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
Never disrobe on the Pegasus, especially if you are a high-ranking officer, because your ass is gonna die. Case in point: Colonel Fisk, who enters his quarters tiredly after a hard day of second-guessing any leader who's not a dangerous sociopath, notices someone in the corner, and almost smiles. "I wondered when you were going to show up." A dude sneaks up behind him, pulls a length of piano wire from a watchlike gadget designed expressly for this purpose and which combines the best features of a fishing reel and a deadly wristwatch, and strangles Fisk. We hardly knew ye, but we only liked ye when ye were drunk. Phelan, from some number of hours in our future, watches this happen, and smokes a luxurious black-market cigar. Credits. 49,597 souls in the Fleet (that's one less than last week. That shit is up to the minute!) We also get the 2001 Toaster Fetus commercial again.
Raptor 129er plays host to a bunch of Apollo's flashbacks (the girlfriend on Caprica, who looks a lot like Kimber from Nip/Tuck; his EVA) and Racetrack brings them in to Galactica. It's clear that Apollo is still verrrrry iffy about spaceflight, which is to be expected. He flashes and flashes and flashes back, in case we missed that he was in a reverie of sorts.
In Galactica sickbay, Cottle is smoking a hilarious grumpy cigarette while preparing for Fisk's autopsy. "I'm just getting started, but from the looks of him, I'd say he was garroted," he says, and somehow avoids putting some spirit fingers on the very dinner-theatre rimshot hilarity of that. He reaches into Fisk's throat and pulls out...a Death's Head Moth! Just kidding, it's a coin. Coins in the Fleet are shaped like octagons, shockingly. Cottle: "Looks like our friend Fisk hit the jackpot." It's like Cottle's the only one who actually gets that they're in a noir this week -- and the only one who thinks it's funny. He's so awesome. Adama and Tigh gawk, and Adama asks to be contacted if Cottle finds anything else. "If I find anything else, I may retire early!" All right, simmer down, Cottle.
Out in the corridor, Adama thinks someone is sending them a message, but Tigh (because he always does) suggests the possibility that it's the Cylons dicking them around. I like that he goes there, because somebody needs to, and I heard the Cylons do have some kind of plan, but if they spent as much time fracking with the Fleet as Tigh seems to think, they would have blown up the Resurrection Ship a long time ago on their own, because these people can be hella boring sometimes. Adama: "I almost prefer that to the alternative. We start killing our own, all they have to do is sit back and watch." Welcome to the last five episodes, Bill. Glad you could join us. The actual shame about this, though, is that the last time somebody said almost exactly this, two episodes ago, everybody got the irony, but now that it's repeated, we have to pretend nobody did, because the irony doesn't seem intentional this time around, he's saying this in earnest, because they've all been replaced for the most part by dullards with no inner life to speak of, plus the Memento disease.