I Like to Watch

March 11, 2007 | Let's skip the usual niceties, and get straight to two very important points. First of all, you're right. Cocker spaniels do have soul. I'm prejudiced against them, thanks to one particularly testy cocker spaniel I once knew. Back then, a vet told me that aging cocker spaniels turn on their owners -- not a fantastic trait in a dog, if you ask me, but not necessarily indicative of a marked lack of soul. In fact, it takes some serious soul to bite the hand that feeds. Also, I'll admit that I've always associated cocker spaniels with the '80s (they were the most popular dog for several years running), and tend to place them in the split-level homes of aspiring preppies, families with working-class Eastern European roots (like my own) who nonetheless give their children idiotic WASPy names like Arden and Kimberly and Chip. (Next week I'll have to apologize to Arden and Kimberly and Chip.)

I do love that a great, impassioned cry rose up across the land in defense of cocker spaniels but my assertion that Ben Affleck had no soul was all but ignored. Can't poor Affleck get a little love, too?

You're coming in hot, Striker!
And what's the second important item on my agenda, right under "cocker spaniels"? "Battlestar Galactica" (10 p.m. Sundays on SciFi), of course. Ahem. Can you fracking believe it? If you didn't watch last week, don't read this part. For those who did: Have the gods gone mad? There's got to be a twist, right? Does this mean that Starbuck is a Cylon, one of the so-called final five? Does this mean that she's going to replace Gaius Baltar in the endless plinky-plink French new wave film that has been unfolding this season?

Let's back up a little, for those of you who haven't spent the past week throwing tantrums in Television Without Pity forums and calling Ronald D. Moore at home, threatening to take out his knees with a baseball bat, Tonya Harding style. Kara Thrace, aka Starbuck, played by Katee Sackhoff, was until last Sunday night one of the more compelling and charismatic lead characters on "Battlestar Galactica." Starbuck was the best fighter pilot by far on Galactica -- imagine that, a woman, the best pilot of all! -- but not only that, she was tough, bossy, sexually fickle, emotionally remote and self-destructive. As a male character, not so interesting, but as Salon's Laura Miller elucidated so eloquently back in 2005, watching Starbuck drink and play cards and get violent and boozy was always entertaining and slightly surreal. Despite a few obnoxiously soapy recent episodes, in which Starbuck and her true love/pal/rival Apollo revealed the stinky crevices of their love/hate relationship, Starbuck has generally provided "Battlestar" with some of its more provocative plots.

Yes, it goes without saying that we should be appalled that in 2007, Starbuck is one of the only overconfident, unapologetic heroines to ever grace the small screen. Let's just consider a handful of contemporary female TV characters: Meredith Grey of "Grey's Anatomy," Ally McBeal Deux (Kitty) of "Brothers & Sisters," Cheerleader Claire of "Heroes," Cheerleader Lyla of "Friday Night Lights," Harriet of "Studio 60," Simpering Susan of "Desperate Housewives" -- some of them smart, some charming, some confident. But look at how they all roll their eyes and pout and fret and giggle under pressure. Look at how they wring their hands and second-guess themselves and weep and then turn on their feminine wiles like one of "Charlie's Angels" to solve any problem. Why? Why is it so important that female characters be jittery and emotionally fragile, as if their femininity depended on lots of coy eye batting and neurotic bottom-lip biting? Are male TV writers really so unimaginative and/or threatened that they dream only of nonthreatening, impish kitty cats? OK, not every one of those characters is a limp little goo-goo-eyed rag doll, but can you or can't you picture every last one biting her bottom lip?

Next page: Why Starbuck? Why now?