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
Apollo's called to Cloud 9, where Siobhan has been supremely jacked up. She and Paya huddle and freak out on the bed. "They said they knew about you and me. They wanted to know what we'd been talking about. I don't understand why they'd care." Me neither, frankly. The only thing here is that Siobhan's being used to send a message to Apollo, to back off the black market, but that's a lot of words to say that. Maybe Siobhan's not smart enough to figure it out, except (a) she is in league with these people and knows who they are, and (b) she's smart enough to explain the entire episode at the end of it. Is she a femme fatale in this? She's just so scribbled in and unfinished that you could go ten ways on it. Apollo starts packing Siobhan's shit up and talking all superhero about taking her and the kid back to Galactica, and she protests for no reason other than to further the plot: "What are you going to tell them about us?" Um, that our completely legal financial relationship does not preclude my getting you and your child out of physical danger? Chill, girl, it's not like he sent you shopping down Rodeo Drive for the next polo match. (Yet.) "I'm not fooling myself. I know what this is." But apparently we, the viewers, do not, because I'm still stuck: does her line of work somehow exempt her from the right to not have her face bashed in? What was the point of turning Starbuck and Boomer into these strong, competent women, all haters be damned (not to mention Roslin and Six and even fucking Kat), if this kind of shit was waiting at the end of the tunnel? You could have had Dirk Benedict if you'd made the women like this from the beginning. It's not like he's doing anything besides chewing on bitterness and hating women.
Creeps enter and attack Apollo. Yet another glass coffee table goes the way of the dodo as Siobhan screams unhelpfully. I've not met a sister in my life that couldn't fight like a motherfucker. I'm just saying. The Bond villain piano-wire device appears and Apollo is strangled while helplessly watching Siobhan get beat. This is the choice of a man who gets more pleasure out of wrestling women on the floor, or getting smacked around by tomboys? Phelan enters and taps Lee on the forehead. "You listening? I hear any more talk about Fisk, I'm going send your whore back to you piece...by piece. And then I'm going start with the little girl." Why are we all pretending she has no legal recourse here? Because hookers in danger put pulp writers' kids through school from 1940-1970, and let's not let simple logic get in the way of that completely irrelevant fact. Lee's reaching for a piece of glass from the smashed table. "I know who you are. I know whose son you are. And I don't care. You tell Adama to let it go." Phelan kicks Apollo in the head and Apollo falls unconscious, and his head bounces on the floor in slow motion, which is funny instead of worrying, because this episode is taking place on the holodeck of any one of a number of vastly shittier shows, and we cut to blessed commercial comfort.