Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: A+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT The Dictates Of Conscience
By Jacob Clifton | Season 3 | Episode 2 | Aired on 10.05.2006
Casey plays on the floor of Kara's apartment. Leoben is exceedingly creepy: "Once I fertilized your egg, we transferred it to a human woman, who carried it to term. She was pretty funny. Great smile. You would have liked her." That is... the most fucked up thing anybody has ever said on this show. Gross me out to the infinite power. "Although her mother died during childbirth, Casey's heart never failed. I think she gets that will to live from you...I've seen her path. It's difficult but rewarding. She'll know the mind of God in this lifetime; she'll see patterns that others do not see. She probably gets that spiritual clarity from me," he says, smiling up at Kara like a lunatic. She's sitting on the stairs, behind the chain link of the banister; looking through bars. "She'll be hungry soon," he says. "There's food on the table." He gets up to leave; Kara doesn't move. Her mother was a monster, a drunk and abusive in ways we don't want to know about. She has refused motherhood, even stable love, on the off chance that she'll have a daughter, and hurt that daughter. And Leoben knows this. "You wouldn't let your own child starve, would you?" She stares him down. "It's not my child. I don't even know if it's human." He nods: "Half human." He assures her that somewhere, Kara does know that Casey's her daughter, and just can't admit it. He takes off, and she begs him to "take this" with him. "Hey! Don't leave me alone with this!" The baby stares up at her sweetly. Her face is full of rage and disgust and fear: "I don't know who or what you are, but I do know this: I'm not your mother."
Laura lectures Tigh on the subject of: Suicide Bombers Are Obscene, No Matter How Effective They Are. He asks her if she's working for the Cylons now, sarcastically, and she slaps him across the face. Everybody's quiet. Anders watches her. "Sorry," she says. "There was no excuse for that." Tigh just laughs at her like the crazy old coot he's turned into. "See, little things like that? They don't matter anymore." Nothing matters anymore: "I got one job here, lady: to disrupt the Cylons. Make them worry about the anthill they kicked down here, so they're distracted and out of position when the old man comes down out of orbit." He laughs about how deeply the bombings have engaged the Cylons' attention, and says he won't give that edge up. "We are talking about people blowing themselves up," she repeats, like he missed that part, and he muses about how half the time she's got air-lockin' ice water in her veins, and other times she comes off as "just a naïve little schoolteacher." He repeats his thing about how he's been sending people on suicide missions in two wars now, and it doesn't make a difference if they're "in a Viper or walking onto a parade ground": in the end they're just as dead. One thing that torture has done for Tigh. Well, two things actually. The first is that I really, really like him now. Actually ever since "Scar." And the second thing is that he talks like a motherfucking genius now. I love it when he opens his mouth. Remember when he was like, "What the hell?" and then he'd take a drink and then Starbuck would call him a shit-eater, and he'd go "What the hell?" and take a drink? Now it's like he writes a fucking symphony every single scene. It's awesome: "So take your piety and moralizing and high-minded principles, and stick 'em someplace safe, until you're back in your cushy chair on Colonial One again. I've got a war to fight." Maybe his suckiness was located in his eye -- like with that rapper Houston that fought his eyeball for the forces of good -- and that's why he's become terrifying and beautiful all of a sudden. Good show, you crazy old bastard!