Ron Moore's Battlestar Galactica Podcast for "Rapture" (which aired Sunday, January 21) contains all manner of insights into the mechanics of television narrative. Moore discusses how telephone calls can cover for patches in exposition (a Hitchcockian trick), how plot points have to work around production constraints (avoiding location shooting in favor of studio shooting), and how scenes are moved around during writing and editing to get a good rhythm and avoid having acts shorter than six minutes. He says that the teaser and first and second acts are extended to keep audiences from changing channels during commercials (though DVD viewers won't care about this), so later acts end up being short. At the same time, every act ideally should culminate in a cliffhanger act-out, with the third act-out having the strongest moment of suspense. (I have found that many shows have weak third-act endings, but this observation is totally casual.) The podcast humbly points out various ways that the episode could be stronger and many of his points address the ways that writers have to manage audience expectations. Some plot inconsistencies he mentions might be the sort of thing that most viewers won't catch, but "if you're listening to the podcast," he says, "you want to know how the sausage was made."