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Holy balls. Okay. The guys pinned down on Caprica fight for about two seconds, and then the Cylons call a cease-fire; the Resistance is brought back to Galactica. Dean Stockwell admits that he's a Cylon, and tells Adama and Roslin that DEMAND LOVE has pulled out of the occupation and would like to apologize, no harm done. The irony is not lost on Madame Airlock, who answers the "How Far Down" question by using Tigh, Tory, and Dualla to fix the election in her favor -- but only after scaring the shit out of Gaius with her recovered memories of his affair with Six. Tipped off by Gaeta, Adama persuades Roslin that it's a bad idea, and she relents; welcome to President Gaius Baltar, whose second order of business is to settle the planet, now named New Caprica. His first order of business is to visit Gina, who makes love with him, then nuclear-bombs herself, Cloud 9, a couple other ships, and the fourth wall. Even the docu-style cameras aren't safe when you're about to smash your show open on such a fundamental level. Kara basically fracks Anders in front of Lee and disses Dualla, and acts like an asshole. We jump forward a year. I'm not making any of this up; it's not a dream. Gaius is the President, the settlement proceeds apace, the Fleet's ships are running skeleton crews. Anders is sick, and Dualla and Lee are in no mood to share their hoarded meds. (Kara and Anders are married, Kara's got long hair; Lee and Dee are possibly married, she may be his XO on Pegasus, and he is fat and has stupid hair.) Laura has gone back to teaching on the settlement, but she and Maya (foster mother of Cybrid Hera -- now renamed Isis) have a hand in an anti-Baltar movement headed by Chief and the ever more sickening Cally, who is pregnant. Gina's last atomic middle finger reaches the Cylons, a light-year away, and that's the length of our reprieve: the Cylons show up with a quickness, so you can thank both Gaius and the assholes on the Pegasus for everything that comes . As Galactica and Pegasus jump away, Six and Eight from "Downloaded" show up terrifyingly on Colonial One and explain their "new beginning": the Cylon can best express their true nature not through genocide and hate, but by making New Caprica into a concentration camp, "protecting" and "loving" the humans to death. Baltar offers humanity's surrender, and Sentinels Riefenstahl their way down Main Street, New Caprica. We lose. Suck on that 'til October. Want more? The full recap starts right below!
Two episodes ago, things looked rosy. The Sharon last seen getting murdered by Cally claimed she had a conscience, that she knew "the difference between right and wrong." Six (Gaius's flesh-and-blood girlfriend from the miniseries) proclaimed her love for Chip Gaius: "My heart and soul are yours." Six and Sharon realized that they were dangerous, "celebrities in a culture based on unity." They realized that they were two "heroes of the Cylon," who had "different perspectives on the war," based on their love of Chief Tyrol and Gaius Baltar. "Jealousy, murder, vengeance," they decided, were all "sins in the eyes of God." The slaughter of mankind was a "mistake." They set loose Sam Anders with a gun and admitted that they were new, that they didn't know "what kind of people" they were. Six and Sharon promised each other to "change things for the better," and decided to create "a new beginning, a new way to live in God's love. Without hate. Without all the lies." They promised to "show them the way." Proudly, they proclaimed that they were alive. That was a month ago. It was very exciting, if you -- like your humble recapper, like Helo -- believed in the Cylon capacity for humanity. In the development of them. Some shit's happened between then and now.
Now. Starbuck's rescue party is still pinned down on Caprica, having rendezvoused with Anders's Resistance cell. (The credits come between the previouslies and the teaser, which is long enough to be an act. 49,550 souls in the Fleet. For a sec.) Centurions at close range, people still in a huddled group on the ground. Starbuck and Anders resolve to fall back to a bivouac the Resistance has set up. They charge up the hill, Sharon leading the stragglers, as ever.
Up in Galactica's sickbay, Cottle is speaking. "Jaw set nicely. You're done here. I'm kicking you out of here and sending you back to work." He's talking to Cally, whose face is fucked up. She can barely speak, jaw wired shut. "Work like this?" she asks him. Cottle cracks some crotchety joke about how women always complain, and tells her she has a visitor. It's Chief Tyrol. Who fucked up her face. He fidgets painfully, and she looks across at him, love in her eyes. I have this rule that if somebody hits you, even once, it's over. Circumstances, details, whatever. Men don't do that. Humans are better than that. Somebody hits you, pack your bags and don't look back. If it's meant to be, it's going to be with a person so unlike the person that hit you that it won't matter. It's not days, it's not months: it's miles. That's a person who crossed the line, and that means you're looking at a person who can cross the line, who is not somebody that needs a girlfriend. By the time they're ready, they won't be them anymore: they'll be somebody who can't cross the line. I'm not saying Chief's a bad guy; that's oversimplifying: I'm saying Chief is a guy who doesn't need a girlfriend right now. (And that I hate Cally, and Helo? He doesn't need a boyfriend either. Remember the wrench.) It's not that Chief's a spouse-abuse case -- I want to be very clear about what I'm saying here -- he's not inside their Venn diagram: they're inside his. People, people in real life, don't just end up like that. "Cylon Girlfriend" is the same as any other backstory, and earns just as much pity and sympathy for the perp, but: pack your bags.
Chief breathes through his apology, stuttering and speaking quickly in turn, and Cally interrupts him with forgiveness, which not even Chief is looking for. He's horrified by her face, telling her, "It was me. I may have been out of my mind and not know what I was doing or anything, but it was me." Parse that sentence again -- the delivery, the confusion are perfect. Douglas plays hell out of this grotesque scene, and I'm not just saying that because the scruff is still here. "You're in pain," mumbles Cally. "You have been in pain for a really long time." Tyrol's not having it, and neither am I. "I care about you," Cally insists. "I always have. And I always will." He stares, and with her eyes, she begs him to get it. On this note alone I envy the international audience: they'll never have to see this. "Oh, sorry I bit off your ear. Must've been that darn PTSD of yours, living on a prison ship. My instincts just took over. I made you some muffins and murdered your girlfriend! Now do you love me? You wanna hit me again?" I only thought I hated her before. Dude.
My girl Barclay screams in the Caprica forest as everybody runs for the fortification. Starbuck gives Sharon her gun as they crouch behind what's left of a building's cement walls. No ceiling. Sharon and Anders get everybody behind the wall as Helo tries to use the field phone. Just as he's lamenting that the "freqs" are Cylon-jammed...the mortars and explosions halt. They breathe. Helo looks at Sharon, she cocks the gun, and one by one they rise and peer out at the Centurions. "They're holding back," says Kara, and Anders wonders why. Sharon: "They're holding position. Sending for non-lethal weapons. They want some prisoners for interrogation, the rest they're gonna send to the Farm." Ever since that baby died she's been such a downer. Starbuck vows that she's not going back to any fracking farm, and Sharon sheds a little more sunshine: "Yeah, well, you won't have any choice. None of us will. They're gonna lob some gas in here and then we'll all wake up somewhere else." In Sharon's case, on ice. Anders asks Starbuck for the plan, and the dynamic is so natural that it's almost beneath comment, but: what you have here is an intersolar basketball stud-turned-dilettante guerilla terrorist asking his petite blond girlfriend what to do, because she's the guy here, and he and she and we (and even the show, which is sometimes questionable) are all so past it that we don't even notice. They'll wait it out, but if Sharon's right, Starbuck tells Anders, "Then you and me, we gotta have an agreement." She almost cries, explaining again: "Not going back to one of those farms, Sam. I'm not. So if she's right and they throw gas in here..." Sharon looks down, sad and scared. She's learned a thing or two about what happens when you don't get to make choices about your body. The cavalier attitude about "Well, maybe you'd be forced to fuck somebody nice, like Leoben" is gone. She at least gets that. "You do me," says Starbuck. "I'll do you." Anders is not getting it. Maybe it's the radiation. Starbuck pulls a gun in his face -- and for such a grim moment (concept, story, episode, arc, season, show), it's fairly funny -- and gets very hardcore: "This is what I'm talking about, okay?" Helo and Sharon are like, "Whoa." Anders gets it, and they nod, eyes locked. Starbuck holsters her gun again, staring into space. Getting him back, getting pinned, and then the Farm on top of it? I'd just feign sleep and hope everybody else figured it out, honestly. Too hard.
On Colonial One, President Roslin paces, pissed: "Down two more points. And this after hearing his notions of 'social policy.' Not to mention his wishful thinking he's calling 'security policy.' Are people really going to be that stupid? Are they really going to be that short-sighted?" Tory reminds Roslin, calmly, that Baltar's got the only real issue that's gotten anybody's attention. Roslin: "That's all anybody wants to talk about, is that frackin' planet." She catches herself and apologizes for her language, cutely, and Tory waves it off. "I know in my gut that settling on this planet's going to mean disaster for humanity," Roslin adds, "and I will not say otherwise just to win an election." Tory nods, resigned to Roslin's BS and constantly-migrating sense of civic duty: "As you wish, Madam President." Roslin almost laughs. "So I guess I should start packing up my office...Unless you have some super-secret backup plan for victory in your pocket." Tory levels her eyes at the President, chill as hell: "There's always a backup plan for victory." She holds her eyes, and Laura looks back, impassive. There is agreement that is so plausibly deniable that it didn't actually happen. Tory shoots a cuff and looks at her watch, saying brightly, back to campaign manager, "Just in time for the priest!" Roslin smiles mordantly: "Oh, good. Send him in."
There's that foxhole silence on Caprica, soldiers staring, a casualty lying on the ground at Anders's feet. Starbuck looks out at nothing through her viewfinder. Anders slumps, waking himself up, and wonders what the hell the onslaught's been doing for the last eighteen hours. That's a long time to be afraid and exhausted and prepared to shoot your lover. "They're up to something," Starbuck says, all cold and empty. "What are we up to?" Anders asks. "Got any brilliant ideas in that military brain of yours?" Starbuck doesn't move: "Do the same thing we always do. Fight 'em till we can't." I hate this. I can't stand to see anybody caged. Sharon, Gina, our guys here. Cain. Roslin. Sharon and Helo consider Starbuck, and Helo approaches, asking for the move. Starbuck orders a recon crew, and everybody assembles. They move out in formation, thumbs up on all points, and Starbuck moves down to the line: "They're gone. They just left." Behind them appears a priest -- who's been with the Resistance, although we don't know that, and the actors all accidentally act like they're more surprised than they should be, because he starts yelling. "Thank the Gods! It's a miracle!" It's Brother Cavil, last seen counseling Chief Tyrol on getting his shit together, and he removes his hat and begins to pray. As the Resistance and rescue party assume prayer stance, Sharon considers him, looks shifty, and looks at Starbuck, but can't meet her eyes. "Lords of Kobol, we trust in your benevolence and praise your righteousness..."
...Cut to Laura on Colonial One, getting a blessing from Brother Cavil. He's a Cylon. He is in competition with Six for coolest Cylon, in fact. He's holding Laura's hand. "...Give the people of this Fleet the wisdom to see the goodness and the strength of your servant, Laura Roslin. Amen."
Back from commercial, a Marine lets Baltar into Adama's quarters, which are dark and spooky: "Admiral? Uh..." Roslin appears from the shadows. "Madam President," Baltar says, in no mood. She steps toward him: "The Admiral's not here. This is my meeting." He's nervous but still. "I wanted us to talk privately, without the press getting wind of it," she adds. "Please, have a seat." She steps closer; Baltar doesn't move. "Well," he says, climbing back toward Gaius Baltar mode, "you must have something very interesting to say to resort to such pedestrian methods of deception." He sits. I have another vision of her offering him a cup of tea with a human finger floating in it.
"The question of permanent settlement may well be the most important issue we face since the attack," says Roslin. Baltar looks at the President like he's going to fight this on principle, but thinks about it and gives in, grudgingly. "The question should be carefully studied before making a final decision," she says, slowly, in the murky dark. "The middle of an election campaign is hardly the time for careful study. Therefore, I propose a truce." Fake smiles abound. "You and I will issue a joint statement declaring that the question be tabled until after this election." Baltar gives a great "the fuck we will" look off this, then folds his arms and stares around, "listening" so condescendingly, as Roslin continues: "We will both pledge that -- regardless of who is elected -- the decision will be made only after careful deliberation, involving all elements of the public, and after consultation with the military, and the Quorum of Twelve." Her measured tone, her eyes begging him to agree. She's too tired to airlock his ass today. He sighs, resting his head on his hands, elbows on the table, about to rebut, but she keeps talking: "Doctor. I know we've had our disagreements, but this issue transcends personal disagreement -- as well as politics." He looks away, and he's never looked so much like Julian Bashir -- and so less -- than right this second. "I am appealing here to your sense of patriotism," Roslin begins, and that's the button. She's trying to be so, so scary, and so very presidential, but she's just pushed the exact wrong nerve, and she doesn't even know it. "Patriotism" is the thing her letter tickled, the thing, the manhood of him, that her letter questioned, and now Billy's dead and she'll never know Gaius read it. She has no idea how that concept cuts to the bone of him, that he knows that she thinks (correctly) that he's too much of a whiny little selfish bitch to be President. It's one thing to be the LBJ in a long line of LBJs -- that's not history. But to beat a beloved leader of the people in a fair fight, which is what this now is? Roslin's putting on the table Baltar's worth as a man, and his debt of destruction; she doesn't know she's just brought in any of these things. She just thinks (correctly) that he's evil and sort of an idiot. It's awful to watch. "Let me tell you," he hisses, "my sense of patriotism is doing just fine, thank you very much for asking. I see it as my patriotic duty to lead this Fleet to a new world." Roslin leans back a millimeter, realizing she just fucked up. "...[and] that new world is unquestionably New Caprica," Baltar finishes, hands spread: "But hey, dude..." He thanks her for "demonstrating just how desperate" her reelection has become, and stands to leave.
Roslin plays her last card. "Were you with a blonde woman on Caprica just prior to the attack?" she says hurriedly, desperately. It's a threat, not a question, and the sign of defeat Baltar was just looking for a moment ago. He stands stock still and she stands, rounding the table. "A...what?" he asks, and Six appears at Roslin's back, frightened for him: "She knows." Over a flashback to Gaius and Six making out on Caprica, Mary McDonnell intones terrifyingly, shaking, unable to even touch the ugliness, the enormity: "Were you with a tall blonde woman in the river walk section of Caprica City just prior to the attack?" Six hisses, "She can see right through you. Get out of here now." Gaius laughs. "You'll resort to anything at this stage, won't you? I'm afraid my affairs on Caprica -- and who I chose to consort with -- are none of your business." Roslin looks closer to breaking, at this moment, than we've ever maybe seen. This is worse than the cancer. She's so small it's like we're seeing her from far away. She stands so unbelievably still, eyes so alive...it's like a horror movie. Like she's been getting creepy phone calls all night about "the children" and now it's past midnight and the phone's ringing again. It's hard to look at. "I saved your life," Gaius says, hurt. His feelings are hurt at this accusation. How can she be so mean to him and accuse him of his actions, when he saved her life? How can she do this to him again? "I won't save your political career." He knocks on the hatch and leaves Adama's quarters. We don't look back.
In Tigh's quarters on Galactica, the Colonel is doing some paperwork while Ellen sloshes her drink around and yells. She's wearing a crazy outfit which at first looks like a Juicy Couture sweatsuit, but is actually this weird, like, felt Chanel suit jacket, over a bulky Laura Ashley bedskirt with five-inch-thick pleats al the way down. She looks like something from an early-morning psychedelic kid's show, like Lazytown or something. It's fantastic. She also looks even more lovely than normal. This woman's bone structure, you could screen silk. Cut diamond. She's so beautiful. She's bitching, of course, that Gaius is going to win and they are going to fracking move down to the planet, and Tigh is going to do what she says, et cetera: "We're going to just sit on this ship and rot? While everyone else gets to start a new life?" I love, love that Ellen gets to be our man on the scene, the character with the Lay Down Your Burdens viewpoint, because it makes sense for her. It's one thing to be told by a pollster that the Fleet is all over the jock of colonization, but it's another to see Ellen unleashed and...talking sense about it. Tigh: "Ellen, my job is to protect the Fleet from the Cylons, and that's exactly what I'll be doing. If you want to move down there, go ahead, be my guest. Go down and cat around with all the men. Have yourself a good old time." Moore's mentioned before -- I probably have too -- about wanting to put in there somewhere about how their relationship works, that Tigh knows she's like that, that they aren't monogamous and Tigh's aware, and willing to leverage it. I'm happy for them that they got that line in there. She crosses her arms, like he's just being silly. Maybe she's changed her mind. Maybe that's what the fight is about: if he leaves the military, they can try being really married. "Saul, I want you," she tells him. The comm buzzes and he answers, then jumps up: "Starbuck's back. I gotta get down there."
In the Galactica hangar, the medics are loading up the casualties from the rescue Raptors under Chief's watchful eye. Starbuck and the Resistance come out, around, pushing through the crowd of people, approaching Tigh and Adama. "Am I good or what?" Starbuck gloats. Tigh grumbles, "There's gonna be no living with her now," and she smiles at him, wryly and without animus -- almost affection, in her reckless pride. Maybe the whole initiation at the end of "Scar" actually took, and they're okay. Later on, we might see more on this. Adama approaches, openly smiling, and clasps Starbuck's shoulders. They look at each other for a moment, and I'm almost positive -- based on the way he does it, and the way she reacts -- that Edward James Olmos does another off-script rewrite, looking at her with love and intensity, and delicately moving her hair from her face. She wrinkles her nose, squints at him; it is wonderful, and perfect, and there's a bit more Katee in her than we're used to. "Good to see you," he tells her. "Welcome back." She thanks him. Nervously, she indicates Anders: "I brought some friends with me." Adama doesn't take his eyes off Anders. Can you imagine how stressful? "Remember how I was engaged to your son and then kind of killed him? And then I dicked around your other son for months on end? And shot him? I'd like you to meet...my boyfriend....Dad." In the background, Barclay is itchy and post-adrenal. "I see," Adama says solidly. Starbuck: "Right. Right. Um...this is, um...wow, um, this is Samuel T. Anders." Adama knows damn well who he is: "Caprica Buccaneers. Hell of a player. I'm a Picon Panther fan myself." The father-in-law vibe almost shakes your TV apart, but Anders gives the perfect, perhaps the only, response: "We enjoyed beating them too." Even nervous Kara laughs at this. "Good to have you aboard," says Adama. Whew. That was scary. I thought.
Starbuck speaks up, official again: "I have news. Good news, actually. The Cylon occupation is over." She shrugs: "They left. They're gone." Adama's like, "Huh?" And Brother Cavil exits the Raptor: "It's true. The Cylons have left the Colonies." Chief Tyrol spots Brother Cavil and begins to run toward him, as Cavil continues: "They're headed for greener pastures." Tyrol screams for security as Starbuck asks aloud what the hell is up, and he slams Cavil down on the deck of the Raptor, screaming, "Code Blue!" The Marines all train guns on Tyrol, who recently smacked the shit out of somebody due to Cylon-related paranoia, and Tyrol screams, "He's a Cylon!" Helo looks up at Sharon for a second, and looks away; Sharon looks at her feet sadly. She knew. Helo knows she knew. He's keeping quiet. Starbuck watches the whole thing go down, freaked out and pissed: "I said I had good news! My news! Was good! That I brought the Admiral! My own personal self! What's with the drama?" Adama tells Tyrol to back off, and Cavil continues. "Well, this is an awkward moment. Yes, uh, he's right. I'm a Cylon. And I have a message. So take me to 'your leader.'" Adama reroutes: "Take him to 'the brig.'" The Marines mob Cavil, and Adama adds, "Take that to the brig too," indicating Sharon. Oh, girl. Helo protests for a sec, and Adama's like, "Don't. Even. Start, Helo. Of course she knew." Helo throws up his hands, disgusted, but not so disgusted that he can deny Adama's right. Starbuck turns to the very freaked-out pals of Cavil, Barclay and Anders: "Welcome to Galactica."
A reader pointed out this week how funny it is that the commercial airtime for the best show on television regularly promotes the very worst that television has to offer. I mean, I am all in favor of TV movies about Theseus -- talk about a timely metaphor, when every joule we've got is devoted to finding the problem anywhere and everywhere else, because we're too scared of the minotaur we helped create, feeding it boys year after year -- and the Ring of the Nibelung, and I would take that over whatever Lou Diamond Phillips/Mansquito/spider-dimension bullshit, but it's funny anyhow. I'd even go for Faust: Love Of The Damned, the week I've had. Helo's on Sharon's cell phone, begging her to explain why she didn't let on about Brother Cavil. She looks right into his eyes: "I don't know. Maybe I didn't want to. Maybe I wanted him to come here and blow up the whole ship." Beat. "Is that what you're looking for?" Beat. "Hm?" Helo begs her to take it back: "You don't mean that." She looks away. "Sharon?" He raises his voice: "We finally got the Admiral to start trusting us. Finally! And what?" She puts her dead eyes through him. "They killed my baby. You think I care about you? Or us? Or whether the Admiral trusts me anymore?" They stare, Sharon drops the phone. Walks away, backwards. Focus on the phone, dangling, communication gone dead, conversation over. Helo drops his side of the phone as she paces around her bunk, lies down, stares at the ceiling. I can't stand to see anybody caged. Maybe that's why I've always loved this Sharon best. Helo screams, barely audible, throws himself against the glass, the only one of them fighting it now, positions reversed: "Sharon! I love you! And I'm not giving up this frackin' easy! Not after everything!" He watches her for a moment, turns and leaves, and she just stares up.
In the Galactica pilots' quarters, Kara and Anders are getting 'faced. They pound a shot, and laugh, and she starts pouring again, laughing without hysteria, laughing joyfully, bullying him into another shot: "Hey, hey, hey. Listen. You don't have to get me drunk. I will sleep with you, okay? I figure I owe you one, what with you saving me and all." They are the same person. Starbuck calls Anders a little slut, and he tells her to shut up, and they play kissing games, leaning back, jumping forward. They finally kiss. I feel like this is about to suck, and Lee Adama immediately enters. "Gods, I guess they'll let anybody in here these days," he says, geekily, embarrassingly, knowing he should turn and leave, unable to do so. Starbuck turns and sees Apollo, and jumps up gaily, running the length of the room to grab him. "Hey, hi," she whispers, overjoyed to see him after the rescue mission. He welcomes her back, and she offers to introduce him to "her man." Lee makes fun of her, the pissing on him, the territory, and she's down. "My personal property. Right, Sammy?" Anders grumbles, "Don't call me 'Sammy,'" and Kara leads Lee back to him, skipping: "Oh ho ho. How does it feel to be my personal property?" We get it. Anders is uncomfortable, but not sure why. "And before you answer...," she says, and kisses him again, Lee standing by. "He loves it," she murmurs, without looking away. He hums his assent. "I'll bet he does. I'm Lee, by the way," he says, extending his hand. Get the fuck out of there, mister! What are you doing? Kara giggles and pulls herself off Anders; he and Lee shake, and Anders offers Lee a shot. Get out of there, Lee. She's not done yet, and the way that I know that is that you are not crying yet.
"Lee," Kara giggles, "When are you gonna get yourself a girl?" Foul! Total foul! On many levels! He smiles and shakes it off and says he's doing fine, thanks. They do the shots. "You're not still frackin' Dualla, are you?" laughs Kara, cruelly. Even Anders is like, "Whoa, lady." "I mean, I'm not one to like, you know, lecture or anything -- because I'll do just about anything to get into the pants of some hot little young thing." Anders pulls her onto his lap, completely ignorant of the shitstorm in the exact center of which his so-called girlfriend has just placed him. It's easy to idealize when your whole life is about playing Pyramid and running from robots. Your asshole qualities kind of run second to survival and hot sex. I might feel worse for Anders than I even do Lee right now, just because he's a nice guy and has no idea about the baggage here. Even though he's drunk, the vibes are hardcore unmistakeable. "Is that all I am to you?" he asks, desperately trying to chill the situation, but Kara's not having it: "Yes. But you love it." He allows as how he doesn't "mind doing charity work," and they start mugging down hardcore, drunk and relieved and giddy. Lee makes his exit, about five minutes too late, as Anders and Starbuck murmur and whisper. At the sound of Lee closing the hatch, Starbuck looks up, having literally misplaced him in all the different kinds of game she was just running: "Where'd he go?" she laughs, Anders shrugs, he picks her up, she squeals, they fuck.
Roslin impassively watches the new Brother Cavil in his brig cell. "I'm here to deliver a message," he tells her. "After that, you can do whatever you want with me. I don't care." The other Cavil, her priest one, is brought in by Marines, bitching loudly: "Would you mind telling me what's going on? I'm not a fracking Cylon! I'm not..." He trails off, seeing the other Cavil: "Oh. Well...okay then." It's adorable and scary. "Sorry to bust up your day, Brother," says the new one, as they put the old Fleet one into the cell. "But there's been a change of plans. It's been decided that the occupation of the Colonies was an error." Roslin and Adama watch as they look at each other. Old Cavil: "I could've told them that. Bad thinking. Faulty logic. Our first major error of judgment." (My emphasis.) New Cavil shrugs: "Live and learn. But the War Heroes have managed to swing opinion over to their side." Adama asks what he means. "A Six and an Eight," says New Cavil. "One of the Eights, you know as Sharon Valerii." Roslin and Adama look at each other. "Their voices carry a lot of weight. So when they started talking about our 'mistakes' and our 'corruption' and our need for a 'new beginning,' the rest of us listened." The other Cavil joins in. "You see, we're not like you. We can admit our mistakes, and we're not afraid of change." Again, emphasis mine, but check out the semantics: this is a situation in which the change would come easy. Thirty-six hours is a way long time for the Cylons to figure this out. A self-regulating system of computer intelligence only needs the new patch, which implements in seconds and then restarts. They don't have to vote, or worry, or weigh -- SpyBot says there's an issue, the system responds. What it does with that information is sometimes fucked up, but the words they're using are the words of an artificial intelligence that has been alerted to a logic failure. Once alerted that jealousy, murder, vengeance are sins in the eyes of God, the slaughter of mankind was a mistake, it will self-upgrade, change things for the better, create a new beginning, a new way to live in God's love. Without hate. Without all the lies. It will demonstrate "the way." It will bring itself back into alignment with the program, sweeping all those ones and zeroes into the Recycle Bin like they never existed. You want a truly alien intelligence? Try explaining Normal.dot to me.
Roslin's stuck on the not-so-machine logic: "So you abandoned the Colonies leaving behind a devastated nuclear wasteland." Adama's in agreement: "And we're supposed to be grateful." Cavil nods. (It doesn't matter which.) "Our pursuit of this Fleet of yours was another error. That's two, for anyone who's keeping score. Both errors led to the same result. We became what we beheld. We became you." New Cavil speaks up, to Adama: "Amen. People should be true to who and what they are. We're machines. We should be true to that. Be the best machines the universe has ever seen." The music gets scared, because only the music is smart enough to do the math here. "But we got it into our heads that we were the children of humanity. So instead of pursuing our own destiny, trying to find our own path to enlightenment, we hijacked yours." "You said it, Brother," says the other. "My mission here is simple. I'm to tell you that you've been given a reprieve." To Laura: "Cylon and man will now go their separate ways, no harm done." Adama and Roslin kind of drink in the irony there: "'No harm,'" Adama repeats. "You completely annihilated our race and destroyed our civilization." Cavil shakes that right off: "Now, if you're going to start pointing fingers..." Roslin asks where they all went: "Back to their home world?" Pronouns, Madame. "Well, I'd rather not say just now," Cavil grins inscrutably. "Uh...let's just say we have other plans." Adama snarks that they're getting "new marching orders" from their "one true God," which is not what you say to a Cavil, because he'll respond, "There is no God. Supernatural divinities are the primitive's answer for why the sun goes down at night." The other nods -- because Wing Chun was right, last week; this is one Brother that can cavil like a motherfucker. "At least that's what we've been telling the others for years. Can't really prove it one way or the other, of course." The Cavils smile at each other and Roslin's about had it: "I know a way to prove it. Throw them both out the airlock. Let them see if there really is a Cylon God." She turns and leaves, Adama leaves, Tigh thinks, "What the hell?" and leaves, and the Cavils stare. And I assume get airlocked, because I love Cavil, but I would do it, and Roslin loves doing it even more than we do joking about it.
It's at this point that I remember to go create the forum episode thread, even though it won't open for almost an hour. My header post: "Vaughn's married?" I thought it was a crappy joke about reversing viewer expectations, about upending the show, about changing the game. About proving me right. DEMAND PEACE and DEMAND LOVE would come together, offer a pact of truce out of their mutual lack of a clue, and the fight would begin against the Three and Five and Leoben factions. And what a mind-frack that would be, right, and I'd just laugh and laugh and be so correct and self-satisfied well into October; Six and Eight and Chief and Jim McManus and Red Devil nestled in my lap like some corrupt Presidential cuddle party, humming contentedly and watching Dr. Who with the smile of the truly righteous. And that was...not the joke I was making, turns out. But we don't know that yet.
Election Day. All very official. Marines bring in the ballot boxes from the various ships of the Fleet, Tigh and Dee and Gaeta overseeing everything, counting them off, marking ships on a list, inspecting the security seals, opening the locks. Jim McManus in a mustard-yellow jacket speaks, as we move to Gaius's campaign, to Gaius smoking, to Tory (again) dragging the circling camera around Colonial One, to Adama, the pilots, to Laura. "It's been an exciting day," narrates Jim McManus. "The polls now have been closed for about five hours. Results have come in, and it's been a see-saw battle back and forth between the Presidential candidates all night long as we, of course, expected it would be...We're still waiting for a few more numbers to come in now, from the counting room of Galactica, which...some of you may know was a source of a bit of a controversy yesterday...Councilman Zarek had filed a formal complaint against the use of military involvement in the election process...a compromise was...reached late yesterday, allowing Galactica to provide security for the balloting, as well as civilians to oversee and monitor the situation...What we have so far is 6,282 more votes for Baltar, which puts his total now to 21,569....and we also have Roslin, her total now is at 17,754...We've had 2,981 more votes come in for Roslin at this time." Tory whispers to Laura, she's worried, they're both worried. Tory moves, scary, to the back of the plane, calls a number, ducks into a niche: "Yeah, it's me. Is this a secure line? Okay. There are only five ships left to report in. We need to move now." She's very intense and spooky and hard. "I'll take care of it," says...Tigh. ...Yeah. He hangs up, nods to Dualla (...Yeah), who excuses herself, making meaningful eye contact with Tigh as Gaeta looks on, invigorated by democracy in action.
Dualla and two crewmen meet some guys carrying a ballot box down the corridor, and ascertain that they're the votes from the Zephyr. (Don't the Quorum hang out on that ship?) Dualla tries to take them, and a hot lisping crewman balks. She tells him firmly, "Counting has already begun; we'll take it from here," and signs off on the Chain of Custody very officially; she then nods to the Marines. She opens the hatch for them, closes the door, and looks steely and sneaky. Back in the counting room, Tigh watches the door, Gaeta watches everything, as the Marines enter by a different door, the box clearly still sealed. Gaeta slices it open, and Dee stands by, Tigh watching from across the room. Gaeta opens it, using his key, as Dualla swallows. "Last one," he smiles goofily, and she nods. They dump out the ballots. It's done.
Zarek and Gaius listen to Jim down in the morgue: "We have some more results [that] have come in here now. It's all been taken care of." On Colonial One, Tory again whispers to Laura. Jim: "Wow. Okay. 8,593 for Roslin, which puts her over the top." Everybody on Colonial One cheers, claps, embraces. Laura shakes their hands without standing, claps half-heartedly, looks sick. "That's 24,265 for Laura Roslin. Is that correct? And 22,366 for Gaius Baltar. We're going to check these again because that has put her over the top. She...has done it! She has retained the Presidency, in an improbable comeback in the final hours of the campaign!...It appears that Laura Roslin has retained the Presidency in defiance of the polls, the pundits, and the surveyors of gloom and doom. I've never seen a political race end like this, but it has just happened!" Zarek shuts Jim right off: "I've seen a lot of elections, Gaius. Most honest, a few fixed. And you can always tell the fixed ones, because they don't make sense. And this doesn't make sense." (As Joe R. said immediately after the episode: "See what happens when you don't fix elections?") After a second, Gaius leans forward, speaking quietly: "Laura Roslin is many things. But she's not corrupt. And she's not dishonest." There's a beat, as we mourn for what small things Gaius Baltar still believes in, and how shallow even those are. Poor guy. "It's over." Zarek stares at him, looks down. How far down will she go? This far. This is as far down as you can go without being evil. If you're in politics at all, it's because you know that law is a form of worship. This is as far as Laura can go.
Adama calls Laura up, as the one person she absolutely cannot handle right now, with his whole Atticus vibe. "Congratulations, Madam President," he says lovingly, and she thanks him. "I hope you don't take this the wrong way, but are you as shocked as I am?" She smiles, sad, trying to fake it: "I'm relieved." He wonders why she doesn't even sound relieved, but you know, it's just "been a long campaign."
Gaeta, looking at the ballots, calls Tigh over and tells him there's monkey business. So helpful, and trusting, and excited about the process: "Dr. Baltar's name is spelled correctly on these ballots. But this morning, the Zephyr called me, and told me their ballots had a misprint, they misspelled Baltar's first name. We didn't have time to print new ballots, so I told them on my authority to go ahead and use them anyway." Tigh's entire jaw shivers, he's clenched so tight. "Baltar's name is spelled correctly here, so they couldn't have come from the Zephyr. They're frauds. Now, there's a complete chain of custody from the Zephyr all the way into this room," he shows Tigh, "so someone in the chain is either a perpetrator or at least a willing ally..." Tigh thanks him curtly -- being sneaky is not really in Saul's wheelhouse, which is wonderful about him -- and Gaeta wonders if they shouldn't at least notify the legal observers and press, but he cuts him dead. "I said I'll take care of it from here," Tigh says, unable to meet Gaeta's eyes. Gaeta stares at him, and backs off. Tigh angrily tosses the ballots into their box. I love Gaeta, and I don't love Tigh a huge amount, but I was kind of rooting for Tigh to snap Gaeta's neck at some point here, just because the future of humanity rests on this, but he did not.
Adama and Roslin continue their awkward conversation: "Madam President, you should celebrate. It's a great victory and you've earned it." She swallows, too full of this. His phone beeps -- space has call waiting! -- and Roslin signs off. He flips to Gaeta's call, and we see Gaeta looking shifty and scared, not wanting to actually say it. Adama tells him to spit it out, "fast and straight." "Yes, sir," says Gaeta, and we act out on lots of quick angles on him, and the Admiral, as he does: "Admiral, I believe that Colonel Tigh is involved in a conspiracy to rig the election for President Roslin."
You don't want this conversation to happen any more than I do, I imagine. It's going to be bad. Let's get through it. Adama and Roslin stand across her desk from each other, backs straight. "When I confronted the Colonel," Adama explains, "he admitted his guilt. He said he acted in collusion with your campaign manager, Tory Foster. Saul said Tory contacted him a few days ago. He did it because he felt that Baltar as President would be a disaster. I said I agreed, but that what he had done was illegal. A judicial tribunal may have to be..." Roslin stops him, shakes off her fear of disappointing him, of admitting it: "I gave Tory the go-ahead. I didn't know exactly what she was planning. I...certainly did not know about Colonel Tigh. Oh my Gods." It's this last that kills: there's a way in which using Tigh this way is a worse betrayal than using Lee at the beginning of the season, and she knows it. Adopted brother trumps estranged son. "But I did know that she was planning to fix the vote." Adama clarifies: "You tried to steal an election?" Roslin slumps. "Yes, I did," she says, and finally meets his eyes. "And I got caught. But Gaius Baltar cannot become President of the Colonies, Bill. It cannot happen." Adama's sympathetic on the concept of that particular hellride, but Roslin's not done: "He's working with the Cylons. I saw him just before the attack in Caprica with a copy of the tall blonde Cylon woman. The same model who accused Baltar of treason before disappearing from Galactica." ["I love it when they refer to Six as a model." -- Wing Chun] Adama's impassive: "What the hell are you saying? Why didn't you say something before this?" Roslin admits that it's a recently-recovered memory, and then I think she kind of fucks up: "But it's real. The same way Kobol is real, and the Tomb of Athena is real, and the map to Earth is real." She's almost crying, but, like -- why poke the bear? Why bring your religious bullshit into a formerly factual conversation? The last time you decided you were the instrument of the Gods, you nearly wrecked this relationship beyond repair. Why do that? "Earth" is his lie, and she nearly destroyed him with it. Why go there, Laura? Are you an idiot? "Even if that's true, you have no proof," says Adama. As usual. "No, I don't," Roslin says, embarrassed and ashamed about every single part of it.
Roslin and Adama sit quietly. He looks incredibly old. He sighs, and she watches his face, begging him to give her the left-field lie that will acquit her. The "Lie To It About Earth" ruling that will keep her campaign alive. Adama: "Do we steal the results of a democratic election or not? That's the decision. Because if we do this, we're criminals. Unindicted, maybe, but criminals just the same." Laura nods: "Yes, we are." Hoping he'll okay it, hoping he'll for once provide the rudder without the "ethics" bullshit that goes along with it. "You won't do it," says Adama. Her face falls, because she knows he's right: whatever he says , she won't do it, because his blessing is essential, because he's the biggest liar there is. "We've gone this far, but that's it," he adds. She's not feeling this. "You try to steal this election, you'll die inside," he explains. "Likely move your cancer right to your heart." She starts to cry, because he's right, and she knows that in her body. "The people made their choice," Adama concludes. "We're gonna have to live with it." Roslin chokes: "It's the wrong choice." He knows that, and says so. He looks away, and she stares at him, nods to herself. Whispers this : "All right. All right. All right." She drops her shoulders, weight gone, new weight on top, and smiles sadly at him: "So that's it. We just give it up, just like that." But he's the biggest liar: "The battle, perhaps. But not the war." Nope, motherfuckers. The war, too. She smiles, because at least they're okay. At least he brought her back, and she didn't lose him in the process.
I don't often say this, because it's generally not as true as it could be, but Gaius Baltar looks gorgeous, meeting with Roslin and the aides in Adama's quarters. Just luminous and stunning and righteously angry. Adama: "Well, the important thing is, the error was discovered and corrected. You've been elected President. Congratulations." Baltar thanks him snippily, but keeps going: "Now, about this error. Exactly what kind of a tabulating error could have occurred on your ship that could've swung several thousand votes away from me in favor of your preferred candidate, Admiral? As soon as I have the time, there will be an investigation." Adama, without his glare-proofing glasses, speaks, deadly and without rising: "I suggest that you take your victory and you leave it at that, Doctor." Gaius twitches as they trade steely looks: "I think you'll find I can be...magnanimous in victory, Admiral. And I believe the correct honorific at this time is Mr. President-Elect." Once more, his feelings are hurt. Like Adama was going to roll over for him, like he did Cain. Like Gaius has earned anything but the Presidency. Like he was going to get not only Roslin's office, but all her awesome friends. Like there's anyone he could ever trust. Anyone that would ever respect him. "Set course for New Caprica," he clips out, and turns on his heel. Bill looks down, so tired.
The Fleet jumps into New Caprica's orbit, Gaeta calling their location, Dualla accounting for the ships of the Fleet. Adama duallas to the Pegasus to launch her initial ground team. She does it, but she sighs first. Speaking of the collusioneers, Tigh watches Adama through this, drops his chin. "Let's get a good look at our new home,"says Adama. He meets Tigh's eyes, and intones -- though Olmos was resistant, because he feels Adama is entirely atheist -- "Gods help us all." Not even them, bitches. You froze them out the second you decided to settle. Cavil was right. You're on your own.
Cloud 9. Gaius sits on Gina's couch; across the coffee table, she sits, bare feet beneath her. He's got a super-sleazy but not unattractive butterfly-collar swinger thing happening. She arranges her DEMAND PEACE papers and he breathes nervously, clearly about to say something awful. He doesn't get that she's already done. The second she managed to get the Resurrection Ship blown, she was ready to die. She put it off, for vengeance on Cain. She put it off again, for the DEMAND PEACE movement. Which as of now, is useless -- the humans are settling on a planet the Cylon can't find. She flashes back to that last moment, Gaius's face full of kindness, flak jacket around her broken body. A lot of people think that what happens here is a sign that she's still trying to destroy the Fleet from the inside, but I don't personally think she really has an agenda, of any kind. Just a death, deferred by purpose, into which Gaius is about to talk her; just listen. "Well," he says, smiling cheaply, having given this speech one hundred times or more before. "Well, I think my ability to see you will no doubt be constrained by the responsibilities and the requirements of my new position." Gina fidgets. It's already over. He's making that clear. "Ha! Listen to me: 'my new position.'" He's so tickled. He leans forward as though to take her hand, but there's no touching. "Um...but obviously, we, um, we will have the chance to connect, to, uh..." Gina swallows, not meeting Baltar's gaze. "...To get together again, on New Caprica, once..." She interrupts him: "I'm not going to New Caprica." She says this, unbreaking, and Baltar knows what she means, but he's not buying it, because in his mind, New Caprica is Old Caprica, same city, same girlfriend -- same cheating on her, even -- and if there's no difference, then he never did anything wrong. He is a hero, not a villain, even now. Same life, plus the Presidency. It could still work. "What? What are you talking about?" She repeats herself, looking so small there on the carpet, kneeling before him. "We're all going to New Caprica," he insists, the new world replacing the old, with him as king. She looks up at him, strong. Afraid. "All of us!" he exhorts her. "Every last, single one of us!" She meets his gaze; he's begging now. "It's our chance to be together. To be together again!" Gina, so sad and sorry, says no. He thinks, as she stares at the table, and then abruptly rises: "I can't do this anymore." She won't fulfill his sexual fantasies of being with Natasi, due to the PTSD; she won't help him play dollhouse on New Caprica -- what use is she? Won't be a virgin, can't be a whore. What else could she be? Nothing. What is her suicide to Baltar's greatest triumph? Nothing. She's a robot. She's not even the girl he loved, just a fracked-up broken version of the truth of her. He heads for the door.
Gina breathes in. Takes in air. Chokes it out again: "Stay." He turns, parts of his body flipping around on him faster than others, and she steels herself. Slowly, she unbuttons her shirt, shivering in this. At the door he watches, unbelieving. Her shudders are audible. Her back is so thin, still, covered in scars. She stands, locks eyes with him as she crosses the quarters to her bedroom. In the shadows, she unzips her slacks. Looking at her back, he begins to undress, heated. She's a robot. She's a Cylon. She's the enemy. She's the ghost of the woman he loved. She takes her time. He didn't know she was a Cylon when he loved her before. Didn't know she wasn't alive. This is a memory of a fantasy; sex with the Devil himself. Gina reaches for Baltar's hand as their song begins to play. She does not smile, only looks into his eyes, full of longing and pain and love. She reaches out to touch him, leans in to kiss him. This is the first time, for both of them.
We cut back and forth from Cloud 9 to Colonial One, where Gaius takes on the mantle of the head of humanity even as he engages physically with humanity's destroyer. There's a priest on Colonial One, wearing ridiculous vestments and unfurling a scroll. Gaius repeats after him: "I, Gaius Baltar, do now avow and affirm." Baltar and Gina kiss, in the shadows, in slow motion; his hands across her scarred back. "That I take the office of the President of the Twelve Colonies of Kobol, without any moral reservation or mental evasion." In the small crowd, Laura looks away. On Cloud 9, Gina cries as Baltar lays her down, kissing her. "That I will protect and defend the articles of Colonization with every fiber of my being." There's a heavily-encoded moment where he takes on the body politic, and that of its enemy, in the same moment; she kisses his neck; the priest congratulates Baltar as "Mr. President." There is applause. I never really felt like I entirely got Gaius until now -- maybe I was too scared to think about it -- but I don't think he knows the difference. He finally got Gina, finally got the Presidency. Finally got Laura, and Adama. Kara, Lee, Natasi. He doesn't know the difference. We're all equally fucked, and we all equally hate it, all shudder at his touch. And that's the last thing on his mind. Gaius Baltar wins.
Gina sits naked before an open suitcase, listening to the radio, to the beeping of her bomb. It's over. Baltar thanks the public, the Colonies, "with humility and gratitude." He begs them all to quiet down for one more sign of his magnanimity. "And now," he says with a flourish, "because it was the first will of the people, I'm going to sign my first executive order." Laura and Adama drop their eyes as he signs it. "...Requiring the Fleet to immediately establish settlements on the planet we have come to know as...New Caprica!" Gina weeps, and we come around, seeing the bomb for the first time, beeping, its red eye blinking. Adama steps forward, and Gaius stands a little straighter: "You have your orders." The beeping and the drums cross, build, and we see Cloud 9 floating, exploding, taking out nearby ships. Shrapnel hits our camera, which swings around on its axis, and there is static. The show's over, the camera breaks before our eyes. The show we've been watching for two seasons and a miniseries? That's over.
Fade in on the chapter -- which is awesome -- Gaius on Colonial One, looking over a confidential report as Admiral Adama debriefs his President: "We suspect the warhead was stolen from your lab, then smuggled aboard Cloud 9 by a Cylon agent." Their positions are reversed, now, and now Baltar is the one in power, the one who says what does and does not get investigated. He's sick at Gina's death. "I don't suppose I could interest you in a cup of tea, Admiral?" he manages. "Ambrosia? A biscuit?" Adama warns that this explosion might be the first step in a coordinated Cylon attack, but Gaius knows better. Adama advises that they should focus on internal security, but Baltar's got tears in his eyes, and speaks as if in a trance: "Our first priority is to the people. See that they are safely established on New Caprica. Once that's accomplished..." he sniffs, and actually wipes away a tear. "We can put this tragedy behind us." Adama protests that Baltar's not listening, but Baltar slowly looks up at him: "I don't have to listen. I'm the President." Which is I think a callback, in addition to being an external reference, but I can't find it. He sips his tea for the fourth time in the scene. I don't think he's got a lot of tea in there: "The settlement begins, and it begins now." Adama leaves, and Gaius stares at him. We back away from the President, not in a smooth track but in a couple of cuts, and consider him, all alone in Colonial One, Gina dead, his head in his hands. He sighs, and a new song begins to play. It's beautiful. Violin and percussion, piano. He breathes into his hands. How come Gaius always gets the best music? We track back in on him, focusing closer and closer, until it's just the thatch of his newly-conditioned hair.
...And fade back to his hair, some more. Gaeta's voice rings out: "Mr. President. President Baltar. Good morning, sir. Good morning, sir." Baltar groans and raises his head, and looks twice as shitty as ever. "Mr. President, the Union needs their answer," needles Gaeta as, behind Baltar, a hooker in the bedroom suite gets dressed. The doorway to Baltar's private chambers is hung with opulent swags; he's replaced Roslin's functional teacher furniture with very manly oak desks and tables; he's replaced the White Board with a portrait of himself. "The union," he groans. "If it's not the union, it's the Quorum. If it's not the Quorum, it's the people's council." We take him in, and learn that it is ONE YEAR LATER. And that's not a joke, or a dream, or anything other than the step in a wonderful adventure. "We survived a nuclear holocaust, Mr. Gaeta. And the people complain about the weather." Gaeta's hair has gone gray; I bet that didn't take a year, working for this jackass. "Sir, it's hardly the weather," Gaeta starts, but Baltar waves him off: "Well, whatever it is." He leans back, looking snaky, looking angry, looking self-satisfied. Looking kind of blotto. He shares a cigarette with the hooker, who has nasty fake boobs and is somewhat more dressed. "How many Cylon attacks have there been since I took office?" he asks, raising his voice. "How many?" Gaeta looks at Baltar, at the woman, back to Baltar: "None, sir." "Precisely. So why do the people complain? Tell the union to get off their fat asses and do some fracking work for a change, or I'll start rounding up their leaders and holding them in detention. I doubt they'll like that very much." Gaeta's so grossed out. "I'll tell them, Mr. President," he says, and takes off. The prostitute takes a seat on a couch, with a blonde woman, to whom Baltar addresses a grunted "'Morning" before going looking for his pills. He thumbs open the bottle and snaps a couple back. Out the window, as crazy music plays, we see a settlement. A tent city, from here to the horizon.
Battlestar Galactica: Orbital Defense Patrol. 380 days since Colonization. There are several shots of her dead hangar, dead steerage, dead hallways. Adama walks through a ghostly hallway, stops under a flickering, buzzing light, now wearing a mustache. It's creepy, the ghost ship. He stares up, then down: his girl is dying.
Voice-Over Adama: "I'm telling you to go, okay?" We're in his quarters, sitting at a table with Tigh. "No, it's not okay." Tigh's at a loss, lighting a cigarette and looking pained. "I feel like I'm abandoning my post," he says, but Adama smiles kindly. "It's time to pack it in, Saul. You know it. More than half the crew is down there on the ground already. We can barely put a squadron in the air to train, much less fly a decent CAP. We're not really doing too much up here anymore." Tigh protests that Adama's staying, but Adama just says that somebody has to take care of the lighthouse. That's what the Fleet is now. Tigh's never been just a guy. Adama pulled him out of nothing and gave him a purpose. And now Adama's taking it away again. Tigh's terrified: "Then I'll stay and take care of it with you!" Adama protests that there's "only one person per lighthouse," and I don't know if that's a literal Baltar decree or a colloquialism, but Tigh's not having it: "We both know the Cylons could still show up." Bill points out that they've now been on New Caprica longer than they spent running. "I don't think they're coming back anymore," he says. And I don't think he's being an idiot, or a pussy: his job was to get these people home, alive, and he's done that. Why should he go looking for trouble, or seeing ghosts in the shadows? The Big Lie worked. They lived. They're safe. Now, Saul, would be the time for a "What the hell?" But none comes. Adama stands, and they shake. He wishes Tigh luck, and hugs him so tight, Tigh nearly crying. Adama cracks a joke about how, if Ellen gives Saul "too much trouble," he should find himself "a younger one." Tigh laughs, almost cries, and heads out. Adama sits and takes out a cigarette. Crazy Olmos Improv Alert! He opens his lighter, then tears the filter off the cigarette and lights it. He's tired too.
We cut to New Caprica City, facing Colonial One sitting like a toad at the edge of the settlement. Population 39,192. I don't know how much of that drop is people Gina killed, and how many people are still orbiting. Somebody comes over the PA about food rations, and everywhere there are hippies in ponchos, big knitted scarves, silly hats. It's like if Burning Man and Sundance had a dirty, ugly baby: it looks like hell. ["That's certainly my idea of it." -- Wing Chun] A blonde woman emerges from the crowd, with long blonde hair, looking for "Sam." It's Kara! She finds Anders on a makeshift Pyramid court, coughing and playing. Kara starts yelling that she's been looking everywhere. He gets sacked and coughs and laughs from the ground. "Doc Cottle is here," she tells him. "You're sick. You're supposed to be in bed." She picks him up from the ground, pissed, as he complains that he'd rather work it out on the court than lie in bed all day. "I can't believe I married a moron," she harps, as he doubles over at her side. "Are you okay?" she asks him. He stands and protests that he's fine as she supports him across the camp, to their home.
Which is a shitty tent. Kara tends to Anders as Doc Cottle wraps up his exam, and then she follows Doc out of the tent, begging him for info. "There's fluid in the lungs," he tells her. "It's probably pneumonia." She really does look beautiful. Well, she always does. "So give him something," she demands. Cottle says he'd love to, but that he's been "out of antibiotics for months." I get that we've jumped into a junky, shitty future, but if you're telling me Cottle's turning tricks.... "So what, that's it?" she says, desperate. "I have a lot of patients to see," Cottle tells her. "But he's young and he's strong. So make him rest. Keep him warm. And with a little luck, he'll make it." He turns to go, and Kara stands alone in the crowd: "Son of a bitch." She looks over at her marital tent, and then notices Ellen and Saul making their way through the crowd. As usual, Ellen looks amazing. Saul looks old, like an old man, in a knit hat and civvies. Who is he now? Kara smiles and laughs, happy to see them.
Kara follows Ellen and Saul into a tent, where Tyrol is attempting to lead a union meeting. He's got more beard than before, and some glasses. He looks earnest, like a park ranger. Like the state of Maine: "Please just calm down. Everybody listen just for a second," he asks again and again of the angry crowd. Finally the young woman to him -- who is fucking Cally -- screams, "Shut the frack up!" Because she's so "motherfracking" spunky and indomitable and it's just so counterintuitive that such a young-looking, small girl would have such a mouth on her and aren't basic reversals of expectation just so fucking hilarious and heartwarming every fucking time you see them repeated over and over and over? Nothing like the comfort of a one-note character you can pretend to have a crush on. I hope the whole crowd instantly shuts up when she does that! That would be so awesome! They did? I might have to hit pause while I adore that fresh little moment. ("Why's Jacob so weirdly mad at Cally?" "Um, because Nicki Clyne is actually a really good actress, yet this is a character Daryl Hannah would feel saddled with?" "No, actually it's because I feel like if I abuse her just enough, maybe she'll marry me.") Angle on her huge belly, which she looks down at sixteen times and rubs continually. Admittedly, that would be a cute kid -- and I would love it if, once Hera starts doing whatever weird shit they have planned for her, Tyrol went nuts again and went after Cally's baby: "I fear that you are carrying a Cybrid!" Chief speechifies that when he was elected Union President, he promised to keep everybody working, "benefits flowing," that he would keep this city alive. As he attends to the crowd, Kara grabs Saul at the back of the tent and hugs him hard. Ellen too, who gushes that the whole New Caprica thing -- a fucking year later! -- is "pretty exciting." Kara's like, "Yeah, that wears off."
Kara explains that they're all very upset about Baltar in this tent, and then leans in to Tigh: "Sir, Anders is really sick. But Doc Cottle's giving me the runaround and says there's no antibiotics." Tigh looks at Ellen, then back to Kara, still so fresh from the boat. "And that's a load of crap," Kara says. "Anything you can do to help me cut through the red tape." It's not that she's talking to Tigh, at all -- it's her eyes, so desperate, the begging. This is worse than "Scar." She, presumably, left the Fleet to play house with Anders like a grownup would, and now here she is begging like a prole. This is one of the saddest moments for me, in this episode, to see her brought so...not low. She's just human, in trouble, scared and in love, and asking for help. Like a human being, like a scared woman. It's somehow the detail that brings the whole thing on. Tigh tells her to call Lee -- that Pegasus is "sitting on the backup meds" (interesting), but that Lee would surely "spring some" for Kara. She's so hard, and so sad: "Yeah. I doubt that." Colonel Saul Tigh looks at Captain Kara Thrace with love, and sadness, and pity. It's been a long fucking year. "That was a long time ago," he tells her. "People change." She meets his eyes and, foiled, runs off desperately. Ellen and Saul, worried for her, watch Tyrol do a spot-on Mario Savio. Aaron Douglas studied video of him for this (so did I, because I didn't want to be all film-student and just say that without checking it out): "...But there comes a time when you realize that the engine you've built with your blood, and your sweat, and your tears, is being used for something so foul, so perverted that it makes you sick in your heart." Ellen and Saul look at each other and think about catching the Raptor skyward and just begging Adama to let them stay on Galactica. Clearly this place is troubled. "...And it's then that you must throw your body on the gears, and on the levers, and on the machine itself -- and make it stop. And you have to show the people who run it, the people who control it, that unless we're free, that machine will be prevented from working at all." My word. Saul and Ellen are now completely freaked, because when Chief goes to the machine metaphors, it's bad news. All around them, the tired and hungry begin to shout, "Strike! Strike! Strike! Strike!" So I guess Baltar's going to put them all in internment camps. If he can get there first.
Maya watches the rally from outside the school tent, and comes back in, as Laura's teaching the children. Maya leans in and says quietly, and somewhat gleefully, "I think the President has a bit of a problem on his hands." Laura smiles. She and Maya have an easy friendship. Laura continues to instruct the kids, telling them to check out the chapter on the Twelve Colonies, and grins at Maya: "The President's problems are not our problems, are they?" They laugh a bit, and Maya addresses the kids: "That's right. Our problems are homework for everyone tonight," and they smile indulgently as the children shout. It's nice to see Laura in her element -- or I guess what she would have said was her element. I thought she was a pretty good President, all things considered. Roslin lets most of the kids go, and sends Maya and the baby home. Maya lifts the Cybrid from her cradle -- a cradle we've seen before -- and calls her "Isis."
Kara makes her way through the crowd, through food for sale, through the very real and very squalid tent city. She enters a Raptor and switches it on, dusty and tired and sad. She sits, unsure, and finally picks up the headset.
Lee finishes those noodles his father always liked when he was a Commander, and makes his way down the corridor toward Pegasus CIC. He is fat, and the hair he's kicking looked way better on Billy. "Oh, hey," he says to the glowering Dualla. "What's going on?" Dualla says he has a call, but wanders off, irritated, when he asks twice who's calling. "Right," he says, finally getting it. He takes the call: "What do you want?" Damn. That hurts. "...I need a favor," says Starbuck. Lee meets Dualla's eyes, and asks Starbuck, "Is that right?" She says she's heard that he's hoarding meds for the pilots, and Dualla -- hair long, eyes popping even more than usual, arms folded -- watches Lee wonder how she would know that. Starbuck: "Anders is sick. He has pneumonia, Lee. I think that he might die." Before Lee can answer, Dualla calls his attention to the board: "Commander." He tells Kara to hold, and Dualla tells him she's got something on dradis. "Dradis? How can you see anything in that soup?" One unknown vessel shows up, flickering in and out. "Wait, what is that?" They stare. Three, seven, ten, fifteen, thirty Raiders appear on dradis. "Oh, my Gods, it's a Cylon fleet," Dualla exclaims. "They found us. They found us." Out in orbit, a fleet of Raiders and Basestars jump in. Lee contacts his father on Galactica: "We have to get out of here, sir." Adama doesn't want to leave the settlers behind. "There's nothing we can do," says Lee. "It's taken us forever just to get to action stations over here. We're in no shape for a fight, sir." The alarms are going off on both ships as Adama protests that New Caprica will be wiped out. "We don't have a choice," Lee says intensely. "We need to get out of here right now." Helo -- now the XO on Galactica, which I'm hoping automatically means Sharon's onboard too -- alerts Adama that all the Galactica decks are reporting condition one, and Adama thinks, looking at the screen full of Cylons. "Begin jump prep. We're leaving. But we'll be back." He tells Lee to jump, and looks at Helo. The Fleet jumps away.
Colonial One. Baltar lies in the laps of his lovely ladies. Gaeta comes running in yelling, and Baltar tells him to quiet down. Gaeta calls him "Gaius," and tells him that the Cylons have jumped in, and that the Fleet has jumped out. Baltar puts all of this together, as the Raider fleet overhead shakes the bottles and glasses on his coffee table. The hookers are getting nervous. In his open shirt, Baltar crawls over to a window, looks out at the sky full of Raiders. "Judgment Day," says the voice of Six. He looks over to her, sitting in the chair of the President. She quirks a smile at him. It is pretty awesome.
Ellen and Saul and Laura stare up at the sky, down in New Caprica City; Laura ushers the remaining kids inside and ties the doors of the tent closed. ["Yes, you'll be perfectly safe in your...tent. Don't forget to duck and cover!" -- Wing Chun]
Anders wakes up to Leoben, out of focus, standing over him: "I'm looking for Kara Thrace." Anders coughs and sits up, as Leoben comes into full focus.
Chief and Cally exit the Union tent; Kara joins them. They stare at the Raiders overhead. So many.
Baltar's staff is arranged behind him, across the back wall. He sits at the Presidential desk looking troubling amounts of awful. I heard he pulled a Hoffman and very professionally gave himself a killer hangover for this scene. He looks like he's dying. The forward doors open, and bright light fills the foyer. Doral enters slowly, wearing blue. Hero Sharon enters behind him, her hair soft, wearing black. They're scary again. The Cylons are scary again, and I can't remember the last time I felt that way. Hero Six brings up the rear, in slate with a black jacket, looking very different from any other Six, but still instantly recognizable as Natasi, because Tricia Helfer rules. She is touched by the sight of Gaius. He meets their gaze with tears in his eyes, the booming sound of the Raiders overhead. Gaeta watches him as he stands to greet them. "I'm Gaius Baltar. President of the Colonies." Six nearly smiles: "I know who you are, Gaius." He almost recognizes her as well. She looks away from his stare, and adds, "I know very well." Sharon speaks up: "As long as you offer no resistance, you won't be harmed." Baltar looks at Gaeta, who is disgusted, and looks down, slapped: "How do I know that?" Doral smirks, of course. "You don't. You also don't have any choice." Baltar turns to his right, unable to meet another staffer's eye: "How did you find us?" Doral smiles, almost: "Oh, it was quite by accident, actually." Six watches him speak. "We were over a light-year away from here, when we detected the radiation signature of a nuclear detonation." It's been 380 days, so they jumped back right away. It took just long enough to settle. The dradis interference on New Caprica worked. So did the bomb. I don't blame Gina. I blame Pegasus. Think about it. Baltar looks up, down, everywhere, almost over with, as Sharon and Six watch him. Six seems to sympathize. How can she? Baltar has brought humanity to its knees twice now. Both times, by trying to help. Both times, by trying to be a hero to his people. But because of his weakness and his selfishness, he's been denied again. This time for good. He stares at them, tears in his eyes. Everybody's TiVo stops at this point -- perhaps he catches Six's eye. He makes the call, and the aides all stare at each other: "Very well. On behalf of the people of the Twelve Colonies, I surrender."
Immediate cut to the humans, on either side of a street through the settlement, as Centurions march down, in unending numbers, moving slowly and terribly, just silver and clanking all the way back. Saul and Ellen watch them progress, her hand over her mouth. Roslin stares, barren and full of rage. The Raiders continue overhead, lacing a contrail grid over the city. Cally and Chief stand with Kara: "What do you want to do now, Captain?" And we close up, drums going crazy, on a different Caprica, but the same Starbuck: "The same thing we always do. Fight them until we can't."
THE END. Immediately as the credits start to roll, a SciFi promo hits the screen; a woman's voice over shots of the cast, and all the Cylons we know, set to poundy drums, breathtaking in its enormity:
"Humanity has surrendered, the war is finally over. We must now fulfill our true destiny -- so we will love them, and take care of them. Show them the glory of peace. And, like God, our infinite mercy will be matched only by our power. And complete control."
Whoa. I get kind of choky just looking at that. It's a big deal. Too big. I don't necessarily see a distinction, or a contradiction, between the end of "Downloaded" and what we just saw happen. The only line that sticks out is the "go our separate ways" one from the Cavils, and even that was immediately contradicted by the "we have new plans" stuff. I think we're getting a new beginning, all right, one without jealousy, or murder, or vengeance. I think the Cylon are making up for their apocalyptic mistake the best way they can: by doing what they were built for. By serving mankind, by showing them the way, by giving us all a way to live in God's love, without hate or lies. What it said on the tin, basically. You can crush a people with love just as easily as with hate, if that "love" is a blunt instrument you don't truly understand. Or, as with Baltar, or even Cally, if that "love" is more about establishing who you are, if you haven't figured that out yet. Their God, their rules. They're a young race. I think it was fun pretending the Fleet, or the Geminese, or at least Pegasus, was ugly America, the scary part of America. But take it to a global level, and you have to reverse it. I just don't like to see anybody caged. I hate it, because I don't want them hurting. I don't want to know how bad it was, that year. How dirty and sad and terrified they were, or how many fell sick, or how nasty the weather could be. I don't want to know what happened between Kara and Lee, or why she left the Fleet, or why Laura knuckled under and gave up her political clout and prophet margin, or how long Anders has been sick, or what they did to Sharon, or how much it hurt Gaeta to see politics in action, or what happened to make Dualla so shiny and hard, or when exactly Lee stopped working out and started eating constant noodles, or what forced Chief into this position of righteous anger and frustration, or how sneaky Laura acted about Maya and the baby, or what strips of hide Gaius got in return for the election hijinks, or what they did to Cavil, or what awful shit Zarek's up to, or what the Geminese did after a couple of months of hard living and no salvation, or what the surrender monkeys got up to once they got bored, or how Gaeta could face Tigh, or Laura, or Dualla, or Adama. I don't want to know that stuff. I don't want to know how bad it's going to get, in October, when the people we love -- who are already entirely different people, but who we still love -- have been thoroughly caged. I don't want to see this dirty haven turned into a concentration camp. I don't want to see Bill and Lee cut off from everyone else they love. I don't want to see Laura disappointed. It hurts too much to even think about, and I don't want to know. But I need to know, and you do too. I love it, too, because it's awesome. It's shaking things up at the top of the game, before this looks like desperation: what's interesting is if they lose. What's interesting is if this continually developing, evolving, complex story turns back on itself, and asks a new question. These are the denials that make it matter -- knowing that we're never going to get the whole lost year back, knowing that none of it matters now, because they're all made new, and their circumstances have just changed pretty violently, and the whole game has changed, and knowing this: every love story is, first and foremost, a mystery.