Boom-o-meter: off the chart.

Gasp-o-meter: off the other chart.

A finale feast....

Shock and awe quotient: Well, let’s put it this way. Galactica rams base ship. George Lucas eat-your-heart-out shock’n awe.

Opera House revealed. Supershock ‘n awe.

Starbuck disappears into the ether? Knock me over with a (pigeon) feather shock ‘n awe.

Twin Sixes and Baltars? Shockfunnyawe.

Twin Sixes and Baltars that may have been messengers of a higher power? Scoop me off the floor shock.

And awe over the creativity of the whole thing. Good, but not sweet. Funny, but not farce. Sad, but not maudlin.

That’s always been BSG’s strength: to edge right up to a cliche, then take you careening into another direction.

Just one moment -A robot dancing to “All along the watchtower” – would have been another series’ finale highlight, but it was just one moment for BSG.

Oh, I know there are much more discriminating fans who will find fault….(“A spare piece of space debris spun to the right, not the left, thus fracking with the existential trajectory of…” Yeh. Those fans.)

Me, I am just going to watch the finale a few dozen more times to see if the shock and awe wear thin.

Maybe start at the beginning.

So while you are waiting
and counting down
and looking at the reruns
and thinking how afterwards BSG fan life as we know it
will not be like we know it

Don’t you think James Callis sounds sooooo much like his snarky character Gaius Baltar in this clip from Entertainment Weekly:

“I’d just come to Los Angeles for the first time, and I was like, I don’t want my very first job here playing some douche bag.

“I was like, ‘Why not give me Apollo? I’d like to be in leather pants and fire a gun at baddies.’

“But the very first thing we filmed was me and Number Six kissing and taking each other’s clothes off.

“It was actually a tremendous way to get to know someone.”

Yes, James. That’s how we all say hello in America.

Even with BSG rocking and rolling on the TV behind me while I write and edit, I reassure my boss that I am more than holding my weight as a dutiful financial journalist during today’s Balacta-thon.

Finance hero...

To prove it: Madoff has to stay in jail until sentencing; the Dow is up 2.7 points; it looks like bonuses to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac execs are next up in Congress’s crosshairs and OMG! Those mutinous cretins!

Oh, well. Regrets to Adam Smith. My body is in business, editing. My heart is with Adama.

OK, it already has.

As I sit here, typing away at work, yes, work, SciFi’s day-long BSG marathon is well underway. The TV behind me that usually spouts financial news all day long is tuned to BSG.

And you know what?

Ms. D’s suicide is still as shocking as ever.

You might have issues, too, if you found your dead self and wound up in a bar singing with your dead dad.

Ellen as the final one – and still a blatant hussy – just as much weird fun.

And Starbuck cremating her other self?

“She has issues,” I try to explain to my boss.

“I have seen this four or five times now and she always has issues,” he says. “Not the sort of woman you want to tick off and then turn your back.”

My boss. He catches on quick.

Frack, as you well know, as we all know, is the censor-friendly version of the curse that got your mouth washed out with soap.

Imagine my surprise, then, to hear that frack actually got its start with the original “Happyface” Galactica.

Well, that’s what we all thought.

Ikea's Fracking mirror.

But fräck is a Swedish word for audacious.
Read the full story

A wee bit of a stretch, even for a series which went boldly where many news organizations didn’t: examining the moral ambiguity of torture and the death penalty, for instance.

(And hey, wouldn’t you have thought Adama might have spared Gaeta the firing squad if only because Adama has been in that chair, with that blindfold, so recently? Like I said. Ambiguity.)

But never mind. The New York Times reports The United Nations and the Sci Fi Channel “will present a panel discussion (tonight) on the social and political issues” raised by BSG.

It will be moderated by Whoopi aka “Guinan” Goldberg.

Edward James Olmos (Adama) and Mary McDonnell (Ms. President) join executive producers Ronald D. Moore and David Eick on the dias — but it’s invitation only, no room for we riffraff who, apparently, are not qualified to listen to intelligent conversation on war and peace.

So who’s gonna break that news to Tolstoy?

Worried about LAG (Life after Galactica)?

Me, too, especially given the trailers for upcoming sci fi movies now being flogged by that channel.

The BSG prequel can’t get up and running fast enough to save me from watching a two hour, made-for-TV movie about thangs with fangs.

Lucky for us, there are….dolls! Yes! Little plastic people.
Or. if you like…more dolls!

Double sixes.

Just, you know, don’t be that scene in Spaceballs.

And you know the one I am talking about.

The one that made you fall off the couch laughing. Yeh.

Don’t be this guy:

Just goes to show that best laid plans can blow up in your face: something that anyone who hitched a ride on BSG could tell you. But this play-by-play blog entry did not make it into the cyberworld last Friday. Toaster mischief? You decide. Meanwhile, taking it from the top…

10:47 pm

Yeah! Go get that li’ weird half human-y kid with the anime eyes! Yeah!

And maybe that creepy Cylon who pulls a Borg by unveiling that poky sharp syringe-y hand-thing. Yeah! Get him, too.

So, to recap tonight’s play-by-play:
Caprica 6 gets Baltar’s cranky dad new digs, showing that she is a better human than Baltar.
Ellen looks forward to kicking a little Cavil tush.
Cavil looks forward to dissecting Weird Little Hera (WLH).
Adama tells Starbuck he doesn’t care what she is, she’s okay in his book. It’s A Moment.
Roslyn, who from our Caprica flashback we now know has a chocolate thing and dates younger men, gets off her deathbed to go get WLH with her not-so-young beau, Adama. It’s A Moment II.
Nothing blows up. But I have high hopes for next week.
Can we start with Cavil? Can we blow him up first?

Play by play: 10:21 pm
Interstellar flight and Adama still has to move to the Cylon base ship with cardboard boxes?
Is Ron Moore’s vision of the future dark or what?
Maybe an interstellar pickup truck with some friends and a pizza will show up.

Nothing blows up.

Heading into the last three hours of BSG, I thought we should do a play-by-play.
10:04 pm
OK, did not expect to be back on Caprica. Baby showers. Lusty limo rides. Military non-intelligence.

Looks a lot like…Earth.

Oh! Wait! It’s Zach! brother of Lee and is that Kara Thrace cooking? as in Martha Stewart dinner party? (Only with strange whorly earth map cylon base ship design in the background. Even Miss Martha doesn’t have that.)

Baltar has family? Family who actuallyclaims him as a member?

Hmm. Father-son relationship in Balatr family may be one reason Cylons felt comfy nuking humanity.

Nothing blows up.

Stay tuned. More toaster goodness to come…