Episode Report Card Jacob: A | 1 USERS: A YOU GRADE IT The Truth About Reconciliation
By Jacob | Season 3 | Episode 5 | Aired on October 26, 2006
Lee brings reports of "missing persons" to Adama's office, where Adama suddenly and spontaneously exposits all over everything that we apparently "left thousands of people on that planet." (Thousands? Really? In a rescue op coordinated by Tory Foster? Doubtful. Maybe "left" as in buried, but not thousands stranded. The whole point of the rescue was that Adama was like, "I'm not going to do that a fifteenth time. I have already left huge batches of humanity to their doom sixty-seven times today. This eighty-ninth time, I cannot do it.") Lee explains, this is people who specifically were survivors but have disappeared since the Second Exodus. "Jammer, for instance." Adama says he saw him as latterly as yesterday afternoon. "Yeah, but he didn't report at muster this morning, bed check negative, sickbay negative. It's like he just vanished." Total of 13, two on Galactica and 11 elsewhere in the Fleet: "Every one of them confirmed as a survivor by multiple witnesses and then poof! Gone." (Adama's like, "Oh my God, have we located Cally?" and he grabs his gun and Lee has to tackle him before he gets on the damn phone himself if that's what it takes.) Adama tells him to keep him posted, and Lee runs off: "I have a date with a jump rope." (Come! On! She's not that bad! I actually really like her this season! â¦What? Oh, right. Just another intro to a fat joke. Sorry.) Bill stares at his fat-ass son and Lee gets defensive, making up a whole new system of weights and measures: "Hey, I've dropped half a stone!" Adama tells him to keep jumping, and Lee manages to leave without telling him to go to hell.
Starbuck watches Gaeta in the Galactica Mess. He's, needless to say, sitting alone. Like, pretending to do comms, or maybe administrating the sugar packets or something. She approaches and sits, genuinely friendly. "Hey. How ya doing?" He's grateful, and, as one does, asks her in response how she is doing. Which is his first mistake, although you wouldn't know it. "I'm good," she says guardedly. And you need a PhD in Starbuck to understand why this would be the fucking point you walk away. "Why do you ask?" she says, which is a CODE RED. "Well," he stupidly continues, "I heard about your situation. You wereâ¦" CODE BLACK. She'll have his ass for this. "â¦Right," she says breezily, and thinks about his eyes. "I just try not to think about it anymore. You know?" She eats and looks back at him. It's a different girl in there now. "Kinda like you. Sitting in your plushy little office on Colonial One doing all of Baltar's dirty work for him. Probably never even thought about what was happening to me, right?" The hidden command: Do not even think about what was happening to me. Don't mention it, don't look at it, don't witness it. "I didn't know about your situation. If I had, I would've tried to get you out." Get your own ass out! Now! You are begging for it! She hums at him, tight-lipped. She folds herself up like origami in a new shape she's never had before. "Like I've just said about 50 times now, I was serving the legal President of the Colonies. We all elected him, remember?" The mess starts to clear out. I mean to say that the ambient heat coming off this table is such that even the stupidest crewman is getting the vibe. "So that's supposed to excuse it?" Gaeta exhales. "What do you want me to say? Maybe I could've done more. But I thought that when the Cylons landed, it was important for me to keep my job. To help from the inside." Starbuck offers a reinterpretation of that story, mainly that his job was "propping Baltar up and letting the Cylons walk all over us." Gaeta protests, talks about the dead drops and Jake the dog and the Cylon positions and all the memos, and she couldn't care less. "Hooray, Felix. You're a frackin' hero." Gaeta stares at her and leaves, realizing there's no way out of this one. She stares and watches him go; in the corner is Seelix, watching. Watching them both. Weighing the votes. Stacking the deck. Making a choice. ("Dude, why does Jacob hate Seelix so much? Cavil's a dick!" This is why, this right here: She'd co-opt Kara's extended abuse trauma to take "revenge" on somebody that never hurt her. Leaving Cavil in the dirt without even suicide as an option was just a pointer to the fact that eventually we'd end up here, now.)