Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: A+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT What Kind Of Father
By Jacob Clifton | Season 4 | Episode 12 | Aired on 01.23.2009
This episode is so interesting, because it manages to be only character moments, while still feeling like plot cartilage. Remember that episode where Roslin kept having flashbacks to Gaius making out with Caprica in public? I know for a fact that things happened in that episode, important things, but I'll be damned if I can remember what they are. That's how this episode feels: like a pivot point. There are lovely things in it, some really great transitions and some bizarre perseverating angles (ten minutes of an ultrasound that made me think my TV was acting out, ten minutes of Adama brushing his dentures at all hours), and some real subtleties in terms of how often what people are talking about is not what they are actually talking about (Felix and Kara's upcoming scene is like a black-and-white negative of what they're actually doing, while still mirroring several past scenes on the show), which is my favorite thing.
But it's also about two other things that this show does well: daddy issues, and making broken stuff work instead of needing them to be shiny and new. Every scene in this episode is about fathers, how they let you down and how whining about that is not the point, even when it's Bill. And we talked a lot about this last season, how "fixed" is not the same as "unbroken," and that really seems to be the driving force of this very last arc: once you acknowledge that all we have is rough spots, it's about sacking up and getting it done anyhow. Turkeys dragging Vipers was just the beginning, and now the show that started with a Butlerian Jihad against wifi is talking about putting Cylon FTL into the Fleet. (The only time we've ever seen the other side of the universe was on a Basestar, in Jump. Think about that! What if everybody starts networking with God when they jump?)
But also: sucky Earth was the ultimate sign that there's no good fix for anything, ever, just all of us trying our best to get somewhere better. If True Blood taught me anything, that's it: the second you find the answer, it stops being the answer, and if you don't figure that out and keep moving, you are going to screw yourself over really bad. The only hope that really kills you is the last one, so you'd better come up with something else fast. There comes a point where you realize that finding joy in spite of (not instead of) being naked and broken is the absolute best you can hope for.
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