Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: B- | 4 USERS: A- YOU GRADE IT The Girl Kneeling By The River
By Jacob Clifton | Season 3 | Episode 17 | Aired on 03.03.2007
Kara begins to cry, watching it unfolding. The day she killed her mother. Kara sits at the table, too young and fresh to understand death. Without looking, she sits gingerly and reaches for her mother's hand. Kara Thrace has hands; Socrata has hands too. Kara almost looks away from herself, unfolding. "I don't want your pity!" Socrata shouts, pulling back, too quick for her daughter. "You haven't got it," Kara chokes. Socrata tells her where to shove her pity: "Feel sorry for yourself. You'll have to find another way to motivate your ass, I'm not gonna be around to do it any longer. Oh, don't tell me you're gonna cry about it now." Kara chokes, pushes it down, into the bug room, stands up. "I'm gonna walk out that door and you can look at it every frakkin' miserable day you have left, and know that I am never gonna come back through it again." And she won't. Socrata calls after her daughter; Kara cries, watching it unfolding. "You kept running, didn't you? For blocks." She runs, and runs; upstairs Socrata lights another cigarette; the clock ticks out her time. The ashtray is full of butts, six for every hour. The only thing more awful than your mother's strength is her weakness.
Kara and Leoben stand in an abandoned apartment, with the Corporal's medal still on the wall: stillness, quiet, loneliness, pills. "She waited here. Five weeks, hoping you'd come back. She died alone." Kara looks at nothing. "I was afraid, I couldn't watch." Time is not something this show has ever taken seriously; the level we're playing at right now, it shouldn't be a concern at all. Time a projection. "It's not too late. She's waiting, still." Kara jerks her head at him and then walks to the bedroom door. Which is about to open.
Kara slowly slides back the door: Socrata lying in the bed. She is small. Kara sits at her mother's side, and Socrata tries to smile, speaking softly. "You came back." All around her on the bed are scrapbooks: pictures, essays, stories. "I can't believe you kept all this." That's all heaven really is. "Everything. Always." Kara turns the page, like a flower unfolding: her childish paintings of the Eye. Somewhere a door slams open, and the bugs inside are pretty lifelike, for the time being. "Momma. Something's about to happen. You know that thing that you were trying to prepare me for? I don't know if I can do it." The fact that you can admit it's coming, the fact that you're not ignoring the sound any more, means you can. Three talked to Cottle, made love with Caprica and Gaius, kidnapped a baby: all the time, she felt it coming. She dreamed of it, and she wanted it, and she pretended and she denied, but she heard the call all the same. End of line. "Oh, yes you can. You can." How can she be sure? "You're my daughter."