Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: A+ | 2 USERS: A+ YOU GRADE IT Six Of One...
By Jacob Clifton | Season 2 | Episode 18 | Aired on 02.23.2006
Gaius does some expositing: "Nicely done. You timed it perfectly." There's an unnecessary flashback to the moment of the smash, with unnecessary Gaius commentary: "Scratch your face with the side of your fingernail the moment the glass hits the wall." Point being, Chip Gaius is the voice of Six wondering if there's any her to her, or if she's so in her head that a real reaction is impossible. Can she reach out to this woman, or is it just manipulation all the way down? With all the hallucination and bullshit she's going through, does she even have the right? Is she just Biers's bitch in this? Can she trust herself to do anything authentically? Can she love? Is she alive? Sharon brings bandages: "Never saw a Cylon show fear before. Especially the Sixes. Usually so hardcore." Gaius smirks, and Six is sheepish but intense. Gaius: "Feign fear and emotional vulnerability. You're very good, you know." Six looks back at him, grossed out -- "What the fuck are you doing to me? Stop poking it!" -- but it's valid. Where's the Six? Why's he so interested in saying there's no such thing? Gaius: "...But I'm better. Let me help you: 'I'm different.'" He drops his eyes again. Six: "I'm different." Boomer looks up. "I'm more like you," Gaius says, and Six repeats it. They begin to speak together: "I had someone I met here. A man. I loved him and I think he could've loved me, eventually." Sharon stares, trying to believe that there's another model as fracked as she is. Six looks back at Gaius, begging it to be true, and he finally looks at her. Ever notice how much pleasure our Gaius gets from Chip Six's protestations of love? Why do you think that is? She drops her gaze, just now realizing how bad this might get.
In the resistance base, there's a cigarette butt in a clothespin. Barclay explains that they're doing a test to see how long the burning cigarette will add to the explosives' fuse action: "Two or three minutes to get the frack out of there. Any longer and we risk them finding the charges before they go off." Anders wonders if Barclay can be any more exact, and they chat while they wait for the butt to say for sure. The third person in their party, a very itchy fellow, pulls a Tigh: "This is a risky operation just to nail a couple dozen skin jobs. I mean, we can't kill them. They'll just download into a new body and...I mean, what's the point?" Anders obligingly tells him the point: "That skin job with Starbuck -- 'Sharon' they called her -- she said that when they download, they remember everything. Right up until the end. These skin jobs are going to remember being blown into tiny little pieces." If anybody qualifies for combatant status, it's Anders. We've had almost two seasons to think of them as people, some of us, but for Anders, even skin jobs having coffee are really just enemy agents. There's no reality to them. He's not a terrorist -- not even a guerilla -- just a person who's been in a state of war for nine months. It's important to make that distinction, because he's about the only human left in the show who gets to believe that so clearly. "It's gotta hurt," says Itchy, and Anders is all, "Duh. Hopefully it hurts real bad, dude." Hilliard's beautifully into it. "Because sooner or later, the message sinks in. There is no safe place, not even a café. So if you want to quit living through hell and dying over and over again, then get the frack off our planet." The fuse trips, the sensor beeps, the verdict: three minutes, ten seconds. Anders: "Boom." It's all very hardcore.