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
"I guess she just couldn't take it, huh? Being married to a Cylon? Being the mother of a half-breed abomination?" The Admiral takes a drink calmly, and the Chief stares, terrified. (At this juncture, I was about to ask, "What if Boomer was projecting all that time, and we never knew?" But we did know. Who the hell wrote CYLON on her locker mirror? It was never there. Human psychology is based on projection, and Boomer's more human than any of us, because it's all she ever had, after download. Just the fears he's thinking now, and knowing they were true, but feeling the memories anyway. At least Chief has the possibility of being real: that's what he's trying to find out.)
"Here you go, sir." The Admiral nods to the bartender, and tries again. "She was a good woman." Chief tells him that if he really believed that, he wouldn't have put her up against a bulkhead and threatened to shoot her, which shocks Adama: are we still going to go there? Now that we're mourning her, now that we're sharing a drink and the problem was solved? But Chief's just spinning dreams now, willing them to be true. Begging them to be true, to make sense. This is grief, not guilt, speaking now. Not the Cylon but the man.
"It's okay, though. I thought about doing it many times myself. Believe me." The Admiral begs him to stop, but he won't. Especially not now. "How many of us ended up with the people we really wanted to be with? Got ... stuck with the best of limited options? And why? Because the ones we really wanted, really loved, were dead and dying, or turned out to be Cylons and they didn't know it. If Boomer had... If I had known..."
The Admiral doesn't know. How can he? How can he stop begging the Chief to stop, stop breaking his own heart, stop shouting, calm down, go to bed, like Saul on those hot nights, how can he talk him down and make him happy, how can he prove his love when every bit of kindness is a hair plucked from the head? Last time, he proved his love with fists; he apologized with blood. This is not appropriate for a widower, not when his last apology was for ever letting their family go. He begs the Chief to stop, to go with him, but the Chief only shouts louder, drawing stares.