Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: A+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT The Girl On The Cliffside
By Jacob Clifton | Season 4 | Episode 3 | Aired on 04.18.2008
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.It's been three weeks since the last episode, and Starbuck is going full-on Captain Kurtz. Her Demetrius crew -- Seelix, Gaeta, Anders, the Fightin' Agathons, and Pilot Pike -- are pretty worried, and annoyed, both with good reason. Kara stays locked up all day going through star charts, painting crazy murals, dissociating all Buffy Summers-style and frakking Sam in a less-than-loving way, while accidentally convincing him that they are Cylon soulmates like Gaius did Tory last week.
Tom Zarek gives Lee Adama a classified memo detailing President Roslin's latest attempt to go Homeland Security on everybody's ass. He brings it up in front of the press and Quorum, causing major political and PR issues. The Admiral and Laura work out their stuff from last week over a nice pulp novel, but she's still clearly pissed about Kara and, like, everything.
Boomer's new lover Cavil -- yeah -- resurrects after Natalie's little massacre last week, and agrees to bring back the Threes, which is obviously a lie. He lures the DEMAND TRUTH Basestars into territory with no Resurrection Ship nearby, meaning the gorgeous Basestar-on-Basestar battle that commences is for all the marbles. Meanwhile, Natalie's realizing that giving Centurions free will is all fine and good, but you better tip their chrome asses pretty good come Christmastime if you're making them do scut work. I think she's close to noticing they have guns for hands, but it seems unlikely she'll notice in time.
And then the biggie. Cally, Prozac'd out to here, sees Tory pulling more of her existential crisis shit on Chief at Joe's Bar, assumes they're having an affair, spies on a Final Four meeting, goes nuts, finally beats the shit out of Chief, and heads directly to the nearest airlock to kill both herself and her child. Tory talks her down long enough to get Nicky away from her, then ... spaces her ass, in one of the darkest, scariest, most shocking sequences in the show's history. We should have expected awesomeness from Michaels Taylor and Nankin, my personal favorite writer and director on the show, but that was just beyond. WTG and WTF, BSG.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Y TORY READ KANT
(In which certain Fears about Boomer become incontrovertible, and Tory Foster continues to make a World of Sense.)
Brother Cavil hurls himself, naked, from the pod and onto the floor. He is slick and white. Cavil has always hated resurrection. That moment between life and death, that moment when God reveals His face, is nothing but pain for model One; every time he sees that light, and hears that singing, is harder for him. It hurts.
Cavil is wrapped in towels by Cavil, who calls him Brother; tenderly; Boomer tends to him upon the floor. Cavil explains to Cavil that he was shot by Centurions, "pure insanity," at the behest of Natalie. "The Sixes have lost their minds," Cavil explains to Cavil. "They have no idea of the threat that they've unleashed." Cavil learns that all the Ones, Fours, and Fives on the ships controlled by Natalie's group have been killed. He calls it "ethnic cleansing." Boomer explains the futility of her tiebreaker last week: "The whole Fleet's split right down the middle." Cavil jokes, like Laura, like Laura might secretly joke: "That'll teach me not to trust in democracy." Boomer smiles and kisses him, still naked as he is, newborn, slick with the waters of resurrection.
The pills and exhaustion are lights, upon the wall, from a magic lantern. Moons and stars whirl in a darkened room, as Cally sleeps fitfully, wakes and remembers, drowses in hell, wakes to Nicky's cries. Who knows how long she waits there, in the silence before the screaming starts again. She remembers their last fight, Galen offering lies, running off to invented emergencies and midnight calls to the deck, and plays with her food without eating, and takes more pills. She comforts Nicky when he is awake, to still his cries, and in between she waits, squatting in the dark, and prays for sleep. She counts the moments in the dark and the lights whirl around her in the darkness, and when she can't wait any longer, knowing what they'll say, she calls down to the hangar deck, to the emergency. He isn't there. Possibilities whirl in the darkness. He settled for her, this dirty girl, because she bribed him to do so. After all his fears came true and he hurt her, she demanded this life, his child, and was rewarded with her dreams, come true. And she knew who she was: Galen's girl.
Before she was Galen's girl, the world made sense: she was working out her time, paying for dental college with a term of service. Small plans for a small girl. And she met Galen, and fell in love, and he never noticed her. And then the world ended, and nothing made sense anymore. The world fell apart, in her hands. And all she had was love. And when he loved her back, even in the dirt of New Caprica, things made sense again. And now she has everything she can remember wanting, and it's gone sick and sour. At least with the attacks the world ended quickly.