Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: A+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT The Girl On The Pale Horse
By Jacob Clifton | Season 4 | Episode 6 | Aired on 05.09.2008
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.The Demetrius standoff from last week ends particularly well: Sam goes nuts, commits a third mutiny on top of the whole bunch of other mutinies that everybody else is committing, shooting poor Felix in the leg. Kara gets it together enough to show Felix a shitload of mercy, and Helo lets her go -- with Athena and Leoben and Jean Barolay -- to the Baseship. They start the countdown to the rendezvous and wait.
Kara recognizes the Baseship as the "comet" from her visions, and meets the Baseship's Hybrid, who lets her in on the whole "harbinger of the Apocalypse" destiny, but there's so very much shit going on that she doesn't really have time to think about it. The main thing is that the Hybrid tells them to unbox the Threes, because she knows what the Final Five look like, and that will lead them to Thirteen, the truth about Laura's Kobol visions, and Earth.
Laura meets a Baltarist named Emily, played by the wonderful Nana Visitor, in Cottle's chemo camp, and various dreams plus the awesomeness of Gaius half-convince her that the One God is an Actual Thing. It is awesome; she takes her newfound hope to Bill and convinces him in turn that everything's going to be okay. It's super sweet, and though the only thing scarier than two separate religious nuts is two united religious nuts, I don't think she's going to be having tea parties with him anytime soon.
Athena meets the usual boatload of Sharons, who ask her to lead a mutiny against Natalie, because the Sixes are doing it wrong. She tells them that they are retarded, and you always have to be a total robot and commit yourself to a side 110 robot percents, even when that makes you a weirdo like her. They don't really get it at first, but then a random platinum Six freaks out on Barolay about nastiness she committed on New Caprica, and kills her. Sam -- who spends the episode wanting to play with the Cylon toys on the Baseship, but ends up shooting people the whole time -- holds a gun to her head, but it's Natalie Six that pulls the trigger, demonstrating how awesome the wonderland of Colonial justice is once again. They jump back to Demetrius with the Baseship seconds after the deadline, and both Demetrius and Baseship jump back to the Fleet.
For five seconds -- which is a record for this show -- it feels good. Five whole seconds before next week tears it all down again: It feels good.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!HOPES SOARING TO SLAUGHTER
(The heartache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to.)
Karl and Kara stare at each other across the Demetrius bridge, contemplating mutiny, thinking about Cain. Kara heads toward the jump controls, ready to spin it up herself. Athena and Felix grab her, and Anders steps forward; Helo calls as ever for peace. "What the hell are you doing, Karl?" asks Sam, still confused about how anybody can take the one star we sail by, and toss her in the brig. Seelix takes Kara's gun, trains both of them on her. In a mutiny, in civil war, we turn our guns on ourselves and our people. Our people.
"Order the Marine guards to the control room, tell them I'm placing Captain Thrace under arrest." Kara swears on the Gods that he's wrong, that it's slipping away, that he's counting down against her revelation. "Either way, we're taking Leoben and his proposal back to the Fleet. We'll let the Admiral sort it out." But Kara knows that will be too late. "And you'll be going back to Galactica as mutineers," spits Sam. "How do you think the Admiral's gonna sort through that?" Helo acknowledges that this will be Adama's call, and tells Felix to spin up for the jump to the Fleet. Sam laughs bitterly; Seelix suggests they just airlock Kara's Cylon ass. Kara struggles, explaining one more time that she's not a Cylon. What she is, nobody knows. How could they? Artemis struggles in the arms of Athena, and the guns pointed at her? They belong to her, and to Diana Seelix. We turn our guns upon ourselves. And every second, the dream dies a little more.
Deadlocked into conflict, neither side giving: neither faith nor duty willing to concede. What do you do when you can't get out? Sam trains his guns on Felix, shouting again and again to abort the jump; when it's spooled up to a hundred, he fires, and Felix goes down.
"You want to know who's in charge? You want to know who's in command? You frakkin' want to know? It's Captain Thrace, Gods damn it! Now you let her go!" Kara screams at him to back down, and Karl begs, but he will not. Everything is moving too fast. Felix's leg is an open wound, broken splintered bone and blood. Seelix drops to her knees beside him, but it's Kara that tends his wounds. She sets the bone, feels it cracking in her hands. Not because she wishes harm: Sometimes when something is broken, you have to hurt them more before they heal.
"This is gonna hurt." She pours on coag powder and he screams, unceasing, cursing her. First the bone, and then the blood, and then sleep: She injects him with morpha and he goes out, as Sam struggles and shakes in the corner. Kara and Karl get him shuffled to a bunk, and she calls out, worried, as he goes: "Be careful!"
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