Episode Report Card Jacob: D | 1419 USERS: C+ YOU GRADE IT BattleNoir Redactica
By Jacob | Season 2 | Episode 14 | Aired on 2006.01.27
We flash back to Lee -- rather than him taking part in the black market, or smuggling her antibiotics for Paya -- paying Siobhan for her services, which makes no sense, because prostitution is legal in the Fleet, but yeah, the point is that Lee's dirty.
"Doesn't make us right, Colonel; just a whole lot of people wrong." Exactly, except Tigh is never going to understand that. Ever. The more people are "wrong" in the Fleet, the lower the bar drops for him. What a great character. This scene rocks. If there's a point, it's this: are you, or are you not, responsible for following the rules -- if nobody else is doing so? What about if nobody's looking? Where's your line?
In the Galactica gymnasium, Apollo is hitting a punching bag. He goes kind of crazy, because he's been confronted with the fact that -- along with unsurprising Fisk and Tigh -- he himself is part of the shadow economy. Somehow. Dualla approaches, noting that he missed self-defense today, and he responds that he's been "pretty jammed up." He finally admits this, after six months of me saying it. Giant word, dude. I'll smuggle you a bran muffin or something. "Anyway," Apollo shrugs, "I'm not sure you need me holding your hand anymore." She wonders aloud, "Is that what you were doing? Holding my hand?" Apollo gets eye-rolly, like, "Don't get all girly on me right now," and explains that he meant it as a compliment. Dualla: "Permission to speak frankly, sir?" When Anastasia Dualla says this, run away. Don't even grab your towel. "You don't need my permission, and you don't need the 'sir.'" Which -- is when Dualla gets the upper hand, to my mind, because he's just said all he needs to say: "I'm perfectly aware of the six levels on which I've been and continue to be sending you mixed messages about our mutual attraction, Petty Officer, and I will continue to do so." Dualla's like, "Fuck that, and fuck you": "Maybe that's the problem. I don't really know what to think anymore. So, I'll just ask: Is this going somewhere?"
And oh, the internets, they go crazy. I've called Dualla "fickle" and I don't mean it in the derogatory sense, in the "slutty" sense, but from what I can see, Dualla and Billy are not a shipper ship; they're casually dating. Sometimes we fill in the blanks for ourselves, and the shock when the show takes a turn, it's hard to reconcile to the facts. And I may well be proven wrong, and I'm sure Billy will go crazy like the internets because he's filling the blanks in too, but I'm not going to drop the hammer on Dee just yet. And that's why this scene is good, because Dee not only plays it correctly, but meta -- McClure plays it incredibly wisely. "Please don't pretend like you don't know what I'm talking about. You know our time together, our workouts. Something's changed between us." Translation: "Be a grownup for just one second while I figure my life out, okay?" And Apollo's disingenuous confusion could not be more defensive or off-putting if he'd done this in a Nixon mask: "I'm just not sure what you want me to say." Every word, including prepositions, is a lie. He shrugs with his face, his shoulders, his biceps, a shrug that sweeps everything under the rug: past nameless baby mama girlfriend, present hooker Siobhan, future possible Dee (and thanks to bluedevilblue for pointing that whole triad out) -- it's all just too messy. The apple doesn't fall far from the...apple. The fact is, Dualla was the exact same way when she was feeling out Billy: puts it out there like a straight-backed adult, laughs about the resulting confusion, and waits patiently for the guy to figure it out. I don't see this as testing Lee to see whether she should dump Billy: I see this as an honest question. "I care a lot about you either way. Should I spend any time or thought on this? Or are you just fracked?" Answer: fracked, of course. "Then don't say anything," she snits. Apollo watches Dualla go; he's making a choice.