Episode Report Card Jacob: A- | 1 USERS: B- YOU GRADE IT The Engine You've Built With Your Blood
By Jacob | Season 3 | Episode 16 | Aired on February 24, 2007
You don't. You do what you can. They take him away; Chief thinks about little Galen, little Nicky. He almost cries. His eyes, as he's fleeing the scene slowly, fall upon a book. Left on a stack of crates, photocopied: My Triumphs, My Mistakes, by Gaius Baltar. He opens it to a useful chapter: "The Emerging Aristocracy And The Emerging Underclass," and the text therein: "I wash my hands of the pho[ny] Democratic system; I will never let myself be distracted by the plac[ations] of the elite..." Something about the falsehood of the Quorum and the various ministries; Chief makes the angry face and heads to the brig.
The last time they really spoke, disregarding the whole Resistance where the whole point was that they never saw each other, Gaius was torturing Chief -- maybe in this very room -- so that he'd answer the question nobody should have to ask. Now, Chief's powerless and Gaius is smoking one of his cigarettes. If Chief is the Body to Gaeta's Neural System, Galactica-wise, he can't have ever respected him that much. Gaius talked Chief's girlfriend into suicide and put his wife in front of a firing line; now he's smoking a Swisher. "Your book. Fact or fiction?" Oh, Chief. I wish you knew the list of Roslin's lies. "She told me it hadn't gone out," Gaius purrs. "So, what do you make of it?" (Chief was only the head of the anti-Gaius contingent, both publicly -- in the union -- and secretly -- the Resistance. He has no reason not to fuck with him, frankly.) Chief says it's a pile of crap, but Gaius isn't so sure: "Obviously my analysis of a bifurcated society scares you, but everything in my book happens to be true." Just like the birth rate, just like the Eye of Jupiter. He always knows this stuff ahead of time. He's totally like Hannibal and Clarice in one, especially now, especially in a second. Chief's not buying that, per the book, Gaius was originally a farmboy from Aerolon. "Yes...as a matter of fact, I was born and raised on a dairy outside a town called Cuffle's Breath Wash [?] on Aerelon." Man, does Gaius make sense. I buy that entirely. Poor old idiot. Chief asks why it's so hard to picture him milking cows and shoveling manure, and though Gaius's explanation -- "lack of imagination?" -- is both true and full of panache, Chief's is equally valid: "Or maybe that your little tale is manure." Gaius blows him off. It's funny, you know. Adama, and at least two episodes of this show, are convinced that if Chief's going to hate anybody, it should rightly be Adama. And here he is, in a position actually literally opposite Adama's via Roslin's, and all the hate for NC is pointed right at my Gaius. It's getting lame, pointing out the freaky Baltar love, but come on: Chief and Gaius in a scene, and I'm on the fuckface's side? And Chief's about to be? This show is awesome. I wish Tigh would come and write a poem.