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The occupation is four months in. Chief's insurgent group is running wild, blowing things up, and having a fabulous time. Tigh has been in detention for a while in Cylon jail, but he is released after Ellen hate-fucks Brother Cavil. The Resistance also has a mysterious contact within the Baltar administration who is not mysterious at all, because it's obviously Gaeta. Up in space, Lee's Towel makes a hideous reappearance, as does his nasty estrangement with his dad. Dualla is pretty cool and kind of tired of his whining. The Fleet is crappy even with Kat as CAG and Helo as Adama's XO. Roslin's still teaching and helping with the insurgents, and keeping a diary. Kara has been living in a house-like cell with Leoben, who's as culty as ever and is keeping her as a pet. She kills him for the fifth time over a lovely steak dinner, and would seem to have lost her entire mind. Sharon Agathon is now BFF with Bill Adama, and begs him to forgive himself for leaving during the occupation. DEMAND LOVE is getting not a whole lot of traction with the other Cylons, but there's still a lot of dissent among the Cylon ranks as far as what is actually the best plan of action. Cavil thinks they're all being big babies because they're scared of God; Boomer thinks they have a chance to synthesize both cultures and create a new utopia; Six is so confused she's fighting herself; Doral believes in smarm but now looks more like Lee than Lee does; Leoben is off being culty and creepy; and Three still hasn't done the yi-yi-yi. Contact is made with the Fleet after Gaeta passes Chief some radio frequency info, and that part is pretty misty-making in the eye area. Tigh is now fully nuts but making more sense than ever with his "this is this" and "that is that" approach to morality. Helo has gotten even hotter somehow, and the concentration camp life is really agreeing with Cally, who looks lovelier all the time. Jammer has joined the SS for real, and Duck has joined the SS in order to become a suicide bomber. Which he does, blowing up at the SS graduation ceremony under orders from Tigh in a room full of Cylons and graduates. Want more? The full recap starts right below!
Spotlight on the Cylons, images of them acting creepy as we learn that they evolved, there are many copies, and they have a plan. Previously, Leoben was scary and cultish, and was very obsessed with Starbuck. Lee was promoted to the command of the Pegasus, with Dualla as his XO. A new planet was found and named New Caprica, and its settlement was the platform that won Gaius Baltar the Presidency of the Colonies, because everybody was awfully tired. Colonel Saul Tigh and his wife Ellen loved each other very much, but in a way that was fracked. Duck and Nora loved each other in a way we don't know about at all, and then she died. After a year of the settlement on New Caprica, the Cylons were summoned by Gina's last middle finger, and Lee talked his father Bill into taking the remains of the Fleet out of orbit. Baltar surrendered the planet to the Cylons, and humanity became inmates in a concentration camp as big as the world, and Leoben came and found Kara.
Tigh sits in a jail cell, curled and skinny, scrabbling with his hands and fingers. Ellen kind of graphically bones a mystery man, her hands on his chest. Laura Roslin lights a candle with her hands, praying for salvation. Chief Galen Tyrol builds a bomb with his hands. Bill Adama plays out war scenarios on the model table, moving Vipers and Basestars with his hands. And in a strange apartment, Kara fights another battle, arranging plates and forks for dinner. Placing them exactly. Saul's hands scratch out a calendar mark on his cell wall. His eye is gone. He scuttles like a spider. The man Ellen's fucking rises and falls; his face is on the other side of a giant brandy snifter. Her face is infinitely tired and sad. Roslin prays, with all the grace and strength she can muster. Adama slides a ship into position; dashes all the tiny ships across space in frustration. The poundy drums come in as Chief and Anders affix their bomb upon a wall. Kara sits and raises a fork before her eyes; one tine goes ting. Everything is perfect.
The door of Tigh's cell creaks and Saul cowers against the wall, to cover his calendar. Brother Cavil enters, sits astride a chair, puts on mirrorshades, clears his throat, and laughs at him. "Do you know that every time they take you out of this cell we come in here and we change those little hash marks? On your little calendar there, that you're trying to hide?" Tigh's face is reflected back in the glasses. What's left of it. He smells like shit and torture. Somewhere Cavil is fucking his wife, getting off on her hatred. He smiles down at Tigh, who is small.
Leoben brings Kara: potatoes, gravy, "even some carrots." From the farms that represent a beautiful future for Cylon and human alike, somewhere far away. She sits at the table and a heavy raider flies over, shaking the house. Leoben smiles and she stares back; he sits down and she stares back. Her hair is very long and she looks very beautiful and very empty. She looks down reverently as he begins to pray to his scary alien God: "Heavenly Father, we thank You for the bounty of this table... "
Ellen fucks Cavil hard and calls him a son of a bitch; his cries are loud and not anything I was ever interested in hearing. He laughs grossly as she climbs off and pulls her panties up.
Chief and Anders are in a port or something, the Heavy Raider sound carrying us from scene to scene and landing here. They behind some junk and watch her come down.
Kara watches Leoben begin to eat; he notices and looks at her. "I need a knife," she says quietly, ashamed. He comes around the table and cuts her steak for her, like a child. She stares up. "Thank you." He finishes and looks at her tiny smile. "You're welcome." She watches his hands.
Ellen's dressed, face all fracked up, back to Cavil, who assures her he quite enjoyed that. She smiles hatefully, seductively. "I'm so glad." Without turning around: "... And when do I get what I want?" Right now, he says. She'll trade that thing she gives freely for the part of her that stays free, no matter how broken he's become. She's the only person I approve of this week. Which is generally how it goes, with Ellen and me.
Cavil taps his hands upon the chair, looking down at Tigh with his glasses on. "We reviewed your case today, and I must say there was great disappointment on the review committee." Tap tap tap. He drags -- not carries -- the chair out, leaving Tigh in a beam of light, in the corner, all alone. The door's still open; Tigh looks at it and Cavil jumps back into the doorway; Tigh flinches with his entire body. "Colonel, come on. I'm not going to hold this door open forever." He stands; he can hardly walk. Outside, his wife waits for him. She spots him and shouts his name, running to him with all the love and care she can muster. The ways she can show him how much she loves him, when so much of what she's done for him must be secret. She cries out, "What did they do to you?" He shakes his head: "I'm out. That's all that matters." They limp home.
In the bay, Chief and Anders watch a Six and an Eight, looking around creepily as they walk toward a Raider; there are Centurions everywhere. "Now," says Anders, low, and the bomb doesn't immediately go off. They stress out; eventually it connects and blows the Raider and the Cylons to hell. They cheer: "galen" means "physician" but this is surgery. This is the part of him that stays free. This is the part of Anders that kept him alive for a year. Ellen and Tigh watch from the center of town as black smoke rises, beyond the detention center.
"Fracking insurgents," Leoben says, standing at the window with the knife still in his hands. He comes back around the table and stands at her side, looking at her face. "You look so lovely tonight," he says, smiling pathetically. He touches her face and she doesn't react; she pulls a pair of knitting needles from beneath her seat cushion. They go all the way through his neck and out the other side. She pushes him, choking and gasping, to the floor, and climbs on top. She stabs him over and over, finally leaving the needles in his chest. As he's dying, she leans in, her hair hanging down, framing his face. "I'll see you soon, Kara," he gasps. "Take your time," she grunts. She wipes his blood off on the carpet, palm down and then the back. She sits back down at the table, hands covered in his blood, and practically hums as she cuts herself a piece of steak and daintily wipes her mouth. This is not at all the most fucked-up thing that is going to happen to her this week, but it's a strong first move in that particular competition.
When they found New Caprica they just wanted to rest: Kara was tired of the bullshit with Lee and Dualla, so she settled down with her true love Anders and became a wife. Laura was tired of the bullshit with Gaius, so she settled down with Maya and the baby and went back to being a teacher. Chief was tired of the bullshit with his suicidal ideation and leftover feelings about Boomer and Sharon, so he settled down with Cally and became a father. Tigh was tired of the bullshit with the war and he was tired, so he settled down with his wife and tried to figure out their marriage for the first time. Gaius was tired of the burden of having engineered the genocide of humanity, and so he left Gina behind and let himself believe he was a hero: the leader of the first generation of the human world. They were so tired. They just wanted to lay down their burdens for a little while, and they all got what they wanted. For a year. And now it's become more true than true, extending into delirious and sickening madness: Kara's wife and mother to something so much worse than Anders, trapped in a sick parody of the life she tried to construct for herself. Laura's reduced herself to a position of no power at all, and only watches and tries to help the Resistance without falling into its craziness herself. Chief's life is about to get simpled up with a quickness, and nothing he does can help the settlement stay clean. Tigh's marriage is doing better than ever before, as long as he doesn't allow himself to notice that his wife is hate-fucking evil robots. And Gaius is about to fuck things up so bad that even he can't write it off as heroism.
It's the 134th day of the Occupation, Laura writes on Marsday. Which is fitting, she says, because perpetual war is the only possibility. She lists her prayers: "I refuse to believe Adama has abandoned us," she says. Though the insurgents' attacks sometimes seem futile, they are still critical for morale and for the existence of hope on New Caprica. That reminder of the possibility of resistance. The step is to hit a "high-profile target," obviously a human target, but she's thinking around and not about that: they can't really kill the Cylons, because they don't die. They resurrect themselves to "walk among us," she says, calling this "horrifying." And the Occupation authority continues, in complete control.
The voice-over goes on and on forever but doesn't really tell you anything you didn't know. It's so nice to hear her voice. Three (the Xena one) walks towards Colonial One as Roslin utters Baltar's name with intense disgust: his leadership is in name only. Three joins a parliament of Cylons in Gaius's office on Colonial One: Cavils, Dorals, Threes, Sixes and Eights. Cavil lectures them: "Let's review why we're here, shall we?" Everybody's got a different shade of meaning here, though. Cavil sees it humorously: they're on New Caprica to bring the word of God to the people, to save the humans from damnation by bringing them the love of God. DEMAND LOVE speaks up: Caprica Six -- remember, Gaius's baby-snapping lover back in the Colonies -- fairly spits at this. "We're here because a majority of the Cylon felt that the slaughter of mankind had been a mistake." Boomer -- remember, Chief's old Brokeback lover that was killed by his new one -- agrees: "We're here to find a new way to live in peace, as God wants us to live." Cavil agrees that it's been a fun ride, but he -- and for our benefit, since the Cylons have never really made any sense at all, which is what's so awesome about religious imperialism -- wants to "clarify our objectives." Please. Three and Doral, who seem to be leaders a lot of the time, look at each other.
"It follows," says a Cavil, "that we should employ any means necessary. Fear is a key article of faith, as I understand it," he says, and offers that their primary goal, given the insurgency, should be to put fear into the hearts and minds of the human population. DEMAND LOVE is not feeling this. Cavil turns suddenly and points at Gaius, who's been at his desk this whole time, useless. "Let's execute Gaius Baltar," he says. "WHAT?" screams Gaius; I'm saying let's hear him out.
Everybody looks at Gaius and then stares at each other. "That's not gonna happen," says Caprica, and Cavil smiles at her: "Just because he's your favorite toy," he says, it shouldn't interfere with "the larger issues." Gaius tries to get sassy about how he's been very good at cooperating, and Caprica stares Three down: "Gaius is with me. Anyone who wants to challenge that will have to deal with me." It makes Three sad. Doral speaks up, saying it wouldn't help. "If we'd killed him at the beginning, it might have worked." Another Doral explains that now all the humans hate him, as a traitor, and would cheer his death. I really, really like Doral this season. Not only is he funny and mean, but he got all of Lee's surplus cuteness. Cavil's like, "Okay, not Gaius, but maybe some insurgent leaders? Or random people from the street? We could execute them in public!" Cavil is so fucking scary. "The insurgency stops now, or we start reducing the human population to a more manageable size. Say, less than a thousand." Dang.
Boomer raises her voice, saying that no, what they "need" to do is stop being butchers and creeps, and Caprica reminds everybody that the entire point of coming here was to start a new way of life, again. "To push past the conflict that separated us from the humans for so long!" Cavil laughs and says they're all living in a fantasy world if they think that's possible; he giggles at the irony of "delusional machines." I love how he's the only one that can mention that shit openly. "By the way, bitches? We're totally robots!" They've really done a good job with giving these seven (twelve) factions voices and consistent viewpoints on the occupation. That's, like, impossible, but they pulled it off. Cavils and Dorals take off, and Three pulls Caprica aside to ask her if "the love of that man" is worth losing all this. Instead of laughing and saying "all what, exactly," which is what I said, she just says that if Three had ever experienced love, she wouldn't have to ask. Three makes a sad thinky face, and it occurs to me that she is going to end up going five times as crazy as anybody else on this show. And it is going to be awesome.
Roslin explains to us about the New Caprica Police and how despicable she finds it -- "humans doing the dirty work of the Cylons" -- over images of them suiting up. Some of them, she worries, are people -- like Jammer -- you might least expect. "Hundreds have been rounded up, held, questioned, tortured... others have simply vanished." But, we're told, a mysterious contact "within Baltar's administration" has been flipping over the food bowl of a dog named Jake (shout-out!) and leaving clearly labeled information in a secret place. Since "Baltar's administration" amounts to: Felix Gaeta, I don't know why the episode wants it to be a secret. Sometimes it doesn't feel like it does, actually, so it's confusing. "Thank the Gods for those that fight. They have everything to lose, and little hope of something to gain." Resistance, anything but submission: Roslin knows instinctively how you stay free.
Under this latest voice-over, Chief grabs the info from the secret place: clearly labeled security plans for the NCP graduation ceremony. He heads home, where Cally -- looking very beautiful -- lies in bed with their baby. A bright wooden mobile hangs down over his crib. "Sometimes," she says, looking down at Baby Nick in her arms, "I hate everything about this place, but sometimes it's magic." She kisses Chief and he nuzzles her shoulder. After a moment of peace he sighs: "Gotta go. Couple of hours." She is frightened and voices her fear that one day, he won't come back. Just vanish, and she'll never see him again, and Baby Nick will never know his father. She's spent this entire series afraid that Chief will disappear. I give her credit for that. He promises he'll come back, and leaves, and she lies with the baby, holding his tiny hand in hers.
Under a pallet, under a carpet, into a trapdoor and down a ladder, into a hidden dark bunker, Tigh joins Anders and the Chief. They drink nasty hooch and welcome Tigh back. Over his head, Chief and Anders OMG about the patch over Tigh's eye. "I know you're wondering: the eye's gone." Right out onto the floor. "They picked it up and showed it to me. Looked like a hardboiled egg." You laugh when you can. It's not very funny. He brings up the explosion that afternoon: "Hope that was you two." Anders admits it was, and that they took out a Heavy Raider. (Awesome! I totally guessed that's what that was! I guess there is a spaceship learning curve after all. I'm sure I'll screw up something momentarily, though.) Tigh is pleased with the graduation schematics, and Chief says they've been getting these excellent little presents for weeks now. (So what was Gaeta doing the months before that?) Merely mentioning the NCP makes Anders wanna puke, because in every scene somebody's gotta almost puke about the NCP because it's so very bad. Chief worries about taking out Baltar without a lot of collateral damage, and Tigh gets very crusty and loud and crazy. "No boundaries for them, no boundaries for us!" Gross.
Anders stares at his creepy ass and Tigh hobbles around on his cane to the wireless. Chief explains that, according to plan, they've been trying to contact a Raptor in orbit every day at the same time, but that the Cylons always jam the transmission. He says he's at least asked the source for the jamming frequencies, but then Anders goes all Tigh on their asses. "There is no Raptor. There never was. The Galactica is not coming back. They're not. Accept it." So I guess we can see how he can be all crazy in Tigh's crazy Osama world, or at least see where he's coming from, since he's already played the Wait & See game back on Regular Caprica. Tigh yells. "Watch your frackin' mouth! There's a Raptor, every day, listening. That's the plan. The old man isn't just going to leave us to the Cylons." Um, "'The old man' left me to the Cylons," Anders reminds him. "If it wasn't for my wife being a royal pain in the ass and refusing to let it go, I'd be dead a year now." Tigh gets up in his face and you think he's going to punch him, but his poor old face goes heartbroken: "Any word on Kara?" Nothing. "In four months." Anders looks down; Tigh is sad. Everything you wanted: Kara and Saul to realize how much ground they share between them, all those silly old rivalries laid down. Everything you want, in the ugliest way possible.
Kara looks at the needled corpse of Leoben in the night of her apartment, her eyes wet. I like to think that they had to do this not only because of the fantasy-fulfilled thing, or because of how it pushes every button you can have as the child of an abusive parent, but also because: if she were free, she'd take them all out. She's too powerful, so she had to be taken off the board, and both Leoben Conoy and Ronald Moore know this. She could so beat all their asses, she could save everybody, if she weren't locked up. I don't really believe that's true, I know it isn't, but it's a choice, because sometimes you have to think things that aren't true, or else it just gets too hard. A to B to C: I love her; so she doesn't belong here, blunted and stained and helpless; so clearly this is due to her being a superhero. If he didn't have her locked up, she'd fly out of there like a ninja, straight to a Viper, and take them all out and beat everybody up, and then she could take everybody home, and they'd be safe forever.
Leoben lets himself in and she goes still. "Hi honey, I'm home!" He stalks down the stairs, smiling lightly at her in the half-light. "You kill me, I download, I come back. We start over. Five times now." The body looms. He smiles and sits down calmly across from her, speaking earnestly. "I'm trying to help you, Kara. I only want you to see the truth of your life. The reason why you suffered and you struggled for so long. That's why God sent me to you, and that's why God wants us to be together." Everything except the last dependent clause is cool, and true. Literally true. But the last one makes my tummy hurt. She searches his crazy crazy face for awhile. "You're right." He does a crazy robot version of a double take and she almost smiles at him. "You're right, and I hear you. I do. So thank you." She reaches out, leans in. "Thank you for putting up with me. I'm so sorry... " He interrupts her without looking at her face. "Put it down, Kara." She smiles, suddenly a madwoman, gleaming like a diamond. She idly holds the knife out, toward his face. "Just put it down." She drops it, point-first; it drops into the carpet and twangs there in the floor. "I'm a patient man," he begins, and she smiles -- almost like Kara, like the one we knew before -- and interrupts: "You're not a man." The part that stays free is disobedience. They discuss how she just needs more time, that eventually she's going to hold him, and embrace him, and tell him she loves him. "I've seen it." She snaps back to reality for a second and shakes her head: "You're insane." Anything to know she's still in there; anything to know the bird's still alive and he hasn't gotten her yet. Anything to know she's still fighting. He smiles weirdly. "To know the face of God is to know madness." He picks up the knife and looks up into her face, says he's going to bed, tries for a kiss -- she jerks back -- and then invites her to come with him. He makes a creepy sniffing noise and stands up: "Either way you're spending the night with me." She's horrified and grossed out, and the body looms. "I do love you, Kara Thrace," he says. I believe him; it's horrible. I hate the Dancing Girl story so, so much. Every third Nazi, seems like, would do this: take a girl and dress her up pretty. I can't do it; it's Starbuck for Christ's sake. He takes off and she goes nuts, tearing up the stairs and out the door -- and into the cell bars that cage her fake house in. And she begins to scream: "Let me out of here! I don't belong here! Let me out!"
The Fleet -- what's left of it -- runs practice drills as Adama walks around Galactica all alone, putting things right, the placement of objects. Outside they form up, Racetrack and Galactica's CAG, Kat, on point, with the Admiral watching every move. They do spaceship things, in space, I don't know what. Something happens and everybody yells at each other and Kat aborts the maneuver. Helo, the Galactica XO, acknowledges the abort and notes she's running out of fuel. Bill says not to bring them in, but to send out the "tanker bird" so they can use this time to practice refueling in space. Helo worries: they've already run this drill sixteen times now. "Then the one will be seventeen, won't it?" Helo nods and launches the tanker; Lee over on the Pegasus is washing his face when they announce the launch. He heads over to his phone to bitch at Adama; he is very fat, and the Towel is in attendance, looking much smaller. Everything you want, in the ugliest way possible.
Lee, dressed on the Pegasus CIC, whines about what the hell. Adama, clearly in no mood for this over the phone, yells at him that if they can't do this simple shit in training, how are they supposed to do it for real? Lee hasn't gotten an answer, because his skill is whining, not getting it done. One of the Vipers wigs out technologically in space and she interrupts their pointless awful fight, and Helo finally brings them in. Adama throws more things and is even more terrifyingly angry; on Pegasus, Dualla shakes her head. (Oh, I love Dualla again. Thanks for that.)
Lee chases Bill into his office bitching at full strength and actually making sense: "Two ships at half strength, crews that haven't seen action in a year and a half, and you're acting like the problem is that they aren't working hard enough?" Well, it kinda is. Adama is not having this: "Have you taken a look at yourself lately? You're weak. Soft. Mentally and physically." Lee protests that this isn't about him, but Dad disagrees: "You've had four months to get your act together, and so far all you've been able to do is whine about how hard it is." Two things here: first of all, have you met your son? He's dumb and cute and bitches constantly. But second of all: I am so happy to see them fighting about something that matters and not their family bullshit. Not that I had a problem with the family bullshit, but it's a funny kind of respect for the character to have him offering the valid other side, and turns their usual estranged bitching and pushmi-pullyu love-hate stuff onto solid and equal ground, and I like that. "It's going to get a lot harder. Turn around and get your fat ass out of here. Get your men ready or I'll find someone who can. Dismissed." Lee's pride is taking some hits. He stares at his dad and then leaves.
Tigh and Chief watch Sam Anders play Pyramid with Duck; both pairs are thus having secret insurgent conversations in broad daylight. Not even sports are free of war now. Chief worries, hard, that this new deterrent action they're planning is where they cross the line. Anders, on the field, tells Duck he can't back out once they start. "It's wrong, Colonel," says the Chief, but Tigh disagrees, saying they've sent soldiers on one-way missions before, and that it's the best change to take out Baltar. What the frack are they talking about? How bad does this get? Duck tells Anders no worries: "Ever since they killed Nora I got nothing to live for." Suicide bombing is so gross. This is gross. This is guns in the Temple all over again. If you forget what you're fighting for then you are fighting for nothing and you already lost. That's like killing somebody for stealing an empty box. It makes no sense. And yet, when Tigh is talking, I totally agree with him. What that means is that I am cult-susceptible, apparently have no regard for human life, and that I am wishy-washy on matters of grave importance. Either that, or these are questions with no answers. It was easier when they were just raping Boomer and you could merrily push them out an airlock and feel good about it. Well, not easier, but you know what I mean. Questions that had answers. Now? No. Duck shoves Anders to the ground, makes his goal, and then picks him up again. I guess Anders's health is better, considering he's back to being a total bad-ass. "Look me in the eye and tell me you're committed to this," says Anders, and the camera whirls around them as he does; Anders crushes Duck in his huge arms and prays for him. "Some things you just don't do, Colonel. Not even in war," says Chief determinedly. Tigh shoves himself to his feet: "Maybe you'll feel different when it's you in detention. Duck volunteered. He's going." A crane shot pulls back; Tigh walks stiffly with his crutch through the game, which continues on around him.
"It's a hard thing to say," says Adama, "but I don't know who my son is anymore." Or the ship, or the crew, he says. "I feel pretty much alone." That's so sad. I miss Roslin too! "Except maybe for you," he finishes quietly, looking at Sharon. They're sitting in what was once her cell, but I hope and believe now is just her quarters. She smiles softly at him. "I wish I could go back a year, and tell that Admiral Adama about this conversation." They are so easy together, the love is so obviously apparent. I guess he misses Dualla too; I missed her as well. "A year's a long time," he says, weary. "Can I ask you something very personal?" He doesn't answer her, just looks. "Do you feel guilty about leaving the people behind on New Caprica?" He looks down at the table, at their teacups. "I don't do guilt." Yes, he does. He always has, he just calls it a bunch of other things that prove what a good and strong man he is. He turns it into redemption. "You know, a year ago, when you put me in this cell... I was at a crossroads. I sat in here for weeks, just consumed with rage at all the things that had happened to me. And at some point I realized it was all just guilt. I was angry at myself for the choices I had made. Betraying my people, losing the baby... " Feeling like she'd somehow earned it; covering her face in shame. "So I had a choice: I could either move forward, or stay in the past. But the only way to more forward was to forgive myself." She's always been my favorite character; I like to see her strong, and more powerful than her regret. They've done literally everything you can do to a person, to this woman, and she fights to stay strong, and she stays strong. "I don't think we can survive," she says -- the Fleet, Galactica, New Caprica -- "unless the man at the top finds a way to forgive himself." He looks in her eyes and (I'm sure this was a patented EJO ad lib) refills her tea sweetly. She watches his face while he's not looking.
Lee chows the hell down and bitches about his dad to Dualla. "Two pilots almost killed because they've been in the cockpit for eleven hours, and he wants to bust my balls. 'You're soft.' Can you believe that?" She looks at him but doesn't say anything. This scene is remarkable because it manages to take one of the lamest things from last season, The Love That All Of A Sudden, and makes it strong and believable. The dialogue and McClure's tone do this, just like that, in a tiny little scene about how married people actually act. I love it. "What?" he whines, pissy. "You agree, is that it?" She goes back to her work. "Forget it. I'm not looking for a fight." He stomps around and shoves food in his mouth and tells her not to do that. "If you've got something to say... " She looks at him, and there's so much love and respect and disappointment in her: "He's right. You are soft. I'm not talking about the weight. You've lost your edge, your confidence. You lost your war, Lee, and the truth is you're a soldier who needs a war. And you don't wanna hear it, because you've got it in your head that your father's the soldier, and you sure don't wanna be like him. Truth is, you are like him. More like him than you know. That's one of the reasons I married you," she says, with a smile that takes what would normally be a pretty creepy compliment, given her daddy shit with Adama, but somehow makes it okay. They're going to be all right.
Chief flips the bowl and gets new data: the Cylon jamming freqs. Down in the bunker, he tries and tries, and Anders is totally Tigh some more about how this proves the worthlessness of their "source on the inside."
Up in space, Racetrack orbits in her Raptor and waits for word, like every day for the last four months. She's an ECO like Helo, right? So the guy Skull from last season is the Pilot? Spaceships are confusing.
Chief makes contact, and the radio goes crazy and loud.
Racetrack gets ready to leave just as Skull picks up the transmission and tells her the recognition codes match: she gets excited and tells him to send the coded response and spin up FTL so they can get back to Galactica. And here's what the message says:
WILL MAKE CONTACT THIS FREQ EVERY TWELVE HOURS
PREPARE SITREP FOR COMMAND AUTHORITY
HAVE HOPE
WE'RE COMING FOR YOU
Have hope. Everybody watching simultaneously bursts into tears; the part that stays free bursts into song; Chief reads it to them, down in the bunker. Tigh gulps, touched. Racetrack comms to Galactica and Pegasus about the Resistance, how they're waiting for command to instruct them on how to coordinate the rescue effort. Adama stares up. "It's going to be okay. It's really going to be okay."
Roslin and Tori compare the Resistance surveillance pictures of the NCP members, in their ski masks; they number 200. Roslin can't believe there would even be twenty people who would "turn against their own kind," but that's kind of always been the thing that fucked her up. Tori says it'll be really hard to figure out who they are, since the Cylons know that the non-collaborators would totally kill them. "They fucking should," Roslin spits. There's my girl.
Duck prays at Nora's altar, in his tent. "I know I haven't lived a model life. I've made a lot of mistakes. But I'm gonna need your protection today." You kind of want to think this isn't actually going to happen, but you know it is. With hope on the horizon and the rescue underway? Not on this show. He's going to blow himself up. He's already gone.
Gaeta enters Colonial One; Caprica sips her coffee and warmly tells him good morning. He doesn't even look at her. He tells Gaius to get ready for the graduation ceremony, and Gaius stands up, all nasty and arrogant -- and having put on at least fifteen pounds, boy is buff right now -- and tells Gaeta he's not going: "Security concerns." The whole thing twists again and you realize he's been keeping Gaeta as a pet: both Gaius and Caprica at least suspect what he's been up to. They grin separately with a horrible kind of smirking victory. "Don't look so worried!" says Gaius. Games within games. "There'll be other graduations!" Gaeta stares for a second and gets it together: "Right. I'll just... let the staff know." He takes off at a clip to have the stupidest most unending sequence of both episodes.
Chief complains to Tigh that there's no point in blowing up Duck if Galactica is coming, if the nightmare is over, but Tigh says they need to have a full uprising cooking when they come. It's beer o'clock. He says the only possible reason they would abort is if Chief's secret sources say that Gaius isn't going to be there. Except also, though, Duck has eyeballs and will know if he's there or not, and it's a lot easier to get work to Duck about the change in plans than it is to run around flipping dog bowls over. Chief runs and runs to the secret place; jangly Mediterranean rock-out and poundy drums don't actually make this part more interesting or exciting. Am I missing something? I am fully willing to admit that I am missing something. The bowl remains unflipped and Chief is sad and goes back to Mantua or whatever, and then immediately Gaeta shows up and flips the bowl, but it's too late, and complicating the lameness is how the camera travels up his body all: "CAN YOU BELIEVE IT'S GAETA?" and there's an insert shot of Gaeta putting a note in the secret place and the note says: "Baltar not at graduation!" Which will be obvious when he gets there, and I don't... whatever. I guess it makes it more tragic that he does it for no reason, except there's nothing tragic about suicide bombers no matter the circumstance: they are assholes, and they go to hell. That's no more tragic than any other kind of suicide; it's all the same kind of suicide. Duck can go fuck himself.
Oh, he's about to: Duck straps explosives all around his midsection. It's so ugly. He looks at himself in a cracked mirror and gets his SS gear together, carries his duffle bag toward a Cylon building with Centurions everywhere. I think one of them stops to check him out but doesn't really care. Neither of them are human now. He stands in his uniform surrounded by NCP; Jammer calls out to him but he doesn't hear. They fall into formation, black jackboots in a line. Three mounts the podium. "Good morning, and welcome to all graduates. You are the hope, you're the dream of a new tomorrow, for humans and Cylon alike, and I salute you for the risks that you have taken for just showing up today."
Tigh listens, or maybe just stares: "Today you begin a new career and a new life as provisional police officers."
Chief and Cally in bed with their son: "Looking out across this room, I see the significance of this new path is not lost on you. Congratulations."
Three works her way down the line, shaking hands and putting a kind or meaningful hand on each shoulder: "Good to have you with us. Congratulations." Doral follows behind, handing them their medals.
Anders nails a Pyramid goal, out in the town.
"See you soon, Nora," says Duck, with Three standing before him. Without ever finding out who really caused her death; who among the Resistance was willing to let her die in order to take their cause higher. Click. The graduation hall goes up in flames, horrible, things flying, the whole world exploding. Duck exploding and taking out nobody that matters: nobody that won't resurrect, nobody that wasn't already dead. Futile and without any gift of morale or hope, or a soul. Just the fact that war sucks and turns you into something horrible, and there's nobody strong enough to make it work any other way. Paper floats through the silence; the air is bright and dark. There are 200 bodies on the floor.