Yes. I've wondered at times whether this was deliberate. At TWOP (and I almost never go there), Jacob (one of the few reviewers who I think tries to be even-handed and has interesting, if often very esoteric, things to say) seems to think that the characters' egocnetrism is something we're supposed to see behind--that it's not necessarily that they're bad people but that they are definitely blinded by their power.
Occasionally I would get that, and that could work except that they kept having people display these attitudes in all aspects of their lives. There were just so many instances where I'd walk away with "Wow. These are really awful people." It at times reached the level that I didn't actually care whether or not the humans survived.
But the way the entire Lee/Kara/Sam/Dee stuff was done mostly to give Kara angst, and, crucially, that she didn't seem to feel that bad about it (whereas Lee, to his credit, at least *felt really bad*) is a bigger issue. I cannot express exactly how much I loathed the Quad of Doom. I hated the storyline. I hated the way it was handled. And it made me want to roll my eyes and grit my teeth at the whole pilot 'love' thing ever after. It made me dislike both Apollo and Starbuck, but, you're right. Apollo eventually seemed to 'get' that they'd been assholes. Starbuck never cared. She seemed to think it was perfectly okay to disregard everyone else, 'cause she had her pain, y'know? Spouses need to just suck it up and, deal, okay. (Then the ending flashback that she and Apollo basically -- nearly -- did the exact same thing to his brother? Put me down as someone who was glad that Apollo and Starbuck weren't given a shippy ending.)
One thought I've returned to on a number of shows with a number of characters in a number of fandoms is that motivation isn't justification. Just because I can understand why a character does something doesn't make that characters actions okay Something can be comprehensible and reprehesible at the exact same time. If you can pull that off and still have likability, you've done a really neat trick. If you can't, then deal with then recognize the fact that not everyone is going to cheer that character on in every situation.
Baltar kind of falls into the same category as True Blood Jason Stackhouse. Both of them do terrible things, but they never seem to realize beforehand that their choice is going to be disastrous and they cannot seem to help themselves. Add in the funny and you can still thing that they're walking catastrophe areas, but you can enjoy watching them from the safe distance of a television set.
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Occasionally I would get that, and that could work except that they kept having people display these attitudes in all aspects of their lives. There were just so many instances where I'd walk away with "Wow. These are really awful people." It at times reached the level that I didn't actually care whether or not the humans survived.
But the way the entire Lee/Kara/Sam/Dee stuff was done mostly to give Kara angst, and, crucially, that she didn't seem to feel that bad about it (whereas Lee, to his credit, at least *felt really bad*) is a bigger issue. I cannot express exactly how much I loathed the Quad of Doom. I hated the storyline. I hated the way it was handled. And it made me want to roll my eyes and grit my teeth at the whole pilot 'love' thing ever after. It made me dislike both Apollo and Starbuck, but, you're right. Apollo eventually seemed to 'get' that they'd been assholes. Starbuck never cared. She seemed to think it was perfectly okay to disregard everyone else, 'cause she had her pain, y'know? Spouses need to just suck it up and, deal, okay. (Then the ending flashback that she and Apollo basically -- nearly -- did the exact same thing to his brother? Put me down as someone who was glad that Apollo and Starbuck weren't given a shippy ending.)
One thought I've returned to on a number of shows with a number of characters in a number of fandoms is that motivation isn't justification. Just because I can understand why a character does something doesn't make that characters actions okay Something can be comprehensible and reprehesible at the exact same time. If you can pull that off and still have likability, you've done a really neat trick. If you can't, then deal with then recognize the fact that not everyone is going to cheer that character on in every situation.
Baltar kind of falls into the same category as True Blood Jason Stackhouse. Both of them do terrible things, but they never seem to realize beforehand that their choice is going to be disastrous and they cannot seem to help themselves. Add in the funny and you can still thing that they're walking catastrophe areas, but you can enjoy watching them from the safe distance of a television set.