Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: A | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT He That Believeth In Me
By Jacob Clifton | Season 4 | Episode 1
As she finishes up, and Gaius thanks her, God shows up to collect his debt in the form of Charlie Connor, from the Circle. Religion looks different to different people. Connor greets him, not unkindly, and goes to the sink-trough to do unspecified stage business involving water and touching his face a whole lot without getting it wet. Gaius, of course, apologizes for not recognizing the guy, because this whole time he's been famous he hasn't really understood how or for why, because he'd prefer to be famous for being Dr. Gaius Baltar, Nobel winner, and there's a whole mess of static between that and what he's famous for now. Paulla tries, in vain, to get him out of there, but Gaius is locked in on Charlie.
"We met at the groundbreaking ceremony on New Caprica. Introduced you to my son Kevin. He told you he wanted to be President when he grew up. You told him that he could be if he stuck to his schoolwork." Gaius remembers him, a "little redheaded boy," about eight or nine. Charlie gruffly corrects him: "Seven." They're both right, in a way. But Kevin Connor will always be seven years old, another burned and dying child of Gaius Baltar, no matter what happens to little Derrick. Paulla pulls and pulls at Gaius, but it's too late. Charlie's buddy Shaunt enters and grabs her by the neck, choking her; Charlie holds a razor tenderly to Gaius's throat. Razors. This is the man Charlie Connor chooses to be.
And Gaius? Screaming, over and over, "Leave her alone!" Demanding that they set Paulla free, with Charlie shouting in his face, over and over, "Look at me!" But Gaius won't look at him, so Charlie decides he wants to hear Gaius scream instead. "I want to see if anyone comes to help you," he shouts, and then screams in Gaius's face, like a wounded beast. Like an animal. And the tiny part of this that was about Gaius goes away, because that's the sound of pain, not rage.
"Beg." He begins to scream. Gaius Baltar sat up there in Colonial One and didn't save them. Twenty-four hours a day, the only thing we know for sure is that he didn't save them. It's the one thing he did constantly for four months, and for a year before that. And then they took Charlie's son, little Kevin, the little red-haired Connor boy, before Charlie could even apologize for bringing him to New Caprica, or into this brutal world at all. All the king's horses rounded them up and shot them dead, and up in Colonial One was Gaius Baltar.
"Beg. I bet you begged the Cylons, why don't you beg for me? Come on, beg!" He headbutts the former President, and forces him to his knees: Gaius Baltar who came this close to paying for his crimes, only to have that justice snatched away at the last second by a tribunal that didn't understand about justice, which is to say that they didn't understand about Kevin Connor, who is seven years old. And now Gaius Baltar is on his knees with a razor to his throat, and he refuses to scream, and he refuses to beg. I mean to say that on his knees, with a razor to his throat, Gaius refuses to be the man that Charlie Connor has chosen for him to be. For a second you can see why she still loves him so much, after all this. How you could fall in love with Gaius Baltar.
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