[Some spoilers will follow if you haven't seen "Battlestar Galatica" to its end]

I've honestly tried to cut back on the amount of television I watch.  Unless they want to crack one more joke before the pass on, I doubt anyone says on their deathbed, "I wish I had watched more television."  But like any medium, while there is a lot of crap, there is some amazing quality.  I was lucky enough to be introduced to the re-imagining (and while I'm usually loathe to use that term, it's exactly what it was) of "Battlestar Galactica" midway into its second season.  It was a show that wasn't exactly inviting until you watched it.  It was on the Sci-Fi network, not known for quality programming but the only place you could watch a "Tremors" marathon and endless episodes of "Stargate SG-1".  The show was called "Battlestar Galactica" which, even if the name wasn't associated with one of the campiest and not-very-good science fiction shows of all-time, wasn't one you could say you watched without sounding insanely geeky. 

But once you were in, you were hooked.  It wasn't a science fiction show, at least, not as we traditionally saw it.  I always viewed it, at its strongest, as a military show and a political show—a "West Wing" set in space.  And while there was a gradual introduction of a larger mythology, what kept the show fascinating was how it dealt with issues both immediate (terrorism, occupation and resistance) and universal (family, reconciliation, spirituality).  There was no techno-babble to fall back on; no transporters to save the day.  If a crew crash-landed on a planet, they were stuck there until a Raptor could come and get them the frak out of there.

And people died.  They died not because it was sweeps week or because they needed viewers to say hooked, but because that was the way of life in the post-apocalypse.  In death, the best you could hope for was to die as a sacrifice to keep the remaining members of humanity alive.  And while characters fell away, challenges faced, and revelations discovered, each episode seemed better than the one that preceded it.

However, I found the show began to falter badly in its fourth season.  After the breathtaking finale of season three, the show started to swing wildly between episodes of tremendous quality and episodes that would have made me quit the show if it had gone ahead with a fifth season because they were making some horrible choices.  Moments like Bill Adama handing the fleet over to Tigh (even though Tigh, not yet revealing himself as a cylon, had admitted to boning Caprica Six on numerous occasions in the same episode) to hang out and wait for his girlfriend; Ellen Tigh as the final cylon (a decision which I don't hate as much as I used to but still seems like a lame choice designed more to surprise than thematically resonate on a larger scale); and delivering the entire history of the final five and the creation of the cylons as one long episode of exposition. 

But it's all in how you end it and "Galactica" ended it beautifully.  After slowly setting all the pieces in place, the show charged ahead with an action-packed, fast-paced rescue mission where we finally learned the true meaning of the opera house and the destiny of our main characters…and then there was still an hour left. 

Some would say that the show ended not with a bang but with a whimper.  While I like quoting T.S. Eliot too, I think that's an unfair assessment.  The show slowly wound itself down, bringing what these characters had desired all along—peace.  No more running, no more charging to the vipers to fend off an attack from cylon raiders, no more enmity and hatred.  Just home and peace.  It would take a tremendous cynic to reject the finale simply because these characters finally got what they wanted. 

It wasn't a flawless finale.  I personally wanted to see more of my favorite characters, Helo and the Chief.  The epilogue showing the robots didn't make me think that this will all happen again as we build robots to destroy us as much as it made me want to write a letter to Japan telling them to cut that shit out.  But those were minor flaws for a finale that did so much right.  That Galactica turned out to be the Opera House of Laura Roslyn's vision took my breath away and seemed so obvious that I smacked myself for not realizing it sooner.  The redemption of Gaius Baltar was four glorious years in the making and when you think about it, no other character could have convinced Cavill to stop the cycle of violence.  Even Starbuck, a character who's always rubbed me the wrong way, made me cheer when she punched in "All Along the Watchtower" to send Galactica on its last jump and the last one it would ever need. 

Below you can see moments of the final table read for the show and tears were shed and deservedly so.  These actors, writers, producers, and directors have all been involved in something truly special and while you may not wish more television into your life, you'd be missing out if you never saw "Battlestar Galatica".