Episode Report Card Jacob: A | 85 USERS: A- YOU GRADE IT That Old Song They Used To Play
By Jacob | Season 3 | Episode 19 | Aired on 2007.03.18
"The 'system,'" he says to the petulant child Lee is being, "requires that you tell what you know, which leaves you with one of two uncomfortable options. First, share the information, and in so doing, uphold the very principles that you claim to hold so dear. Or second, keep 'em to yourself, and prove once and for all your only purpose here is to jab your father in the eye and make a mockery of the entire justice system." Apollo responds to even this total, abject, horrifying honesty with a cocksure grin and astounding smugness: "That's very nice. Very, very nice, but I know why I'm here. I don't need to prove it to you, or to anyone else." This is what they all do, but it's especially what Kara used to do: get knocked down, lose another pillar, and you reduce yourself to as few dimensions as possible. The simplest possible identity. He's got nobody to tell him who to be now, and the person's he relying on is withholding, trying to get him to imagine it himself. The one thing he can't do yet, and he never could: Lee Adama never learned to breathe. You go looking around, for the source of the smell, the sound, the terror, the problem -- can't be you, you're just doing what's right -- you could go crazy; you don't know from crazy until you realize the smell's coming from you. You're the one that's singing, or screaming. And everybody knows it. That's horror. That's what he's asking for. That's what he's putting on display. Nobody cares where you came from, what arcane random rules you've decided to follow: they care who you are, and what you do, and why. He's so close to his existential crisis but it's him, he won't get there yet, because he's still got somewhere to stand, but it'll go like this because it always does. Nothing you do matters, so all that matters is what you do. Until then, it's lies all the way down to the part that stinks: the part that needs to punish Bill for Kara's death, no matter how little sense it makes.
"You're wrong. You need to prove it to yourself, or you leave that courtroom out there knowing you kept a secret that could've saved that man's miserable life. Now unless I greatly misjudged your character, that's not something that Lee Adama wishes on his conscience. So what'll it be, Major? Sit on the sidelines mouthing pieties, or are you gonna get in this trial and give us something we can use?" Or are you going to take it one step further than you need to, burning bridges and jumping off edges with aplomb, because that's what self-destruction looks like from this angle, now that you can't get anybody to hurt you quite like they used to? Because even your father's given up on you taking any amount of responsibility at all? Because from this angle, a disappointed romantic looks a lot like a sulking menace? Because without the romance of "Captain Apollo, Defender of the Universe," with all the cracks you can't ever face when the chips are down, what are you? The destruction of Captain Apollo is accomplished in three quick acts, each leading inexorably to the next, with a sort of dramatic unity that would make Aristotle proud. The road to Hell is paved with good intentionsâ¦but not too good. Joseph was right.