Juliet Lapidos misses the point entirely in her critique of Battlestar Galactica. The problem is not that the show is secretly misogynist. The problem is that the show has been increasingly tailored to a certain melodrama loving, female demographic.

See, the first season of the show was badass. The Cylons had just exterminated 99% of humanity and they were tenaciously pursuing the last 1%. This translated into lots of cool scenes with spaceships blowing up and teleporting away in the nick of time. They also had this neat V-like twist where the Cylons looked like human beings, so there was lots of intrigue onboard the ship as to who was a spy. Finally, they had this great character in the philandering Dr. Gaius Baltar. Revenge of the Nerds aside, the media never portrays geeks as babe-magnets, never! This was monumentous--the intellectual worshiped--it was like France on a spaceship! What's more Gaius was haunted by a spectre of the Cylon that tricked him into turning over the codes for the earth's defenses; there was genuine pathos with these awesome dream sequences where he got to have even more sex.

But then, they introduced all this crap on how the Cylons couldn't reproduce because they didn't know how to love--and then it all went downhill. Suddenly, the space battles ended and in its place came love triangles and religious mumbo jumbo. Dee loved Apollo who loved Starbuck who loved Anders. Saul Tigh loved his wife Cally, but when he thought she had died, he grew to love a number 6 and got her pregnant. Of course when Cally was reborn, she was none too pleased about Tigh's new squeeze so she induced a miscarriage by forcing Saul Tigh to choose between his two loves. AAAH!!! It's like Days of Our Lives in space; Battlestar Galactica even has a guy with an eyepatch. All we need now is for Rosalyn to be possessed by the devil and the circle will be complete.

Battlestar Galactica is obviously pandering to the same demographic that used to watch soaps and is currently fixated on Gossip Girl. If Lapidos has a problem with this, then she should direct the blame where the blame is due: women. In short, I challenge Lapidos to become the Bill Cosby of feminism. Women need to look in the mirror and come to terms with the fact that they secretly love melodramatic, misogynist crap, and are the primary reason that it continues to thrive.

Only then can we all sit down together, male and female, and watch a true feminist work of art: Alien 2!