Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: A+ | 4 USERS: A+ YOU GRADE IT There's Beauty In The Breakdown
By Jacob Clifton | Season 4 | Episode 4 | Aired on 04.25.2008
"Where's the Admiral? Where is he? And what are you doing? Taking notes, standing here, Mr. Officious? You should be out there, right now, trying to find the people, whoever they are!" Mr. Officious is like, "Whatever you say, sir." I love how a nutcase crackpot is a nutcase crackpot, and a bureaucrat is a bored bureaucrat, no matter time and space. Six directs Gaius's eyes to the wall, where the Sons, as boys will, have scrawled their name across the wall: "You can read the old text, can't you, Gaius?" He sounds it out: "Sons... arras? Ares. Sons of Ares. They're the people who committed this attack. Obviously a fundamentalist splinter group. Although, all they're doing is trying to protect the old Gods..." To whom you still cry out, even now, even though you've been the hand of God for years at this point. They're only trying to protect their faith, while you work -- at the behest of your angel and your anger, to destroy it.
Six nods toward an old, lovely woman, indicating her with her eyes: "Old gods die hard. Even among your people." She worries over something in her hands, as he kneels before her. We've always known Callis and Douglas were classic, and lots of people got the memo that they were hotties, but I don't think until this episode I've really noticed how beautiful they actually are. And I don't mean it in a gay way necessarily, just -- the usual disclaimer about how men were never commodified so we don't have words for it -- but: like Olmos and Hogan (about whom we'll talk a bit later, because damn) often do, James Callis and Aaron Douglas spend this episode looking totally, angelically beautiful. And it's not really a big deal, because actors know this and hear it all the time, but it does lend certain scenes an extra gravitas. Like now, it's almost essential: Gaius kneels before her, looking as gorgeous as he possibly can, so the total devotion -- spiked with a little grandmotherly guilt -- in her eyes makes sense. You don't have to pretend, I mean to say, that this imperfect man could inspire salvation in anybody. It's right there on the screen. "I've seen you here before. Your name is... don't tell me, um, begins with M...?" She smiles sweetly, afraid to disappoint but mostly, simply, in love: "Lilly."
He opens her hand slowly, talking to her all the time: inside she holds a pagan medallion: Asclepius. The God of Healing. "I know you'll heal our people. But I thought..." Lilly swallows, and she's so adorable, so right and full of belief, so full of fear that he'll forget her, or denounce her, that even Six hasn't much to say, beyond, "The old Gods are fighting back." Gaius looks into Lilly's eyes, so full of belief and love, like the memory of something we've all forgotten. Imagine the eyes of something infinite and loving, that could forgive you anything. Not like a hound, not like a pet, but something brilliant, that saw all your angles at once, the dark and bright sides, all the facets, and loved you anyway. Like music, across the water. Something switches on, inside Gaius. The old Gods are fighting back, but he's got something better. He's going to save them all, for the love of this old woman. A gift, to replace all the things the Cylons and New Caprica took from her, and all the things the Gods failed to protect. He will heal us all, save us all, fight until the medal in her hands is dust.
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