Episode Report Card Jacob: B- | 1 USERS: C YOU GRADE IT Can't Stop The Signal
By Jacob | Season 2 | Episode 13 | Aired on January 19, 2006
So, of course it's Gaius that's confused here -- even though I don't fully think Adama's on the exact same page just yet -- "Madame President, I don't understand. This makes no sense." And she stares him down: "One of the interesting things about being president is you don't have to explain yourself to anyone; thank you, gentlemen." She dismisses them and Cottle ushers them out, and Adama looks at her, figuring it out. Gaius attacks Adama in the hallway, getting more and more overexcited and hysterical, begging Adama to overrule her. He starts with a call to reason, suggesting to Adama that she's losing it, and Adama shuts that down right quick, so he starts going nuts: "I'll have to appeal to you on scientific grounds! Destroying this child would seriously impact my studies of the Cylon sub-species..." Adama explains the obvious fact that he will always back Roslin, and that the call has already been made. Gaius says that this decision was made based on Cottle's evidence, and tries to pull the intellectual superiority card. Finally, Adama shuts him down completely, looking disgusted as he does it: "Pull yourself together. You're about to become President of the Colonies. You're going to be asked to make some very hard decisions. Act like you can handle it." It's a deft synthesis of about a hundred things: his annoyance with the fact of Baltar, his pre-annoyance with having to deal with Baltar on a governmental level, his fear of what will happen with Baltar in power, his constant annoyance at having to answer questions more than once, his own ambivalence about the termination order, his counteracting respect for it as a technical last wish, and of course, his heartbreak over Laura's death. He might as well have just slugged him. He kind of did.
Adama leaves Gaius standing there, looking ridiculous and slapped, and Six appears -- yeah! -- wearing a cool bronze jacket and black skirt. Gaius is complicatedly happy to see her, and she gives a very humorously exasperated, "Where have I been? I never left you, Gaius." It's a rare creature indeed, that can infuse the usual selachimorphic menace with these additional flavors of "recently fucked-over" and "fed up with the High Fidelity bullshit already" girlfriend, but Helfer does it, and gorgeously. "Right…yeah, metaphorically speaking," is his awesome response. He exposits that it's been "weeks" since he last saw her -- and the last time he saw her was the day Cain died, remember -- and he immediately starts in with the Baltar crap, reaching up to touch her imaginary cheek. She almost gives in, but at the last she grabs his wrist, twisting him around. He's in a corridor in what must be -- since we were just in sickbay -- the heart of the ship. Getting self-defense-twisted by invisible forces. No wonder everybody hates him with this crap all the time. "I'm sure you've suffered mightily in my absence," she hisses. Baltar, nearly upside down at this point: "You know, jealousy is a really ugly emotion." Hee! Yeah, dare the evil invisible robot to show you "ugly."