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In short: being spoiler-free is amazing, everything turns upside-down, and everybody picks a new side to be on. As the President lies dying, we are told the stories of two parallel insurrections: one, a teacher's strike which Roslin resolved back on Caprica toward the end of the world, in defiance of her lover Adar's wishes; the other, a Cylon-sympathetic group within the Fleet that is stupid in precisely the same way as your recapper. In both cases, Roslin takes them in her two hands and shakes them up like a snow globe, revealing that her current gravitas and negotiation skills -- not to mention the habit of doing whatever the hell she wants -- were always a major quality. She makes an executive decision to abort Boomer's child, which is supported by basically everyone but Helo, of course, and Boomer, who loses it so totally.
On the threshold of death, Roslin comes close to discovering a memory in which she saw Gaius and Six canoodling back on Caprica. The miracle cure is earned as well as it can be via one million obstacles, both violent and bureaucratic, but basically amounts to injecting Roslin with the blood of Boomer's baby and curing her cancer. (Slow clap starts here -- I told you I didn't care how they got it done.) Only time will tell if the medical stuff will give her superpowers over and above the ones she has had all along, and I know you hate the idea, but it makes me laugh: I wanna see Slayer Roslin picking up metal desks and Raptors and hurling them around when she gets frustrated.
Gina has set herself up on Cloud Nine as the mind-blowingly beautiful leader of the shadowy Cylon sympathizers, who promise several times to stop sabotaging everything and then continue to sabotage everything. Roslin, nearing full recovery, enters into talks with the group, and what with the Cylon blood and her own history of revolutionary empathy, this will probably prove to be the most interesting storyline yet. Chip Six returns -- hooray! -- acting the part of the jealous ex, and convinces Vice President Baltar that Roslin will never trust or respect him, resulting in Gaius's delivery of a nuclear warhead to Gina's quarters. Idiot. Oh! And Roslin has the ring-a-ding sexiest gams I've ever seen on a political figurehead. You go, Madame President! Want more? The full recap starts right below!
This one's going to be pretty long, because there's a lot going on as we gear up for the post-Pegasus onslaught of storylines. We begin 189 days ago, also known as The Last Day Ever, not to mention one of the busiest days a person has ever had. Such a busy day Laura Roslin had! First she got inoperable cancer, then she solved a union crisis verging on bloodshed, then she watched some people making out hardcore in public, then she got dumped and fired, then took a trip to a museum, then the whole world ended, then she got LBJ'ed, then she killed a few thousand people, then she freaked out for a while, and then she may or may not have grabbed a nap. And she did all this with total class, while looking -- at worst -- a little tired, with everybody treating her like she was completely slow the entire time. Jack Bauer's like, "Lady, I gotta hand it to you."
So, 189 days ago. Laura's hair is very dark, sitting in her doctor's office, because it's Caprica and it's always crazy bright on Caprica. Especially in flashbacks. Caprica was beautiful once. Now it's yellow. There's a very echoey, very still silence here. The doctor informs her that her cancer is malignant and metastasized. Outside, in the fountain square that characterizes most Caprica flashbacks -- particularly, and this is important, when it comes to Six and Gaius -- Laura dangles one very shapely leg in the water and thinks about how she's got incurable cancer and a probably incurable union strike going on. The palimpsest that goes on in this episode is impressively comprehensible: moving forward from last episode, where dialogue from each scene bled into the others, in this episode you might be confronted with dialogue from two different scenes while alternating visuals from two or three others. It's a credit to the vision of the show, and even more so the adeptness of the editors, that it never becomes overly confusing.
For Laura -- well, for everybody really -- this episode is just a series of endings: the end of love, the end of life, the end of the world. Approaching zero, they all signify the same amount. I'm reminded of a story told by Connie Willis in introduction to her marvelous story "Daisy, In The Sun," about how Edward R. Murrow saw a fire engine going by during a respite in the London Blitz, in the middle of the day with no planes overhead, and it took him a while to think it out: regular house fires don't stop because the world is ending. Your apocalypse is not on hold for the Big One. It's the reason that Maus and Jarhead and Sarah Bunting's essay "For Thou Art With Us" and Fast Food Nation are beautiful, and better than history: because they highlight the fact that political meaning doesn't exist in a vacuum, that while the political informs the personal, it couldn't exist without it. And I would say that there's something even bigger on the line, which is that one approaches zero as a limit -- all apocalypses are equal. There's no relativity to pain. And that's why the cancer, and the Cybrid, and the Big One, and the breakup, and getting fired, are all mixed together, in the episode and in her head. Because there is no difference. Your apocalypse is not on hold for the Big One, it is equal to it. Why should we care about the Teachers' Union, or Adar's term as President, when we know what's coming? It's a viewpoint we don't get in this show, a whole lot, because the action takes place in the equivalent of the West Wing: the peanut gallery only speaks in screams and yells and bombs, and often seems incomprehensible to us, because we are with the ones in the know.
Billy stands above the gurney, looking down at Roslin, on the threshold between the past and now, and death and life and sickness. Back at the fountain, on that last day, Roslin meets with Navlin Stans -- blonde curly hair, a Culkin plus a Busey -- who represents the Education Alliance, meeting with Roslin as the Secretary of Education to discuss his group's standoff with the government. "Once our chief negotiator got a billy club to the head, we figured Adar's government had written us off as a lost cause," he says, and she takes a moment to think. "I was a teacher long before I was Secretary of Education, and causes are only lost when we give up." She doesn't smile as she says this. She looks across the garden square, notices Dr. Gaius Baltar with a beautiful blonde, hard as a shark. As they wheel her into a makeshift lab on the Galactica, she smiles up at Billy. She looks like she's made of paper. Cottle worries and grumpuses around above her. Billy leans in, scared, and she smiles weakly. "Oh, Gods..." she whispers. She can feel it coming. We pull back, off-kilter, sickening, on Billy holding her hands. The camera straightens and a doctor steps through before us -- he nearly looks into the camera before he closes the plastic curtain, cutting us off from Billy and Cottle and Laura. Credits. 49,598 souls in the Fleet, for now.
So in last week's American Idol recap, I made a sort of joke about how I only took this job to get closer to Gabriel Köerner, who now does effects rendering work for Zoic, the company of this show. You and I know that's not true, or at least not the whole truth, but this is a story about how the internet is MAGIC. Four hours later I get an email, subject line: "You're one step closer…" This kind of thing is why I always trust Wikipedia -- it took four hours from go-live for somebody (one of a very small number, I assumed, of people who both watch AI and know who the hell Gabriel Köerner is) to grab the ball and run with it. I emailed him back to congratulate him on being such a good sport about the whole thing.
Starbuck's flying in on a Viper, and I think but cannot swear that she is still the Pegasus CAG, which is really cool. Kat radios that she's "20 frakkin' minutes late," and since there's currently no Blackbird, I assume she means from the other Battlestar. "Have a rough night, Starbuck?" she snots, and Starbuck laughs -- in a very official, respect-me, Apollo kind of tone -- that she's way out of line, but doesn't mention that Kat's just like her, only twice as irritating, and additionally a crackhead. Dualla smiles, so we know Starbuck's not going to beat Kat up or anything, and Kat requests permission to "clear guns," or as Starbuck rogers it, "Clear your throat." She fires a few rounds, and then the gun explodes, sending shrapnel into Starbuck's Viper and cracking her window. Kat freaks out ("Weapons malfunction! Weapons malfunction! Galactica!") and Starbuck, making sure Kat's okay, lets her know that her port gun just blew, and then requests priority landing clearance. They return back to the Galactica, Kat trailing smoke like a Reaver ship. In Starbuck's cockpit you can hear a whistle. It's space trying to come in, and it's pretty scary.
In the Galactica hangar, Starbuck's busting Chief Tyrol's balls about trying to kill her pilots, over a shot of a crewman smashing her window out. Chief's very gruff about it all, like he usually is, until Cally comes running up with some rounds in hand. He realizes that the weight's off, and then it crumbles in his hand. Cally says she's found three more substandard rounds, mixed in with regular ones, and Chief ascertains that this is sabotage. Cally rolls her eyes cutely, because come on, yet more Galactica-endangerment? Or maybe it's because Chief orders every round pulled. Either way, nobody's sleeping for a while.
Adama comes into sickbay to check on Roslin, giving Cottle license to engage in both character development -- he offered her "morpha" for the pain, but of course she wasn't having that -- and some echoey flashback talking. There's another shot of Laura's undiscovered Baltar memory in the square, and we come on Roslin having a fight with President Adar in his office, dominated by the giant presidential seal behind him. President Adar is played awesomely here by Colm Feore, who rocks, and whom you might remember as Marcus Andronicus in the Julie Taymor Titus, or as Karl Gunderson in The Exorcism Of Emily Rose, which of course also starred Aaron Douglas, our beloved Chief. He's skinny and good-looking along the same lines as Nathaniel Fisher. She's asking him to at least "speak with the strikers before sending in the troops." They're "teachers," she says, "not terrorists." He counters that their last action involved sending two cops to the hospital, and that they are crazy. She explains why they're crazy, and it's the usual stuff about which unions were created long ago, substandard pay and conditions, et cetera. He says coolly, staring at his desk, "One of the most interesting things about being president is that you don't have to explain yourself," and looks up at her. "To anyone." She smiles, and he gets all het up: "You've already set a meeting with Stans, haven't you?" She looks away grinning, and there's a tiny smile on his face. "Obviously," she says adorably, "only if you approve, Mr. President." There's a sexiness to her smile here that belies what's coming up in the story.
Roslin arises out of the memory to Vice President Gaius Baltar talking about how she's unfit right now to do anything. She asks politely that they not talk about her as though she's not there, and smiles sickly. She doesn't open her eyes at all. She coughs once, gets it together, and has Billy jack her bed upright so she can look Gaius and Adama in the eyes. "Gentlemen, I called you here to discuss the Cylon." Doc Cottle explains that the Cybrid's genetic profile is showing some abnormalities. First of all, duh. When Adama asks why Gaius, the supposed genetics expert, hasn't mentioned this -- and again, duh -- Gaius extemporizes that there's nothing "conclusive." Which earns him the patented Cottle Look: "Didn't say conclusive, just damned odd." As grouchy as Cottle is all day long, it's fairly hilarious how vehemently he still has time to hate Gaius. Like, even though he's grouchy as possible today, because he loves Laura just like everybody else, he's still going to dig a little deeper so he can hate Gaius that much more.
Gaius leans in to whisper conspiratorially to Laura: "As you know, the Sharon Cylon is of considerable tactical value to the fleet." Without taking her eyes off him, or blinking, or showing any weakness whatsoever -- a rough trick from your deathbed, for sure -- she informs him of the possibility that he's gotten a little too close to his subject. Which is funny, because she's wrong -- he couldn't care less about Boomer -- but more right than she knows -- because he's totally on the Bad Guys' side. Cut to Adama glaring meaningfully. She addresses Adama, noting that it's a difficult issue so she should just cut through it: "Allowing this thing to be born could have frightening consequences." Gaius starts looking freaked as she continues, taking both him and Cottle into the conversation: "For the security of this fleet, I believe the Cylon pregnancy must be terminated before it is too late." I'd like to point out that the "cut through it" phrase is something that she picked up from Cain, and has used several times since -- you can go ahead and fill in the blanks thereafter. Adama gives a token resist, and she looks at him meaningfully: "I thought you of all people would understand, Admiral."
Of the many cheats in this episode, the only one that really bugs me is this, because I think it's not necessary, and actually clumsies things up a little. The real reason the baby's gotta go is the same reason Cain had to go: it's a loose thread that Roslin knows Gaius can't handle. But whereas Cain was capable of blowing up the Galactica and then stripping the Fleet for her own mad agenda, not to mention killing Adama first thing, the baby's primarily a political issue. We're talking about living proof that a high-ranking officer had relations with a member of the army which committed genocide on the human race six months ago. That she is still alive, in a comfy cell on board Galactica, no less, and that every member of the cast, which involves the highest members of both the military and the civilian government, knew about it, which is tantamount to condoning it, and furthermore kept it secret, which is an unimaginable failure of the government and military's fiduciary duty to the people. This is where the peanut gallery thing comes in from before: we're so used to spending our days with these people that we forget the level of power their wield, and that the general populace has no idea about anything that's gone on for the past two seasons. So it's a combination of two combustible political issues (fraternization and a variation on Bartlet's multiple sclerosis) -- and she's going to hand that off to Gaius Baltar? A man whose incompetence runs so deep he can't even go the bathroom without breaking fifteen rules of etiquette?
So, of course it's Gaius that's confused here -- even though I don't fully think Adama's on the exact same page just yet -- "Madame President, I don't understand. This makes no sense." And she stares him down: "One of the interesting things about being president is you don't have to explain yourself to anyone; thank you, gentlemen." She dismisses them and Cottle ushers them out, and Adama looks at her, figuring it out. Gaius attacks Adama in the hallway, getting more and more overexcited and hysterical, begging Adama to overrule her. He starts with a call to reason, suggesting to Adama that she's losing it, and Adama shuts that down right quick, so he starts going nuts: "I'll have to appeal to you on scientific grounds! Destroying this child would seriously impact my studies of the Cylon sub-species..." Adama explains the obvious fact that he will always back Roslin, and that the call has already been made. Gaius says that this decision was made based on Cottle's evidence, and tries to pull the intellectual superiority card. Finally, Adama shuts him down completely, looking disgusted as he does it: "Pull yourself together. You're about to become President of the Colonies. You're going to be asked to make some very hard decisions. Act like you can handle it." It's a deft synthesis of about a hundred things: his annoyance with the fact of Baltar, his pre-annoyance with having to deal with Baltar on a governmental level, his fear of what will happen with Baltar in power, his constant annoyance at having to answer questions more than once, his own ambivalence about the termination order, his counteracting respect for it as a technical last wish, and of course, his heartbreak over Laura's death. He might as well have just slugged him. He kind of did.
Adama leaves Gaius standing there, looking ridiculous and slapped, and Six appears -- yeah! -- wearing a cool bronze jacket and black skirt. Gaius is complicatedly happy to see her, and she gives a very humorously exasperated, "Where have I been? I never left you, Gaius." It's a rare creature indeed, that can infuse the usual selachimorphic menace with these additional flavors of "recently fucked-over" and "fed up with the High Fidelity bullshit already" girlfriend, but Helfer does it, and gorgeously. "Right…yeah, metaphorically speaking," is his awesome response. He exposits that it's been "weeks" since he last saw her -- and the last time he saw her was the day Cain died, remember -- and he immediately starts in with the Baltar crap, reaching up to touch her imaginary cheek. She almost gives in, but at the last she grabs his wrist, twisting him around. He's in a corridor in what must be -- since we were just in sickbay -- the heart of the ship. Getting self-defense-twisted by invisible forces. No wonder everybody hates him with this crap all the time. "I'm sure you've suffered mightily in my absence," she hisses. Baltar, nearly upside down at this point: "You know, jealousy is a really ugly emotion." Hee! Yeah, dare the evil invisible robot to show you "ugly."
She leads him down the hall as he continues to ask for it: "What is this? Lingering controversy over my affair with your three-dimensional duplicate?" People are starting to stare at his crazy ass as Six -- bored already -- explains that she's not jealous, but concerned. Specifically about "our child," which is the math of which I am not capable, but Six has always been able to do in her head. And Gaius's, of course. She explains that while Gaius is right, that the President wants to kill the baby, what he hasn't figured out yet is that he's more than capable of saving the Cybrid once she dies. Because he'll be President, duh, which is kind of the entire point of being Vice President, and one I'm not surprised he's been overlooking. He has that kind of brain that can't even spell responsibility -- instead of coming up with this obvious fact, he went running to Daddy instead.
Baltar demurs that -- as should be clear from a few minutes ago when Adama was even more grossed out by Gaius than usual -- his Presidency will have zero legitimacy: "I will be the President, all right, but without the military support, I might as well be an anointed dog catcher." Which is a good point, and not one I'd considered. Six teases that he has "resources," if he'd use them, and his blank, crazy stare explains that she's going to have to bottom-line it. We flash back to the original Cylon Detection Scheme, when Gaius was hella fine and Six made him ask Adama for a nuclear device. It's nice when the other shoe finally drops like that. Gaius wigs, and Six is awesome: "I'm trying to help you, you idiot." She maintains that the bomb may be their "only hope" if Adama doesn't get off trying to kill Boomer's baby. Only she calls it "our baby" because: mysterious math. She vanishes, and he's got himself by the tie, and everybody is staring…but not enough to mention to the press that Gaius Baltar is totally off his nut. I would tell somebody, if I saw him do any of the shit he regularly does, you know? Raise an alert of some kind.
Adama has invited Helo to his quarters to have a horrific conversation. Helo's freaked out from word one, as Adama starts in the best possible way: "There's no easy way to say this." Helo just looks away. I have this rule where if you say "we need to talk" or "this isn't going to be easy" or whatever…we don't. We won't be having the conversation; you've just established a certain kind of power over the conversation that isn't necessary. You're starting out with a wall around the whole talk that you built specifically to keep me in line. If we need to talk, if you need to tell me something: say it. Tell me the thing. No matter how freaked I get, it's less freaked than if you prefaced it by basically ordering first: "You will now freak out." Anyway, that bugs me. So Adama is then out with it: "It's about the Cylon. The President has decided that her pregnancy will be terminated." Helo takes a second to digest this info, and then asks why, and is told the blood work thing, which sounds like a lie every time. Helo's sad, and pissed, and asks if it isn't something that can be assumed about an entirely new kind of person. Helo loses it, a little bit, at the end of the question. His jaw is working overtime. Adama explains that, per Roslin, allowing the baby to come to full term would constitute "an unacceptable risk to the Fleet."
Helo complains that Sharon's been completely helpful since they returned from Caprica, leading the search for the Tomb, giving them intel…even broadcasting the virus to the Raiders, characterized by Helo as having "turned on her own." Penikett's really good at not yelling -- completely contained, caged and nearly boiling over. It's very real. Adama points out that each of these involved "saving her life" -- it's interesting that these can all be characterized as self-interest even without referring to Helo and the baby -- and then a thing happens that is interesting. Because Adama's face, on the screen, says: "Don't mistake the will the live for genuine conversion, Lieutenant. She's still the enemy." And that's also what the closed-captions would have you believe he says. But the vocal track, what comes out of your TV, Adama says, "Don't mistake the will the live for genuine compassion." I wish I knew how that went down, and how and why it was redubbed, because the difference between the two is the entire point. Helo asks whether Boomer knows about this new horrible violation coming her way, and looks away as Adama replies in the negative. Helo says, and I agree, that he should be the one to tell her. Adama looks up as Helo asks to be dismissed. "Helo. I don't expect you to agree to the decision. But I need you to accept it." And Helo, of course, disagrees: "We're talking about my child, sir. Part of me." It would be at this point that I would remind Adama of the numerous times he has put the totality of humanity at risk for Starbuck's unholy ass, and she's not even his actual kid. But Helo's a class act and that's not how he rolls. "…But I guess it's easier to kill when you call it a Cylon." He hits the last phrase with a palpable disgust. This might be Helo's best performance of a pretty demanding run on the show. Adama dismisses him without an answer, because there's not an answer, and Helo snaps to attention with tears in his eyes, turns, and exits. There's a lot going on with Adama as he watches him go.
In Galactica CIC, Tigh's asking self-evident questions again, and disagreeing with things for the pure reason that it gives the other characters a platform to explain them. We thus learn that Apollo has ordered a stand-down for the Vipers of both the Galactica and Pegasus, until the tampered-with ammunition gets sorted. We also learn that Apollo has been reinstated as CAG, presumably of the Galactica, and that somehow this was Tigh's call. Then -- even though Adama's standing right there -- Tigh calls this a mistake, and Apollo tells him to go to hell. Adama tells them both to chill, and I have to commend Tigh on not immediately looking to Adama for support like usual. Tigh complains that grounding all the Vipers leaves the Fleet "defenseless," and Adama supplies him with the obvious upshot of this, which is that they already were. Adama sends Apollo and Starbuck out to figure out who's sabotaging them.
Lots and lots of Marines enter Adama's quarters with Royan Jahee, the representative from the terrorists. He dispenses with the gravity that sedition normally incurs, noting somewhat sanguineously that Adama has a "unique way of welcoming visitors" to the Galactica. Tigh is so into this: "Visitor, my ass. We shoot people like you for treason." Jahee explains that he's only an "interested party" (lie) "trying to prevent more bloodshed" (also a lie) and that he "deplores" what happened with the Vipers (total lie). This is not the best way to make me feel sympathetic to your cause, which is one that I pretty much support, but I have a feeling it's going to get worse before it gets better. Moore has mentioned an interest in playing against type for such a progressive show, by setting the "peaceniks" up as antagonists to the military cast. It's interesting, but also plays against the progressive tone of the last few episodes, which were pretty much a brutal operetta about not being mean to Boomer. Just me? Fine, if even I would rather hang out with Cain than these idiots, maybe you've done your job too well. Adama asks how many sympathizers there are in the Fleet, and Jahee gets to the part that interests me most, personally: "If you're trying to crush an organization, you can stop now. The people in this movement are following an idea, not a leader." (Kind of a lie, unfortunately, as least as far as we'll see tonight.) Tigh asks, of course, what "the hell" they want, and Jahee explains again that it's peace with the Cylon.
Tigh smiles cruelly, almost giggling about how lame the dude is, and for a second I'm reminded of "Scattered," where we learned that even Colonel Saul Tigh was once a hottie. He momentarily gets back there. Adama looks the guy up and down: "You want us to surrender? They attacked us." Jahee shows his crazy cards a bit early, in my opinion, proceeding directly to hissing, spitting madness: "Only after we'd enslaved them!" Which is yeah, totally true, and the point…but only from a human perspective. The Cylons left that train of thought behind a long while ago, proceeding to the part where they wipe absolutely all humanity out due to a religious imperative. And I mean, that doesn't seem to be the whole story at this point, but it's an important chapter. Jahee asks another good question: as military men, he wonders whether Tigh and Adama can coherently explain "how our current course of attack and retreat leads to victory." Tigh gets more and more grossed out through this whole scene, because logic is his anti-drug. Adama calls Jahee on his "innocent bystander" lies, and says that either way he's a danger to the Fleet. "Admiral, arresting me isn't going to stop any of this," he protests, and Adama is awesome: "Maybe not. But it's a start. Take him away." I almost hate these people more because I ostensibly agree with them. When I said I was a Cylon sympathizer, I didn't mean that I was a jackass, no matter how many times you tried to tell me otherwise.
In the Galactica hangar, Apollo tells Starbuck to get her "rubber gloves on," and the fact that both of them proceed to not do that would seem to suggest that it was meant idiomatically, which means to me that procedural dramas are as virulent in the Fleet as they are here on Earth. Poor guys -- even after the end of the world, they still have to watch boring TV. Adama wants the twins to go through all of Asha's private belongings to see if they can get any Homeland Security info on the movement. Neither Apollo nor Starbuck is itching to do this, because it's stupid yet serves the plot, but they're grateful for the screen time this week. Starbuck floats maybe talking about Apollo's recent suicide attempt, but the Easiest Criminal Investigation In The History Of The Universe changes the subject for him immediately, producing a hand-held computer detailing the movement's target: the Daru Mozu tylium refinery. My friend Ali and I have a deal about science fiction stuff, which is that I only read, watch, or recommend the good stuff, so she takes me at my word, but the only time weird sci-fi names like this are okay is if Mary Doria Russell is involved -- otherwise it's a deal-breaker. And I feel much the same way, and there are hella weird sci-fi names in this episode. Apollo gets really intense and runs to the phone, ordering up a tactical team.
The step in this C story investigation knocked out of the way -- if you don't want to write it, take a pass and write the week's screenplay time, dudes -- we get back to the B story, the forced abortion. Boomer's crying on her cell phone, now quite pregnant, and Helo's short on answers. "I don't know! The Admiral said they found something in the baby's blood. Somehow, President Roslin considers it a threat to the fleet." Helo hasn't figured out that these two things are virtually unconnected, because he's sweet but he'll never beat Roslin at chess. There is an infinite sadness in Helo's eyes and a total craziness in hers: angry, hurt, disgusted and scared to death. Both Boomer and Helo act the hell out of this scene. Boomer shakes her head. "It can't just be that. I've done nothing but help them since I've come here. I've held back my anger. I've tried to show them that Cylons are not all the same. That we're not all murderers." While this is technically true, Adama has good reason for being iffy about the whole thing. Of course, Helo's too close to it, and he's like, yeah, but mysteriously enough, "I think they're still afraid of you." She starts pacing like a crazed zoo animal in a very bad zoo. "They wanna be afraid of something?" She's started to get hysterical, pacing faster and moving around erratically. "Yeah? Just let them come! Let 'em!" Helo looks so, so sad. "Let them try to take my baby!" She screams wordlessly. "Just let them try to take my baby!" It's hard to describe how well she pulls this scene off, but I dare you to go in the bathroom right now and say these words into the mirror. They're like impossible to say.
Boomer -- still screaming -- starts bashing her head against the reinforced glass, where Helo's face is. Where do you go when you can't get out? Helo starts yelling for her to stop, eventually picking up the phone and screaming futilely into it as she continues to smash her head against it. There is blood. She screams and thrashes and bares her teeth at him through the glass for a second. It is horrible. Helo keeps shouting for her to stop, think, listen, but she's gone. Marines with guns rush in and try to stop her, but she continues to fight, and scream. I wish this were the worst thing that happened to her this week. It's not.
Apollo briefs his tactical team in the Raptor. The plan is to land and find the explosives on the Daru's FTL. A Marine picks up some crazy talk on the wireless: "None of us want to die, but the fighting must end. If my sacrifice sends a signal to the Cylon that brings peace, then it was worth it. I do this for my children, and for the children that will follow them. Gods willing." Apollo screams for the Raptor pilots to pull out from the refinery. "Demand peace, demand peace." They pull out just in time, and the place explodes. A bunch of bodies come spilling out, into space. These people are idiots.
Commercials. Peaceful, earnest violins play over a floating fetus. "Life. Fragile, peaceful and innocent. What starts as microscopic matter one day has the power to change" -- and the Cylon glow starts moving on the fetus's spine -- "…everything." As the baby turns to look at us, we fade to the Battlestar Galactica logo, slowly unfolding on us, and the poundy drums enter in. That's my GIRL! Fuck YEAH! There was this ad that ran in the X-Men comics for a few months back in the '80s, three cute little kids in black-and-white shots and little five-year-old Franklin Richards at the end, with a stamp across his face that said "MUTIE." The ad read It's 1987. Do you know what your children are? (Paid for by citizens in support of the Mutant Registration Act.) and it gave me the freaking creeps for a long time, but it taught me something interesting about fiction, which is that sometimes you need to get snuck up on in order to step back and understand how much the fiction has actually gotten to you. I still have that ad on a t-shirt somewhere. You know, I'd give props to the Sci-Fi Channel department that did this, only the same week they also did a house ad that involved a man blowing into the anus of a schnauzer. I can't roll with that.
Anyhow. Tigh's watching Adama interrogating Jahee in the brig, and loving it. Jahee's going as suddenly nuts as he was last time we saw him, normal normal normal SCREAMING, about how this is only the beginning of what's in store, unless SOMEONE STARTS LISTENING! Adama just grabs him by the throat and commences to jigglin', and Tigh starts looking like he would make out with Adama right now if there were nobody around. It's hilarious. Adama explains that he will go ahead and interrogate the entirety of the civilian Fleet if necessary. Tigh fully licks his lips at this point. Having freaked out Jahee as much as possible, he exits, and Tigh follows after like a lovesick, rabid dog.
Meanwhile, Billy's giving Gaius the Colonial One tour, citing Roslin's desire to keep the transition as smooth as possible. He looks very sad, pretty bored, and rather put-upon. I love how there's a point to showing just how grossed out everybody is by twitchy Dr. Baltar. Gaius flips open a folder, which he's told contains pictures of suspected and known Cylon agents, and of course Six is on top of the pile. Billy points out the Whiteboard of Extinction: "That number means everything to her. Represents hope. That's our future." Gaius thinks quickly, and stands, babbling about how much of a drag it must be to be President of a dying race. Billy pulls out a letter Roslin wrote to Gaius: "It's tradition for outgoing Presidents to leave a letter for their successor. It's usually opened on the first day of the new term, but the few days are likely to prove...hectic, so..." Poor Billy. What a horrible situation. "And now I have to work for a total maroon, on top of it? Dude, I hope I am a fucking Cylon." Gaius mealy-mouths that they should "just pray that she gets better," and Billy looks him right in the eye, level and hollow: "Let's." The phone rings and Billy answers it, then calls Gaius to the phone. The music gets severely worried, and my stomach actually drops, even though it's obvious she's going to be fine. But what if? The best show on TV is allowed to do shit like this, right? But surely they won't. Miracle cure! Miracle cure! "Yes. I understand. Thank you."
Gaius takes a shuttle to Cloud Nine, figuring something out in his scratch-paper sketches, and we see him enter a "luxury room" that was originally supposed to be in a bordello. There, he finds a skinny, scrappy-looking woman with a bunch of tattoos and a giant gun staring at him. "I was told I might meet an old friend here," he stutters, and another woman enters the room, smiling. "It's good to see you, Gaius." She's heartbreakingly beautiful, this girl. Spaghetti-strap t-shirt, very militant looking, and cool square glasses. She's blonde and striking and seems to be very, very tall. "So you've become a member of the peace movement?" She smiles. "Despite what you may think, I've always abhorred violence." Who is this mystery woman? If she's such an "old friend," how come we've never seen her before? She excuses the guard lady. I wonder if he's known all this time that his old friend is involved in the sympathizer movement? He really kept his damn cool, if so. "Do they have any idea," asks Baltar, "what you are?" She snorts. Even her snorting is sexy. "Of course not. Even their dedication has limits." She takes off her glasses…oh, it's Gina!
She tells Gaius she missed him, and he breathes, "You look amazing." He steps in a little close, and you can see her react, but she smiles. She clearly loves him. "I can't believe," he says, reaching out to touch her face, "how real you are." And, like, right then: creepy. "Thanks for marveling at how 'real' I am. You haven't been screwing any imaginary versions of me behind my back, have you?" He gets closer, clearly intending to kiss her, and she backs up, asking what he thinks he's doing. "I haven't stopped thinking about you since the second I left the Pegasus," he murmurs, doing that one-track thing that is very sexy if you're feeling it, and creepy as hell if you're not. She's not. Obviously. He continues along this line for awhile ("I can't get you out of my head," "I can't help myself," et cetera) and she continues to fight off his advances. He finally kisses her, and she bites his lip, pushing him away. He falls to the bed and she breaks away, hands everywhere in the air. There's blood on his fingers. He apologizes, and it's pretty cool, because she just levels with him that it's not time yet -- she's not ready. There's not a lot of hysterics, and she doesn't so much apologize for biting him or flinging him, just tells him where they stand. I hate his ass. That's where we stand right now.
He takes it further: "So, is there any reason in particular for inviting me around here?" You mean, other than the sex we're not going to be having? Gross me out. "Because you saved me. Let me save you." He gets petulant, not only because she turned him down -- it's Gaius, her very compelling reasons for not getting physical don't actually apply if he's horny -- but because it's a very Sixy thing for her to say. "Oh, here we go again. What are you talking about?" She explains that the Fleet is in big trouble, people turning on each other, mistrust of the military…once he's President, she tells him, she can turn the people against Adama, "paving the way for the Cylons to save us." God knows what she means by that, but as usual, he doesn't bother asking. He weighs the possibilities: sell out humanity -- again -- to be with Six, or else, you know, stick with humanity. "I know it's hard, but it's the only way." I love Gina. I love how different she is from the regular Six, but how the Six stuff is slowly reasserting itself even in her broken, atheist form: you know the first thing our Six would do if she were in hiding on the Pegasus with no Ernestine around is start a bloody revolution. Even just for the hell of it. Gaius thinks and thinks, and then looks down at the blood on his fingers. He looks sad, and hurt, and infantile. He glances over at that sketch pad. "No. No. I am not who you think I am." He starts gathering his stuff, getting more and more pissed about how no matter which Six it is, they just dick him around and use him and he's got a six-month case of blue balls with occasional Starbuck, whom I would imagine is a fairly disappointing substitute if Six is what you're after. He gets that crazy look he gets. "And I will not be responsible for the destruction of mankind." The irony, as usual, escapes him.
Roslin enters Adar's office smiling and he rushes toward, then past her to shut the door. He apologizes for the way they left things this morning -- when she outmaneuvered him and he got pissy but secretly approved -- and then kisses her. Oh, yeah? I guess being "the kind of man you can't say no to" extended a bit further than we originally thought. She breaks away. "I just met with Stans. The Education Alliance is going to back off." She is not at all happy to be talking about this right now, but between their affair and her inoperable cancer, it's not like she's got a lot of more cheerful topics to switch to. Adar get worried. "Laura, what did you give them?" She says that they were promised a serious hearing with the administration about their grievances, and lies that she thought he'd be "happy they're going back to work." He complains that she's put him in a very awkward position, which she knows, and that the problem extends beyond the current strike, which she also knows, because she's sent the message that "if they hold out long enough, this administration will cave." As he gets more and more condescending, she slowly realizes that he set her up for a no-win in the negotiations, given that he'd backed the Alliance into a corner and had no intention of doing anything but sending troops in all along. She can't even believe it. "You expected me to fail." He shakes his head. "I expected you to hold the line." Which is valid, except for how he was basically asking her to smokescreen her own people, teachers, who had valid complaints, and still expected her to avoid even trying. Adama was right, the guy's a prick.
Adar gets very professional very damn fast: "This doesn't have to be the end of the world. You can stay on in an advisory capacity. Gods know we need your ideas." She lags a bit on the whole "I just got canned" concept, but he explains that it's no longer just about the two of them -- and then the hardcore Roslin that we're used to shows up in force. "You're right, it's not. You were willing to attack those people, and up until a few hours ago, I was prepared to let you. I am on my way to the Galactica to represent this administration. When I return, if you still want my job, be prepared to fight." Big day, yeah? Back on Galactica, Cottle asks an aide to call Adama, and gets very sad. My stomach flip-flops a little less this time.
Adama comes over the Galactica loudspeaker, and we move from area to area. "As you know," he begins, and we cut to Tigh, looking pretty sad, "President Roslin has been aboard Galactica for the last few days." Cut to Lee, in the hangar, looking pretty sad. They were close once. "She's a fighter. But as of this moment, her prognosis is grave." Chief and Cally. This is like the opposite of the scene at the end of "Final Cut," only not cheesy, and lacking the awesome Geena Davis punchline, because there is no punchline: she dies. "I know that many of you believe in the power of prayer," Adama continues, and we cut to green-eyed beauty Dualla, "…if that is your way, then I urge you to pray for our President." Cut to Laura, dying in sickbay, and then to Adama, doing his best to keep it together. "As for the others, I hope you will join me in keeping her in our thoughts." I love that Adama's like, "Pray. Unless you don't believe in the Gods. Then just, you know, good vibes." What's it like to live in a country where the government doesn't legislate its temporary religious values?
Whoops, spoke too soon. There's been this song playing the whole time, a sad and sweet song, not intrusive but good as usual, that plays over the scene as well, which is a nice nod to those of us who actually don't like seeing Boomer violated in every single episode, equating her current situation with that of Laura, putting them both on a level of sorts. Boomer's lying in her cell, and hears the guards entering. Knowing what they've come for, she flips out and immediately starts knocking them down with a chair. Adama watches as they wrestle her down and sedate her, and she keeps kicking, fighting like to the point of drooling. It's awful, and even Adama finds it pretty hard to watch.
Back from commercial, Boomer's pretty out of it, being wheeled on a gurney towards sickbay, surrounded with Marines. Adama looks down at her as they walk. Helo steps out of a doorway, hand hovering hear his gun. "Admiral, please don't do this." Of course, there are immediately about a billion guns trained on him, but he was dumb for doing this armed in the first place. Adama tells everyone to stand down, and then walks toward Helo, pushing through the Marines. They stare each other down. "Think about what you're doing Helo. You're a soldier." Helo shakes his head. "I'm a father, like you." He loses the whole hardcore edge almost instantly, and ends up pretty much begging. "Please, sir, give me a Raptor… Let me take her off the ship. I'll get her away from the Fleet." But of course Adama can't do that. He calls Helo "son." The unanswerable moral questions here are a lot easier to read than usual, but a lot harder to answer than usual too.
Gaius runs up just then, like it couldn't get any worse, and without looking away from Helo's face, Adama tells him to fuck off. That's pretty funny, dude. Once Gaius explains that he's come to talk about the Cybrid, though, he's got Adama's attention. "It seems I may have been wrong. Very wrong. When I said that Dr. Cottle misinterpreted the fetal blood work…" Adama and Helo are still looking at each other, silent and still and very much on the edge of several things at once, and Gaius joins in the three-way eyeballs for a second before continuing. "… I had another look at those samples, and I discovered something quite intriguing. Understand, Cylon blood is virtually impossible to differentiate from our own…" Then there are a million painstaking, distracting, environment-ruining minutes of pointless explanation about how human blood is this one way (he draws a hexagon, and not an octagon like I originally typed, even though that would be funnier), and Cylon blood is this other way (seemingly identical hexagon), and so probably the Cybrid baby would be carrying (hexagon) blood, but if you go to Cottle's "damned odd" blood tests, you see that it's magic hexagons, because it contains "no antigens" and has "no blood type."
Adama glares, but at least he has the class to not turn directly toward the screen and say, "Jacob. This is what all that magic bullshit bracelet only-in-the-cancer talk will get you." But screw it, I'm following through on my end of the deal, which is why we'll only now rejoin the hyperactive explanation already in progress. "…Knowing, as we do, that the Cylons are built slightly better to endure, than their human counterparts, I wonder: could the Cylon blood also be blessed, shall we say 'blessed,' with a heightened resistance to disease?" Why not? This part's fine, because they are robots. You're allowed to be genetically or otherwise perfect if you're robots.
Here's how that scene could have gone: "You know how the Cylons are robots?"
So then Baltar runs over and grabs these pictures of Petri dishes, and some of them are red, which means cancer, and some of them are clear, which means no cancer. Gaius tells us how, between last scene and this one, he took some of Sharon's fetal blood, and applied it to some Laura blood, and Adama picks up a picture of a Petri dish with nothing in it, and asks what he's looking at, and the answer is nothing whatsoever, because it solved the whole problem in a number of hours. Because Cylons are robots.
"Are you saying you found a cure for the President's cancer?" Even Baltar's like, "Does it even matter at this point? She's totally about to die." He glares, and Gaius gets cool: "If you abort Sharon's fetus now, you'll never know." I wonder if he did this whole dog and pony with the glossy pictures of empty Petri dishes and the last-second you'll never know thing to prove he's cool to Adama? That's very Gaius, to try some kind of sweeping gesture of scientific awesomeness just because the Admiral called him a pussy. The thing is, emotionally, the whole thing tracks, and sometimes you ignore the details because the emotion tracks, or else you drive yourself crazy. I'm not bringing up Season 7 of Buffy, because Sars is editing this week, but there is a certain bliss attached to not giving a damn about story logic, as long as the emotion tracks. ["Agreed, on all counts." -- Sars] Which it does, here, way better than Buffy anyhow. Fuck story logic, I need Laura Roslin, as the saying goes. Not to mention that there are plenty of shows where this crap happens every week, instead of once ever, and those shows are crappy, and not even the one-two punch of Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles is going to get me there, at least not a fourth time, so you have to understand that any complaints here are coming to you in a Tiffany-blue box with a lovely silver ribbon. Plus the fact that Ron Moore laughs his ass off about the mangled logic this week in the podcast, which sweetens the deal somewhat anyway.
So now it's just plot moving forward: Gaius pokes Boomer's stomach to draw some fetal blood, and it takes a whole porno's worth of time, because needles are your kryptonite and mine, and Helo's comforting Sharon, who's tied to the table, and then Cottle follows Gaius around the lab as the Official Voice Of Concerned People Against Stem-Cell Research and tells Gaius that he's doing something "unnatural and damned dangerous," and I love this thing where Cottle says everything plus "damned," and Gaius once more points out that her ass is dead either way, and we get a small shot of Laura looking hellish, and Cottle complains that maybe it's just her time, and Gaius says that "for once," then, maybe that makes him "the beacon of hope around here," and Cottle makes this face like, "I'm a doctor, too, and I know from God complexes, but dude," and then Helo's comforting Sharon some more and everything's moving very quickly.
Flash back to Roslin's meeting with Stans. "If you want to settle this, your people have to disengage. No more civil disobedience, no more acts of violence. I want our students back in school." They stare at each other, and Stans gives in. She gives that amazing smile of hers, like the sun breaking through, and they just look at each other respectfully for a second. "I'm glad you called, Madame Secretary." She nods and agrees, then sees Six and Baltar again. Back in sickbay, she starts seizing. Cottle jumps to attention as Gaius bumbles about, and Laura flatlines. For a second. Then she comes back to life.
Laura looks over at Sharon, both of them formidable women, both of them at the mercy for the moment of the dangerously messed-up Vice President, and there's a lot to unpack in this brief second. For reasons of my upbringing, I ping Goddess stuff the way most of my friends notice Christian imagery, which is to say, without thinking twice about it, so I'll tell you what I had going on in this second. You've got three people: an older woman, a young mother, and a daughter, okay, and they all share the same miraculous blood? That's not an accident, that's most of human religious history. I'll be very surprised if we don't see this particular trinity a few more times before all is said and done; I'm guessing Pythia wrote a truckload of stuff about these three. And let's not even get started on Starbuck -- there's a lot of Artemis stuff going on there and I was pretty much assuming she'd at least be present for Boomer's delivery, but this kind of confirms it for me. For such a masculine kind of show, they sure do get their Goddesses right, which is more than fucking Buffy could ever bother to do.
Laura turns from looking over at Boomer, who's still totally out of it, and rolls her head back toward Gaius, who's holding her head and touching her hair. Her eyes turn up and the music goes sour as she sees him, and her eyes get cloudy with fear and confusion. She knows, and I'm not sure that she knows she knows, if you know what I mean, but she's freaked nonetheless. Imagine instead of Auntie Em and the farm hands, you woke up and saw Michael Myers. "Dr. Baltar?" she mumbles, and he tells her how good it is to see her. I imagine he's relieved: beyond the difficulty of the actual job, being President might actually force him to pick a side. She raises a hand and points toward him, sick and scared, and he pats her hand stupidly. Or cannily. "No, no, don't -- don't move." Baltar looks over at the very freaked Billy to help her, and tells her again not to move. If this were Adama, you'd know that he knew everything that was going on in her head, that's the kind of guy he is, maybe that's the point of him, his intuition, but Gaius…not so much. It's not clear, to me, that he's even on page one this time. He's still in "beacon of hope" mode, not "I'll call my lawyer" mode. Neither of which is that great, which is why the only people that will date him are imaginary robots.
Forty-eight hours later, Adama's asking Doc Cottle about her state in a very restrained, scared way. He won't even look up until Cottle starts talking. "I've never seen anything like it. It'll be a while before she's a hundred percent, but...her scans are clear. Cancer's gone." Adama asks if he's sure, and Cottle gets a little sassy with him: "It's gone." Roslin calls to him, and he attempts small talk about how she seems better. "Much. Are you still holding the spokesman from the new faction in the brig?" Even Roslin, back from the brink of death, is like, "Are there any plot threads hanging at this point, or can we just get straight to the terrorist cell in the Fleet storyline?" She asks to be taken to Jahee, and Adama proudly complies. That's my girl.
Billy wheels the President into the brig, outside Jahee's cell. He stands to welcome her, quite friendly as usual, which means he's going to freak out in a second. Or maybe he heard about the Education Alliance deal, although I doubt it, since all of those people were consumed a few hours later by a nuclear blast. "Mr. Jahee, isn't it? I thought it was time we met." She asks the guards to open his door. Her voice is so weak, but she's still so scary! I would not want to be this particular nutjob right now. She could airlock him with the powers of her mind, dude. I'd rather get strangled by Adama than have to look her in the eye. There's a very subtle parallel here about how, since the movement is civilian and has infiltrated the military, she's responsible to Adama for the violence -- her constituency has changed from the teachers to the civilians, but she has to answer for them in the exact same way, even down to how Adama is in charge of the military troops that will commence Rumsfelding these people in one second if he decides that's what should happen.
She enters the cell. "All these people want is to be heard. A member of your group nearly destroyed our Tylium refinery. Before we can even begin to talk I need your personal assurance that there will be no more attacks." He starts up that "I have no direct contact" bullshit again, and she cuts him dead: "Genuine negotiations require trust. Do not lie to me." There's a moment of struggle, in the eyes, but come on: she wins. She's Laura Roslin. "I'll talk to my people. Make them understand." She smiles, that same warm, gorgeous smile as ever. "Excellent. And I'll listen. Maybe even act. But if you renege, I'll insist the Admiral hunt you and your friends down, without mercy." Even the Glare is nothing to her intensity right here, Adama standing behind her with a giant sign over his head that blinks, "Renege, motherfucker."
Baltar's in his lab with Six, who notes his air of content, and he names his successes for the day: "Sharon's child is safe. Adama and Roslin have agreed that more study is required before any drastic measures are taken." He actually lights a cigar. I like how he's still calling it Sharon's baby -- not even Genius Baltar can do the crazy Six Baby Math. "Yes," she Ellen MacTighs, "But by saving Roslin, you've denied yourself your rightful place of leadership. There are many aspects of you, Gaius, I will never understand." He smiles. "You wouldn't." He then takes it what you might call A Step Too Far: "Neither, would I suspect, your corporeal counterpart." Six makes this great face, like, Oh, her. "Do you love her?" You know exactly how she asks this, how brittle and coiled Six can be, gathering herself for the answer, putting a wall around it. He ignores her and pulls out the letter from Roslin. My girl Anna always says, "Don't read the diary unless you want to get hurt."
He giggles and they are happy, opening it, like a golden ticket to the Wonka factory. He literally bounces up and down in his chair, and even Six is like, "Twee it down a notch, mister." She begins to read. "President Baltar. I offer my sincere congratulations --" Baltar whispers a funny Oscar-practice "Thank you, thank you." She continues: "I say that knowing we've had our differences, and that you take office despite my many reservations." Six is so awesome! She totally grins, this incredibly you are about to get so served grin, and moseys away with the letter, coming to rest standing near the prenominate nuclear device. "You may be the most brilliant person I've ever met, but your intelligence is unleavened by compassion." He starts to get really sad, because that's what guys like this are like: "How can you be so mean? I know I caused the downfall of humanity, talked a woman into nearly killing herself, tortured a man nearly to death to get her to answer a question I admitted to knowing she couldn't answer, and sell you out on a weekly basis, but don't you remember the hexagons? All those other things were months ago, but I did a really nice thing just now! Where is my cookie?"
"You must be reminded of your ethical responsibilities, and challenged to rise above your own selfish needs," Six continues, and his lips start to shake. James Callis has a hell of a lot of work to do here, not only in the emotional arc and ego-deflation during the letter itself, but also making the rest of the episode make emotional sense. His challenge here is to make us honestly believe that the man two acts ago that told Gina to go to hell would flip a hundred eighty just because of this well-intentioned, honestly critical letter. I buy it, but only because I know a million guys like this. They're called "the majority of American males," and you can find them nearly anywhere. "I don't write this to hurt you, but to beg you to open your heart." He starts to fidget. "Understand that the people in the Fleet look to you not just for leadership, but for solace..." He takes the letter away from the imaginary woman who just carried it across the room somehow, and she keeps talking. "…[For] justice. Find a way to give them that," she grins, and he's nearly weeping here, "and you will be a great leader." He begins to nod angrily. "Laura Roslin."
Six smiles wickedly as he somehow melts and catches fire at the same time. "After all I've done for the Fleet. After all I've done for her." It's incredibly petulant, this, and somehow very British, but underneath that, it's very deeply hurt, and angry. This letter was supposed to tell him what a good President he'd be, that he deserved to be Vice President and President, that he was a good man, a strong man, the kind of man that could lead all the remnants of humanity, what is left of all 12 Colonies, into safety and the future. It was supposed to be the cherry on top of the "I just did the right thing and sacrificed my own ambition to save a good woman" pie. It was supposed to tell him that his secret belief was right, and that he really was worthy of leading mankind. It's like when you go to pet a nice dog, and the nice dog turns out to be a mean dog, and tries to bite you, and your first impulse, before you get your act together, is to punch the dog in the face. And one thing the doctor's act has never been is together.
Inches from breaking down, he rips the letter into smaller and smaller pieces. Six pushes the advantage: "Roslin's never trusted you. She's undermined you at every turn, and now…" There's a wonderful moment where Six watches him ripping the letter and you can see her heart breaking for him, she feels so terrible for him for a second, but keeps pushing. "So now we know she's never going to trust me," he chokes out. "This is not a political struggle anymore, Gaius. This is quite literally life and death." She says literally like Madonna used to, even before the whole Brit thing, like litrally. (Slight aside: I may be the only person on Earth who still likes Gwyneth Paltrow, I love her like a sister, and when she pulls shit like the "Antony Hopkins" thing, where you feel disgust and rage, I just feel like when your best friend gets drunk at a party and her dress ends up over her head, or she hits on a gay German dude all night or whatever. The total tragedy of my life, though, is that this happens every time the girl leaves the house. I mention this, of course, because of the obvious and varied parallels between the Cylons and Gwyneth Paltrow. You say "Sir Antony Hopkins," I say, "At least her bag of bullshit is not Drew Barrymore's bag of bullshit"; you say "human genocide," I say, "Please Disturb sign outside the brig." Macrobiotic food for thought. One can only hope that someday soon, groups of misguided and militant Gwyneth sympathizers will start sabotaging some shit, because that would be hilarious.)
Boomer, back in her cell, looks across the corridor at herself in the mirror, hands on her belly. Behind the mirror glass, still in her wheelchair, Roslin watches her, looking at Boomer's body, and the tiny life inside that she now owes, and with which she's now intimately connected. She's overcome with enormity, not smiling, not frowning, not weeping, not crying. Just thinking about the hugeness of this: she died. She came back to life. Is she still the "dying leader" that will lead them to salvation? Is she still worthy of her religious standing? Is she her own administration's worst enemy? Is she still human?
Gaius watches Jahee and his very centrally-focused luggage board the shuttle to Cloud Nine, conflicted but not terribly so, because he is infantile. A bit later, Jahee enters the wonderfully-appointed whorehouse suite of that woman from earlier, the beautiful blonde leader of the sympathizers in the glasses. He does this without knocking, startling her, which drives home once again the point that all his "I am not personally involved" stuff was not just the obvious political white lie that it was, but pretty creepy too. "The President assured me that as long as there are no further acts of violence, she's willing to bring our concerns to the Quorum, and Admiral Adama." Demand Peace lady is fairly exasperated by his civilian naïveté. "She's trying to buy time. She'll never be open to negotiating with the Cylons." She starts to massage the bridge of her nose, clearly full of headaches and manifestos. "I disagree. I think we've made real progress today, and so does the Vice President." That gets her attention. "Baltar?" He tells her that, just before Jahee left (I guess they let him go, no questions asked, after his deal with Roslin), Baltar met with him, and "encouraged patience while he works with Roslin from within." He also gave Jahee something special for her. He indicates his suitcase.
"What's in it?" she asks, and Jahee doesn't know. "He said that you should be the one to open it." She looks at it awhile, Jahee standing by. She kneels, slowly unzips the case, then jumps back, her hand flying to her mouth like Six always does when she's overwhelmed. Jahee wipes his mouth, scared, and the woman begins to smile. It's a very specific kind of smile that I've seen somewhere before. You know, Lois, if we took off those glasses -- they're the tiny almost-invisible-wire frames kind that you can barely even see on her face -- she'd look a little bit like… Oh, MAN! It's totally GINA! Fooled again! They stare, her smile growing wider and wider, and we focus on the contents of the case: it's the nuclear device from Baltar's lab. Also known as the Cylon Militant equivalent of chocolates and flowers and a card with a cute little dog on the front saying, "Roses are red / Celibacy makes me antsy / Your issues are legitimate / Sorry I got handsy."
The end. You know in movies when the people are going to get hot and heavy on a desk, or a finely-appointed dinner table or whatever, and they sweep everything off the surface in an incredible passion, and it's sexy and powerful and a little bit scary, because actually you'd never do this at home, because you don't want shards of glass or thumbtacks in your tender post-coital feet? That's this episode. Cancer? Check. Cybrid? Check, for now. Gina in hiding? Check. Gaius still a little too White-Hatted? Check. And all the little questions -- Turning a rape victim into a single-minded terrorist? Really? One little letter shoving Gaius to the dark side and erasing all of his genocidal guilt? Really? Unnecessary hexagon tesseract blood? Really? Everything that ever happened to Roslin happened on the same day, and Six and Gaius spent that entire day canoodling in the park so she could keep spotting them? Helo is suddenly willing to shoot ten Marines and the Admiral? Nobody thought to ask the admitted terrorist if they could maybe look through his luggage? Really? -- don't really matter, because this is love, baby, and we are right in the middle of something awesome. Don't talk, don't ruin it, don't worry about the mess, we'll clean it up later. And one thing about this show: you can count on them cleaning it up later, at the very least. Right now there's just us, and the show, and you've got work in a few hours. You know? And week, lots of angsty half-naked "Redemption of Apollo," I mean, that's worth something to some folks, right? Let it ride.