Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: B | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Hi, Billy...
By Jacob Clifton | Season 2 | Episode 16 | Aired on 02.09.2006
Adama and Starbuck work out the op details: Two strike teams inbound, ETA ten minutes, available firepower good, limited access points. Right then Sesha fauxallas to CIC again, and Adama conferences Starbuck in. "We're losing oxygen. If it's not restored, the hostages die." Tigh is freaked. Sesha: "Then you'll all die," Adama lies coolly, "Because this is over." Sesha says it won't be over "until the Cylon's dead," which is interesting phrasing, and that she's "willing to die to see this through." She plays the Lee card, and Starbuck wigs. "Suddenly you're listening, huh?" Ellen starts screaming her head off about how they should just do it and get her the hell out of there because she hasn't had a drink since Lee took hers away a half-hour ago. "You're all alone on this, Admiral," says Sesha, emphasizing how these strange new doubts about Boomer are causing Tigh and Roslin and Billy worries. Adama replies with the first of the episode's two biggest trademark Adama non sequiturs: "I'm not going to sacrifice a military asset on your altar of revenge!" Even Sesha kind of blinks at this: "What are you talking about?" Seriously, lady.
Adama speaks to Sesha over more flashbacks, explaining the episode to us like children, which you know I love: "You said this was about us being played by the Cylons, but it isn't. It's about the loss of your husband, and I understand that. It's about you wanting to strike back, and I understand that too. But we've all lost people that we care about. And we learn to live with it." Having come so intuitively close to her secret craziness, Adama pushes Sesha closer to it. She almost loses herself altogether as she repeats the propaganda in an "I memorized this" way that's used to great effect throughout the episode. "I am sure you are aware, Admiral, of the concrete evidence that Caprica's defenses were compromised by a Cylon agent who infiltrated the Ministry of Defense on the eve of the attacks." (Concrete evidence? I know it came up during the Quorum election, but I don't remember any real evidence. Not that there isn't, I just don't remember it, and honestly, crazies always talk like that anyhow.) Adama gets Sesha on the couch again: "People look for complicated answers when something terrible happens. Maybe we were just caught by surprise, and were beaten. And maybe we have to learn to live with that." Which is (a) not true, and (b) stupid: this conversation, where he tells us (and her, but like as an afterthought) about where her whole conspiracy business came from, is infantile. And also, makes no sense because he's making a point that would be valid any other day whatsoever, but is not valid right now; and Adama doesn't actually completely know that, but it's pretty lame to sandwich this awkward Psych 101 crap into an episode about how, in this case, it is true, but beside the point altogether.
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