Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: A | 1 USERS: B+ YOU GRADE IT With Honors
By Jacob Clifton | Season 3 | Episode 10 | Aired on 12.07.2006
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.Jane Espenson's obsession with food hits the Fleet front and center, contaminating all their business and leading to a plagueâ¦of starvation! Sharon finds a planet with lots of healthy, disgusting black algae on it, but it's on the other side of a massive star cluster. Trekking through the cluster will expose the civilian ships to radiation meltdown, and flying around it will lead to delay-induced cannibalism. The plan is this: shift all but skeleton crews from the Fleet ships to Galactica; shielded Raptors will lead them across in five trips; everybody meets up on the other side. The big jump on each trip is the one into the middle of the cluster, where they keep the starlight and radiation, and where they'll have to find their ships blind. Not to mention the intense cancery radiation that means they have to do all these things lightning fast. Meanwhile, Kat is actually a drug-running lowlife name of Sasha, who stole Louanne Katraine's name during the holocaust on Old Caprica and has been increasing her Viper power and becoming more awesome and less obnoxious all this time. Hotdog loses a ship on the first trip, Kat loses hers on the fourth. Kara goes on her own mission straight up Kat's nose about the "Sasha" thing, leading civilian ships of guilt and Adama Daddy anxiety behind her in a pretty chain. After that, Kat's in no mood to fuck up, so on the fifth and last trip, she goes ahead and gives herself cancer to make sure everybody lives. Back home, Gaius figures out about Three's recreational suicide game, gets Delphic all over a Hybrid's ass, then asks Three to keep killing herself over and over to fulfill his jerkwad dream of being one of the Final Five Models, thereby removing his guilt not only for engineering the decimation of humanity but also for being a criminally bad basestar houseguest. The idea is so fucking irritating he's probably right. Oh, and also there's another roadstop toward Earth, with the usual embarrassing name of Mervin's Meretricious Mallet of Apollo's Artemis's Harlequin Masquerade of Captain EO's Arrow or whatever. Anyway, it ends on a bummer note when Kat makes it right with Kara, then gets a MAJOR handjob from the Admiral in the form of him telling her he thinks of her as a daughter. Which is either a lie or something he tells, like, everybody. Everybody and everything: His nachos. Left shoe. A mandolin. His son Lee. But it's a really sweet scene, I mean, I cried so I'm not trying to be a dick, but come on. Not your moment, Bill. Let her have her cancer in peace. And how about nobody mentions Hera, eh? Want more? The full recap starts right below!
Kat gives us the previouslies. I like that. I like Kat. This episode is funny, because I always thought "Scar" was at least half Kat's episode, that whole "jouncing the limb" factor that makes you feel like a loser even as you're winning, and then this episode is clearly a Kat episode, while doing some pretty awesome stuff with Starbuck when you're not looking. The other cool thing about this one is that I assumed, because it was written by Jane Espenson, two wrong things: one, that it would be funny -- it really is not -- and two, that it would be wondrous in its words. Which it is. But so much of the story is told through the visual on this show, especially this season, and I should not have made those assumptions, as it turns out, because this is a story of powerful images with strong supporting dialogue. I saw a transcript before I ever saw the episode, which led me to another assumption: that I wouldn't cry my ass off. No more assumptions.
Before New Caprica, before Pegasus, before I even started recapping, Kat was a crackhead. She had a lot to prove. She flew missions like whoa and grew from nugget to a great tall oak that went NOW NOW NOW and sometimes she got tired, and so she took stims. She jounced Starbuck's limb until it almost snapped off, and called her on her shit, and they loved each other, but in a Tigh kind of way. It's good to have people pushing you. Other stuff: Bill invited Saul back into the CIC but that didn't mean he was going to stop loving Helo; Gaius discovered the secret Final Five Cylon models we don't talk about plus the glossolalic power of the Hybrid; and Three went nuts all up in your face.
Now: Sharon's flying a Raptor through the middle of a star cluster, surrounded by fire, and she is not doing well.
Adama and Cottle are conferencing with Roslin on the wireless, telling her there's no food left. There was good food and contaminated food, and the good food got mingled with the contaminated food, so now there's no food. Sharon's out Raptoring for algae to process into delicious meaty protein, is why all the fire and stars and stuff. Hopefully she is not a sleeper agent, because when you're down on resources what you don't want is Brokeback Boomer sabotaging your hungry ass. Cottle tells Laura the Fleet can survive about a week if Sharon comes back empty-handed. Helo gets choked up and tells them she was due back three hours ago. "The, um... The radiation levels are high, but she's strong and -- she's, um -- she'll be here any moment." First of all, what's hotter than Helo in full dress? Helo crying in full dress. Second of all, there's a very awesome parallel between Laura freaking out on Colonial One, and Helo freaking out on Galactica, about not at all the same thing, but also kind of the same thing. I like to think that Laura has the grace to be worried about Sharon, to love her like Bill does, but... she's great in a lot of ways. Great great lady. But I don't know if she's feeling the Sharon love. Still, a moment of silence.
Sharon flies, sick and coughing. Her radiation badge is going black. That's bad.