ONE: The Baby Crazies
Day 67 of the New Caprica occupation. People that the Tyrols apparently sometimes have dinner with include: Tigh, Jammer, Duck and his wife Nora. You've not seen Nora before, but you know Duck and Jammer. Jammer's the Deck Crew guy who fought Cally and Socinus about Letting The Terrorists Win during the witch hunt, and also ended up in that room with all the dead nugget bodies; Duck's the blonde Viper pilot who was the only other person in "Scar." Jammer is religious, Duck is not but his wife is, Tigh believes in the power of doubt and the word "no," Chief Galen Tyrol used to be religious before Al fromQuantum Leaptotally blew his mind, and Cally is quietly religious.
There are no atheists in foxholes. James Morrow, a genius on many levels, said this was not an argument against atheism so much as it is an argument against foxholes. Meaning that war makes you do terrible things, and get confused about who you are and what you actually believe. I don't care if you believe in God or not but terrible things have a way of making you confused about who you were in the first place, and that's what we're dealing with here: two different arguments about foxholes and about what you do .
Curfew's in twenty minutes, so everybody's getting their jackets and stuff to leave. Duck says something about ending up in a Cylon jail cell for being out past curfew; Jammer informs us that the first thing the Cylons did when they "showed up to help us" was build a jail. That sounds about right. Baby Nicholas Tyrol starts crying and Nora, Duck's wife, says he's so beautiful. If you say a baby is ugly, you go to hell, so I will say that it is possible that Nora has the Baby Crazies where you wonder if today won't be the day you steal a cute baby in the supermarket because it is cute, but more so perhaps because it is a baby. I don't believe in hell, but I do believe that phylogeny recapitulates lameness, and also that I might really like Cally this season if she will just... do something.
Cally knows about the Baby Crazies and tells them they should have one, and Duck protests that they're working on it. Jammer says this is "great work if you can get it," and everybody laughs, because in a concentration camp nothing is funny anymore. They leave, and Duck makes a joke about how Jammer needs to have "a lady" soon, because he's starting to walk funny. This is because of that medical condition known as Blue Balls, which is a terrifying situation where the backup of semen in the testicles causes you to actually die. At least that's what Coach told us, and if I pass this knowledge on to the ladies it's only because it's of medical interest. Apparently those of us looking for a fight thought this was a gay joke, but come on: there are no gay people on this show. Jammer offers to sleep with Duck's wife through the well-known "if you only had a sister" gambit, and everybody laughs, and then Duck refuses a cigarette because "if they're going to have a baby, they gotta clean up their act." They kiss, which apparently Jammer cannot have, because he brings up a person they know named Longo, who was killed by toasters after they found his weapons stash. Downer, Jammer! I guess Nora won't be getting impregnated tonight.
Back inside the Tyrols' tent, Tigh and Chief talk about how Jammer is trying to recruit Duck to the Resistance. Chief opens up a weapons stash and expresses relief that at least this one stash was still under Longo's latrine. Tigh is allergic to relief, and his Canadian Scots accent he sometimes falls into gets very hardcore. I like him more when he talks like this, like a salty dog. "This is all that's left? This is fracking pathetic. If this keeps up, we'll have nothing but rocks left to throw at the bastards!" Chief's like, "Also nobody to throw the rocks, because we will all be dead, and then it'll just be: rocks."
Nora can't believe that the Cylons shot this Longo in cold blood, but to be fair, she's been on the show for five seconds. Jammer scoffs that they are saying when they found the stash, he was reaching for a gun. That sounds not unlikely, but Duck is amazed, because Longo, a.k.a. Charlie, would not be stupid enough to do that, so it would seem those frackers murdered him. I feel them on this issue, but I can't help feeling like it's a little silly to be amazed or horrified by Cylons killing your friend. To recap the last two years or so, the Cylons killed ALL YOUR FRIENDS AND ALSO EVERYBODY, and then put you in a concentration camp. Duck doesn't even have the plausible deniability of his wife, because he's been on this show watching the Cylons kill his friends for two seasons. "My hair being on fire sucks, but I've got this hangnail that is driving me nuts!" On the other hand, if it didn't still piss you off then you might as well lay down and die, I guess. I think the part that I find funny is how they're like, "Cylons are so unsportsmanlike!" Like it's enough to argue with the idea that Longo was reaching for his gun, like if that were true it would be fine that they killed him. Like the Cylons even need a reason. Frankly I think it shows real growth and class for them to even manufacture the gun-pulling story, rather than just being like, "We shot Charlie. It was fun. Go ahead and complain and then we will shoot you too, because that is how we roll. Duh."
Off Nora's line that maybe he was kind of asking for it, hiding weapons in his tent, Duck attacks a recruitment poster for the New Caprica Police: "And now they want us to do their dirty work for them? Are you kidding me?" Jammer, note, is all about the upside there: "Get the Centurions off the streets and let us patrol them ourselves? Maybe Charlie would still be still be alive if they had human... " Duck tells him to shut right up: "You work for the toasters, it's treason." He tosses it to the ground with a weird look and remembers curfew; Jammer manufactures a reason to head back to the Tyrol house. He kisses Nora and shakes Duck's hand, and when he's gone they discuss making him their child's godfather.
Cally puts the baby to bed as Chief worries that they won't have an "effective fighting force" put together by the time Big Daddy comes down to rescue them from space, putting Tigh in a bind because A) he believes more fervently than anyone that Adama will always save his ass, but B) he hates hope. So he changes the subject and notes that the guns have to stay in the Tyrol tent for the moment. Cally and Chief are both not feeling this, but Tigh has no time for their family or their baby: "We'll move them as soon as we can." Jammer comes in and confirms that Duck hates the Cylons, but that's all he's got to offer. Tigh reminds us -- and Kat said this before -- that Duck is an awesome Viper pilot with forty kills. "Talk to him, make him understand that we need him! Throw in some poetic crap about the struggle for liberty against the Cylon oppressors, whatever it takes!"
I'm of two minds about Tigh in this little story -- on the one hand I agree with him, because the one thing I've always loved about him and about his wife too is that he doesn't give a fuck beyond getting whatever it is accomplished. On the other hand, you're not really in a position to be cynical about the fact that you have no hope and that "poetic crap" is all any of you have to hold onto. I see him putting the cart just a tad before the horse as far as all this, which is at odds to the fact that he really does believe Bill is going to save his bacon just like always. Putting the cherry on top of his total insensitivity to Baby Nicholas sleeping on top of a gunnery: "We need more people or this resistance movement is going to die in its crib." Classy! We cut before getting to see Cally and Chief be absolutely appalled at his mentioning crib death in front of their baby.
TWO: Being Gross In Church
Duck, Jammer, and Chief hang around a water tower, discussing the Resistance. Duck says that, as much as he'd love kicking "some chrome-plated ass" with them, he's got other plans. Like having a baby with the clearly marked for death Nora, for example. He bounces, and Jammer sighs. Chief -- who has no room to talk considering the last person he beat the shit out of married him for it -- is like, "Other plans what?" And Jammer spells out that he's talking about Nora. "So what! I've got a wife and a kid -- you don't think I worry about them? What kind of a future are we gonna leave them if we just lay down and quit?! That's just a spineless excuse." Also valid. I love the Chief.
Jammer says it's a matter of choice, and that they're still entitled to choose their level of involvement in life and revolution. Chief is not feeling him at all on this issue. But see, Chief's got a history of strength when it comes to this stuff, and a hell of a lot of practice subdividing love and fear, and giving up your dreams of the future in order to survive, and to help. They're both right, but Chief is slightly more right because he's already taken Option A, namely choosing your dreams of a happy future v. giving everything you've got to ensure the future, and it didn't work out, but now he's got both. He's already worked through the pain and shame of taking Duck's option, and of all things he's worked this one out for himself. If you take the Boomer situation and substitute Nora in, Duck's choice is clear: humanity, then romance. Bros before hos.
Inside the Temple tent, Jammer and Tigh are worshipping with Jean Barclay. Or so it would seem. Being an atheist, or not, in a foxhole, is a very different kind of thing than being a killer, or not, in a church. An opposite kind of thing, and the heart of this entire ten-part story. I support Jean Barclay -- she was one of the Buccaneer group in the original Caprica Resistance, the gorgeous scary redhead -- but compared to the Galactica people, I give her a lot more moral scratch paper. She was in the Shit, left behind when the Fleet jumped away, and she has been exposed to radiation, and had to hang out with Anders, and went from just a person to a guerilla in two seconds flat, and she survived. Compared to her, the regular cast is a bunch of pansies.
So they pray: "We give thanks for the food you have presented us. May this harvest be spared the blight. So say we all," they say. The priestess leaves, and Jean goes into the real deal: "We picked up all the weapons from the other sites. They're in crates marked 'Machine Parts.'" Which I question only because what if the Cylons thought that meant, like, hair extensions, and then the jig would be up. Jammer realizes she's talking about smuggling the weapons into the Temple itself, and wigs, because he's religious. Jean does not understand the problem, because that one time he was drowning in dead bodies up on Galactica was, like, a normal Tuesday to her. She's in a different world entirely. She blows up coffee shops! For kicks!
"This is sacred ground," Jammer says. It's something he believes both in the personal and in the political realm: "The Cylons respect that. Which is why we should leave the temple alone." Tigh points out that this makes it the perfect hiding place, and Jammer's not buying: "But it's sacrilege!" Tigh -- and again, I'm on his side to a certain extent, but only because he didn't start out religious -- tells him to say a prayer for forgiveness, then, and take the pussy party somewhere else. The problem I have is that this is very similar in a lot of ways to thePegasusproblem, which is that it's not so much an objective moral issue as the fact that you, yourself, are having to change your own moral code. Rape a robot or not, but you're only getting off on it if you don't really think it's a robot, and that's gross. In the same way, it's either a church or just another tent, depending on how religious you are, but you can't ask somebody else to turn off their feelings about it without going way over the line. Especially when that includes the enemy, and their reverence for your religion is what creates the détente. So it's like double sacrilege? But also, since that's not logically defensible and I yell about it in like every recap: It's a slippery slope issue. You can't let war change who you are, or what you believe. Jammer is being forced to choose, and it's not a choice he should have to make.
THREE: Who's In The Temple & Why
Nora prays in the Duck & Nora tent: "If it pleases you, great Aphrodite, grant us a child." Or Artemis, or Hera. Maybe the problem is that Nora doesn't know her own religion. Or maybe the problem is that the Gods don't want her pregnant: "If it pleased her, you'd be pregnant already," Duck smiles, and she says maybe if he'd come to Temple with her they'd be pregnant. None of which makes any sense, theologically, but I bet in a concentration camp there's a lot of confusion about what the Gods are actually up to. "The Gods help those who help themselves," says Duck, which to me at least proves that, religious or not, he's got the high ground on the rest of these people. Nora throws her shirt in his face and tells him to get to work then. They are very cute. Duck tells her that Jammer and Chief tried to recruit him to the Resistance, and she confirms that he turned them down, thank the Gods, and they reiterate for each other that chrome-plated ass-kissing does not hold a candle to Duck's clearly marked for death bride. He jumps into bed with her and they are adorable some more. Get it while you can, Duck.
Chief, Tigh, Jammer, and Jean are hiding weapons in the Temple, and Jammer does indeed pray for forgiveness from the Gods. Tigh gives him that look he gives people, but come on: this is gross. Even if you're not religious, you have to admit that this is gross.
morning Nora slaps Duck's ass and screams, "Reveille!" He twitches and wiggles around and complains that he "left all that military crap aboard Galactica." She gives him some coffee and tells him he's already late, and Chief's going to kick his ass. I love this so much, this role that Chief has taken -- even in "Lay Down Your Burdens" it made me happy, because a political system is just another machine, and "Galen" means "Physician."
Nora asks Duck to maybe meet her at Temple after work, and Duck protests: "I don't do Temple. I don't need all the bells and whistles. I talk to the Gods in my own way." She's not happy about it, but he smiles winsomely and says he'll be there "in spirit." They kiss and she tells him to leave, but he begs for just five more minutes in bed. Happy couples are all the same.
So what's developing is a story about who's in the Temple and why: you're either in the Temple for God, or not in the Temple, or you're in the Temple for horrible reasons. But it's a truth about life, and about war, and especially about this show, that the people who do the crimes are rarely the people who pay for the crimes, at first blush. So if Cally and Nora are the only people in the story who go to Temple for pure reasons, then one of them is going to bite it, and we've only just met Nora, and Cally -- apparently -- has still not been put through enough hell, so Nora is, clearly, marked for death. But the corollary to that is that the actual people perverting the temple -- Tigh and Chief -- are going to be fine, and Jammer is going to be fine because he's on the middle ground of that spectrum, and Duck is going to be fine so that his wife can be horribly killed and this will radicalize him and prove the importance of the Resistance. Which, if this is the best behavior the Resistance can scrounge up, is pretty gross, but humanity always has the fractional moral high ground over the Cylons, because that's how the show works.
FOUR: Nora Dies Horribly With Some Celery
In the Temple with Cally, Baby Nick, and Nora. Cally writes her prayer on a piece of paper, lights it on fire, and places it in a metal bowl. What a lovely ritual. Nora holds Baby Nick, because she still has the Baby Crazies. Nora chats about how Galen's from a religious background, so that's lucky for Cally, while Duck's belief is more personal and he won't go to Temple. Cally blows Chief's spot about yes, he's from a religious background, but the whole Brother Cavil thing, how he turned out a Cylon (and an atheist!) was not that awesome for Chief's religious impulses. Nora's like, "At least Baby Nick gets baptized," and Cally calls this a small miracle. "It's the small ones that keep me going," says Nora, and that makes me love her an awful lot. Even though, like all the women that don't constantly kill people on this show, she's just a cipher for her male counterpart with all the depth the actress can bring to the part. And no, I'm not bitching about Cally exactly, because at this point Cally is fine. But, like, it would be fucking splendid if they could, I don't know, spell Kandyse McClure's name properly in the credits. For starters. On the way to giving her personality back. Or ever show a relationship -- or a conversation -- between two women, maybe.
Oh, here's one: They talk about celery. Nora and Cally have a conversation about celery, and Goodwife Duck says she got Goodwife Tyrol some celery, and Goodwife Tyrol says "Thanks!" and then somebody starts shouting at the Cylons outside that they are "infidels," and Doral, outside, tells him to shut it, and then Nora and Cally run out of the Temple, but then Nora has to run back inside for the celery, and then she dies horribly, and then there's just her dead hand, covered in blood, holding a stalk of celery. I don't think it's supposed to be funny.
FIVE: Duck Has A Crisis With Some Celery
Cally brings Nora's bag of celery to Duck's tent, and sits beside him on the bed. Chief and Jammer loiter near the tent flap. Cally tells him Nora didn't say anything, because she died horribly fast, but on the upside, she didn't suffer. Cally and Duck are both very good in this scene, as usual. Duck barfs, and Cally tries to comfort him. He rues the whole thing about how she asked him to come to Temple and he wouldn't go with her, and there's not much to say to that beyond the fact that he wouldn't have been able to help in any way. "Could have died with her," Duck murmurs, and Jammer starts in with that "will of the Gods" shit, which always sounds like a good idea inside your head but is NEVER a good idea to say out loud, which Duck proves impressively by wigging out and suggesting that the Gods go fuck themselves, since they're the ones that killed her. (Still not true.) He smashes their house altar, and grabs a picture of the two of them, whirling on Chief.
"Were there guns at the temple?" Chief wriggles around the question and says it doesn't matter, because the toasters thought there were. And then she pulled a stalk of celery on them, and it all went to hell. Chief finally admits that they were grossly hiding weapons in the Temple, and Duck tells him to leave. Jammer stays behind to spread some more cheer, and Duck tells him loudly to leave as well. Cally takes off, too, and Duck continues to stare at the picture.
SIX: Tigh Versus The Crybabies
Jammer, Jean, and Tigh are building something as Jammer wigs out about the massacre at the Temple. Ten dead, twelve wounded. Tigh's like, "I know! Lucky, right?" Sigh. Jammer has a problem with this concept, even as Tigh notes that it'll do wonders for recruitment. Nonprofits are so scary. Jammer exposits that they're doing random arrests and cracking down, and Jean says that a whole thousand people protested outside Colonial One after the massacre. Jean says there've been 150 new recruits in the three days since, and Tigh calls this a "hell of a bargain for a few confiscated weapons." Sometimes I think it's too easy to make Tigh the one to say stuff. Like he becomes less believable when you convince yourself, as a writer, that Tigh could actually be this crazy. Jammer points out the collateral damage of the ten innocents: "Why don't you tell Duck what a bargain you got for Nora's life."
Tigh retreats to a certain kind of logic, which is that the Resistance didn't shoot the churchgoers, the "chrome jobs" did... which, while true, is still not the point. It's not even the point that it was bad strategy: it's crappiness on a higher moral level. Not only did you endanger innocents, but you crapped on God. That's just bad form. "Hey! We're not playing patty-cake here. These bastards burned up twenty billion of us. You gonna say that's our fault too?" (Sort of yes?) "Instead of bawling like a little girl you should focus on getting some payback." I take it back, I think maybe Tigh really is this crazy. And without Bill around, we've seen him get this crazy, and maybe I should go back and watch those episodes again, because he is making more sense than usual, even as he's making less. "Is that all this is about to you? Blood for blood?" Tigh just says that war is messy, and people get killed: "Good people, nice people. Get that through your head or get out. We don't need any crybabies in this outfit."
Hey, remember when Tigh almost shit himself because Admiral Cain scared him so bad? It was kind of comforting to know there were lines he wouldn't cross.
SEVEN: Literally Drinking The Literal Kool-Aid
People are walking through the streets of horrible, awful New Caprica life. Still looking like Burning Man, still smelling like burning garbage. Tigh and Chief are doing some kind of work and Tigh is bitching about "Of all the people for the toasters to grab, it had to be Jammer." He calls him a "little frack" and worries that he'll give up the whole deal. Which is not too weird of him, actually: Jammer's twitchy, and he's also a pushover, and willing to snitch on his fellow man if he thinks they're bad guys. Just like the NCP! Way to tie in that character continuity! That is awesome. He's so joining the NCP, I bet. Chief says Jammer's a pain in the ass, but not a traitor, and Tigh says something encouraging and hopeful.
New Caprica Detention Center, the first building the Cylons made. Jammer paces an interrogation cell and yells at himself about how he's completely fracked. Doral enters in the usual game-show-host teal jacket. "Sorry to keep you waiting. Have a seat, if you would?" Jammer asks what he wants; Doral slides him a big bottle of red Kool-Aid, then takes out a knife and slits the cuffs around his wrists. "Can I call you James? Or do you prefer Jammer?" That depends, am I over the age of ten?
Doral apologizes on the cuffs and says that was totally unnecessary. "Can you tell me why I was arrested?" Doral explains that he's not under arrest, he's there to have a conversation about the missing three thousand... wrong webisodes. He's there to talk about the Temple massacre.
EIGHT: S.O.L.
Jammer is not feeling this conversation: "All I know about the Temple is that you blew ten innocent people to pieces." Doral says, though it may be hard to believe -- and it is -- the Cylons feel just sick about it. He blames the Centurions, but what, are they going to take offense? They're walking toasters for real. "But I think if you're honest with yourself, you'll admit that the shooting wasn't entirely our fault." Jammer calls this "bullcrap," always funny, and Doral reminds him that they've always left the Temples alone. Jammer repeats Tigh's thing about how, guns in the Temple aside, it was still Cylons that killed the people and bloodied the celery. "True. And I accept full responsibility for that. But bringing instruments of death into a house of worship is a sin. Don't you agree?" Seriously!
Jammer takes a big old motherfucking sip of the Kool-Aid.
"Think about it, James. Whoever hid those weapons in there must have known we'd catch wind of it. Maybe they even leaked the information to us. Maybe they wanted it to happen." Oh, damn. This just got very interesting, actually. I might like a sip of that myself, there, Jammer. "Because some people are afraid of peace. Afraid to stop fighting. Afraid of what they might be without it. But you're not one of those people, are you James? You'd like to put all this bloodshed behind you. Get a place of your own one day, a farm maybe. A wife, kids, a life." Doral tells him this is possible: for Jammer, for Doral, for everybody.
Doral spins some poetic crap that is at least as good as the revolutionary poetic crap: "Individuals like you and I have to be brave enough to demonstrate there is a better way. Others are already doing it. That juice comes from farms right here on New Caprica where Cylons and humans are working together. Growing things, instead of killing each other. The power grid is almost complete. So is the water system, thanks to your engineering teams and ours." Sounds great until he hits the clincher: "And when we can finally have human beings policing the streets instead of Centurions... "
Jammer stands up and yells about how I was wrong and no way is he joining the S.O.L. or the NCP or whatever you wanna call it. "That's never going to happen, I'm not a frackin' collaborator." Doral questions his terms: "All I'm asking is that you help me prevent another tragedy like the Temple shooting." How? With this little keycard microchip, which Jammer can show at the gate of the Detention Center and they'll let him in immediately. "If you hear of anything that could lead to more bloodshed, get a hold of me. Maybe the two of us can find a way to stop more innocent people from being killed."
Doral takes off, leaving the door open, and Jammer stares at the keycard. I don't know: "they have a plan" and all that. I think this is one case where you have to impute a certain amount of creepiness no matter how delicious and refreshing the Kool-Aid is.
NINE: Boomer Told Me
Chief's waiting for Jammer when he comes out of the Detention Center. The gates are automatic and for a second I got excited thinking about how maybe the jail was alive, like a Raider, and how maybe all of that stuff is alive, like the Basestars and the Resurrection Ships and all. I think I could deal with Cylon jail a lot easier if it was alive, for some reason. You could say, "Hi," and sing little songs to it, and maybe feel peaceful. I don't know what I'm talking about. That Kool-Aid was strong.
Chief, surprisingly, says that he knew Jammer was being released because Boomer told him. (What if DEMAND LOVE is actually completely different from the Kill You With Kindness occupation? No, wait, because the Six that Gaius surrendered to was obviously the DEMAND LOVE Six from Caprica City. Dammit.) Anyway, that is awesome. I love that Chief and Boomer are talking -- working? -- together. I cannot wait to see more of that. I'm sure Cally would love it. She and Dualla could have little bitter parties about it. "Some skin job all over me about the Temple massacre, the weapons, who, what, where. You know, the usual stuff. Just like you'd expect." He confirms for Chief that he told Doral to go frack himself, which is... not true. They talk about how awesome the look on his face was, when this thing that didn't happen happened, and Jammer's like, "He was one pissed-off toaster," and I don't like this because it makes Chief look kinda dumb, or else he's not buying this story. It's complicated! The last thing you see in this scene is a NCP recruitment poster, though, so if Chief is paying attention to the camera work then he knows the truth.
Duck walks into his tent and slowly puts the altar back together. The last piece is the picture of him and Nora. He picks up an idol, presumably Aphrodite, and weeps for his wife and the child and the future that they never had, and the tenuous faith he never acted on. All gone forever.
TEN: Aries & Apollo
Raiders fly over New Caprica City as Nicholas Steven Tyrol -- with his parents, Jammer and Duck, and Jean standing by -- is dedicated to the service of Aries and Apollo. If I were a Colonist or a refugee baby, those would be my choice too. "May he prove worthy of their blessings, and those of mighty Zeus. So say we all." Everybody claps and the baby wets himself. Cally and Chief are very cute together, and then Duck interrupts everything and Chief's like, "Sorry, I have a baby. What do you want?"
Off on the side, Duck flashes Chief a NCP patch; predictably, this causes Chief to go nuts. "You're gonna work for the toasters after they killed Nora?" Duck figured out what Doral figured out but I was too dumb to figure out: that some motherfracker obviously snitched about the weapons stash in the Temple. "If I join them maybe I can find out who." Chief recognizes that this is dangerous work, and welcomes him to the fight. At no point does Chief show any surprise about how there's a stoolie in the Resistance, so again: is Chief being sketchy, or is Chief being dumb, or is Chief going double-agent on Duck and not trusting him but pretending that he's still in the Resistance? Duck and Jammer! You are confusing me! He tells him to be careful, and Duck leaves. I hope he is careful.
Tigh and Jean are all geared up about their major hit, what with all the new recruits. Jean says Anders found a source of ammonium nitrate. I guess from his sickbed? And Tigh's like, "What's the best place to turn it into bombs?" Jean thinks probably... what's worse than the Temple? Oh right: the grain storage tent across the street from the hospital. She might just be creepier than Tigh. I thought the stoolie was obviously Tigh but now I just don't know. Jammer calls bullshit on this plan, due to possibly blowing up hospital patients, and Tigh interrupts him and says the patients can take their chances. I love that: "Sucks to be your tuberculosis! No crybabies in this outfit!" Jammer bounces to check on Duck, he says, but mostly I think he wants away from the dangerous murder cult of Tigh and Jean. Oh, not to mention how this is exactly what Doral was just talking about a second ago.
Outside, Duck's smoking a cigarette and looking down at his NCP patch. The two things -- the three things -- he wouldn't do because he loved Nora. Jammer pulls out a smoke and Duck wordlessly hands him his own, to light it. "Thought you quit?" asks Jammer, just in case we forgot the first webisode. "What frackin' difference does it make now?" Duck mumbles. Good point. They smoke and are very quiet.
So there's Duck, okay, who was not religious but lost his family to the Temple atrocity, and now he's joined the collaborationists in order to expose the Resistance member who was willing to leverage the deaths of the Temple folk against recruitment. And there's Jammer, who is religious but went along with the Temple atrocity, and now regrets it, and will probably end up actually being a collaborator. And there's rhetoric on both sides that is simultaneously disgusting and pretty right on. And there's the Cylons, who say they want to work together, and there's the Resistance, who... I'm not clear what they want, actually. Big Daddy Adama to come save them from space, I said, but also to be spies and act creepy and blow up civilians and hurt people.
The legal mind says that Duck is at least working within the system, whereas Jammer is working around the system, which is dicey. I don't know. They both of them lose pretty hardcore -- again, some more -- I guess. But Duck is more adaptable than Jammer, generally, and he's in a much more direct situation, and I think that's what is going to fuck Jammer up: having to think on his feet. Because there's no task list for Jammer's story like there is for Duck's: just a continuing edge he has to walk and remember at any time that he may be making the wrong choice. He actually has to spend every second choosing between the Resistance and actual collaboration, whereas Duck just has to be several men at once. I think it would be better for everybody if the situations were reversed, but I don't know if I have any real strong backup for that opinion beyond the fact that even in the foxhole, Duck's way more of an atheist than Jammer can be trusted to stay true to the Resistance. Duck's a pilot so he has pilot stories, Jammer's got deck stories. Duck's story from here on out, it seems, is a detective story, but Jammer's is closer to an existential one, and I don't trust those bitches.
But also I feel like it really does go back to the Pegasus thing, which is that -- see, here I go quoting existentialism -- it's more important that you stay yourself, true to the thing you've declared, because that's all you have. Period. Like, I don't have a problem with Jean, because she's doing her thing, and I don't have a problem with Chief, because he's Chief. Cally's still Cally. Tigh's like Tigh with a little extra Tigh on top. The only people who have been seriously changed in this story are of course Duck and Jammer, and Duck's still Duck. He didn't go all foxhole religious or anything; he just resumed smoking and got a little more Jean-like. Duck had his support taken away, when Nora died, but Jammer handed his over the second he signed on to desecrate the Temple. And I don't know if that's a big difference or a small one, but it seems big to me, ethically speaking.
Duck puts his hand on Jammer's shoulder and tells him to take it easy, and they smile. Duck walks away, and Jammer finishes his cigarette. He pulls out Doral's keycard, looks at it a while... and heads down the middle of the street, toward the first building the Cylons ever built.