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Dana Delany's husband died somehow, which has caused her to go all manifesto-crazed and generally act like Al Pacino in Dog Day Afternoon. Dualla and Apollo go on some kind of date on Cloud 9, but of all the embarrassing people they might run into there -- witnesses to Phelan's public murder, bad guys, hookers -- it's Billy who runs into them. He then generally unspools. Ellen Tigh shows up and acts nutty and awesome, and when Encyclopedia Adama figures out that a hostage situation is about to happen, he fools Ellen into hiding with him in the bathroom under pretext of boning. Apollo finally puts his CO2-filled history to work for him, fooling the bar's sensors into thinking they're low on oxygen. Starbuck knows this is Lee's way of giving them an option, and comes in pretending to be the oxygen repairperson. Things immediately go very, very badly, and Starbuck shoots Apollo, for real. She's understandably awkward about telling Adama that she's yet again tried to murder one of his kids, but between having even-creepier-than-usual conversations with Boomer and dealing with Dana Delany, he's pretty nice about it. The demands of Delany and her crew are simple: they've learned about the second Boomer model aboard Galactica, and they would like to use her as a piñata -- basically the same kind of stage-three bargaining that the Pegasus pricks got involved in. Roslin's not happy about negotiating with terrorists, but here's who is in the hostage queue: her son-analogue Billy, Tigh's wife-analogue, and all three of Adama's children-analogues. Versus Sharon, who they hate anyway. No problem. Bill ends up sending in the original Lee Harvey Oswald Boomer's dead body, which he keeps around to chat with because he's a weird old man, but the hostage-takers quickly twig to the fact that he's keeping one Boomer back. Amidst many conversations about the fact that Boomer may have been playing them all along -- which are awkwardly shoe-horned in by, of course, Tigh's dialogue -- Adama decides that it is, in fact, possible, even though this assertion comes entirely out of the blue. Things go further and further south and get more and more intense and violent until finally, Billy dies in the crossfire. At this point, Starbuck just jumps out of the whole sick quadrangle, because we now have proof of what happens to those who dare to stand between Lee and Dualla, The Love Which All Of A Sudden. Still no forward movement on the season arc, and major ignoring of important characters continues. week: same deal, only instead of hostages and oxygen deprivation that is fake, it's Raptor pilots and oxygen deprivation that is real. And the week after that? It all goes down. Want more? The full recap starts right below!
Previously, Billy and Dee were in some sort of ill-defined relationship that, not unlike the chief export of Picon, picked up whatever flavor you had lying around. Lee Adama was in an ill-defined relationship with somewhere between four to eighteen women, some of whom may or may not exist anymore. Kara was in ill-defined love with a dead sports player, Boomer totally thought you deserved to die, and the whole world ended when most people exploded. One of them, although not immediately, was Ray Abinell, the husband of Sesha Abinell, a crazy person.
Forty-eight hours earl...waaaait a minute, there's none of that nonsense! This is already the best episode in a while! Right here in the lovely, wonderful present, aboard the Freighter Greenleaf, Sesha Abinell is wound tighter than Captain Lee Adama, trying desperately to understand how her husband could have overcome all the odds and made it out of the Colonies and joined the Fleet, only to get sucked into space after a Cylon attack ten weeks ago (which by my reckoning would have happened between "Flight Of The Phoenix" and "Pegasus," but I don't want to get into a knife fight about it). Sesha is doing this, as people so often do both in TV and real life, by obsessing on huge conspiracy theories and trying to find someone to blame. Well, besides the Cylons, of course, who actually are to blame. In fact, all of her info is pretty much on target, which is interesting. She's, like, Mel Gibson: exciting! There are press clippings creepily covering all the walls, de rigeur for the agent provocatrice, and lots and lots of pictures of Boomer everywhere. It's a scene that relies heavily on us processing both the spoken and the written word, as we flash on various paranoid writings and pictures and stuff while Sesha types things, speaking them aloud in a completely different order from how she's typing them.
The Cylon M.O. involves: sleep deprivation, "assault on natural resources," emotional manipulation, suicide bombing, Cylon impregnation and reproduction, multiple models, sleeper agents within the Fleet, takeover by brute force...There are various articles asking very Weekly World News questions like, "Can Cylons Reproduce?" A picture of Ray and Sesha, happy. One cool article about suicide bombers reading, "Commander Adama and President Roslin must finally make public the terrifying secret known only to a select few: Cylons now look like humans," with the pullquote: "Cylons want to kill us. That's all they want to do." It's interesting because between these people, whatever their name, and the DEMAND PEACE people, that's pretty much every viewer that ever had a thought about Boomer. For comparison, here's an interesting part of the Demandifesto: "WE BELIEVE: Only open dialogue can save mankind. The military is the servant, not the masters, of the Fleet. The Cylons will respond to reasonable dialogue. Democracy is the key to responsible decision making for the future of mankind. Man and Cylons can coexist in peace. We are at the dawn of a new beginning for mankind. The enemies of peace are the enemies of mankind. DEMAND PEACE." (Emphasis mine, because the coolest thing about revealing both of these factions within the Fleet close to the same time is that they are right about everything -- this whole paragraph is true -- except for, possibly, the highlighted sentence. The Cylons can do "reasonable," just not "dialogue.") We see Ray running down a corridor and getting sucked out after a Raider pass, as Sesha shakes off her tears and keeps typing. Dana Delany is one of my favorite actors in the world, I'll say that right now, and it's not really a coincidence, because the show seems to have not only good taste but specifically my personal taste, and maybe yours, in guest stars. China Beach! Wild Palms! Pasadena! Sesha sends these incredibly intense vibes at one of the pictures of Boomer, like, so intense that she might just go ahead and beat up the picture. But the Post-It attached tells us that it's not the famous Adama-shooting Boomer, but the one currently pregging it up in the Galactica brig. I knew she could only avoid being a political football a few more weeks. Man.
In Adama's quarters, Adama, the President, and Billy listen to the ever-helpful Radio Free Humanity on the wireless: "Speculation continues that Galactica is harboring a Cylon agent. Eyewitnesses claim to have seen one of the known Cylon models moving in and out of Galactica's brig. Admiral Adama has made no comment on this situation." ("Also, the same eyewitnesses have noted that Vice-President Gaius Baltar is a dangerous lunatic, talks to himself, beats himself up, and molests people in the restroom daily.") Billy is impassive to Adama's bewildered -- it's hard to glare bewilderedly without looking like a deranged murderer, but he does it -- confusion about how the press learned about his pet toaster, but Roslin's up-front: "I'm surprised that it didn't happen sooner. I'm told you've been meeting with her regularly, allowing her to interact with members of your crew." Wow, I never really thought about the fact that Roslin's not spent much time with Boomer since the...well, was it really Kobol? Minimal contact since then, right? So Adama probably does look kind of crazy to Roslin right now. Adama gives what will become his battle-cry: "She's a military asset, providing us with vital strategic intelligence." Billy -- who spends this entire episode in a spitting rage, for several fucking good reasons -- spits: "While we pray that she's not somehow...colluding with other Cylons." Adama talks a good game about how he'd "pull the trigger on her" himself if he thought she was a threat. "I think the Fleet may need to hear that," says Billy sharply, taking a beat or two before adding, "...Admiral." Adama looks at Laura with the tiniest smile of "Get this kid out of here or I'm gonna fuck him up," and she looks up at Billy. He doesn't even care: "Even more, they need to believe it." Remember when Billy was the voice of the common man, our privileged Nick Carraway witness, who was in a position of influence by just a trick of fate? How Roslin could rely on him to tell her when she was crossing the line? She'd ignore him, of course, but she loved him a lot anyway. I like that the show finally remembered that. I like that the show finally remembered Billy -- the beauty of him -- even on the way to what's .
Outside Adama's quarters, Roslin could not be more proud of Billy. She's nearly bursting with giggles throughout almost this entire scene and it's beautiful: "Someone took their [sic] vitamins this morning!" Billy's sheepish, but Roslin gets overheated: "No, you're right. Keeping Sharon Valerii alive, allowing her pregnancy to continue -- there is no road map for any of this. Somebody, somebody has got to keep asking the hard questions." Billy agrees, and Roslin outlines a plan: "I wanna stay ahead of this. Acknowledge the Cylon's existence, and then make...some kind of case for her to stay aboard Galactica." Billy's not feeling that: "I think you need to trust the people. Use the press, tell them the truth." Roslin loves him so, so much. He gives this little speech and she just stands there, adoring him, as he says, "I mean, we barely know anything about the Cylons. And until we learn more, we're not gonna destroy the only source of information that we have, period." She snorts: "'Period.' That simple, huh?" She's about to, I think, go into a whole defuse-the-Billy-bomb song and dance comedy act for him, but he spots Dualla and asks to take off and talk to her. Laura does that tiny humming thing as she laughs at him, just completely fucking with him -- using basically her eyes and the corner of her mouth -- but he's too stressed. She watches him go and hopes really hard on his behalf. Billy, don't be a hero.
In some kind of barracks, Billy holds up a ring for Dualla. Now, in regular life, I can identify with her anyway -- she's fickle, whatever. But Billy! You've known her somewhere on the lower side of between 189 and 222 days! I realize that the world ended and basic human makeup means there will be a baby boom in about three months, and that Adama and Roslin were looking directly at you when they talked about making babies ASAP, but you don't actually have to go along with it. You and Dualla should learn some basic things about each other -- like if either of you are sleeping with Apollo -- before you take this step. On the other hand (even though he knows a jeweler), "I know it's just my debate team ring, but it's the best I could do." Ugly old clunky old sad old debate team ring, hanging there in the air. It's pretty heartbreaking. "This really isn't how I planned it," he says, and then Dualla's jaw drops as he slips it onto her finger -- and this is where you would maybe, like, say something, but she's clearly just had her mind blown. She opens and closes her mouth a couple of times, looks over here, over there, up, down, like this girl can hide a single emotion, but anyway Billy's off on a thing: "I love you. I've loved you since -- since the first day I met you. I mean, you were half-naked, granted..." He giggles, she looks down. He knows she's on the verge of turning him down, so he keeps talking, backing off her verbally but trying to negotiate with what's about to happen: "I know that I kind of blindsided you with this. Okay? I mean, it doesn't have to be tomorrow. We can take our time." She looks at him and they are silent, and even though he dropped the Defcon of the proposal twenty steps just now, really quickly, it wasn't enough: "Billy, I can't marry you. I don't know how else to say it." His lips get tight and he stares, thinking: "I should have been like, 'Actually, let's not even get married. Let's pretend we don't even know each other.' Maybe that would have been enough." She apologizes, he looks down, swallowing compulsively (which is awesome, because I never noticed that people do that, that little detail -- maybe that's where "swallowing your pride" comes from?), and she puts the ring in his hand and leaves. He gets to do more awesome acting stuff in this episode, of course, but this scene itself is really great: small and subtle and like, he stands there, alone, in this awful barracks room, and he...stutters, with his hands, in putting the ring back in his pocket. This tiny little "oh fuck" flail, like he might punch something if he weren't Billy, and it's so well done, and very sad, and his ass is doomed.
In a lounge on Cloud 9, Dualla is looking smokin' hot as she's telling the story to Lee, who is looking smokin' hot. The really, really awesome thing about a show about the military is that when they wear normal people clothes and have hair, it's like they're walking around naked or something, or like how a normal person looks ten times better in a uniform. The opposite of that. Dualla: "He pulled out that ring...and it was like an electric shock. I could barely say anything." There's a tiny, tiny creepy little smile, like maybe Billy's a total joke, as Lee replies, "Well, maybe you're regretting that you didn't say yes." Dee is cool about it, though, very like, "No, that is not the deal, but it is a very sad story I am telling you, and we should feel bad for him." As Apollo creepily masturbates his beverage, Dee confides, "I don't know what to make of me and Billy, but...I know I can't marry him. Then again, I don't know what to make of you and me either." Um, nobody does? Because this whole season makes no sense? Why are they on Cloud 9? Have they both been there for two days together, and this is like them taking a break? Or did they just run into each other? Are they dating? Sleeping together? Are they still in that phase of telling each other embarrassing stories about their significantly other significant others? Because, dude: I want to see Lee try to explain the painful incest. Or really, just talk about it, period. Who are these people? Are we going to find out some made-up fact week that changes this whole scene around, only not on purpose? Unreliable narration is a stylistic choice, not the fucking collateral damage to a production faux pas. Dualla gets flirty back, and Lee plays with the fruit in his drink, and I kind of feel like maybe I was wrong and they're actually less attractive than ever before: it's not that she's a player, and I get why they're into each other, and I don't think they're doing anything wrong, it's just that...in this scene, they both seem to think Billy is a puppy, and not a man. Which kind of makes them assholes, even if he did just pull a total Charlie Brown with the whole proposal in the first place. But either way, if the performers want sympathy for this relationship, they could stand to make some less bizarre choices here. They do know what happens at the end of the script, yes?
Ellen Tigh! Enters, looking hot as hell! Wearing what I think we can all agree is a magical nanotechnological necklace. She really does look very, very pretty. I like that they let her be pretty in this episode, instead of giving her the barfly nooks and crannies and creepiness. Now apparently -- and this was deleted, so it doesn't count -- Ellen goes trawling for sex on Cloud 9 constantly (which is awesome, because if that's why we never see her, she's got magic sex powers or something -- maybe it's the necklace -- no matter what, though, every episode in which she does not appear, moving forward and retroactively, I am going to assume that she is having some kind of neverending Studio 54 orgy over on Cloud 9, which is in all seriousness the most sensible response to the Apocalypse possible), and Saul Tigh is...okay with this. He loves her and they have this marriage that works for them, and she's got nothing better to do, and he understands that that is how she is, and he can handle it, so he just keeps the Rid handy and drinks himself to sleep every night. And granted, we could have put that together based on what we've seen, but dude, if I had seen that shit going down, or if it was shown as an actual open thing with them, I would have responded very differently to Saul Tigh in the first place. Because that is awful, awful, awful. Dana Delany bumps into Ellen acting pretty weird and sketchy, but like, Ellen invented "weird and sketchy," so she just excuses herself and makes her way to the bar as Sesha locks eyes with her thugs. There are three of them, and they all have names, but once again, they all look the same to me, so I'll try to keep them straight. Sesha does this awesome head-jerking tic thing in this scene. We pan on her standing, legs apart, gun clearly visible in her pants waist, her face full of anger and deep sadness, the eyes completely blank. She is going to mix it up, I think. I also think she is dead meat. The price of being Joan of Arc is getting burned. The price of articulating the Fleet's rage is that you become a sacrifice yourself.
Credits. 49,590 souls in the Fleet, including Dualla and Ellen Tigh, but not Boomer. Apollo approaches the bar and Ellen's personal swerve-on area to get more drinks so that he and Dualla can continue their discussion of Billy's minor-league status. He smiles at Ellen in a personable, friendly way, like a stranger, then it clicks: "Ellen. It's, uh...it's...good to see you." Lee Adama is such a nice boy. He totally doesn't give this the "this is a total lie" spin that you or I would. The bad guys all around Ellen at the bar, Sesha's thugs, get up and start moving around, Sesha looking sneaky as hell.
Dualla waits for Apollo at their table, but Billy appears before Apollo can get away from Ellen, who's giving him some weird Ethical Slut polyamory lecture, which word thankfully my dictionary does not recognize, although it does know "polyandry," ironically enough for the two ladies currently concerned. Dee stutters and tells Billy that she's on a two-day R&R rotation. She looks around, now hoping that Lee will stay where he is, which she doesn't know is Tadpole Hell. "I'm on business, as usual," says Billy, and I don't know what he means by that exactly. He makes a sad face. Lee approaches, and Billy welcomes him, and then notices Lee looking down at Dualla. A horrible silence ensues, which Billy fills with a classic, and very spitty "I really am an idiot, aren't I?" The thin lips are back, and they're not going anywhere now. He looks disgusted, sickened, confused. Dualla tries to explain -- which I think would have helped us place this a lot better, frankly -- and Billy cuts her dead. She asks Lee to give them a moment, and Billy says he's happy to leave: "You know what? Have a seat, Captain. Be my guest." So that's two Adamas Billy's snitted at today. Lee blanket apologizes to Billy and makes a sad face at Dualla. Not such a joke when he's standing right there, eh? Apollo takes his incredibly fruity drink back to the bar to hang out with Ellen, because even though he's so hardcore and ambiguous and part of the underworld now, he still only knows one person in the entire bar: a desperate military housewife hopped up on pills.
Billy says that, at the very least, he would have expected honesty between Dualla and himself. She makes that What The Eff face she makes so well, but not as much as after the following: "...But you knew you were gonna be here with him today, and you let me propose to you." Dualla tries to interrupt -- and again, I'd like to actually know what the situation is, here, but Billy's not having it: "I know that giving you that ring was stupid. That's fine. And maybe this wasn't gonna work out between us. But...you should've told me about this." Okay, that's sad. "I know I fucked up by pledging my love to you." That's such a boy thing to say. "If only I had not proposed marriage yesterday, you would not have traveled into the past and liked Lee Adama months to that point in time." And again, Billy's filling in the blanks, but at this point, we shouldn't have to; the last time we saw Dualla and Lee, he was getting all shruggy with her and telling her they had no relationship. That was literally the last time. And now they're either meeting as friends (which is disproved by this scene), shacked up for two days (which is a big stretch even though they are both easy like a Sunday morning), or somewhere in the middle. But like, if we don't know what the hell, and we're somewhat omniscient, then how does Billy know enough to freak out about it? Where is the emotional core of this show? Did we leave it on Prometheus? This is all plot, plot, plot: "Billy sees Lee and Dualla having a drink. He freaks out. Dualla stammers and drools and Billy calls her a betrayer. Because later, he's going to be a Big Man and take a bullet, and she'll feel bad then." A lot of the time the acting caulks this shit together, but not this time. There are actual facts we need for the acting to make sense; the story doesn't track. It's not "Black Market" or anything -- it's one of the better ones of the six -- but...we used to be able to juggle the emotions and relationships of two, four, six...hang on...like fourteen complete, complex, real people, in every episode, and all of a sudden we're not capable of doing that? What changed? (In fairness, the episode gets better with each passing minute, and I think what changed were the stakes, because this stuff stops mattering. However, you shouldn't have to worry about stuff like this, because it really takes you out of the thing the first time around.)
So off of Dualla's 404 regarding "you should have told me about this," Ellen enjambs on the subject of how "...it's hard, you know? To choose the people we fall in love with. To love only one person at a time." Bored of this crap so, so fast -- because Love is for Grownups, and neither of them actually are -- Apollo sees Dana Delany acting sketchy. Finally. She and Baltar could have a twitch-off any day of the week. But apparently nobody would notice anyway. "People like us," Ellen continues, "are more complicated." This gets Lee's attention, the "us," and he looks away from Dana Delany all, "The hell?" But let's think about it: ambitious? Check. Puts his own ethical system above the letter of the law? Check. Loves Bill Adama but also kind of hates him? Check. Loves to hate/make out with Colonel Tigh? A world of check. Capable of carrying on parallel romantic relationships with more people than you have fingers on which to count? Check. Frequent beneficiary of the exasperated indulgence of Laura Roslin? Check. Frequent bouts of fantasy involving a threesome with Kara Thrace and another party? Check. You guys, they actually are the same person! I wonder if Apollo loves magic jewelry as much as Ellen? We know the entire cast are all huge fucking fans of fresh, delicious grapes, so they've got that in common.
Dee makes a sad face and apologizes, and Billy snits, "I'm here with friends." O.R. you? Because a second ago, you were here on business, and in a few minutes, we'll see you knee-deep in boobs, so...well, maybe it's those aides we used to see all the time, which means it could easily be all three. Billy seems like the kind of sweet guy who has way more girl friends than boy ones. The price of symbolizing the Fleet's humanity is becoming a sacrifice yourself.
Sesha's acting odd, some more. Apollo gives a well-played, casual "conversational topic" segue: "You're a regular here, right? You ever see that woman before? In the corner?" Ellen says she doesn't know her, but that she saw her when she came in, "and wondered when they were gonna start enforcing a dress code." Lee finally sees the gun, cleverly hidden in plain sight this entire time, which has been sending out a high-pitched emergency whine since before the credits, in addition to the huge red arrow pointing at her head that says "ARMED! CRAZY! PASADENA FUCKING RULES AND IT NEVER STOPPED RULING!" He gets all herky-jerky, as does the camera, and he says in a tight-lipped but not emergent manner, "Ellen, the bathroom's over here." She gets plosive and fake-scandalized and double-checks, "Are you serious?" As he drags her crazy ass off from the total bullshit about to go down, she giggles in that Joey Potter way where your tongue is sticking out between your lips. People, it's not as cute as you think. The editing is weird, because you can't tell if Apollo even looks back at Dee, but of course it's to be assumed. We do see a quick shot of her making a really fucked-up face, but I think it's just an odd angle on a shot intended to show us that she's wondering where Lee has gotten off to, and wondering about the bitter impotence of Billy's sudden rage, and maybe boredom.
Inside the bathroom, Ellen still has her drink in her hand. Because this show is in space, it has vapors coming off of it due to the very space-age dry ice inside. I looked it up, and the whole "dry ice equals poison" thing is a myth. The reason you don't eat dry ice is that it will give you frostbite on the inside of your body. Which is compelling in a way that "chemical poisoning" kind of isn't. Point being, as long as Ellen doesn't eat the dry ice, it'll be fine. Something tells me she won't exactly feel it bumping up against her lip, either. Lee leans in, and Ellen gives herself willingly to his mad embrace, but of course it's not a kiss, it's him clapping his hand over her mouth. Thinking he's getting some kind of frisky scene going, she's all agog and trampy and awesome: "Lee Adama, you amaze me!" I love Ellen; she's like the kittenish yet terrifying Cousin Serena on Bewitched. You love her, but you don't want all that coming right at you. He shushes her and she's...intrigued by all the goings-on. I don't blame her. I would assume, in this circumstance, that I had just won fifteen hundred bucks (cubits?) in the "Lee's intense repression has to have made him a sex freak by now" office pool. Come on.
The thugs, clutched around Sesha, give themselves a pep talk. And by "pep talk," I mean "a shot of the old Sagittaron Courage." Sesha signals one of them, name of "Chu," to close the blast doors on the lounge. He does, and she immediately starts firing her at-no-point-concealed firearm into the ceiling. All of Billy's friends are hot chicks, yep. Well, maybe they're hookers, completely out of nowhere. I heard that can happen. Or maybe Billy's moonlighting? "Vinson," the main angry thug, herds all the people to the bar so that they can all be scared in one single area. Chu follows his lead. Now that I'm thinking about it, everybody looks like a hooker. I wonder if they're all there trying to get antibiotics for their kids? That's so sad. Through the cracked door, Lee counts the perps as Ellen gasps a little OMG-type fake prayer to the Gods. Something tells me she doesn't feel it bumping past her lips, though, since they don't turn black or fall off.
Adama's quarters. Boomer would like to know if it is true that rumors of her existence on Galactica are spreading through the Fleet. Oh -- prepare for Boomer to act really, really weird this entire episode; unless I miss my guess, this is in some kind of inorganic and hammered-in "foreshadowing" for some kind of upcoming bullshit where we're supposed to distrust Boomer and she'll do something scary and then we will find it all turned around on us again and we'll think maybe not and we'll be even more confused than ever, in an upcoming episode. Probably, the way this season's going, episode. This is why I didn't care if they threw in a scene of Lee fucking that hooker earlier, because you can tell. I mean, I'm unspoiled, but that's what it feels like to me. I was right about Ernestine, wasn't I? And getting shot only in the cancer. So anyway, Adama doesn't even dignify: "I'm interested in navigational weaknesses. Wormholes, dark matter blind spots. Likely ambushes." Boomer's game, although it's kind of sad that he won't even acknowledge or reply to her question, like she's just a talking computer spitting out coordinates. Which, yes, she is, but Adama's not doing it authentically, he's trying to get a handle on himself. Boomer: "I would avoid these pulsar pointers because of dradis interference. If I was gonna plan an ambush, I'd do it there. It depends, Admiral. They adapt to your every move." She looks at him all creepy because that line is totally symbolic of the fake tension this episode sets up between them: "Every move triggers a counter-move." Adama: "Adapt. That's what you're good at, right?"
Finally, Boomer is irritated. "Why won't you answer my question? Does the Fleet know I'm on Galactica?" It's pretty scary: the last time randoms got in, Cally shot Boomer's ass dead. She has reason to keep a low profile. But also: remember why? Remember how Boomer shot Adama, and he's never really trusted her, and only their post-Pegasus interaction was really all that civil, but then the time he saw her, he tried to tie her down and abort her baby, and then they haven't really spoken? How fucking ambiguous is that, really? Instead of giving us this "While we were busily reversing all show stances on gender equality and jacking off into storytelling culs-de-sac, a bunch of actual story and character development happened. You saw flashes of it in the form of awkwardly pasted-on exposition scenes that barely suited the directorial style of the last four episodes, but that's all you're ever going to get. Let's see what happened , and we hope you enjoy jumping in midstream!" business, why not...show us the shit? That stuff we actually want to see? Instead of this MOTW crap? You know I liked "Scar" as a well-done story, but in the middle of a lackluster and unrepentantly heterogeneous season, I could have done without. Not to mention that, somehow, during that episode Lee started dating Dualla (immediately after specifically rejecting her, and pushing her specifically back to Billy, in the episode), but it was so fucking secret that even we didn't get to see it, and also, he was completely focused on Kara that episode, but anyway. There's a silence after Adama's just ignored Boomer's question a few times, and then: "Oooh. It's the baby. She's kicking." He looks at her belly, then her face. It's complicated: thinking she's acting, it means she's trying to play him as a mammal and a dad. Thinking she's not playing him, she's still a military asset carrying a political timebomb. Which is worse? Conflicted, Adama signals the guards. "The Fleet knows. That'll be all for today. Guards." Boomer looks up at him -- wary perhaps, or hurting at the withdrawal of a warmth we never got to see -- and is escorted from the room. The price of carrying the burden of a race's pain and fear is becoming a sacrifice yourself.
Past cast members of 24 have talked about the stress of having to act totally creepy and sketchy all the time because who knew what the writers would come up with, who would be the big twist, so they all had to act like the mole all the time, and like they were simultaneously in love and secretly planning to kill each other. But honestly I think the real problem is that it's just a symptom, of the writers not planning things out far enough to justify the meandering, and needing a lot of blank room in the margins to scribble their last-minute ideas, which would be harder if the characters were allowed any emotional arc across the season. Not to mention that as the technology of focus groups and network notes and ratings and such get closer to realtime, the storyline can be adjusted to suit the whim of whomsoever's wearing the biggest jock in the room -- which means those long-term plans don't mean shit, because who doesn't like to swing it around every now and then, just for fun, not to mention that everybody in management or production, whatever the industry, has this big idea that their notes are going to be the thing that puts their stamp on it, that they're going to make their name by suggesting that Apollo start fucking hookers because they're "bad" even though they're not, or whatever. I'm clearly no different, which is why this paragraph exists, but fuck it. That's not what I'm getting paid for.
Colonel Tigh is...Irish, today? That's weird. Maybe he's got some kind of accent deal where he becomes what he drinks, like Alice. Tomorrow, Jamaican. "You know [mon], if people knew how much you've relied on that thing's so-called intelligence, they'd be scared out of their wits." I am assuming that we would be, if we'd known, but we didn't, so it was fine. Adama asks if Tigh's afraid of Boomer, guaranteeing that he'll get pissy and retaliate and make it an attack on Adama's judgment. Which is funny, because Adama is a grandiose, like megalomaniacally big damn liar, and he has the E.Q. of Isaac Mizrahi, but his judgment is actually infallible. And in the other corner, Saul Tigh. You know? Tigh: "The truth is, I don't like the way it's gotten under your skin." Adama gets his GLARE on, way harder than we've seen lately, at this implication that this something contradicting every scene onscreen thus far (...which somehow passes for character development. Just add water! Less waiting!) might be true, and pointed right at him.
Then Roslin starts crying, and Boomer's creepy, and it's the end. week: Raptor pilots in peril, Lee's career on the Pegasus brings all the boys to the yard, and That Guy Who's Not William Hurt gets his authority questioned. See you week! Boom boom boom.
That's the recap equivalent of this shit. You feel me? So back to the lav again with Ellen and Lee. How interesting to think of her being his new Roslin mommy, to signify his complete apathy and self-destruction or whatever...oh, we're done with that? Sorry. They watch Sesha stalk around with guns and whatnot, and Apollo starts searching the bathroom, all the stalls, with Ellen taking her husband's usual role ("What are you doing? What are you doing?"), and he explains -- while opening a service hatch -- that the pressure doors are very strong, because they are built to "withstand explosive decompression," meaning that only a "raft of high explosives" will get the incoming cavalry inside. Alternately, they can make the hostageers open the doors for them ("Open the door for us? Why would they do that?") by using Ellen's dry ice to confuse the CO2 sensors in the lounge. I like how Lee Adama, whose every problem in life and each episode is a lack of oxygen, is finally using this fact for the powers of good instead of getting in over his head. On being told to stay calm and stay put, Ellen of course immediately clops off into the main lounge, announcing to the thugs that she is prime grade-A hostage material, because she is nuts. Sesha starts the speech she must've practiced a hundred times: "We are not criminals. We are members of the Fleet, just like you..." Ellen tells Sesha that she is the wife of the Galactica XO, characterizing this as "the worst mistake" of Sesha's life instead of a total hostage situation bonus for them, which is actually what it is. Such is the general power of Ellen's intrinsic hysterical nonsense that Sesha is fooled into getting worried -- shit just got real. (And she's right. The episode gets kind of fantastic at this point.)
In Galactica CIC, Dualla's weekend replacement fauxallas that Ellen's calling from Cloud 9, and gives the call to Tigh and Adama. Ellen squeals about the hostage situation until Sesha takes the phone. "My name is Sesha Abinell. I have seized control of the Cloud 9 lounge...and held the people in it hostage." Adama is awesome, signaling to Gaeta to pick up an extension with one hand while taking notes with the other. Tigh asks what she wants, and there's flashback again to Ray getting spaced. Sesha: "This is not about what I want. The Colonial Fleet has become a Cylon-occupied territory. You are working in collusion with a Cylon agent -- the very same model of a Cylon who tried to murder you, Admiral Adama, on your own ship. We want Sharon Valerii. You have two hours." She hangs up and Tigh synchronizes swatches. I've just noticed that Adama has scratch-proof, glare-proof lenses on his glasses. That is fucking hilarious. Adama orders Gaeta to ready a précis on Sesha Abinell.
Commercials: Everyone on Stargate: Atlantis seems to be inordinately charming, even the guest stars. Too bad I will never, ever see them in action. The price of being cookie-cutter sci fi TV show with no ambition is becoming a sacrifice to my very busy schedule. Also, Gunn is back on TV in a capacity having to do with young lawyers. I wonder if they're the kind that started out vampire-hunting street kids, too. From the presence of the hated Balfour, I imagine that could easily play a role of some kind.
Back to CIC, where Gaeta runs down the Sesha sitch: widowed ten weeks ago when a Raider Fleet took out part of the Greenleaf. Adama murmurs, "Widow." Yeah. Adama gaetas for the personnel currently on Cloud 9: "Captain Adama, half a Marine squad, and Starbuck's already there on R&R." Of course, Adama and Tigh make many worried faces about all that, knowing Lee's Spawn-like ability to get into trouble, but Adama doesn't miss a beat, reaching for his best weapon without even looking: "Get me Starbuck right away."
Apollo is inside the walls now, searching for environmental sensors. "Take a sip of carbon dioxide," he fronts at the inanimate object.
Meanwhile, Thug Vinson has remembered that Lee was with Ellen, and sends poor Chu to check it out. He stage-whispers, "Kern, there's an awful lot of military types here." Vinson explains that Chu has now grasped the entire point, and then pushes him down, all mean. He ends up bleeding. Vinson sends Thug #3, name of "Page," to investigate. Billy watches Sesha continue to freak out as Page checks the stalls one by one, then gets jumped by Lee.
In the corridor outside the lounge, three beefy Marines approach in Hawaiian shirts. Starbuck meets them, looking amazingly gorgeous. Even for her, she looks good. She's wearing a cute black band-collar shirt with kind of puffy sleeves, and her hair is down and kind of flippy, like a shorter version of Buffy's awesome haircut the week she became invisible. She greets Gunnery Sergeant Burrel in a wonderfully hard-boiled manner: "Good to see ya, Gunny. I'm gonna need some of those gorillas you call Marines." He replies that most of his "gorillas" were already on Cloud 9, "just trying to cop a little R&R." She's like, "Word," then gives them the sitrep: unknown number of shooters, at least twenty hostages, and a ninety-minute window before the threatened violence starts up. Burrel, mostly trusting Starbuck but also thinking she's nuts: "You got a plan, sir?" And yes: "Lock and load. Let's figure out the rest as we go along." So anybody else, not a plan. But it's Starbuck, and not even Gunny's going to be like, "That is not a plan, that is a chaotic incident resulting in massive casualties," because that's the best she can do.
Inside, Dualla watches Sesha and her boys skitter around all crazy. Apollo walks Page out of the loo at gunpoint. Prodded, Thug Page delivers a short speech: "He says he's Captain Adama, from the Galactica. He just wants to talk." I don't know why it was necessary for them to practice that in the bathroom first. Sesha intuits that Lee and Dualla are "together," so maybe she's one of those crazy people who's also psychic, because none of us knew that, and there's a bit of a standoff where Lee has to say the following: "Hey, she dies, he dies, you get it?" Sesha says the damnable line, "Difference is, you won't do it. He will." I CALL SO MUCH BULLSHIT. I realize that we'd all like to ignore "Black Market," but like...unintended (yet practically verbatim!) callbacks are for the birds. There's a tense 24-style thing where everybody stares intensely at everybody else with guns forever. Lee randomly gives in, because I guess the difference is that he won't shoot a man in cold blood, and opens himself up very helpfully to Page elbowing him in the gut, disabling him instantly. If only Apollo were trained in hand-to-hand combat! Oh, there could be a sexy scene where he spars with Dualla and then they get sexy. That would be cool, for example. Sesha approaches, pissed and scary and deeply fractured. "We all have someone we care about," she turns to the goons, "...It's his son. He's not gonna choose the Cylon over his son." She hasn't gotten the memo about Boomer "getting under" Adama's skin either, I take it. Vinson shoves Lee over with Billy and Dee, which is kind of awkward anyway, plus they are hostages. The CO2 alarm now goes off, and a thug ascertains that "they're trying to suffocate us!" Sesha, immensely disheveled, asks if it's a trap, and Lee finally exhibits his dad's amazing lying power: "There's a reason you don't just start shooting on a spaceship. You probably nicked a line. Why don't you let me talk to the Admiral, see if we can't find a way out of this?" Sesha's wary, but I'm squealing about how he just mentioned that they're all totally on a spaceship.
Adama and Starbuck work out the op details: Two strike teams inbound, ETA ten minutes, available firepower good, limited access points. Right then Sesha fauxallas to CIC again, and Adama conferences Starbuck in. "We're losing oxygen. If it's not restored, the hostages die." Tigh is freaked. Sesha: "Then you'll all die," Adama lies coolly, "Because this is over." Sesha says it won't be over "until the Cylon's dead," which is interesting phrasing, and that she's "willing to die to see this through." She plays the Lee card, and Starbuck wigs. "Suddenly you're listening, huh?" Ellen starts screaming her head off about how they should just do it and get her the hell out of there because she hasn't had a drink since Lee took hers away a half-hour ago. "You're all alone on this, Admiral," says Sesha, emphasizing how these strange new doubts about Boomer are causing Tigh and Roslin and Billy worries. Adama replies with the first of the episode's two biggest trademark Adama non sequiturs: "I'm not going to sacrifice a military asset on your altar of revenge!" Even Sesha kind of blinks at this: "What are you talking about?" Seriously, lady.
Adama speaks to Sesha over more flashbacks, explaining the episode to us like children, which you know I love: "You said this was about us being played by the Cylons, but it isn't. It's about the loss of your husband, and I understand that. It's about you wanting to strike back, and I understand that too. But we've all lost people that we care about. And we learn to live with it." Having come so intuitively close to her secret craziness, Adama pushes Sesha closer to it. She almost loses herself altogether as she repeats the propaganda in an "I memorized this" way that's used to great effect throughout the episode. "I am sure you are aware, Admiral, of the concrete evidence that Caprica's defenses were compromised by a Cylon agent who infiltrated the Ministry of Defense on the eve of the attacks." (Concrete evidence? I know it came up during the Quorum election, but I don't remember any real evidence. Not that there isn't, I just don't remember it, and honestly, crazies always talk like that anyhow.) Adama gets Sesha on the couch again: "People look for complicated answers when something terrible happens. Maybe we were just caught by surprise, and were beaten. And maybe we have to learn to live with that." Which is (a) not true, and (b) stupid: this conversation, where he tells us (and her, but like as an afterthought) about where her whole conspiracy business came from, is infantile. And also, makes no sense because he's making a point that would be valid any other day whatsoever, but is not valid right now; and Adama doesn't actually completely know that, but it's pretty lame to sandwich this awkward Psych 101 crap into an episode about how, in this case, it is true, but beside the point altogether.
Kara fauxallas in to Adama that the O2 is fine in the lounge, and she and Adama decide that it was Lee: "Maybe he's giving us an opening. If I can get someone inside, get a clear idea of what we're dealing with..." Knowing how Kara's plans generally consist of two simple steps -- Jump In and Don't Die -- Adama calls her "Kara" and reminds her that she's only on a recon mission. Her face gets hard, because obviously she's going to risk herself: it's Lee. Not up for debate. Adama: "Get someone to volunteer. Then you assess the situation. And then get the hell out of there. Do you understand?" She gives a fake assent and then, conveniently, the maintenance guy shows up. She takes his hat, puts it on, and looks hot as hell some more. "Captain," says the ever-increasingly worried Burrel, "What are you doing?" And you already know her answer: "Volunteering."
The goons admit Starbuck, now wearing overalls to go with her lovely hat. Sesha orders them to close the door and search her, and Starbuck reminds them that the O2 clock is ticking. Frisked and cleared, and her toolbox checked, she makes her way around the room to the back, covered by Vinson. Who notices Ellen recognizing Starbuck. This is the well-known dramatic rule of Chekov that goes, "When there's an Ellen in the teaser, she's sending us all to hell by the third act." I wouldn't have it any other way. Vinson tells them to check the box again, and at least Ellen has the class to look sheepish about how she just got them all totally killed.
Starbuck sighs, closes her eyes for a second, and pulls two guns out of the toolbox's false lid. (Note to hostage takers: Get references for your goons. You'll thank me.) Everything goes nuts as she and the perps start firing and the Marines bust in, immediately losing two-thirds of their number. Gunny Burrel kills one of the goons and Starbuck has to hit the deck. Apollo jumps up to get into the fight, but Starbuck shoots him in the chest. She is horrified, and blanks out. It's interesting, because obviously, she's now killed all the sons of Adama, but also because of something on the forums relating to how no matter what happens with Kara, she still has her Overwhelming Awesome Skills and Tactics, and not only has the operation just gone to hell, but she's lost her perfect markmanship. Her body, her instrument, has failed her, for failing it last week with Lee. Gone. Control. Gone. Her jumping in and living through, borne of sheer willpower and hellcat exuberance -- her luck. That's gone. This op should have gone without a hitch just because it's Starbuck, and if you find that concept annoying, switch sides and pretend it's all you have for a sec. Gone. And because one random dude saw one random drunken harridan catch her eye -- not because she fucked up, not because of anything she did wrong, but because, like everybody else here, including Ray Abinell, was in a place that was not a good place to be at a time that was not a good time to be there. It's a nice companion to her conflict with Kat last week -- I am all for the Buffy theory of "If you take it all away, what's left?" because I think that's maybe the only story there ever needs to be told, over and over and over again until you get it, but thinking about Kara going through it...she's lost her bad-assery, her irradiated boyfriend, her Top Gun status, her invulnerability, her unspoken and unrecreated fantasy sex with Lee...that is very fucking sad, man. Even if you hate her, you hate her for the things she is built on, the fake bravado and the free passes she gets from everybody all the time, and the noli me tangere bullshit, the "I'm so prickly and nobody can get close to me...but could you try?" stuff, but...if you take those away, what's left? All she is, is this bad-ass architecture, built around something broken and screaming she can't even access and wouldn't want to. You wouldn't either. This is a woman so cut off from her own center, by abuse and terror, that she -- as Cymon said -- cannot imagine herself as a parent, or a lover, or a person who trusts. She doesn't get to make choices. She was running well before the Holocaust, and taking these things away from her is like removing skin. Like Voyage Of The Dawn Treader when Dragon Eustace gets ripped completely open under the moon and comes out all fresh and naked and allegorical. My favorite story of all time. It's not a "storyline," it's not Apollo's one-episode descent into suicidal johndom, it's a character in the middle of being dismantled, and becoming small. I am scared for Starbuck, for once. The price of being a mythical persona is that the landing's a bitch; you become a sacrifice to yourself.
Burrel grabs Starbuck and heads for the door, and she and Lee consider each other in slow motion. Burrel gets shot in the leg, and he and Starbuck both go down near the door, which Sesha activates. They kick out and the door shuts behind them, Billy and Dualla and critically-injured Lee still inside.
Dualla crawls awkwardly over to Lee as Sesha flips over the dead crim, Page. With one hand applying pressure, she orders Billy to fetch shirts and towels for bandages. He considers the goons and their guns, and to the tune of Apollo bleeding out and groaning, Dualla screams at him again. Vinson tells him to stay down, and Billy applies that hissing rage he's been carrying around since the first scene: "You still want the Cylon? Do you? Because if the Admiral's son dies, you're not gonna get a deal, you get that? If he dies, you're not gonna get what you want." Which is why you don't shoot hostages. Sesha gives consent and Vinson looks at Billy a second before lowering the gun. The really suck thing about this is the futility. Sesha, Vonson, Chu, the other guy -- they're all clearly going to die in a hail of bullets, and the real question is who they take down with them. But for what? So that Adama will stop telling Boomer all his secrets while they do each other's hair? It's the old Job deal all over again: if God doesn't protect you from the Devil, then clearly they are in league, and you have to pull the whole thing down. Milton too: if Adama can't protect you, even with all his propaganda otherwise, then clearly, that was never his aim, and he has betrayed you to the one you hate the most. Billy stares them down. The anger in this kid. It's not just adrenaline -- he just got proven right on the worst day of his life. How bitter would that be? "Whew, I was right about the Fleet freaking out over Sharon. And now I am going to die alongside the woman I love, who rejected me earlier this week. Not actually a relief on any level. I thought being right felt good."
Starbuck fauxallas back to Galactica CIC and has to tell Adama what happened while Burrel cleans his horrible bloody wounds: "My cover was blown. I had to move. I'm sorry." Adama asks for casualties. "Two Marines, probably K.I.A....at least one of the gunmen." She pauses for a long time, staring into space. "And Lee." Bill goes very still. "It was crazy in there, confused. He got hit." Ascertaining that the degree of damage is not something that Starbuck can tell him, Adama does his thing: "Stand by. Hold your position. Make no move unless you hear from me." Starbuck whispers into the walkie. "It was friendly fire." And it's the same old math: is she going to lose Bill too? Again? The man that would put the future of humanity on hold not once but dozens of times because she got a wild hair? Who forgave her for Zak? I don't know what Starbuck's father was like -- I got the impression he was dead, maybe not a great guy (who doesn't like Phillip Glass?) -- but he did a shit job of protecting her, I'll say that much. "Lee got hit by friendly fire. I think it was me." Tigh looks at Bill, and for once it's hard to say whether he feels worse for Adama or Starbuck. Adama: "You have your orders." Act out.
Dualla and Billy are tending to Apollo's fairly horrific wound, but not doing it great. Dualla keeps repeating "I can't stop the bleeding," and Billy's no help, and she's just repeating it. Lee groans, losing color, and Dualla realizes that he is important to her. Like, important important. Like, she likes him in that way. "Lee? Don't leave me. Lee, Lee. Don't leave me, okay? Please." Billy tries to calm her, but she just keeps repeating. "Stay with me." I'm going with the concept that when you lose everything, the things that you get after that point are not just "things," they are everything. That's where Billy's at -- and he's been there before, during Laura's pilgrimage away -- and that's where Dualla just got. He watches the Marines, unable to go on seeing her in such pain, trying to come up with a solution. "Stay with me. Please, stay with me."
Adama stands outside Sharon's brig cell. They stare at each other, unblinking. "Are you playing with us? Are you playing with me?" She's disgusted, but less hurt today, because today is her day to act sketchy. "I've saved the ship. Saved you. How many times now? Five? Six? You just can't believe I'm not plotting against you." She's impassive in response to Adama's opening salvo: "You know that there are Cylons within this Fleet. You know what they look like. You know where to find them. If I were to ask you, would you tell me who they are?" Close-up on just Sharon's mouth. The inability to see her eyes here is almost physically oppressive: "No." Disappointed, Adama hangs up: "That I believe." Which, sure. That's creepy. But how many chips does she have left? Ernestine's gone, not that it matters with the Toaster Bump, because Boomer hasn't the option of just dying either way. In a way, it's what Billy said at the beginning: it depends on if there's a hidden agenda, specifically: if she's connected. And we know that she's not, because Mystery Science Boomer almost cried with joy to see her, and Mystery Science Six likewise, to see that she was pregnant. Don't trust her, but don't waste your own fucking time. It's possible that this is just an internal mirror of the Sesha issue and that we won't have to follow this particular thread again, actually. Like the B story of the Sesha A story is that Sesha might have a point, and Roslin and Billy and Tigh are all there like a Greek chorus trying to get Adama to understand it. But then why the sudden "maybe I like her too much" stuff? I'm into this.
Vinson watches Billy and Dualla caring for Lee, who seems somewhat stabilized. "He'll be all right," says Vinson. Billy's so grossed out: "Thanks for the concern." Sesha comes around right then, all, "You did not just talk to my goon in that fashion," just as Billy's expanding: "She loses a husband, and suddenly the world owes her an explanation." Vinson clarifies that Ray was a good man, and also Vinson's brother. Billy: "My brother died on Picon. He was a good man, too. They're all good men." That's something Adama was right about, at least: that death is ugly and final and arbitrary and just happens, and even if you survive an attack or an accident, that doesn't up the ante for the time around. There's no lottery luck with death, and there's no earning your way out of it through your deeds. 50,000 people, left out of twelve planets' worth, and you've got the brass balls to think you earned it? Eventually that kind of denial and bargaining give way to depression and acceptance. And sometimes, good men die for no reason.
Roslin shows up in Galactica CIC, still toting her Exposition Infection. No complaints, though, because she did have that awesome scene at the beginning, with Billy. And we might see her again in a little while, too. "The Abinell woman sent over a manifesto to the press before they took over the bar. It's mostly a collection of rumor and conspiracy theories about Cylons in the military and the government. It's getting a lot of attention. We gotta get our people out of there. You have marines on Cloud 9." (It's not a question; she's now expositing to herself.) Adama tells her there's no getting in through the blast door now without maybe killing everybody, and that "there are no options left except for one." Roslin cuts that dead with a little bit of miracle Cylon sass: "No. We don't strike deals with terrorists. We can't. We give them Sharon Valerii, we're inviting terrorism and we weaken our position permanently; you know that." Me, Roslin and Tigh on the same side? Mark your calendar. Wait, spoke too soon. Tigh's not so sure about that anymore. He and Adama do not want to hear that. Echoing Billy inside, she continues. "Gentlemen, everyone in that room is someone's son, someone's wife, someone's mother. Billy is the closest thing that I have to family left in this world. And if you don't think that that confuses things emotionally for me...Let's not be naïve." Tigh returns to the parallel structure well: "What if they're right? What if Sharon has been playing us all, plotting our destruction with every passing day? What if the terrorists are right?" But Roslin's on another level altogether: "This isn't about Sharon. It's about something much bigger than that. It's about the long-term survival. It's about the way we conduct ourselves in all of this." Yes and yes. I missed Roslin.
Adama gets a fauxalla from Sesha, and asks her, "How's my son?" He's alive, but two Marines and a dissident are dead, and Lee is dying. Sesha starts pacing, getting back into character for this step in her big stand against the giant conspiracy that took her husband: "You know, I thought a long time about this. About what I'd do...about how far I'd go...and I honestly did not know until this moment." She signals Chu, who gets Ellen up, screaming awfully, really painfully, and puts a gun to her chin. Ellen: "Saul, give them what they want! It's just a machine!" Adama tells them to cut it out, and says he'll give them the Cylon. Roslin almost rolls her eyes, but relaxes by thinking about how, once this is over, she's airlocking Sesha Abinell so fucking hard, due process's head will spin completely around. "But she won't be alive," Adama adds. Nice, dude.
Of course -- since, unbeknownst to Sesha, she could care less about the actual conspiracy and just wants a piñata -- she starts stressing: "That is not the deal." It's pretty awesome, because Adama's calling her bluff: "Sharon's the problem? She's dead. All better? !" But also because it makes the ultimate point, maybe of this entire show: the personal is not political -- that's obsolete, ego-identified Baby Boomer bullshit oversimplified overidentification borne of watching yourself on TV every night -- but the political is always, always personal. It's made up of the personal. Movements are made of individuals with their own concerns, and when those intersect right, you get change. There's a reason economic revolutions are always started by the lowest classes and followed by angry intellectual kids: you don't shift for anybody unless you've got a stake. The political is made up of lots of little personals and they all got there by a different route. Sesha's not rebelling against the collaborationist military or the weak civilian government or even the genocidal Cylons: she's rebelling, period, and that's the same story every time. She's got something to prove, personally, on the personal person of Sharon Valerii, the face of her pain. And if she can't do it, if Adama kills Sharon first, then what the hell is she fighting for? Adama: "You've convinced me that we may have been played. And if that be the case, and she's been playing with me, then I can't take any more chances. So you make up your mind. If you want Sharon Valerii, you can have her. But on my terms. I give you the body, you give me the hostages." This also serves the purpose of making us think that Adama's willing to kill Boomer today, "altar of revenge" or otherwise. More 24. Sesha agrees, because her bluff is called and she's in the kind of weeds that the weeds are scared of being in. Adama, again off-script and in the awesome, crazy Olmos moment: "Cut the wire." Nobody knows what this means. I love Edward James Olmos more than I love most people.
Adama arrives following a force of Marines pushing a gurney down the corridor outside the lounge. There is a covered dead body upon it. He's not wearing his glare-proof glasses, meaning maybe the glare will get all Scott Summers on some people. Starbuck's hanging on the wall outside the lounge, sick and sad, and pulls herself toward him like she's under water: "Admiral. Let me help. Please." He looks into her eyes, so deep, and the love in him is so, so real, because he knows what she's feeling, the hate and the anger she's risked, and with one hand on her tender arm, he murmurs, "Let me take it from here." There is grace in it. Starbuck nods, almost crying, and Adama heads off with the Marines. She's like a bunch of pieces stitched together, but now she can just worry about Lee and the rest, instead of wondering when Adama was going to pop up and choke her like a Boomer model.
Inside, Billy watches a perp pacing up and down the line of hostages. Dualla, still tending Lee, gets very teacher-voice with him: "Stop looking at him, Billy. I can see you watching him. I know you think you can get that gun." Her delivery on this last line is really good, and really unexpected. It's got spin. Billy: "I'm only thinking. In case something happens." They're both being totally nonchalant and whispering in that way hostages have of not looking each other in the eye. "No. You're not a soldier. You're not trained for that. You've got nothing to prove." Even Dualla is better trained than Billy is; she's making the right call, of course. But his line is telling: "I know." Wow. That's looking it right in the face, isn't it? Dualla watches Billy's face, knowing he's about to try something. Don't be a hero, Billy.
Vinson opens the door to Adama and the Marines, and they wheel in the body. Billy stands. Sesha unveils the body, and sees Sharon Valerii's broken, gross face. She pulls out a gun, and shoots the body twice, shaking, tears running down her face. Even now, she had to do it. She had to have the physical experience, corpse or not. "It's over." Vinson realizes that there's something wrong with the body as the music goes nuts, Billy makes ready, Dualla freaks out, the Marines start moving in. "This one's been dead for weeks." He unzips the body bag further, to show the disgusting autopsy lines in her gray skin. "Their Cylon is still alive." Sesha orders Dualla's death, calling her "the girlfriend." I love how Dualla's just totally an object now that gets held hostage and turns people down and applies pressure in a pretty dress, but has no inner life whatsoever. "The girlfriend." Billy jumps to Chu and steals his gun as the Marines storm the place, but Vinson shoots him. The Marines kill Vinson and Chu, and finally Sesha, who falls down dead across Boomer's corpse. Weird little quadrille, these guys. This is nearly the position Adama found himself, that day he met Sharon on Kobol and tried this exact same thing -- revenge on her for another Cylon taking something precious from him, in a fashion he in turn employed against Cain, who died for perpetrating the same kind of straw-man piñata crimes Sesha wanted to do. Like it would give any of them peace. Or even satisfaction. Or make it stop hurting. The price of being the father of all humanity, the Adam, is having to sacrifice parts of yourself for them -- and that's what dead Boomer is, now. The Marines do their yelling thing and Dualla scrabbles in the glass, begging for help. This time around, though, Adama throws himself on the body of his son. "Lee. Lee, can you hear me? Lee! Can you hear me, Lee? Come on, son. Come on." Adama holds his hand tightly as Apollo groans, and Dualla drops to Billy's side. He is dead. She cries his name, over and over and over.
In the Galactica morgue, Adama sits with his old friend Boomer's Corpse. He's asked it "why," and had it answered again and again by our Sharon. He's used it as a prop like Hamlet, and as a literal shoulder to cry on, and as the symbol of death always coming for him and his, without resting, with its matching wounds and matching scars. And he keeps returning to it, the body of his fallen enemy, to ask the ashes why. Roslin enters, unable to meet Adama's eyes. She can't look at Billy either, on the other side of the small room. She walks to Bill, looks down at Boomer. Her body decomposing, sore and disintegrated, the holes in her fine, strong face, and asks, "Is this what you gave them?" Adama calls the gambit a "calculated risk," I guess banking on the fact that nobody is creepy enough to keep her body around except him. Roslin spits it at him: "It wasn't worth it." He can't look at her. It wasn't. She stares into space, completely alone, and straightens her spine to approach Billy's body. Adama looks heavy and doesn't turn around, his back to Roslin. She pulls up a chair and seats herself regally at Billy's side. Her stiff upper lip lasts a second or two before she nearly collapses, holding herself awkwardly against the far wall. Bill keeps it together, not turning. Roslin cries over Billy's still body, looks down at him like they're about to go into a press conference, the way you check before the cameras come on. She notices that his hair is mussed, and moves it slightly. He is beautiful. "Oh, dear," she whispers. "Well, that's better. That's better." To nobody at all, she whimpers, "He was so young!" He was. She wanted him to be her successor, down the line of leaders. She sucks in a gasp and nearly loses it. She stands. And leaves. Bill doesn't look at her. She doesn't look at him -- she turns clockwise, awkwardly, toward the wall, so that she won't even see Adama's back, bent and sick and mourning and to blame. Imagine Bill the day he learned the truth about Zak, looking at Kara's beautiful face. Imagine the way your mind would stop, if you had to look.
Dualla sits with Apollo, sleeping. His hand moves in hers and he looks up. She's back in uniform. Lee: "Hey...what is it?" He has no way of knowing, about Billy or Sesha or what his father did. What Kara did, and how she can't repay it. Dualla: "Nothing. When you're feeling better, we can talk." He calls it a "hell of a vacation," and they smile. He falls back out of consciousness, moaning weakly. Dualla resumes the litany because she doesn't know what else to do: "Lee? Lee, you can't leave. You have to stay." Somewhere, Lee's floating in a black sea, her voice over the radio, calling him home. I wonder if all the pilots, Viper and Raptor and all, aren't just a little bit in love with Dualla? It's been said that she is the voice of home, out in the black. Behind Dualla stands Kara, in Captain's dress, watching them. "You have to really stay. You understand?" Kara leaves silently, her heart breaking for him. Which is worse: Adama hating her again, or Lee knowing that when the chips were down, she couldn't protect him -- she in fact shot him herself. A little taste of his guilt, after the Resurrection battle, when she walked into the Pegasus bridge with a gun in her hand, all alone. The price of representing the emotions of the entire cast is being sacrificed to them yourself, and that's not a role Lee's ever going to be able to control or even understand about himself. "It's okay," Dualla whispers. "I'll be here when you wake up." And she will. Lee's all she's got. There's a wide shot from above: Apollo sleeping, Dualla awake. "I'll be right here."
Lee's bed cuts to Sharon's cell, a wide shot from above, ninety degrees from his, slowly turning. Sleeping Apollo, the sacrifice to rage, is replaced by the sacrifice he and Billy replaced, who lies awake, hands over her belly, having once again narrowly missed paying twelve worlds' worth for what her people have done. What is she thinking about? Is she playing with them? Is she planning something? Is D'Anna (the only uncompromised model left, right?) coming back to save her and the baby? Will Helo turn? Or is she counting the chips she has left, and wondering what they'll do to her when the baby is born? What they'll do to the child? Staring up like that other Boomer, in the morgue, the one the others loved, those others that she can remember loving. The music is troubling as the camera creeps up Boomer's body, slowly, the curves of her hands, stomach, breasts becoming sinister, fading into her face, off-center, one eye obscured, staring blankly up. Fade to white.