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
In the arms of an angel, he tries again to enter the promised land; the guard drops him with another hit. "Stay down. Please, sir!" The kid's almost crying, begging him not to push it further. As he raises his rifle for one last bashing, wondering if this is the one that kills the nut, Lee Adama's voice rings out over the crowd. The Marine with him tell the guard to stand down, and he does so gratefully. "The Quorum has just met in an emergency session. Full right of assembly has been restored." The crowd murmurs gratefully. "You can, uh, you can go back into your home. No one will stop you." Clucking and caressing, they gather Gaius up and carry him toward their home. He stops at Lee, and hurls himself on the body of Adama, tossing an arm over his shoulder, supporting himself entirely on the Major's body. "Thank you."
Lee swears he doesn't do these things for Gaius, never intended Gaius to be the floor on which he seems constantly to kneel these days; none of that matters. "Your God compels you," he mumbles, and the ladies peel him off Lee and usher him away, and Lee stares after.
Nothing else matters. Lee's devotion to fairness, to the greater good, is the last variable in an equation started by Tory and Lilly. The possibility of perfection, redemption for even Gaius Baltar + platonic, agapic love, and the simple belief that he can save the world + the physical presence of an angel of God, sent to shepherd him in God's love toward salvation + the clarity of pain + Lee's knowledge, alone, that Gaius deserves our grace = The redemption of Gaius Baltar. In five easy steps. And Lee has no idea what he's done; even as he follows the crowd into the church, into their suddenly sanctified assembly, he has no idea.
"...Lee has no idea. He really has no idea." Bill's exasperated; they've clearly been at it awhile. He sits by her side in sickbay, and she's sitting up straight in her glasses and wig. "There are pragmatic realities he refuses to face." Bill takes off his own glasses. "Well, that's a problem, of course. He's doing what he thinks is right." And Laura, with Bill, now, can show all her cards, how much she still loves our boy, how much she always has, and in such a voice that it seems never to be under debate. "Well yeah, he's Lee." Bill's body relaxes a fraction of an inch; that's three-quarters of the family. Now if he can just work the Kara thing. "Thing is, it probably is the right thing," Laura recognizes, "But...sometimes the right thing is a luxury. And it can have profoundly dangerous consequences. And yet it's almost as if he doesn't want that to be true... Okay, I gotta stop this, I'm not supposed to get upset during treatment." She settles and turns it off. "Will you read the next chapter?", she asks sweetly. He warns her that he's getting into the unknown part now, the secret part that only they share. She gets sexy in response, loving this, his little rituals and all the angles you negotiate, when you love someone. "Oh dear. Are you going to be able to continue?" She snuggles down, to watch him read, and quickly closes her eyes.