Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: A+ | 1 USERS: A+ YOU GRADE IT The Stockdale Paradox
By Jacob Clifton | Season 4 | Episode 11 | Aired on 01.16.2009
Saul speaks easily, quietly. Unnerved by this reversal. "Looks like you've got a head start on me, Bill..." Bill tells him to shut the fuck up and follow orders, splashing booze all over the table as he pours. One glass comes sliding at Saul's lap, quick as a shot, and he grabs it, looking up. He is unsure how to proceed. "Bill, I am so sorry that I didn't have the guts to tell you when I first found out..." Bill screams. "Frak you!" he growls, and then starts laughing. "You got no guts, you're a frakkin' machine." Saul realizes he's never met this man before in his life. He's afraid, and sad, and doesn't want to take this further.
"Is that how it worked? They program you to be my friend?" Bill's face is so sad and torn for a moment, as Saul shakes his head, bewildered. "Emulate all the qualities I respect?" Bill laughs. "Tell me jokes and I'd laugh at them..." Saul realizes this is bigger than them; that he was just the first straw or the last, and that he doesn't have the wherewithal to fix this other than by jumping in, so he responds. "Bill... I was your friend because I chose to be. I wanted to be." You had all the qualities I respect. That's what love is.
Bill smashes glass against the table, and picks up the photograph, of Saul with his Ellen. If anything, that will do it. "Ah, Ellen. Yeah, you know, Ellen was smarter than I gave her credit for..." Saul warns him not to go there, praying we come back from this. "Smarter than me. She knew from the beginning that there was something wrong with you!" Saul's confused, pulled in, not ready for the strike when it comes: "That's why she went around frakkin' half the Colonial Fleet, searching out, trying to find a man who had real blood in his main vein!" He laughs, over Saul's barking orders to shut up, stop it, halt before he goes too far. "She came on to me once," Bill chuckles. "Like a dog in heat. I could smell, I could smell it." Saul puts the gun to Bill's head, pleading with him to stop. "She smelled so good... Go on, do it!" he suddenly screams, shocking Saul. "Do it, do it!" Saul growls, deep in his throat, terrified of what will happen, unable to look away, to make it stop.
"Or I will," Bill grunts, holding a gun to his own head, pleading for death. "Go on, go on. Do it. Go on!" Saul cocks his head at Bill finally, and then drops his gun: "Oh my Gods, that's why you came here. To do this. You haven't got the frakkin' guts to do it yourself." He ejects the magazine, relieved and disgusted, and Bill sits very still with the gun still to his temple. "I'm sorry, Bill. This is one time I can't help you." Bill crumples, so sad and disappointed. He can't do it, either. Hope is what kills. He puts the gun down slowly, down to gravity more than intention, and reaches for the bottle again. "I think we've both had enough," Saul says, pulling the bottle out of Bill's hands, and Bill shrugs and takes a long drink from the glass instead. Saul watches him drink, and the room rights itself. The equilibrium is restored. Bill tells him a story, as he often does when he can't say his feelings out loud.
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