Episode Report Card Jacob: A | 12 USERS: A- YOU GRADE IT He That Believeth In Me
By Jacob | Season 4 | Episode 1 | Aired on April 4, 2008
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.The season begins seconds after the finale, fifty-five weeks ago: Apollo has just discovered Starbuck back from the dead and flying around, the Final Four are back at work, Baltar is being shuffled off to some kind of sanctuary, and there's a huge fight about to start with four big Cylon basestars. Here's what's up with everybody:
Lee is totally confused by Kara's reappearance, but super excited, of course. He has left the military permanently, and will now be joining the government in some capacity, hopefully involving an actual storyline for once.
Chief gives Anders a quick pep talk, and the newest nugget pulls it together and heads into combat. He sends some kind of glowy signal to a Cylon Raider scan of his shiny red eyeball, and the whole Cylon attack, four basestars and all, vanish. While it would be funny if he was secretly yelling at them with some kind of scary Wizard of Oz Final Five voice, it seems clear the Raider figured him as a Fiver, and the Cylon as a group realized that shooting at him, and the Fivers in the Fleet, would be about as tacky as throwing beer in St. Francis's weave.
Tigh is showing a...bit of strain under the pressure of Cylonicity, opening up the teaser by shooting Bill Adama in the head. Literally shooting his ass in the eye. Although whether it's suppressed Cylon programming or just a waking nightmare, we're unsure. I think it's the latter, because you know his number one fear nothing to do with hypocrisy, or the futility of killing his wife, but that something will happen to Bill. Which is sweet, but it's honestly the scariest moment, watching him plug the Admiral like that.
For Kara, the time between the Maelstrom and now was just six hours, subjectively. She is high on life and carrying loads of "vacation pictures" of Earth, and it takes her a while to figure out that everybody's acting so weird because she was dead for a couple of months. Given that generally she gets the slow clap for spelling her name right, her confusion is somewhat justified. Tigh, Tory and Chief are all total paranoid dicks and make sure they have as many fingers pointing at her as possible, but Sam and Lee are on her side. Of course. Somewhere Dualla's gotta be like, "Tell me when that bitch starts raping puppies, so we can throw her a party."
Madame President is not having any of Kara's mess, and throws her in the brig before visiting Caprica Six and learning that the Five are in the Fleet. It's really cool, because Laura just teases Caprica with the old "don't think of an elephant" trick until her robot eyes cross with the logic loop of not thinking about not thinking about not thinking about the Final Five. Caprica is awesome at a lot of shit, but nobody's immune to the BSD.
Around the same time, the Four agree that if they start acting toaster-like in any way, the others will gang up on them and shoot 'em dead. Grim. Meantime, all they do is get drunk and feel weird about themselves. Just like Kara and Tigh used to, before they died/turned into evil killer robots.
The Batshit Ladies of Baltar shove him in a tiny secret room on Galactica, where he gets laid a whole lot, prays for the son of his cult leader lady Jeanne, and feels yucky about having such a crappy cult. He eventually offers God his life in return for the kid's when he's attacked by Connor from the Circle, who kept tossing people out airlocks in the name of vigilante justice. He is saved by the completely crazy Paulla [sic] Schaffer, a cultist with a certain very amazing gleam in her eye and a taste for blood, and crazy. (I am in total love with her.) Also, his big Marxist agitprop philosophy includes that the Gods plural don't exist, and now he and his followers are all about monotheism. This is, of course, like a total birthday present for Chip Six, who looks more like a scary angel shark than ever.
Kara tries to get everybody headed toward Earth (and the Apocalypse!), but because of her being dead, possibly a Cylon, and generally hard to get along with, nobody's really listening. Even the Admiral admits that it's a hard sell to question Roslin's authority on the Earth issue after so many seasons of assuming her junkie ass knew what she was talking about. Which is like, so ironic, because fully half of every season is Adama committing the entire Fleet's resources to whatever bug is up Kara's ass at the time, but until now it's always dovetailed nicely with Roslin's separate ass-bugs. Adama, however, does not understand irony.
Every time they jump away from the Nebula in the direction indicated by the Pythian Scrolls, Kara's connection to their destination gets weaker and weaker. It also makes her want to barf, apparently. So, having had enough of her new magic powers getting ignored by everybody, Kara beats the shit out of several Marines, tells Sam that if he were a Cylon she'd murder him, and ends the episode with a gun pointed at Laura's beautiful head. Which to me proves that it's Kara, being that it's the most insane option. How great would it be if that were the solution? "I had my doubts, but only Kara Thrace could come up with a plan that idiotic. Welcome home." Want more? The full recap starts right below!
We already know what's up, because we remember, so here's a list of people who are totally freaking out: Helo, Chief, Racetrack, and Athena. But not Lee Adama. Lee doesn't even look, just lowers his head like a ram, and crashes into her, and holds her so tight."Okay. Okay, me too. It's okay. It's okay."
"Do you believe in miracles?" asks Tigh. Bill doesn't; he can't afford to. He used to, before she died -- not in a lot of miracles, and not necessarily in the Gods even, but the kind of miracles that always used to bring Kara skipping back, dancing them away from the abyss. Those Starbuck quick saves and heroic last second-shots. But the last time she died, it broke something in him. Such a little girl, to leave such a big hole: that's our Kara. He can't afford to believe in miracles anymore, even when they're staring him in the face, grinning with a smile like five stars and no pain at all.
In the Colonies they have a very old story, about a boy who played the harp and sang like an angel, and the woman he loved. When she died, the Gods wept for him, for he was beloved. And he went down into the underworld, and made deals to get her back again. And on the way home, on the path out of the underworld, his curiosity or his fear or his desire got the better of him, and he turned around to look, and you know what happened next, and so does the Admiral. It seethes in him.
Lee is good, he's a good boy. When Sam comes running up, just as excited and just as scared, and throws his arms around his wife, Lee steps to the side. Just far enough not to get caught in the crossfire. Sam and Kara, their love was always a little too rough for Lee, I think. Jock love.
Sam chuckles, and touches her face: "I told everyone that you were too frakkin' mean to kill." And she says it again: "Okay, I'm okay, I'm okay. I'm okay." She pulls back and takes him in, his Viper gear. "What the hell are you doing in a jock smock?" He's proud: one more thing they have in common. One more thing on a list that might be getting longer every second she stands here, proving she's not dead.
"I just finished Viper transition a week ago, and I started ACM..." She shakes her head, really confused now, but he can't talk, he just touches her some more. And up on the balcony, Zeus calls down to Artemis, his voice booming, neither angry nor afraid, neither welcoming nor warning, but full of love: "Starbuck!"
"I did it, Boss. I found Earth." She chuckles like a daughter, and behind her, Sam smiles hugely. She's home.
"Everybody move back," Adama orders, and the guns come forward, the Marines start barking orders, and everybody steps away from her.