Episode Report Card Jacob: A | 12 USERS: A- YOU GRADE IT He That Believeth In Me
By Jacob | Season 4 | Episode 1 | Aired on April 4, 2008
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.The season begins seconds after the finale, fifty-five weeks ago: Apollo has just discovered Starbuck back from the dead and flying around, the Final Four are back at work, Baltar is being shuffled off to some kind of sanctuary, and there's a huge fight about to start with four big Cylon basestars. Here's what's up with everybody:
Lee is totally confused by Kara's reappearance, but super excited, of course. He has left the military permanently, and will now be joining the government in some capacity, hopefully involving an actual storyline for once.
Chief gives Anders a quick pep talk, and the newest nugget pulls it together and heads into combat. He sends some kind of glowy signal to a Cylon Raider scan of his shiny red eyeball, and the whole Cylon attack, four basestars and all, vanish. While it would be funny if he was secretly yelling at them with some kind of scary Wizard of Oz Final Five voice, it seems clear the Raider figured him as a Fiver, and the Cylon as a group realized that shooting at him, and the Fivers in the Fleet, would be about as tacky as throwing beer in St. Francis's weave.
Tigh is showing a...bit of strain under the pressure of Cylonicity, opening up the teaser by shooting Bill Adama in the head. Literally shooting his ass in the eye. Although whether it's suppressed Cylon programming or just a waking nightmare, we're unsure. I think it's the latter, because you know his number one fear nothing to do with hypocrisy, or the futility of killing his wife, but that something will happen to Bill. Which is sweet, but it's honestly the scariest moment, watching him plug the Admiral like that.
For Kara, the time between the Maelstrom and now was just six hours, subjectively. She is high on life and carrying loads of "vacation pictures" of Earth, and it takes her a while to figure out that everybody's acting so weird because she was dead for a couple of months. Given that generally she gets the slow clap for spelling her name right, her confusion is somewhat justified. Tigh, Tory and Chief are all total paranoid dicks and make sure they have as many fingers pointing at her as possible, but Sam and Lee are on her side. Of course. Somewhere Dualla's gotta be like, "Tell me when that bitch starts raping puppies, so we can throw her a party."
Madame President is not having any of Kara's mess, and throws her in the brig before visiting Caprica Six and learning that the Five are in the Fleet. It's really cool, because Laura just teases Caprica with the old "don't think of an elephant" trick until her robot eyes cross with the logic loop of not thinking about not thinking about not thinking about the Final Five. Caprica is awesome at a lot of shit, but nobody's immune to the BSD.
Around the same time, the Four agree that if they start acting toaster-like in any way, the others will gang up on them and shoot 'em dead. Grim. Meantime, all they do is get drunk and feel weird about themselves. Just like Kara and Tigh used to, before they died/turned into evil killer robots.
The Batshit Ladies of Baltar shove him in a tiny secret room on Galactica, where he gets laid a whole lot, prays for the son of his cult leader lady Jeanne, and feels yucky about having such a crappy cult. He eventually offers God his life in return for the kid's when he's attacked by Connor from the Circle, who kept tossing people out airlocks in the name of vigilante justice. He is saved by the completely crazy Paulla [sic] Schaffer, a cultist with a certain very amazing gleam in her eye and a taste for blood, and crazy. (I am in total love with her.) Also, his big Marxist agitprop philosophy includes that the Gods plural don't exist, and now he and his followers are all about monotheism. This is, of course, like a total birthday present for Chip Six, who looks more like a scary angel shark than ever.
Kara tries to get everybody headed toward Earth (and the Apocalypse!), but because of her being dead, possibly a Cylon, and generally hard to get along with, nobody's really listening. Even the Admiral admits that it's a hard sell to question Roslin's authority on the Earth issue after so many seasons of assuming her junkie ass knew what she was talking about. Which is like, so ironic, because fully half of every season is Adama committing the entire Fleet's resources to whatever bug is up Kara's ass at the time, but until now it's always dovetailed nicely with Roslin's separate ass-bugs. Adama, however, does not understand irony.
Every time they jump away from the Nebula in the direction indicated by the Pythian Scrolls, Kara's connection to their destination gets weaker and weaker. It also makes her want to barf, apparently. So, having had enough of her new magic powers getting ignored by everybody, Kara beats the shit out of several Marines, tells Sam that if he were a Cylon she'd murder him, and ends the episode with a gun pointed at Laura's beautiful head. Which to me proves that it's Kara, being that it's the most insane option. How great would it be if that were the solution? "I had my doubts, but only Kara Thrace could come up with a plan that idiotic. Welcome home." Want more? The full recap starts right below!
To her, it's a joke. She doesn't know yet.Dualla, over the PA, announces another jump, and counts it down. Kara hisses, grabbing at her head, at the infinity inside it, and whimpers. "Damn it, they're still going in the wrong direction. Oh, one more jump and I'm gonna lose my way altogether..." She wobbles off in an unspecified direction, and he grabs her elbow, supporting her. "All right, we gotta find you a rack. Okay, take it easy." The Marines stare at them, guns shaking, at ease, as Kara whirls on Sam, eyes bright with crazy revelations.
"It's Roslin. The old man's not gonna listen to me as along as she's... I gotta get to her." The worst idea in the universe, well, Kara Thrace is going to go ahead and do that. Sam points out that it's a dumb idea to go lurching through the halls toward the President of the Colonies, what with being a suspected Cylon and confirmed high-ranking seed on Laura's Big Old Airlockin' List.
"Is that a fact?" It is, Sam says, almost sadly, like he knows she's about to bust into crazy ninja Cylon-powers hyperspeed and take out one Marine -- by the neck -- then drop the other one after Sam gets knocked to the ground disarming him. So now, in the time it might take you to blink, there are two KO'd Marines on the floor, a bunch of ordnance ready to be snagged, Sam on the floor looking at her like she's crazy. And where this is happening is in the middle of the holiest place in the Fleet, the place where memories are kept and honored, where love is laid to rest and where families weep and lovers remember and brothers and sisters mourn and wives and husbands and lovers grieve: right in the middle of that, a hall made into an altar for the tears of the orphans of twelve planets. In the Hall of Remembrance, where she wept for Kat, where Sam and Lee wept for her, where they laid to rest a girl named Kat, and Reilly's girlfriend, who had a name like Kassie, or Cally, or Kacey. Back from the dead, Kara Thrace stands in a temple and stares down at her husband.
"No, no, wait! What the hell are you doing, Kara?" She shakes her head. "Where's the president, Sam?" He scoffs, begs her to stop, and she knocks him out with the gun. She moves so fast, now. Death is really good for your reflexes. Also your hair, I keep meaning to mention how cute her hair looks.
Kara stands in the Hall and stares down at Samuel T. Anders, feels shitty, looks at the other scattered bodies, and takes off running toward Adama's quarters, the obvious location of the President. Laura is alone on his bed, with her shoes off and a cold compress over her eyes.