The BSG series finale profoundly sucked.

The first reason is that they used the ultimate cop-out to answer some of the most interesting questions posed by the show.  What was the reason for the Six in Baltar’s head?  What exactly was Starbuck?  The ultimate cop-out: God did it.

Supernatural explanations have been the basis of lazy thinking for thousands of years… first it was water gods that made the river flow downhill, until that could be explained by the science of gravity.  Then they said gods created the universe, until enterprising folks realized the Big Bang had a lot more evidence than the theory that the Earth hatched from the egg of a giant bird.  Then they said the gods were necessary to created life, but Darwin realized that also had a natural explanation.

Now there is no excuse for laziness.  And yet, that’s what BSG did in the finale.  Don’t answer questions, and leave it on the river gods.

I understand most people are still superstitious to various degrees, which is why I accepted the show leaning on themes of prophecy.  It’s unavoidable and I understand that.. and even found that entertaining.  But what I do not tolerate is the lazy cop-out, refusing to put thought into the answers the show had tried so hard to create.

They didn’t even bother to tie together the prophetic elements of the show that had been repeated time and time again since the very beginning.  The temple scene with Baltar, Six, Hera, Roslin, Athena… all of that was basically meaningless.  The final five, basically meaningless.  I was expecting at least a partial resolution to these questions, but instead they just lazily threw something together that was utterly unsatisfying.

What it tells me is that they didn’t have any picture of where the story was going when they introduced those elements in the first place.  Contrast that to a Lost, a much better show, which has shown that they have answers to the mysterious elements raised in earlier seasons.  There, the payoff seems significant because you can see that it wasn’t a waste, they had some idea of the explanation to the mystery.

Now I wish I had never watched the show at all.  I haven’t been this disappointed in an ending to a fictional story since Stephen King’s The Stand, which had a very similar cop-out ending.   LAME.