Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: A | 3 USERS: A+ YOU GRADE IT Admiral Cain, She Dead
By Jacob Clifton | Season 2 | Episode 10 | Aired on 09.22.2005
I bring this up because so much of this episode is a compare-and-contrast on the ways that being homeless has made the two ships crazy. For Galactica, it's been about losing a little bit of protocol in exchange for becoming a family of survivors -- the only human beings in the universe except for, possibly, the huge lie of the thirteenth Colony -- and opening up that family to include the civilians of the Fleet, symbolized by the relationship between Adama and Roslin. For the Pegasus, it's meant...something else entirely. Something bad, but consider the fact that the Galactica's mandate now includes protecting all of humanity in addition to its own crew members' asses, while Pegasus -- which anyhow is overwhelmingly male, as far as we can see -- has been on the run, thinking themselves to be all that's left. And not only that, but in an entirely military environment. Control where there is no control. They're not only the human race, but also the entire Fleet, and those are two big things that Galactica kind of got to skip over, in some ways. It's a completely different situation, and we have to infer that...you know the last two seasons of this show? How hardcore and awesome and generally freaky and difficult and exciting and seat-of-your-pants they were? How scary every single day is? Now imagine that, but take out Adama, Roslin, Chief, Starbuck, Apollo, and Helo. Okay, now I want you to multiply Tigh by one hundred, and shoot up all the Viper pilots with 'roid rage and a little bit of Kat's crack. And now, run through the last two seasons with them, in your mind. God, just watch "33" with them. It's not that Cain happens to a priori have a ship full of assholes, or some kind of symbolic Mirror Universe awful crew; it's that they became this way, were made this way, and have lost something that is desperately important.
Anyway, on the Pegasus CIC desk, as noted, everybody's a guy, except for Cain, who's hardcore. Her hair is long and with chopped bangs, and Michelle Forbes is as beautiful and scary as ever. She's like the opposite of Mary McDonnell -- she emanates suspense and sinister fractures, whereas Roslin gives off an unending calm. Even when she's killing your ass. The ships and Viper squads stand down, and we get an exterior shot of the Pegasus -- it's a basic Battlestar but more awesome due to not being an actual museum -- as Apollo, Adama, and the suddenly guitar-rocking score collectively geek out over how beautiful it is to find more survivors.