Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: A | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT A Stupidly Tilting Planet
By Jacob Clifton | Season 2 | Episode 19 | Aired on 03.02.2006
Helo follows Boomer down the Pegasus corridor, frantically trying to find a way in. "How you doing?" he asks her. "You okay? Sharon, don't shut me out. Not now." He's on all sides of her simultaneously. Without looking anywhere but ahead, she speaks to him: "Something dark is coming, Helo. I can feel it. I can feel it lurking out there, waiting." He asks her to elaborate -- maybe she's talking Caprica -- but she just calls back to a Roslin line: "No. Not on the mission. Not any specific thing. It's more like a dark time."
Quick cut to Cally, still looking around for Chief. She finally finds him, whimpering and rolling around on the floor of the hangar. How the hell did he get there? How far's he gone? She touches him gently, to wake him, and he wakes up. The edits go crazy as he rouses, and beats her terribly. It's just shots of her face, his face, her arms trying to protect herself, his fists dropping again and again. There are two horrible things here. One, the fact that we don't see Chief actually connecting is a blessing and a curse: it's nice not to see him connect, but it's awful to see him and Cally in two different shots. They don't make sense, and the intercutting between them, between wonderful Chief hitting somebody, and then poor little Cally getting hit -- they don't make sense. They don't go together. It's worse. The separate, and vastly more horrible thing, is that even though it goes on forever, you don't want it to end, because when it ends, that's when Chief realizes what he's done. And you don't want that ever. Too hard. He finally snaps back, screams, and jumps away. There are three quick shots: a split-second of Cally's face, bloody; then them Chief looking at his bloody knuckles; and then a full shot of Cally, unconscious or nearly so, covered in blood. Chief rushes to her side and checks her vitals as she groans, out of it. It's monstrous. There's a voice over of Chief screaming for help, and then a silent shot of him carrying her out of the hangar, two different things out of synch, in slow-motion. How many Emmys now? Two or three, this one just for editing, and we're still in the fucking teaser.
Credits. Oh my God! Take a rest if you need it. If you told me Cally got beat up, I'd laugh and buy the person a beer no questions asked, because you know she bothers me. Or so I thought. But it's not just the shocking parental-discretion part at the end of the teaser: Roslin's cuteness as she prepared and promptly lost it, Tory being adorable, the Caprica mission, Boomer's premonitions, the bad-assery at the start of the debates, Starbuck's fulfillment, Chief's dissolution. Is this what it would be like if you did all the drugs at once? My goodness. Battlestar Galactica just called, and it said that it's sorry you can't peel yourself off the screen. 49,579 souls in the Fleet and I don't even care to do the math right now! More show!
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