Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: A | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT With Honors
By Jacob Clifton | Season 3 | Episode 10 | Aired on 12.07.2006
Kat and the Faru Sadin suddenly appear on dradis; Hoshi calls out for all of them. Kat radios into Galactica: "Mission accomplished." The Faru Sadin comes home. Kat comes home.
On the deck they crack Kat's Raptor, and she exits to thunderous applause. Adama and Tigh stand in the center, worried, while everybody else is grinning and cheering. She looks like last week's dinner. Her body turning in on itself, screaming something's wrong, but nobody can hear it over the applause. She holds her hands up, Evita-style, and the crowd goes wild. Portrait of the woman-child, cavern of the soul. Lee realizes something's wrong with her; what she burned off in the pressure-heat ratio of history and starlight. Lee sees her breaking right before she falls.
Kat lies in sickbay, Starbuck standing above. Looking tall as Helo. "They said you wanted to see me," she grits out. Hating the sight of this. Kat swallows painfully, and says she didn't want things to end between them the way they did. I think that Katee Sackhoff should have an Emmy on her shelf, I mean it. I know this is Kat's episode and Kat's scene, but my God Sackhoff can kill you with a look. She chokes out the following, proud and sick, sad and on fire. The kind of shame at somebody else's pain where you kind of hate them for showing you, and yourself for seeing it. The one thing she's always had is a body that works, and looks great. This is what weakness looks like. This is what she helped Kat accomplish. "Listen, um...everybody's...everybody is stuck with the things that they're not proud of. That, uh..." She breathes. "That thing about good people, I... um, I didn't mean that." Kat blinks at her: duh. "Yeah, I know." But it got the job done, didn't it? Burned off all the Sasha and left just Kat. Now there's just one girl in the room with an ugly history. "Here," she coughs, handing Kat a small bottle. "Take these. Sleeping pills." Kat looks up at her; if you know Kara, you know now isn't the time to look her in the eye. It nearly breaks her: "Enough," she says. "So, um, take 'em if you want." Kat thanks her. Once you've burned off that amount of bullshit you can look pain in the eye and make the choice. They tell each other their own stories, over and over, and this is how they tell their stories to themselves. That's why things are so intense with them. The last time that Kat, Kara, and death were in the same room, Kara pushed Kat out of the way and dove straight for death. And the only reason she didn't die was because she had Sam Anders. That's what we're dealing with here. Kara breaks into tears, finally, and runs straight from the room. As much for Kat as for herself: they've been all over this from every angle now, the pain of seeing your rival fall. Of being seen. Neither of them wants her there for that. Bill claps her on the shoulder on the way out: he knows. Kat was the CAG on Galactica for a year. He knows what it's like to love her.
"Admiral, I -- I know, I'm so sorry... " she says, apologizing for heroics. He shakes his head. "I'm not here to lecture. I'm letting you know about a promotion. I'm making you CAG again." We should have known this. She cries, almost laughing about it: "Sir, you know I'm not getting out of here, right?" He doesn't answer that question because that question is moot and not important; he answers the question behind the question. "You earned it. What you did was harder than facing a bullet. And you did it without putting one other soul in harm's way. Don't know if I could've done that." Okay, this is a sweet and touching scene and I do love this episode, but, Bill: BWAH! You couldn't go five fucking minutes! You've got a Faru Sadin all right, and you've put the whole Fleet in danger for her more times than I can count on my magical Cylon five-fingered hand. And you sent her over the brink just a few days ago, called her a cancer, burned out what didn't work. And that's the thing you can't admit here: given the same exact abuse, from the same place, for the same reasons, Kara lived and Kat is dying, and Saul's back on the CIC where he belongs. That is something inside, that response. You can't know in advance which way they'll jump, you just have to do it. And love, and hope.