Episode Report Card Jacob: A+ | 562 USERS: A- YOU GRADE IT There's Beauty In The Breakdown
By Jacob | Season 4 | Episode 4 | Aired on April 25, 2008
(The only songs I make sure are on my playlist when I'm recapping this particular show are a whole lot of garbage (the band and the regular kind), and 1) a bunch of covers of "Umbrella," because it's easy to write when that song is playing, 2) a bunch of covers of Modern English's "I Melt With You" ("You should know better: Dream of better lives, the kind which never hate. Dropped in a state of imaginary grace, I made a pilgrimage to save this human race. You should see why I'll stop the world and melt with you: You've seen the difference, and it's getting better all the time."), and this way old song called 3) "Something Happened On The Way To Heaven," by I think Phil Collins, which contains my favorite lyric of all time: "You can run, and you can hide, but I'm not leaving unless you come with me." Sometimes when I was recapping The Apprentice and feeling really angry with America, that idea was all that kept me going: No matter how bad I fucked up or how bad you fucked up, or how viciously you repudiate me, I'm not leaving -- unless you come with me. If you leave this hellish relationship with me, we can hold hands and run somewhere better, called the future, we can ditch this war we're caught in and just hit the disco, or whatever, but no matter what I'm not going to be the one to fucking blink. I like that a lot.)
Put another way, the Cylon are developing civil fractures and individuated personalities at the same rate as the Fleet is hardening into social roles and groupthink terrorism, and abstracting its self-imposed self-definition out to a place where it doesn't even mean anything. At some point the question, "What is human?" stops meaning anything at all, because the only point, ever, is "What is redemption?" The orbits are decaying, and where they meet is the Promised Land, or the Apocalypse, but either way it's nuclear.
I think that Gaius's little speech is about fusion too: of human and Cylon, of the Gods and of God, of multiplicity and singularity, of democracy and autocracy, of Lee and Laura, of Caprica and Chip Six. The thing about nuclear fusion is that it's not necessarily bad. It could be awesome. It depends on how it's used. And I think the implications of Gaius's little sermon are scary as hell -- but only depending on how it is used. Because of anything I've ever heard, the sermon itself comes closest to my personal beliefs.