Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: B- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Looking Up At The Admiral
By Jacob Clifton | Season 3 | Episode 15 | Aired on 02.17.2007
Adama spits about lawyers, and she's surprised: wasn't Joseph an attorney on Caprica? "Yes. And I told you that I didn't get along with him very well." Awkward! She makes that embarrassed yee face for a second, and then moves on. "Right. Okay, I need to set up an organizing committee, though frankly, trying to get a room full of legal scholars to stay on task is like herding cats. And so I need to set up a chairman of this committee, somebody who can make a hard decision and who won't get seduced and bogged down by all the legalese." Specifically Lee. "Like grandfather, like grandson, perhaps?" Bill can't say that Lee would be bad at it, because who's more judgmental than Lee Adama, or more in love with rules when he's not breaking them, but then, that's how his relationship with Laura has always worked. "Here's the thing," she says. "We need the lawyers to parse the law, but we really need people who actually know the difference between right and wrong. That's Lee." Kinda. Unless it's "Black Market," or there's treason to be done, or he gets bored with the holy sacrament of marriage. Bill promises to talk to Lee, and Roslin nods. "Good. Admiral, I was wondering if you'd mind if I stayed on your ship for the rest of the day." He of course obliges, and she grins again. "This is very difficult for me to say, but I'm going to go to the gym." He reminds her that this is an aircraft carrier: "On its best day it smells like the inside of a shoe," he gruffs. Such a way with the ladies, our Bill. She just laughs, and sighs, and thinks about Bill and how hard it is to get laid after the apocalypse.
Airlock 12: Chief's still snapping at Cally about getting that leak patched, and she's still snipping right back.
Bill makes his way past pilots and deckhands, watches them grow quiet and respectful as he goes past. "You're getting better at ignoring all of that. That sudden hush, those sidelong glances. That really used to get to you," Carolanne says. And there's a key here: this is an episode about marriage. Love is always some percentage projection: what you see, not what I am. How much magic or hatred you offload on other people, that takes them out of the real and into your projection; the godlike façade she was talking about. We put each other on pedestals and down into pits all the time: look at Cally loving Chief when he didn't notice, and what happened next; look at what Bill and Lee do to Carolanne in her absence. Human psychology is about projection. But the only people on this show who are the same on every level -- symbolic on the show, symbolic in the Fleet, symbolic to each other and everyone they meet -- are Laura and Bill. Laura is the head of government, Bill is the leader of the military. The difference between them and their pedestal selves is a lot slimmer than, say, that between Chief and Cally's image of Chief. Or the enormous amounts of bullshit the twins regularly offload onto each other. Hell, Caprica and Gaius have made it into an actual religion and/or art form. But the only people on this show that actually have to negotiate being that every single day, besides I guess Sharon Agathon, are Laura and Bill. Marriage is hard because love is partly me and partly you, and because in the movie of your life, you're a Laura and a Bill, and when you fall in love they become a Bill or a Laura, and marriage is about taking the bricks out of those pedestals one by one, until you can actually see each other. Naked, without all the hero worship and the family drama and the Just Like Dear Old Mom and the specialness getting all over everything and constantly disappointing you with reality. Marriage in Spanish is casarse, to build a home with: you build a cabin, and live there together.