Never knew this topic was here... Surprised it's not more active these days!
I have to say, as a die-hard fan of BSG (and the third - or "turd" season tried damn hard to kill me!), the final? could not have been better... in a sense.
In the sense that, given how low the bar has fallen since the end of Season 2, I was not surprised at the ridiculous turn of events. I could accept nearly everything in the episode, the battle was frakkin' awesome, the effects were great, the collision scene was almost as good as Nemesis, and the setup, while a tad shonkey, was somewhat believable. But when they found Earth, again, for the first time, It all went a little wacky, and I found it hard to suspend my disbelief any more.
Specifically, I have a huge problem with Lee Adama deciding that Humanity will abandon any trace of advancement, litterally throwing away their space ships, and dissolve any trace of the social identity that the people of the fleet have been striving to protect for the last 4 years. My problem is that we are to believe that the only dissenting voice to this plan is Romo Lampkin!?
I was waiting for the usual heavy-handed political wrangling over the issue, but it seems all that the writers were doing by giving Lampkin the dissenting voice, was hanging a lantern on the issue and moving on. The writing on BSG has almost never been that bad before. It screamed it's inauthenticity at me, and left me feeling cold for the otherwise fairly good ending. The show felt complete, and initially, I felt satisfied, but it started to creep on me, and now I feel I'm waiting for the story to end plausibly.
I lament the New Caprica storyline and the destructive effect it seemed to have on the writing standards on the show. It really hasn't been the same since.
Also, while mystery is good, Starbuck's end just felt like a cop-out. I felt led up the garden path. Maybe as a staunch Atheist, I just find it harder to accept the hocus pocus answer.
Call me a bitch if you must, but I'm just being honest about how it made me feel.