Lee Kemp

Like most other people I (possibly) found out who the Stig was this week and felt a little bit less once I knew. I liked that there was a secret and if I was going to find out, I didn’t want everyone else to know.

This brings me far from neatly onto Battlestar Galactica. It’s been a long feverish wait after the mid-season break following the WGA strike in the states. I don’t care if you’re not a fan, you should be. The writing is excellent, the themes are complex and intriguing and the approach is utterly fearless; no character is safe and no topic is taboo. The second half of season 4 is now showing and it’s the last season. Ever. The end is coming and I feel like a teenage mixture of quietly sad and completely joyous. The impending resolution, no more secrets, all the answers will be mine. But there’s another ten episodes or so and apparently the last one will be a three hour special. OMFG, as they say. The end is coming, the secrets will be blown wide open and I can’t wait.

Then there’s Lost. I got bored around about season 3 and then picked it up again recently and now have the last 2 episodes of season 4 to get through and it’s looking pretty damn impressive. The character’s have remained mostly the same, Kate is annoying and wet and suddenly a crack native American tracker, Locke needs to realise respect is earned and not given and Jack needs to earn it and not be given it. Sawyer just gets better and better. In my frankly not that humble opinion. But it has just got so damned good recently. I think the reason I’m enjoying it so much more now is that for a while the prospect of questions without answers, or answers that just lead to more questions was just irritating. Now it feels like there is a plan, there is an answer and they’re drip feeding it to me. I’m sucking at the breast of JJ Abrams and the experience is much more comfortable than the image. The show’s gone in directions I never expected  but at least it’s going somewhere, not just meandering. The weirder it gets the better it gets. It feels like the end is coming and that anticipation, no matter how long it takes, is where the excitement comes from.

Finally I’m on the last episode of season 4 of The Wire. I believe season 5 is the last one ever. I love these characters. Literally. Their actions are completely dictated by who they are and they still manage to surprise me. In this case it’s just the plot that’s a secret but the unfolding of it and the trajectory the characters are on is intense and addictive.

I have complete faith in the writers of all 3 shows. They’ve brought me this far and haven’t abused my trust, where they’ve faltered they’ve brought me back and I know that whatever answers they choose to give me will be surprising and satisfying. But when they’re finished I’m going to feel completely full and a little bit empty. This lack is what will drive me to find the next series, the next Quality American Drama. I’ll become entangled once again, hopelessly addicted. Yearning for the answers, worried that I might actually get them and scared that I won’t.

Wow this sucks, but isn’t it great? Ed and Tony have both told me I should be watching Mad Men next. God bless you writers of Quality American Drama. God bless you and all who sail in you.