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!
One shot through the Admiral's right eye, so they match. And Bill goes down, as Laura stares. It's everybody's nightmare coming true. It's a nightmare that's already come true once, coming back around again, in slow-motion, with sitars playing. Saul stares at the space his best friend was standing in, and then his mouth opens wide, and he begins to scream.THE MEN WE WANT TO BE
"Colonel Tigh! I gave you a frakkin' order. Everybody that's ever held a stick, I want them up there now. Get 'em out! Put 'em up there!" Saul snaps to, grabs the phone, speaks into it: "Attention, this is the XO." His biggest fear, his first thought, the things on his mind: Bill, something happens to Bill.
Because he is an embarrassment, and a drunk, and a lonely old coot. And he's been a cancer, and he's been a murderer, and an insurgent. He's been put to bed like a baby, and felt weird about it in the morning, on more occasions than you could comfortably count. And every time, Bill says, "You're my friend." Like that's enough, but for forty years he's nearly been able to believe it. A stupider man could let it rest altogether, and not have to drink sometimes, when the snake in the mirror gets too strong, when her faded smell comes back, and a smarter man would see through that excuse. The Gideon will always be with us, but the Admiral forgives him, and that's how he puts the pieces together.
Except, what happens when he kills him? When the thing in Saul decides it's time for Bill to die, where will he go then?
Chief -- it's Chief Tyrol I am proudest of -- hustling around the hangar, shouting at his crew, getting pilots in their Vipers and Raptors, shouting, "Where the frak are these nuggets?" and "Momma's not gonna save you today!" and "You wanna fly or not?" Don't get me wrong, I fully expect him to go craziest out of the Four, just completely ass-monkey, before it's said and done. He's the only one with anything to lose, and this show is nothing if not brutal to the people we love most. But right now, he's doing a good job keeping it together.
Seelix hustles Anders onto the hangar deck, and Sam pulls Tyrol aside, worried he's going to turn his coat on the battlefield. "What the frak is wrong with you? Shut the frak up. It's like the Colonel said, okay? Just think of that. 'Be the man you want to be, 'til the day you die." Which Sam appreciates, as rhetoric and as good advice for all of us, but notes that it's sort of hard to apply, given that he doesn't even know what he is, right now.