Episode Report Card Jacob: A+ | 562 USERS: A- YOU GRADE IT There's Beauty In The Breakdown
By Jacob | Season 4 | Episode 4 | Aired on April 25, 2008
Racetrack comes for her Raptor, and she and Skulls go out on CAP, laughing and trading insults with Redwing, once Hotdog's wingman. He compares Raptors to school busses, and he laughs off her retort -- that they're bicycles in comparison -- explaining that Vipers are racecars. They joke and crack on each other, and as good old 289 lifts off the deck and out into the Fleet, something goes bad. (Knowing Jane, and 289er, it's gonna be the RCS thrusters.) Skulls shouts from the ECO jump seat, and Racetrack radios in: "Galactica, Racetrack: I have no control in my port rear lower RCS thruster." (Bingo.) She tells Skulls to get his ass up front and tells them to clear the landing deck, and they do. She counts it down, adjusting as she goes, on the edge of a knife: "One, two, three, four.... One, two, three... Coming in hot... Too hot!" And I never wondered what it would be like to see a Raptor get totally fucked up, nose over ass in a ball of fire, slamming itself against seemingly every wall, gorgeous in its destruction, but now we know what that's like. Considering there's not a scratch on either of them -- so don't worry, she's okay -- I can only assume they've been drinking Sparks at the FX house again and nobody told them not to make it completely, totally, frighteningly awesome.
"Where's the Admiral? Where is he? And what are you doing? Taking notes, standing here, Mr. Officious? You should be out there, right now, trying to find the people, whoever they are!" Mr. Officious is like, "Whatever you say, sir." I love how a nutcase crackpot is a nutcase crackpot, and a bureaucrat is a bored bureaucrat, no matter time and space. Six directs Gaius's eyes to the wall, where the Sons, as boys will, have scrawled their name across the wall: "You can read the old text, can't you, Gaius?" He sounds it out: "Sons... arras? Ares. Sons of Ares. They're the people who committed this attack. Obviously a fundamentalist splinter group. Although, all they're doing is trying to protect the old Gods..." To whom you still cry out, even now, even though you've been the hand of God for years at this point. They're only trying to protect their faith, while you work -- at the behest of your angel and your anger, to destroy it.
Six nods toward an old, lovely woman, indicating her with her eyes: "Old gods die hard. Even among your people." She worries over something in her hands, as he kneels before her. We've always known Callis and Douglas were classic, and lots of people got the memo that they were hotties, but I don't think until this episode I've really noticed how beautiful they actually are. And I don't mean it in a gay way necessarily, just -- the usual disclaimer about how men were never commodified so we don't have words for it -- but: like Olmos and Hogan (about whom we'll talk a bit later, because damn) often do, James Callis and Aaron Douglas spend this episode looking totally, angelically beautiful. And it's not really a big deal, because actors know this and hear it all the time, but it does lend certain scenes an extra gravitas. Like now, it's almost essential: Gaius kneels before her, looking as gorgeous as he possibly can, so the total devotion -- spiked with a little grandmotherly guilt -- in her eyes makes sense. You don't have to pretend, I mean to say, that this imperfect man could inspire salvation in anybody. It's right there on the screen. "I've seen you here before. Your name is... don't tell me, um, begins with M...?" She smiles sweetly, afraid to disappoint but mostly, simply, in love: "Lilly."