{"id":700,"date":"2011-10-31T13:00:48","date_gmt":"2011-10-31T20:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/?p=700"},"modified":"2011-10-29T14:57:10","modified_gmt":"2011-10-29T21:57:10","slug":"mark-watches-battlestar-galactica-razor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/2011\/10\/mark-watches-battlestar-galactica-razor\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Watches &#8216;Battlestar Galactica&#8217;: Razor"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In the very first <em>Battlestar Galactica<\/em> movie, officer Kendra Shaw is a badass and Admiral Cain is back <em>and<\/em> a badass and then everything gets awful and uncomfortable for an hour. Intrigued? Then it&#8217;s time for Mark to watch <em>Razor<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p><!--more-->I have so very many feelings right now. I HAVE FEELINGS. CAN I SHARE THEM WITH YOU???<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Good<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Now I understand that the <em>Razor<\/em> Flashbacks webisodes are actually scenes from the extended version of the movie. And in context, they are made A THOUSAND TIMES MORE HORRIFYING.<\/li>\n<li>Which only means that it is beautiful that we get to see Nico Cortez as young William Adama again, which means all is right with the world.<\/li>\n<li>STEPHANIE JACOBSEN. YOU ARE THE VERY BEST KENDRA SHAW IMAGINABLE. God, the casting on this show is so impeccable. An actress of color who is also from Australia\/Hong Kong? YES. YES PLEASE. ALL IS PERFECTION. But I can&#8217;t praise her performance enough; she nailed this character with what little time she had, taking the idea that Kendra came from a politically significant family, combining that with arrogance and assurance, and giving us a portrait of a woman who looks up to Admiral Cain and tries to be like her.<\/li>\n<li>oh god MORE ADMIRAL CAIN. That means that <em>Razor<\/em> was already perfect from the start because she is my true love. But that aside, what impressed me so much about the expansion of her character in this movie was being able to see <em>why<\/em> she was the way she was, through flashbacks to her childhood and by seeing the events that shaped her behavior as Admiral of the <em>Pegasus<\/em>.<\/li>\n<li>Which\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6let me first just say this: YES. MORE QUEER WOMEN. i mean it would be nice if this relationship wasn&#8217;t coated in layers of fucked up tragedy, but STILL. BAM. HELENA CAIN LOVES WOMEN <em>AND SHE WILL EVISCERATE YOU IF YOU ARE A BIGOT TOWARDS HER.<\/em><\/li>\n<li>OH GOD THE EXPLOSION OF THE SCORPION FLEET SHIPYARDS. <em>holy shit<\/em>. I will never stop being impressed by how spectacular the special affects are on <em>Battlestar Galactica<\/em>. It always looks so real!<\/li>\n<li>The entire &#8220;cup of coffee&#8221; introduction between Shaw and Cain. A perfect representation of how Admiral Cain ran her ship, and how she was also capable of having a laugh with those she trusted.<\/li>\n<li>A blind jump. SWEET CHRIST.<\/li>\n<li>Actually, on that note, it is a feat of creativity and beauty that this movie shows us things we already know have happened, and they&#8217;re still shocking and exhilarating to us. We knew the shipyard exploded. We knew that Cain executed an XO, that she raided a group of civilian ships for supplies and left them behind. AND YET I WAS STILL SURPRISED BY ALL OF THESE THINGS HAPPENING.<\/li>\n<li>Omg how amazing is the scene where Cain asks Shaw how long she&#8217;s been working on the computer systems??? Just in that tiny moment, Cain is able to distill this belief to Shaw, to tell her to hang on to all the anger she has, to use it as a weapon if she must, and it&#8217;s the start of Cain favoring Shaw in a way that shapes her as a person. And I can&#8217;t deny the parallels to Starbuck, either. UGH THIS SHOW.<\/li>\n<li>The death of XO Belzen is just <em>too much<\/em> for me to deal with. I knew it was going to happen, and it still overwhelmed me.<\/li>\n<li>The betrayal was inevitable, but I thought <em>Razor<\/em> dealt with Gina Inviere well. It was still as terrifying and depressing as any Cylon revelation, maybe even more so because it showed the entire crew of <em>Pegasus<\/em> that even Admiral Cain could be manipulated. <em>That<\/em> is scary. What&#8217;s more frightening, though, is how personally Cain takes this moment, so much so that it directly influences her decision to mistreat Gina so badly.<\/li>\n<li>Okay, so I don&#8217;t find the massacre on the <em>Scylla<\/em> to be GOOD, so I know it&#8217;s weird to put it under THE GOOD, because obviously it was a HORRIFIC MOMENT IN THIS SHOW. But the show did not sugarcoat this scene in any way, and it did not glorify Shaw for pulling the trigger. Instead, it showed us the motivations of Shaw and Cain; we got to see how Gina&#8217;s Cylon nature affected Cain. Even if she wouldn&#8217;t have admitted it later, I think she knew that it was a mistake to make that call. For just that moment, she allows her emotions to distract her. That&#8217;s not to say that she would never have made this decision at all; Admiral Cain is a pragmatist to the core, and she would find any way to get what she needs anyway. But in those unspoken seconds when we see how hurt she is by Gina Inviere, we get insight into how the massacre on the <em>Scylla<\/em> even happened.<\/li>\n<li>I know I shouldn&#8217;t have laughed, but Fisk&#8217;s method of comforting Shaw was ridiculous. &#8220;Oh, you won&#8217;t have to kill any more people, so you&#8217;re fine!&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>Flashbacks are fun; I generally like them in fiction, but I especially love them when they&#8217;re done as they are in <em>Razor<\/em>, by framing so much of it around Kendra Shaw, giving them contextual meaning. And we even get a flashback from Adama, too!<\/li>\n<li>SHAW&#8217;S TRAINING SESSION. oh my god, she is <em>so much<\/em> the new Cain on the <em>Pegasus<\/em>.<\/li>\n<li>OMG THE OLD RAIDERS. OMG.<\/li>\n<li><em>OH MY GOD EVERY GODDAMN SECOND WITH THE FIRST HYBRID<\/em>. Who fucking knew this movie would have a GIGANTIC CHUNK OF MYTHOLOGY. WHICH\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6.oh my god <em>I DON&#8217;T EVEN KNOW HOW TO TALK ABOUT THIS. <\/em>Unlike the hybrid that we saw in season three, <em>this<\/em> hybrid speaks entirely in coherent statements AND THOSE STATEMENTS ARE ABOUT THE FINAL FIVE AND STARBUCK AND <strong>WHAT THE FUCK <em>HOW IS STARBUCK THE HARBINGER OF THE APOCALYPSE <\/em><\/strong>and <strong>WHO IS THE FINAL CYLON<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<li>oh god i am going to have to watch that scene a million times in a row.<\/li>\n<li>oh my god Lee and Starbuck are being nice to one another.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>THE BAD<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Admiral Cain is still dead. \ud83d\ude41<\/li>\n<li>Kendra Shaw is dead. \ud83d\ude41<\/li>\n<li>I know nothing about what the <em>fuck<\/em> is going on.<\/li>\n<li>I&#8217;M NOT WATCHING MORE <em>BATTLESTAR GALACTICA RIGHT NOW<\/em>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the very first Battlestar Galactica movie, officer Kendra Shaw is a badass and Admiral Cain is back and a badass and then everything gets awful and uncomfortable for an hour. Intrigued? Then it&#8217;s time for Mark to watch Razor.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[109],"tags":[112,120,119,9,110,113,142,152,153,117],"class_list":["post-700","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-battlestar-galactica","tag-edward-james-olmos","tag-jamie-bamber","tag-katee-sackhoff","tag-mark-watches","tag-mark-watches-battlestar-galactica","tag-mary-mcdonnell","tag-nico-cortez","tag-razor","tag-stephanie-jacobsen","tag-tricia-helfer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/700","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=700"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/700\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=700"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=700"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=700"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<!-- WP Super Cache is installed but broken. 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