Episode Report Card Strega: B- | 715 USERS: B- YOU GRADE IT Let Baltar Be Baltar
By Strega | Season 1 | Episode 11 | Aired on 2005.03.18
Instead, we go to the bar again. Ellen is looking around vapidly when Zarek offers to make her a drink. He's standing behind the bar, and Ellen jokingly asks if he works there. Zarek goes into his spiel about how he can't ask the bartender to do something for him when he can't repay the bartender with anything of value. Ellen gossips that Gray is winning the election at the moment. Zarek claims that he's happy with whatever the people decide. Ellen says that everyone has an agenda, and apparently hers is to provide some more exposition for new viewers. She explains that she just wants to make sure she and her husband have a secure place in the future. Zarek thinks that over before he nods and says, "I'm looking for a friend of mine. His name is Valance."
Valance sits, slumped over, in the storeroom or whatever it is. Apollo and Starbuck stare at him. Starbuck wonders how this happened, and Apollo says they have to go see the Prez. The camera moves down slowly to show that Valance's hands are dropping with blood. His own, just to be clear.
Commercials. Moore said this was conceived as their West Wing episode, and admits that the assassination plot doesn't really work as well as they wanted. And yeah, the stories are closely related, but for some reason they feel very separate. Instead of making things more urgent, they seem to cancel each other out a little bit. It's not a bad episode but it didn't quite jell, for some reason.
Cloud 9. McManus is interviewing Baltar in a freaky huge atrium with crazy stairs. McManus asks, " Is President Roslin's political career terminal, or is there hope of resuscitating it?" Baltar says that the Prez is still in the game, and that it would be a mistake to underestimate her. Six laughs and says that Baltar has missed the limelight. Baltar chuckles, "Yes, I have." McManus and the other reporters are slightly confused, but Baltar asks McManus to continue. Heh. I will say that I don't think it's odd that nobody's noticed Baltar's...eccentricities. Well, no one besides Starbuck. I mean, if someone says something that I don't understand, or that seems to have no context, I don't immediately assume that he's talking to his invisible friend. Although now I'm going to start doing that, because my life could use a little more surrealism. Anyway, McManus says, "So you seriously believe that this schoolteacher is able to handle the job of Presidency?"