Episode Report Card Jacob: A+ | 561 USERS: A- YOU GRADE IT There's Beauty In The Breakdown
By Jacob | Season 4 | Episode 4 | Aired on April 25, 2008
Galen stands in a receiving line, hearing half-heard well-wishes, sees half-blurred faces, touches half-faded hands, nods at half-felt sympathies. None of them along the line have an idea what it was worth; nobody's seriously questioning whether this is a purely social duty or a purely religious one. And when Tory comes along the line, he grabs at her hand like a drowning man, and won't let go. He snatches at the Colonel with his other hand, the Colonel who sat through this service like his skin was being flayed off, he snatches at him, staring. The link. Tigh breaks it, coughing. "Yeah. Sorry about your loss?" Tory apologizes too, and they take off. "What the frak was that?" Tigh's still shaking. "Get us all killed," Tory murmurs. Galen stares into nothing as Lee approaches, trying desperately to find his eyes, and finally stammering out his own apology, but Galen doesn't really see or hear him.
Saul goes straight to Caprica's cell, on fire with Ellen, the murder he tried so hard to justify, to himself and to his hate, now empty and sour. The Marine at the surveillance console tells him she's the same as ever: "Sleeping, pacing." Saul muses, wondering how it doesn't go nuts. Locked in a room with thoughts of murder, singular and plural. Every Cylon must feel guilt for the death of humanity, he thinks, even the Final Five. An infinity of guilt. And for Saul Tigh, infinity plus one. "Probably turns its brain off," the Marine spits. "Frakkin' toaster." Locked in a room with pain and madness and futility and blood on your hands; knowing that you're capable of more, never knowing when the snake in your gut will take out someone else. Wouldn't it be better to be a machine, in those hot nights? He's not human. Like, he's stronger. So can they turn their brains off?
Caprica's up against the wall when he comes in, and greets him as politely as only Sixes can. "Your request to see the child Hera Agathon has been denied," he grits. "And you felt the need to come all the way down here in person to tell me that again?" To look the thing in the face, analyze its movements. Like looking in a twisted mirror: It does that, do I do that? It does this, can I do this? What it tells him about the man he's trying to be, what to watch out for. He scoffs and sarcastically asks if she honestly thinks he wants to be there. "We're done."
"I think we're not," says Ellen Tigh, in Caprica's black dress and platinum curls. "You come every day."