Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: A+ | 4 USERS: A+ YOU GRADE IT There's Beauty In The Breakdown
By Jacob Clifton | Season 4 | Episode 4 | Aired on 04.25.2008
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.Wow. Um. Fourth home run in a row, mapping the weird S&M current running through this show onto religious absolution, and there's this whole part with Raptor 289 exploding again, and ... I'm kind of speechless right now, actually, so let's just do a roll call, I guess.
No news on Boomer or Natalie, but we live in hope. President Roslin is totally awesome again, between her relationship with Adama going deeper and further than ever before, sexy new hairdo, and balls-out reevaluation of the Baltar situation. Adama is not doing well with her illness, but is changing just as fast as everybody else.
Chief gets fired and tossed off Galactica by the Admiral himself after pretty much losing his entire mind in front of everybody like six times. The funeral also causes Tory and Tigh to go majorly nuts in different ways: the former trying desperately to turn into a superhero/robot as quickly as possible and the latter by, well ...
Tigh's shit just got complex. He and Chief both start projecting like crazy, whether out of human guilt or lack of experience with their Cylon abilities, and Tigh spends most of the episode confusing Caprica Six with poor dead Ellen. Things end with a particularly brutal -- yet sweetly intentioned -- fistfight, in the middle of which Caprica realizes actually what she needs to do is make out with him. And this is the least weird thing that happens in the whole episode. It's awesome.
Meanwhile, Baltar's cult gets hit by a fundamentalist group, so Chip Six puts Gaius through one wringer after the other: causing him to throw a huge hissy in the middle of a service to the Gods, get thrown in the brig, and finally physically picking him up and hurling him at the Marines in such a freaky, miraculous way that like even Lee is starting to wonder if Gaius isn't onto something. Then Gaius gives one of the most beautiful speeches about religion I've ever heard, cementing Tory's cult status and pretty much giving Six the best birthday ever.
Oh. And Sam's about this close to coming out of the chrome closet with Kara.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!WILL IT BLOOM THIS YEAR?
(Guilt and Grief become confused; two Men seek absolution in Negation.)
Persephone stands on an altar, holding her pomegranate, holding service for the dead, bearing witness to Galen Tyrol's lament.
"I couldn't keep you safe from harm, my love, but I kept you in my heart."
Artemis holding her bow, Zeus holding his lightning, his phoenix, his Battlestar insignia, his Cylon Raider.
"You were the breath in my lungs, the blood in my veins, the light in my eye, and now that breath is gone."
Saul thinks of Ellen, the service she never received. Enemy of the state, collaborator, futile victim of the Circle and a battle still waging in his heart, behind his eye.
"That blood and the light are gone."
Tory and Lee are there, the President and Admiral next to them. This is a state ceremony, as befits the wife of the man who keeps every engine running, the heart of the Galactica. He doesn't wear a uniform, except for the grease on his face and the dirt under his fingernails, but today he is clean, and beautiful.
"Now I am left, a voice. And the Lords of Kobol, as many and as varied as mortal men, must bend down and lean low to hear that voice and hear my lament."
He steps away, after silence, and the Gods lean down.
"With all our thoughts and love, Calandra Henderson Tyrol, we send your spirit into the universe," says the priestess. "So say we all." And Persephone hears, as the mourners say amen, and weeps for the end of a world.
Laura leans into Bill, whispering. "I liked that service." He responds casually, lightly. "It's not for me, I'll tell you that." She smiles. "I know. But I want you to know what I like." As lovers do, sharing likes and dislikes. As widowers do, planning last rites. She won't meet his eyes, because she knows what they're saying: you've just put me at that altar beside him, mourning a cabin in the wilderness that never was allowed to be built. You've just made this funeral real.
We mourn alone. That particular numbness, that animal need to do it, as quietly as praying in a closet. Mourning is hard because everybody looks at you, and inside themselves you see them fighting: how much is caring, how much theatre. Human psychology is based on projection: You look into their eyes to see if they are hurting in the same places and for the same reasons you are. They never are. We mourn alone, funerals are for everybody else. Adama murmurs nothing words at Galen, Tory complains quietly to Laura. "Why do they have to do these things at dawn?" They're always like this, those two. Laura doesn't even worry about it; the mysteries of mystery. "It's all right. They do because they have to."
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