Episode Report Card Jacob: A+ | 2 USERS: A+ YOU GRADE IT When The Know-Nothings Get Control
By Jacob | Season 3 | Episode 7 | Aired on 2006.11.10
It's a kindergarten motherfucking sense of entitled, playground morality that assumes just because A is an asshole, B is blameless. It's possible for B to grow the fuck up and act in accordance with a stable morality, instead of leveraging their evil based on some kind of flimsy "Mommy, he started it" excuse. At the end of the day, A is not your problem, because A is not your responsibility. Your behavior is your problem, and what you did to excuse it, because you are the person in charge of you. There are a lot of unanswerable questions here, but that is not one of them, and somebody should have told these motherfuckers when they were younger, because now they are grown up and I am ashamed for them. Your personhood doesn't go in the closet until things get easier -- that's like the one thing I disagreed with Tigh about, down on New Caprica -- it's there all the time. You can't write your bullshit self a hall pass to be "your worst" or commit atrocities right up until the very second that things get perfect and awesome, at which point like a wonderful jackpot prize you get to be who you are "at your best," and how one of these days, you'll get to be that you. As soon as nothing bad ever happens, nobody ever calls you an asshole, and everything is perfect and quiet and still. I'm not saying don't "wipe 'em out," I'm saying be really damn sure you know why you're doing it, because that's the only question that matters. Fuckingâ¦be better. It's the easiest thing of the world.
And the assembled leaders of humanity standing on Colonial One -- with the exception of Adama, who's never been so conspicuously silent and aware -- are not interested in hearing it. Which Helo realizes, and notes angrily: "So let's keep it on me. Yeah, I'm married to a Cylon. Who walked through hell for all of us ⦠how many times? And she's not half anything, okay. How do we know there aren't others like her? She made a choice. She's a person. They're a race of people. Wiping them out with a biological weapon is a crime against -- is a crime against humanity." And because not even Lee is this stupid, I'm going to give him a pass for the fact that both of them have worked themselves, at this point, into rhetorical culs-de-sac: "But they're not human, they're programmed." THEN WHOSE FUCKING HUMANITY IS IT A CRIME AGAINST? So not the point! This week -- the last two days -- have been really hard, thinking and talking about this stuff, watching people take sides, watching people so willing to exterminate the Other just in case. It's been frustrating. Because unstoppable robots on a killing spree is one thing, but that would be a stupid fucking show, and I wouldn't watch it, and I can't imagine why anybody would watch that show. If that were the show we were watching -- well, not "we," but you know what I mean -- then I'd say "Go for it! Kill 'em off! They're not people! This show is retarded!" Like: Charmed v. Buffy: One of them you are called upon to look at both sides, the other you don't have to. But they are people, and this show is not retarded, and there are questions without answers, but this is not one of them. And I wouldn't get so grossed out about all this if I didn't think Apollo -- who's tremendously well-written in this episode, he's like the new Sarah Porter -- represented a sizeable portion of actual, current American view. Which is terrifying, and ugly, and scares me to death. Still. Because this is a viewpoint that's already given up on its own soul's worth, protecting a box with nothing left inside. Making zombies to carry the very best guns.