Episode Report Card Jacob: D | 1419 USERS: C+ YOU GRADE IT BattleNoir Redactica
By Jacob | Season 2 | Episode 14 | Aired on 2006.01.27
Commercials. Far be it from me to even acknowledge internet drama, especially involving the whizbang illiteracy and creepy misanthropy of your average IMDb discussion, but I so, so love how the guy over there decided that I agreed that this version of the show was fake and evil and sex-obsessed just because I hated this episode, like I had finally seen the light or whatever, when in fact, the reasons he hates this show are the exact reasons that science fiction is a fucking joke to everybody that's not in on the joke, and that my hate of this episode is hate for everything he stands for -- not to mention that, for the same reason, he'd fucking love this episode, for exactly the reasons I hate him -- and it -- in the first place. Which is tidy and ironic but doesn't change the fact that this show, which I love precisely because it takes that which sucks about sci-fi television and turns it into awesome, has power-injected those things into this episode with a fucking vengeance. Nobody wins. What kills me is, what if this was the first episode you saw?
"Yeah, you're probably right about everything," says Lee. "You, me, Fisk. Nobody can stop it, and maybe nobody should. But it needs limits. There's lines you can't cross. And you've crossed 'em." Again with the kids. This is not the heart of it. Tigh was the heart of it. Apollo's not saying anything Tigh didn't say better. "You're not gonna shoot," Phelan says. "You're not like me." Siobhan stares, Apollo stares, everybody stares and thinks for a while. We flash again to the girl on Caprica, and I guess the point is that Apollo did this girl wrong enough that it's his most guilty thing. Like, everybody has their one thing and they don't think or talk about it, but it's there, and when Phelan says, "We are both the same amount of in the mud," Lee thinks of this. Which is characteristic of Lee -- that he would equate child prostitution with anything normal -- because this whole time he's been pretty much textbook clinically depressed, which is where one takes the personal apocalypse and puts it above everybody else's because they don't look as bad on the outside as he feels on the inside, so it stops being about ego ("My pain is bigger than your pain") and starts being about subjective fact ("There is no way your pain could be this big or else you couldn't stand up"). Apollo shoots, Phelan dies. Siobhan goes "Huh," and wanders off, freaked out. Instead of shooting Apollo's ass, the thugs stare at him noncommitally and wait patiently for him to explain a bunch of shit to them. They actually put away their guns. "Fleet relies on the black market. Much as we'd like, we can't wish that away. So, you're still in business. For now. But if there are any more killings, if you hold back essential medicines, if you ever touch a child..." He just stands there, weirded out. I don't know, though. Does the Fleet rely on the black market because it's inevitable and widespread, like Orwell and Zarek said, or because the trains aren't running on time, like Gorbachev and Phelan said? One's about the human condition, the other is about why socialism fails, and they're not necessarily exclusive -- but in this story, they kind of are, which is confusing, because the story just keeps shooting stuff at you. Maybe saying "pressure valve" was the tie between the two? "We hoard because we love."