Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: A+ | 1 USERS: A+ YOU GRADE IT Blood On The Scales
By Jacob Clifton | Season 4 | Episode 14 | Aired on 02.06.2009
1342, Felix calls them out. All the crimes. He was the Tactical Officer, but I've always liked his real title better: Senior Officer of the Watch. It carries such loneliness, just in the sound of it. War gives us such poetry, at such unexpected moments. It's why I love Saul Tigh now, and it's why I hated Felix Gaeta for so long: because he stopped watching at the moment he most needed to. He lied on the stand, which violates my values, which means holding a grudge. Which is dumb. That was a different guy entirely that did that, and he had reasons we -- and he -- never even knew, for doing that. I can't really agitate for compassion if I don't play along, it violates the text. So okay, Felix, let's hear it.
Felix: You deserted us on New Caprica. You let us twist in the wind.
Adama: I saved your frakking ass.
Felix: Why can't you just admit that you've been derelict in your duties as an officer? Not only do you give aid and comfort to the enemy, you were about to grant them access to the jump drive of every ship in this Fleet.
Adama: About to? I did it. I gave them access. And you know what? I didn't give them aid and comfort. They gave it to me.
At which point I sort of got carried away and thought they might kill him after all. I honestly felt like anybody in this episode could die at any time (which, awesome show great job) but that was such a beautiful line that I actually got preemptively scared. He's done: that's what he needed to figure out. The thing that nobody's prepared to say or think, because there's so much scar tissue, but there it is. Of course, he's only saying it to piss Felix off, to push the blister until it ruptures, but the fact is that Athena kept his heart alive, in the sky above New Caprica. Lee was gone, going crazy on another ship; his daughters were scattered to the winds; Chief and Cally and Laura were gone. All he had were Helo and Athena, and they gave him aid, and they gave him comfort. They gave him a way to cross that bridge, in their love for each other, and they pulled him across it with their love for him.
And when Laura was gone, abducted by the stars, the Cylon brought her back to him. Having ended the war forever, having turned the 145s into Onoda and Uwano: guardians of a hate that has no bearing on the future. Having solved his problem for him, because he believed, and trusted, and had faith. The thing that Gaius wants most, and Laura fought so hard to lose, and that hurts Felix so badly in a place he can't reach anymore: the passion and the prose of William Adama, the bridge between the monk and the beast, the poet and the warrior, is the thing he's got that made him uniquely suited to shepherd and steward and save humanity again, and again, across the universe. It's the thing he has that kept us all alive. Only connect.
Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23Next