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
"We're talking about the genocide of your entire race," says Helo, and Sharon whimpers, trying to keep her back straight. "Yeah. You think I don't know that? I made a choice to wear a uniform. To be a person." He's only hearing about half of what she's saying, and blundering again: "You were a person before you put on that uniform. Okay? You were a person before I fell in love with you. You don't have to prove that." (White people, straight people, men, are that maybe ten minutes out of the day; the rest of us get to be what we are twenty-four fucking seven. I'm really not trying to be the whiny liberal this week, but you talk about what's handed to you.) "I have to prove it every day," she spits, angry. And calmer: "Let me tell you something, Helo. My people may die, my entire race may be wiped out. But this Cylon will keep her word, even if it means she's the last Cylon left in the universe." Categorical imperative satisfied, in the most warped possible way. I don't agree with Sharon, for once: you don't get to take the easy way out and define yourself this way. You'll always be both, one foot her and one there, and that's your strength and that's your glory, but it's also your sucky life. Grow up. Or maybe she's just as good at looking at her options as Helo is, and seeing the right way to be: with malice toward none, and charity for all. Won't kill or turn traitor to save their race, won't move to help the other side either. And that really is her sucky life, and I guess I forgive her.
"Can a human being do that?" she asks, but if I wrote this script, it would have been Adama's next line, coming in off nothing in the transition back to his office. "â¦Can a human being do that? Posterity really doesn't look too kindly on genocide." (See? Double duty, referring to Sharon's speech but also bringing us back to his conversation with Roslin. The juxtaposition still works, though, because it's fresh enough that you can ask the question. And the answer is no, but not because humans suck, it's because it's a weird call to make, and would only make sense to a robot: Not A but B. She's no longer a Cylon exactly, but woe betide her for thinking it's that easy, for taking her Cylon logic and thinking they mean anything. Check out the other parallel here, also: we're jumping back and forth between Helo/Sharon and Adama/Roslin, and the conversations mesh well, but we're also looking at Helo/Sharon and Six/Gaius: "This is how you become the Other. This is the psychology, the projection, the way you stay alive on enemy lines." The comparison between Sharon and Gaius became important the second he ran to Three's basestar, but now it's essential.) "You're making an assumption that posterity will define this as genocide. If they do, at least there'll be someone alive to hate us for it. The Cylons are our mistake, we created them." She delivers all her lines in the softest, most regretful tone this week. Like Caprica and Three, crying at the cruelty they must do. "All right, Admiral Adama. As President, I have determined the Cylons be made extinct. The use of biological weapons is authorized." He sighs. "So say we all." And she laughs softly, just like Apollo in the brig: "â¦So say we all."