by Kate Miller
Kat arm-wrestled a fan, Anders tried to Fonzie fix the TV when it broke then offered to act out the final five minutes of the episode (tease!), and the bartender served Eyes of Jupiter last night as Battlestar Galactica fans mingled with the cast and caught the season three finale in a swank little Hollywood dive called Republic.
So here’s the thing. If you’re like me, practically no one else you know — in real life, anyways — is watching the best show on TV. Or you may be lucky and all your friends want to talk the next day about is Starbuck’s destiny, Baltar’s culpability, and how Caprica Six is still wearing that same skimpy black number in that dark, dank brig, and doesn’t she get chilly once in a while? Either way, watching an episode with the fan contingent in full effect plus cast members probably isn’t how you spend your Sunday nights. (And if it is, invite me. I can’t dish up the foie gras like Republic, but you should know I make a killer apple crisp in case you’re having a quaint BSG potluck. Just saying.) So I jumped at the chance.
When my husband Josh and I pulled up to the curb of La Cienega at 7 p.m., the biggest fans were already hanging outside Republic. Two signs you’re hard-core: you’re prompt, and if you happen to catch a glimpse of the TV screen 10 minutes into the episode — like we early birds did at the first showing in the lounge (there were technicalities in the feed or something) — you avert your eyes so you’re not spoiled. Seriously, guys. If you got to the party before 8 o’clock, what you’d have seen was a viewing party with everybody’s backs to the screen, which had the sound down super-low. (There was a private viewing room off the lounge with the sound on, which I was itching to run into but avoided until the last scene, when I saw an image I couldn’t resist and bolted back there, boldly risking spinal injury by sprinting in heels on hardwood floors, only to catch the final credits. Snap.)
No complaints on the glitch in the 7 p.m. showing; heck, the 9 p.m. showing was still an hour earlier than we’d have seen it in L.A.. And it didn’t suck to be swilling open bar booze and mingling. (Well, I’m a lightweight, so I nursed half a quir royale all night long. But still.) Meeting people in real life from an online experience is a trip. “Hi, I’m Kate. Er, BringingHomeTheCat.” There were lots of friends of CallisRocks/Desiree — who, with Sephiroth, worked hard to put together the bomb viewing soiree and worked the room like a fabulous BSG-lovin’ rock star — and more than a few lurkers. Guys and girls, younger and older, TOS fans and TNS theorists and pals who were dragged along for the ride — it ran the gamut. For all the talk upthread about dressing up, I didn’t meet a single costumed fan, for the record. Who we did meet were some pretty cool people — not only nice, but no hints at all of axe murderers. And that’s always a lingering thought in the back of your mind when you’re meeting folks from the Internet, right? Or is that so 1999?
Luciana Carro was the first cast member to show up, glimmering in a gold print dress and bangles. Lucy, as her friends call her, looks petite and sweet and feminine and not at all like she might punch you in the jaw for looking at her wrong. She mingled with fans and posed for pictures and even answered my silly questions. Like, did that spinny thing that the pilots would compete to shoot guns straight out of make her feel sick after a while? (Yes.) Did she really shoot guns out of it? (No. Duh!) The girlfriend who’d first read her the “Passage” script over the phone was there, too, and together they described the shock of realizing Kat’s character was dying that episode. (I cried that episode. Did you?) It was a nice inside glimpse.
Over at the bar, somebody was talking about how they’d read on the boards about a BSG drink called the Airlock. First it was a Treo race between Josh and another guy to find the posted recipe. Then an attending fan named Steve (at least I think it was Steve, but I also met a John and a Paul, and I’m terrible with matching one-syllable names and faces the day after) and I decided to take this as a dare to invent a new drink for the finale party. With the help of Kovar, another fan who also happened to be a bartender, we created the Eye of Jupiter — a martini glass containing a lemon drop with Blue Curacao and a cherry in the middle, to match the yellow-blue-red mandala. I’m not a hard liquor person, and I still had another quarter of a quir royale to go, so I didn’t try it, but Steve said it was good, and Eyes of Jupiter were flowing the rest of the night. (I presented the prototype to Luciana Carro, then I felt like a heel ’cause she wasn’t drinking that night. But she was incredibly gracious about it, and her friend drank it instead.) I like to think that the Eye of Jupiter will go down in BSG legend, referenced by future historians and drunk in BSG drinking games every time the Eye is mentioned. Or every time they say frak. Or every time Ron Moore inadvertently calls it the Eye of Zeus in his podcast.
Michael Trucco showed up next in jeans and leather jacket with his lovely blonde fiancé and a friend who designed those matching winged tattoos Starbuck and Anders share. Michael is brawny and funny and smiles a lot, which is nice because Anders leads such a tortured existence that one poster suggested his callsign be “Mr. Happy Pants” just to give the guy a break. Actually, maybe that’s why all the cast members appeared more attractive in real life — they were happy and relaxed instead of fighting for their lives, eating algae protein bars and avoiding Tigh’s single accusing eye in the halls. More mingling, more pictures, etc.
The 9 p.m. showing was due to air any minute, and we harder-core fans who couldn’t possibly delay watching the finale — even to hang with celebrities — started staking out our spots on the couches of the private viewing room. (Is it too nerdy to mention that, in the headiness of the final minutes before the episode, the primo early-bird couch section was nicknamed the CIC? Oh, it is? Then why are you sooo jealous that you weren’t sitting in the CIC with us last night? Ah ha!)
So the episode starts, and the coolest thing happens: Luciana Carro and Michael Trucco join the hard-core contingent in the private viewing room, scooting onto the floor in the first few minutes of the show, right after the roars of every guy in the room had died down after a certain scene between a certain guy and a certain girl. (I’m being vague because Sephiroth had indicated upthread to avoid spoilers, I presume in case whoever’s reading this hasn’t yet watched the episode. If you’re a big enough fan to read this and haven’t watched the show yet, though, what were you doing last night? I mean, were you in jail or abducted by aliens or inexorably sucked into a red-yellow-blue swirling storm or what?) Like, they actually watched the show with us. In the hard-core room. That’s, like, seven flavors of cool.
So we’re watching Crossroads. It’s rocking. Every commercial break, we turned to each other to dissect the latest happening, and a warm hum of fandom embraced the room. Then, ironically, just as the power in the CIC cuts out onscreen — the satellite feed cut out in a white screen of deathly “Yes,” “No” and “Cancel” buttons. The room’s jaw collectively dropped and then picked itself up again to voice an aghast “Noooo!” Michael Trucco — just to show that he really is the hero he plays — scrambled up to the digital keypad by the screen, messed with some buttons, then mightily attempted to click “Cancel” button as if it were a touchscreen. Some people were stunned, frozen; some scurried to and fro for help. My husband Josh, a networking consultant, went to check it out because he’s the man. But not even his mad skills could resurrect the feed.
“I’ll act it out for you,” Michael finally offered, jumping up. “OK, I’m Adama.” Luciana nodded, laughing, as if she was gonna channel Roslin in a private celebrity skit of our very own. Think they’d let me be Racetrack? Baltar? Hoshi? Aww, they didn’t do it.. “I got nothing,” Anders laughed. A roomful of cliff-hangered fans darted their eyes around; such cruel cut-offs during a season finale could prompt glass-smashing or cannibalism.
I heard that the other TVs are OK and bolted back into the bar, risking spinal injury once more. Back in the bar, the TV was on all right, but this half of the season finale viewing party was so cool that nobody was even watching the finale. The volume was down so low that I could barely hear over the murmur of schmooziness — just enough to grasp that certain people telling each other certain things with a certain look in their eyes that certainly means something. (That vague enough? Watch the show already, peeps!) I couldn’t hear and I wasn’t hip enough for the room, so I finally headed back to the viewing lounge — back up, whew! –where the other really big certain something happened. It was a cliffhanger — c’mon, that’s no spoiler — and the thrum of fan wowing and theorizing and what-iffing began to beat like a big fat heart of BSG love. Michael Trucco was bluffing; I wanted to walk right up to him and say “What? Certain thing?!!” but he’d disappeared. Somehow, it was fitting.
Back in the other half of the party, Bodie Olmos had shown up, understatedly everyman in jeans and a sporty pullover. He, too, is more rakishly good-looking in the flesh, possibly because his name isn’t actually Hotdog. The DJ started to spin the tunes and an after-party afterglow fell over the room. Someone pulled out a table in the middle of the room and Luciana Carro arm-wrestled another girl amid laughter and trash-talking. I cheered, “You go, girl,” but couldn’t decide who I was voting for — Kat or the fantasy up-and-coming Viper pilot — and I didn’t see who won, and it didn’t matter, and somehow that seemed fitting, too.
After more afterglow, Josh and I strolled down the slate stairs to pick up our car from the valet, where Luciana was, too. On the drive home, spine-endangering heels finally off and bare feet up on the dash, I realized I hadn’t eaten a single bite of foie gras or fancy salmon or the rest of the $65-a-head grub. We stopped for 99-cent spicy chicken sandwiches from the Carl’s Jr. drive-through. They were 10 times as delicious as I remembered. At home, our baby was asleep and my two non-BSG fan friends who babysat had been watching Sci-Fi. “Did you see this certain person and this certain thing?” they asked me. “Did you see?” I watched the certain scene I missed on DVR and fell asleep, content, dreaming of season three marathons and two-hour specials all the BSG parties to come.