After many Netflix sends and iTunes downloads, I am now successfully caught up with "Battlestar Galactica," my (recently decided upon) third favorite show on television after "LOST" and "The Office." It's truly a great show and I've loved nearly every single minute of it.

I find it fairly amazing that a show where humanity is almost completely destroyed in the first episode of the series can find new and interesting ways to make the show darker. Season 3 really nailed this point home beautifully. It seems that having your planet nuked by humanoid robots was the least of their worries. It turns out that what the humans do to one another is at times worse than anything the Cylons could ever think of.

But what makes the show great is that it shows the interplay between the Cylons and the humans. Because much of the bad things humans do to humans, humans do to cylons, cylons to humans, and even cylons to cylons has a reason. You can see where everyone's coming from. And in many ways, everyone is justified in their actions against each other.

That's real life folks. And if there's one thing this show does especially well, it's showing us a fictionalized representation of the politics and social issues that face our planet on a daily basis. And that's what I most loved about season 3. I loved it's weekly take on issues like military tribunals, suicide bombers, labor unions, fanaticism, presidential powers, and sexual politics.

Season 3 seemed differently structured than the previous 2 seasons. After the narrative of what happened on New Caprica, the show's writers seemed to write a few "one off" episodes. So while there was always an advancing storyline, they chose to show some of the lesser spotlit characters. While I enjoyed many of these episodes, the labor episode in particular, I felt that some of season 3 dragged because of it.

If I have a couple of gripes with the show, it's that I find some of the more spiritual leanings of the show to be a bit on the tedious side. After three seasons, I still find the spirituality of the show kind of confusing. Maybe that's because I don't quite jump into the mystical nature of the show in the same way that I do with LOST, and maybe because I don't have anyone to bounce ideas off of, but it's something that I still don't quite get.

And if it were up to me, I would have killed Starbuck off much earlier in the season. She was only gone for what, 3 episodes or so. I think her return would have made a much larger impact had she been gone for a longer period of time.

As for the big Cylon reveal at the end of the episode, I both liked it and disliked it. I like what it means for the show and where it can possibly go, but I tend to not like twists that aren't foreshadowed. This one kind of came out of nowhere. I think if you're going to reveal something as major as major characters actually being cylons, you have to at least hint at it way ahead of time. It's the storytelling concept that if you're going to shoot a gun in book three, you have to have it mentioned in book one.

That's actually one of my major complaints with the show. I mean, it's a minor gripe because it doesn't really distract from my enjoyment of the show, but I sometimes think they haphazardly introduce themes. Like I found the specialness of Starbuck to kind of come out of nowhere.

And one MINOR complaint is I found much of the cylon storyline to be a bit tedious...all the stuff on their ship. It was just too "Sci-Fi" channel for me. But it's a minor complaint.

I have to say that this season really belonged to "Chief," Tigh, and Starbuck. They were really put through the ringer in season 3 and I'm glad to see that they were more than up to the task.

That's all I got folks. Can't wait to watch this sucker live.

- Matt