Episode Report Card Jacob: A+ | 562 USERS: A- YOU GRADE IT There's Beauty In The Breakdown
By Jacob | Season 4 | Episode 4 | Aired on April 25, 2008
Figurski tells the Chief to chill out and take some down time, because clearly he needs it, but that's just more of the same: the Chief has a purpose, his purpose is Galactica, he'll have to work ten times harder to make up for it, and his world is disintegrating around him in ways they know about and ways they don't, and every kindness, every bit of forgiveness and comfort, is salt in the wound. Because he's not only human, he's not one of them: he's something else, trying desperately to be the man he chooses to be, and now he has to try a thousand times harder just to prove it, and every time he tries they tell him to go take a fucking nap. "Get out of the Raptor, Figurski," the Chief growls, in a voice we've maybe never heard. Figurski sighs, but he goes: and this too is a kindness, and so it hurts too. And the relay in his hand is burnt to dust.
HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME
(Certain Fears are spoken aloud, creating their opposite Effects.)
Six: "People have room in their hearts for one great belief. You or the old Gods: which one will it be?" Baltar's headache begs for relief: "Why can't I just be a man? Do I really need to take on the Gods single-handed?" And Six does a thing she often does, spinning wishes into truth, telling him one thing knowing the other thing will happen: "Oh! But imagine the kind of man you'll be when you do! Surely such a man must be magnificent. Larger-than-life, Godlike himself..." And at his response she grins her angel grin, because this is how she wins: by inflating him so far he's horrified. Feeding him the shit she always feeds him, until he chokes on it. In some ways it's the scariest grin yet, because as he outgrows her I think she loves him less and less, and uses him more and more.
"What are you talking about? It's not about that at all. It's about this." He stands, and walks among the faithful. As they reknit and repaint and string their beads, he calls them to attention: his army of the homeless and the houseless and the loveless and bereft; the thousand orphans of Gaius Baltar. "Stop! Stop. This is unacceptable. We have been targeted because of what we believe by those who answer to faceless Gods that bear no relevance in our world." Six is moved, perhaps, by this nod to her ascendance; by his love for her, even now. "They want us to be afraid. But I'm tired of being afraid. The time has come to make a stand. And that time is now." Gaius heads toward the hatch, and the faithful follow. And the first of them, beloved Paulla, cries out to him: "Where are you going?" But she follows. And where is he going?