Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: D | 4 USERS: D+ YOU GRADE IT BattleNoir Redactica
By Jacob Clifton | Season 2 | Episode 14 | Aired on 01.26.2006
Cloud 9, Siobhan's suite. Apollo flashes back to his EVA, and then a breakup with a heretofore unknown girlfriend back on Caprica. If you're keeping score, that's not one but two girlfriends we never heard about before. Apollo looks at Siobhan through her vanity mirror as he dresses, and then notices a bottle of antibiotics on the dresser. "I...got them from a friend," Siobhan clearly lies. Her roughly six-year-old daughter Paya (that's three made-up but extremely important spec script-esque characters, ten minutes in, two of whom speak not a single word the entire time), to Apollo's not-quite-stepfatherish but definite boyfriend-to-a-single-mom delight. Paya's fairly sketchy about him, and not just because they look roughly the same age. Rebuffed for a handshake, he digs around for a "special surprise," and I have to say that Bamber (the father of three daughters, for what it's worth) is really, really good at acting with children. You can feel the disappointment and yearning to connect with this little girl, and the pain at her complete lack of interest. Apollo pulls out a deformed dolly with one eye, and Paya utters a tiny screaming gasp before running away. Nice. As a familiar moment in anyone's life, it's pretty devastating, even given my low tolerance for Lee Adama's constantly cracking heart. He gives a nice mix of "well, that went fucking poorly," with top notes of "my stupid doll sucks, and I suck" and all that. Siobhan smiles apologetically, and Apollo is sheepish and sad. Siobhan covers nicely that it was just a surprise for Paya, and they stand about awkwardly. "Look," he stammers, "I'm not sure when I'll be able to make it back." Ah, the old story of the military man forced to occasionally abandon his loved ones for the duties of his career. Siobhan touches his lapel lovingly, and then they both stand there for a second before he remembers, and awkwardly dives for his wallet. Ah, the old story of, um, the man deathly afraid of intimacy who has to rely on prostitutes and their kids for proxied emotional connection. That old Rockwellian chestnut. Siobhan: "Um, I'm gonna have to ask for an extra hundred, since you spent the night." Apollo smiles and pays up. An editor somewhere decides to cut to Paya watching this heartwarming display of capitalism in action.
Briefly, let's talk about sex, baby, in the Fleet, because it colors and confuses a lot of what's to come. We know that prostitution is legal, at least or especially on Cloud 9, which implies a level of sexual health and maturity concomitant with what we've seen across the Fleet in terms of gender equity. If there's no particular sin or taboo that pertains specifically to the female body, then prostitution in the Fleet is along the lines of a transaction, closer to temple prostitution in ancient Rome or the courtesans of Ye Olde Europe, somewhere between above-board stress relief like massage therapy, and the whole Whore + Madonna social status of a Firefly Companion. There's not even a societal/ethical consideration, because 90% of what's wrong with current prostitution has to do with conditions, danger, pimps, union concerns, warping the supply/demand curves, etc. We were given to understand that prostitution was not part of the underworld, in this show, and this was backed up by the gender sociology of the show. I don't think I made this up out of whole cloth, although I'm assuming it's possible that I did. In any case, we were wrong, apparently, because this episode is rife with pimps, danger, and general disapproval of the entire concept. So, sucks to us for assuming that just because prostitution is legal, pimps are pointless. Pimps are, after all, staples of pulpy noir bullshit that isn't even trying.