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Baltar's attempt at prison suicide is thwarted by Gaeta, who was out on a booty call, or so we're left to assume until the 50-minute mark. Apollo has either built or, I don't know, discovered a bar on Galactica, so he and Tyrol can get ripped and commiserate about how they secretly hate their wives.
Roslin actually interrogates Baltar herself, as if that wasn't the coolest scenario possible, and she gets all fired up for the airlocking of a lifetime, but Gaius won't give up any Cylon intel, so it's on to Plan B. Plan B is Adama's bright idea to use CIA-grade experimental LSD on a man who talks to the imaginary blonde robot in his head. Not that Adama knows that much, but he has spoken with Baltar on more than one occasion, right? So he and Roslin and Cottle administer the drug, which gets Baltar to spill the contents of his screwed-up psyche, and even on psychedelic truth serum, he still denies true responsibility. He does spill somewhat about ChipSix and the final five Cylons -- of whom he no longer seems to believe he's a member. So , they haul out Gaeta for Plan C: appeal to his academic egotism. Gaius manages to see through that ruse, however, and decides to frack with Gaeta about "Who's the real traitor?" Gaeta flips and stabs Gaius right in the neck! And then Adama punches Gaeta right in the face! No one dies, though, and in the end, Gaius tells ChipSix he's "the chosen one," and Roslin tells Adama to prepare for The Trial of Gaius Baltar.
Elsewhere, both Kara and Lee get permission from their shat-upon spouses to be with each other, but Kara's willingness to divorce Sam scares the hell out of Lee, and they eventually wind up running back to their big, empty marriages.
Bonus Scene: Roslin interrogates Caprica Six! And it wasn't part of the episode so we could watch Lee and Tyrol bitch about their women! So not cool! Want more? The full recap starts right below!
Previously, Starbuck and Apollo whined in a hell of their own devising, and Gaius signed execution orders while in his. I say it's your life, do what you want. Later, Chip Six told Gaius he might be a Final Fiver, and the Hybrid told him and Three that the chosen one would see the Final Five, and even though Three did and he didn't, Chip Six persisted in telling him that he was the chosen one. Three croaked, and then croaked for real, but before Gaius could do the same, Chief cold-cocked him. Elsewhere in time and space, though relative to all this we cannot say, the concept of enjambment was invented simultaneously with poetry. It would seem to have fallen out of favor in the thousands of years since then, considering how challenging this episode seems to be.
Now, God forbid I get up on my high horse or give you a tutorial in anything, but this show is ambitious on a bad day, and this episode is ambitious in an outsize way relative even to the usual, and it bums me out to think that a pretty simple poetic device, even used so obnoxiously/aggressively, could totally wreck the episode for you. I can see why, and I agree it's not a 100% success, but I pretty much love this episode and I'd like to share with you why. Hopefully using as few words as possible. Enjambment is from the French for "straddle," and it's when you end a line of verse before its time: think of Williams, or that awful dude with the punctuation jones. It's the second-most abused poetic grievance in crappy poetry, right after rhyme schemes, but done correctly (rather than arbitrarily), it's haiku brilliant. The point is to give you a second to run through every possible meaning that unended line could have, to let out the shapeless Hybrid nonsense your brain goes through, before the poet is forced to clamp down on the meaning in order to continue on the other side of the gap. A comparable example would be the visual of Three in the Temple last week, looking up at the Final Fiver: this paragraph is that kind of spiraling crazy talk that enjambment wants you to do, quietly and to yourself. It leaves a space of the unknown, a gap where the poem leaks out, and that's you doing the work of creating the poem's total meaning for a second, which makes you love the poem even as the line adjusts your vector, because it's part of you now. Which is how this episode operates, from beginning to end: every line, every scene, every word's a cliffhanger. Everything has a gap in it, and you're invited to point all the fingers you've got.
Meaning it's not technically Olmos's fault -- he's a good director -- or the editor's fault -- also great -- but the fault of the screenwriter, Michael Taylor. Last seen employing the exact same technique in "Unfinished Business," which of course was awesome in the exact same way, or horrible in the exact same way, depending on where you're standing. The other one that managed to convince people it was "all about the quadrangle" when the quadrangle was just the lens it was looking through. Or focusing the light with, to light everybody on fire once and for all, maybe. I think I'm pretty much lying when I say I've tried desperately to avoid tipping my hand as far as how I feel about his scripts. He also wrote (on DS9) "The Visitor," "Things Past," "In The Pale Moonlight," and in a show called Star Trek: Voyager, of which I vaguely remember hearing, the episode "Fury." He was in the room for the DS9 story "Statistical Probabilities," and for Voyager on "Blink Of An Eye," "Ashes to Ashes," "Author, Author," and "Dragon's Teeth." (Sadly, none of these has been recapped by the redoubtable and lovely Keckler, because none of them involve creepy/hilarious space sex with Scottish ghosts or salamanders from the future, or I'd link to them.) But which does all add up to something and that something is a hunch, so because I love you, I did some research on this hunch of mine, and yeah: what Taylor writes about is writers, writing, meta-narrative, and most especially, time-space anomalies such that two contrasting narratives are brought into, like, violent conflict and then play out in parallel, each commenting on the other. Like this one, which mainly seems to have pissed people off.
So Galactica and the Fleet are anchored near a strange moon. As the camera pans across lots of pilots and crewmen lying in bed, peacefully, two voices sing. Two voices: Chip Six and Gaius, over the images of sleepy little crewmen. "Close your eyes, go to sleep / Baby's in the cradle counting sheep / Climb up to your house of dreams / Baby's in the cradle fast asleep..." In the brig, Gaius is robotically ripping fabric into strips. Not like he's a Cylon, but in fact like he has lost his marbles. "...Should I die before I wake," he sings in the same melody, and Chip Six appears, concerned, looking at him as he continues to OCD all over these ripped clothes. "Sorry," he says, even though he's totally not, "improvising." She assures him he's doing the right thing, and he can barely hear her. He's on autopilot. She says his name tenderly, again, and he notices her only barely, then drifts toward sleep on her shoulder. The Marine standing guard bashes the bars, jerking him awake and screaming. Cruel and unusual, no? He wakes up and they begin knotting the strips of fabric into a...rope. Yeah. (In addition to admiring the structure, I think I cried the entire way through this episode both times I've watched it so far. This has got to be the darkest episode of the series, or at least tied with "Pegasus." Tell me the difference between the two stories. I'm serious.) They begin to sing again, in two voices. "Close your eyes go to sleep / Baby's in the cradle counting sheep..." As they sing about the house of dreams, Gaeta tosses and turns; he finally sits up as Chip Six adjusts the noose around Gaius's neck. He wakes up from his sleep-deprivation delirium long enough to balk, to ask for more time to think. With the noose around his neck, Six nuzzles his cheek. "Too late, Gaius. It's time to learn the truth." She kicks the bunk out from under him. He drops. Nowhere to stand.
Gaeta comes rushing up to the Sergeant standing guard, claiming he's got direct presidential authorization to speak with Gaius; the Sergeant blows him off. Chip Six, as Gaius dies: "That's it, Gaius. Deep breaths. Deep breaths."
"That's it, Gaius, Deep breaths. Deep breaths," says a Six, smiling like Caprica, as Gaius awakes, in a resurrection pod. He doesn't move, just stares up at her above him. "The first time's the hardest. You're doing wonderfully." There are three identical Sixes, attending to him. Playing midwife. He stares around, covered in goo. The three of them smile at each other at his shock, then elation: he's alive. "I'm alive. Thank God, I'm alive!" The Six above him, in whose lap he sits, visually, smiles down like a virgin: "I always told you to have faith." He addresses the Six on his right hand: "Then no one was betrayed. I was never one of them. I am one of you." I mean to say that Gaius Baltar, hair down to here, beard gone wild and woolly, having just learned that he is possessed of immortal life and that he's been washed clean of all his sins, addresses the woman on his right. The Six above him strokes his face and hair: "Is that what you think, Gaius?" He speaks to himself, the usual: "I always knew I was different. Special. Maybe a little gifted." The Six above strokes his face; the Six on his left hand strokes lower. "Oh..." he says, surrounded by Six; the Six on his left hand begins to draw blood. He chuckles sexily, then yelps that she's hurting him; the other two Sixes join in, stripping him of flesh. His blood clouds the water as he screams: "What's wrong?" The Six on his left is clear: "You are, Gaius. You're not Cylon, you're human. And you're dead," she says, loud, pushing him under. The pod becomes a deep and dark pool -- water, not the stuff of resurrection, marred with his blood -- and she follows him down, pushing him deeper, kissing him passionately: her lips on his.
Gaius lies on the floor, the Sergeant astraddle him, enjambed on his body, administering CPR. He begins to breathe again. Gaeta (Come! On! It couldn't have been Gaeta?) runs for Doc Cottle. Gaius lies on the floor, forgotten, and the sing-song nursery rhyme music plays again, into the credits. 41,403 survivors this week: add Sharon, Hera, and Gaius. No Caprica yet, on the official roster. Hopefully never. Love makes you do some pretty low stuff, though. Watch.
Lee leads Chief through the Hangar Bay toward a whole new set: Joe's Bar, which I would assume proceeds directly from the destruction of Cloud 9 and the host of civilians now aboard Galactica. There are people playing pool, listening to loud bar music, drinking themselves silly, yelling, all that stuff. Chief giggles. Apollo introduces him to the barkeep, Eponymous Joe, in a way in which it is made clear that Lee spends a shitload of time here. Joe offers him some of "the good stuff," and Chief good-naturedly chuckles about how he is grateful, because it's not like he's going home tonight. Oh? Ho ho ho! You don't say, Galen. Getting a little hard, up at camp Whiny Pines? (Two men who married the easy choice, the girl that was in love with him, the one that wasn't scary or complicated; two men who settled. He'll never love her as much as she loves him. Two men seeing the cracks for the first time in "normal," in the lives they wanted on New Caprica, the cracks in everything they wanted. To be the kind of man who could overlook the damage he'd already done before marriage was even in the equation. The way she apparently can. These two heroes. I'm not going to gloat; I'm sad.) Apollo's shocked: he thought he was in this club alone. Has Chief ever laughed this much in a scene? How much of this is theatre? Chief cracks they should have sold tickets such was their fight, and toasts to marriage: "Why we build bars." I hate to see anything caged; they order another drink. It's harsh on their throats, and they shiver, but they keep drinking.
Love. It's why we build bars. Cottle (Hi!) bitches at Tigh, Roslin, and Adama about their shitty sleep deprivation plan, noting that "psychosis can make a man do strange things," even men who didn't start out shit-hot nuts in the first place. He also mentions Baltar's "little hunger strike." These people, you guys. "The bastard wants to die that bad, I say let him," says Tigh. I kind of agree, but Roslin is not into basic freedoms right now: "Bottom line, we need Baltar to talk. If the other Cylon saw the same symbols that we saw, they could be on their way to Earth, they could be setting up an ambush by now. I'm betting that after tonight, he'll be more willing. Doc, wait an hour or two. I want him cogent. I also don't want him to starve." He asks what the hell she wants him to do about that; he already knows. "I expect you to make sure he eats," she says, like she's offering him another helping of tiramisu. Tigh heads out to get some security cameras into the cell, lest Gaius and Chip Six try something else; Gaeta tries to follow him out, but Roslin stops him.
"What exactly were you doing going to see Dr. Baltar in the middle of the night?" Adama and Roslin look at him intently as he makes a sneaky face. "I...couldn't sleep?" Roslin nods; she knows about that. "And I guess...I thought he might be willing to talk to me?" Adama says kindly, "We understand. Just...leave his interrogation to us." Felix is Latin for a particularly innocent happiness: it connotes a luck in life, as in a felicitous coincidence. Gaeta leaves with a sad "of course," and alone, Adama and Roslin have a whole conversation without talking about how nobody ever understood the relationship between Felix and Gaius before, but they're not about to look under that rock now.
Lee comes home drunk, slamming the hatch behind him; Dualla's doing paperwork by the midnight oil. He tells her the Chief said hi, and she asks if he's one of Lee's new drinking buddies. So that's new, then. The drinking. Lee complains drunkenly that he'd invite her if she hadn't been clear about her disinterest. "Not what I'm asking," she says, using enjambment in her everyday life. What he's saying is that he has nothing to hide; what she's saying is that's just a technicality. He lies down, whining that he's got a briefing at 0500, and she asks if they're still having dinner tomorrow; she cleared her schedule for a date. Some of his thoughts are hanging out all unsightly: he sighs aloud, "Dammit," then reassures her in an outside voice that they're on. "It'd be nice for a husband and wife to occasionally..." He begins to snore; she says, "Forget it," to an empty room. As long as she's got him caged she wants him comfortable; as long as he's harboring secrets she might as well have the last word. "Forget it," she says, like he doesn't know the door's open: there's no cage at all. She's been waiting for this; the door's always been open.
Roslin enters Baltar's cell, telling the Sergeant to leave the door open. She speaks tenderly, friendly, softly: "Hi." He stares at her and she hands him his glasses. There's a totally fracking unnecessary flashback to this callback from New Caprica, in case you don't remember that, but not in a way where it illustrates anything beyond the token gesture of getting back some small amount of power, the ability to focus on objects, while you stay in your cage. He finally takes them, and then she pulls out a tiny little tiparillo Swisher Kara smoke, lighting it with a Zippo. He stares like it is a naked lady on fire; she finally hands it over. Creature comforts; that's the clincher, always. (This is the first time I have found Gaius attractive in the entire history of the show; that's so, so troubling. I've been in Austin too long, is what that means.) His desperation as he takes the smoke from her is not easy to watch. "Touché, Madame President," he says, standing as she sits. "I have no wish to see you suffer," she says. He points out -- a little crazily -- that he recently had a feeding tube forced up his nose and down his throat. Imagine that, choking and breathing like that. Not even having that choice. Not even having that much room to stand.
She grins brightly, putting on lots of faces at once, trying to keep control; last time she fled the room altogether. "Everybody's gotta eat!" she says, with a little steel behind it, but mostly like a crazy TV personality. "It's for your own good. And it's nothing," she says, segueing like a master, "Compared to what many of our people were subjected to in your jail cells on New Caprica." He sits, eyes sad: "Not my jails. The Cylons'." She calls it academic, and tells him to just tell her what she wants to know, and she'll end his suffering. "I know nothing about the Cylon plans or their whereabouts. I witnessed nothing in that Temple. My information on Cylon intelligence is limited, to say the least." No kidding! You could not have chosen a worse lunch table to sit at on the Basestar if you'd shown up with Sharon Agathon herself. There's no way you could get in with the cool kids acting like that. How weird is it to have this whole thing go down in a way where he actually is innocent? He can't tell them anything, because he doesn't know anything, and argue the precedents of U.S. law or not, intention is crucial to treason, and anyway that's not what it's about. We're still in guns-in-the-Temple territory, it's just now, instead of Tigh, it's the most surprising people. "Truth and reconciliation" can mean shit-all when you've got the man himself in your hands, right? When there's no rule about what you can and can't do to him, because for good or ill he's your racial scapegoat? The one person that all of humanity can agree deserves to go to Hell? The way he carries all those sins upon his back -- and there's no rule that says you can't break him. The second-tier types already had Gaeta to kick around: for Roslin and Adama, only the best.
"Prior to the attack on the Colonies, did you have high-level security clearance?" He doesn't get it, I think honestly, for a second; doesn't click into the gap she's left. "Did you tell anybody about it? Did you let someone into the defense mainframe? The blonde woman that I saw you with on Caprica just prior to the attack?" Chip Six appears and warns him she'll airlock his ass so fast, and he fugues out, staring away from Laura, and one of my favorite things in the whole episode happens, so fast you might miss it. As he's staring at Six, Roslin gets pissed at him for fading, and off-camera flicks the lighter on and off in a split second, to get his attention. It's so fucking awesome, and so in character: "Yo, over here, motherfucker." He looks at her, boggled, and Chip Six puts her hands around his neck: "Unless, of course, that prospect no longer frightens you." Roslin watches him: it's his hands around his neck. Two things here, before the big freak-out: While it's really the same story -- the story of five marriages in five parallel threads -- there are some specific thematic visuals in play right now: Gaius and his neck, and Gaius and light. Keep those eyes open, because they're both used very specifically. This is the second instance of the neck thing and the first iteration of the light, beyond last episode, which was one long moth story. The breath -- spirit -- and the light. The only true things, once they've taken away even your right to die in captivity. The list of true things keeps shrinking.
"Lies," he says, shaking them both off. "All lies. A rehash of all the other old lies. I did not collude in the genocide of my own people." Laura stands and steps toward him, looking him in the eye before sighing in disgust. A bit later -- though it's an instant cut -- he's crouched against the wall of the cell, on the floor. Where Laura was, when she didn't even have her shoes. "This is Devlin and Maryanne McAllister, and their son and daughter. This is a family of four that was gunned down in their own home on suspicion of harboring insurgents," she spits, holding out an octagonal photo of dead folks. They both start talking at the same time, all over each other. He basically claims that the occupation was no more his fault than the genocide, and that her tactics aren't about legitimate threats or clear and present danger, but about scapegoating him for her pound of flesh, and demands a fair trial. While all of that is going on, Laura is losing her entire fucking mind. It's literally, actually, the scariest thing I think I've ever seen. The concept of Mary McDonnell yelling at me like that, even if she was acting, makes me want to first shit and then airlock myself. I mean to say that she trips the crazy fantastic. I don't know what else to say. You have to see it to believe it. Mary McDonnell's seriously the scariest person and the most scary-awesome actor on the face of the planet. Imagine if you will that you are four years old, and you have just driven the family car into the living room, killing Stephen Hawking and some orphans. And instead of just your mom yelling at you, terrified and enraged and hating herself, it's also every mean teacher and mean librarian and police officer and meth addict that's ever made you think you were about to get a black eye. Plus, like...Kali. And the Furies. And Sean Young.
That's what Gaius's feeling right now. And the reason for that is that he is four years old, and has driven a succession of family cars into the living room, killing a succession of Stephen Hawkings and creating orphans, whom he then kills. Like ten times, and each time is more of an accident than the last time. It's kind of funny, but mostly it explains why he's crazy, and why he's really really sad.
So she starts winging the photographs in his face and tuning up the orchestra for the freak-out like so: "I just wondered if you recognized even one of these faces. Did any image get through to you on the rare occasion when you ventured out from behind your sandbags and your razor wire to see what was happening to your people?" This is where the first big crack happens: her grief is larger than the Olympic Carrier and all the ships left behind. This is all on her. "Your people!" she screams, full of hate and fire; he's nearly in tears. "I need to know! Now! Colonel Tigh, get in here! Get this man out of here, he's not gonna talk. I want you to take him, I want you to toss him out the nearest airlock." This is the second big crack: she does this jerky solfège hand movement on "airlock" that she's only done a couple of times on this show, like when diva singers get weird in the hand area, or like Imogen Heap all the time, and it always means she's this close to fucking killing you for real. She screams for the guards, and there's another instant cut to the corridor, where McDonnell and Callis continue to get all New School on your ass, dancing back and forth very stompily across each other's lines and shooting laser beams of acting at each other.
Pulling him with an uncountable, constantly moving body of Marines, Laura and Gaius come upon the Wall of Remembrance. She continues to scream like a lunatic. "Take a good look, Doctor, these are just a fraction of the people you sent to their deaths -- rather fitting they should see you take your last steps," she says passably well, even though it's awkward. I love the implication that they could have gone any way to the nearest airlock, but they just happened to choose this route. He shouts to stop, and points out a photo on the wall. "Yes! Show me. Show me! Let him go. Let him go. Keep your guns up!" she screams. Gaius pulls the photo off the wall: "This man. His name was Adrian Bauer. He was my lab assistant for three years on Caprica." Roslin screams that she doesn't fucking care. "He was Geminese. I got him a visa. I introduced him to his wife. I am godfather to their first child I wouldn't do anything to harm this man or his family. Or anybody's family. I am not a murderer. I am innocent. Why won't you believe me?" Roslin freaks out and commences the airlocking, and as they drag him away he screams again that he should get points for figuring out about Hera shooting Laura in the cancer. Still thinking that's on the table. He makes me so sad. How much of this is theatre?
Commercial. How much of it was theatre? Adama stands up in his office, where he's meeting with Tigh and Roslin about their little comedy routine called "Freak Out The Prisoner," which was totally not faking except for the dying part. Adama congratulates them on a job well done, with the psychological abuse. "Either he's got more stones than I gave him credit for," says Tigh, "Or..." Enjambment, but this is Tigh -- Adama knows what he's thinking: "Or he knew you were bluffing." Because the truth, that Gaius doesn't know shit about jack, is too sad to even consider seriously as a possibility. Tigh stands and asks what , what possible abuse they can engage him in now that they're halfway to V For Vendetta with the creepy fakeness, and Adama admits that it can still get worse. Roslin finally looks up, speaking softly: "Admiral?" Adama tells them about how the Colonies had MKUltra and they would induce hallucinogens in which the subject believed "their very survival was at stake." (You don't need drugs for that: forty-six episodes of that show Battlestar Galactica are proof that people will totally freak out just as bad on the threat alone. I'll spare you the speech about how that's a hallucination too, for now.) Roslin sits back with a migraine; Tigh's loving it. Adama talks about how the interrogators, given this setup, would naturally change from adversary to lifeline, from torturer to sherpa. From sinister, traitorous, inhuman girlfriend to a perfectly loving, omniscient angel, sent from God. That's something that might happen, if you thought your soul was on the edge of destruction, Adama is saying. If you were crazy. Roslin stands up, looking from Tigh to Adama: "Are you telling me we have these drugs aboard Galactica?" You had something that dangerous in your pocket this whole time? A whole new way to steal control?
Kara takes a drink and thanks Sam for being so "accommodating"; he doesn't like the sound of that. "Your estranged, two-timing bitch of a wife calls you up for a quickie, and you hop on the first shuttle? I'd say yeah," she says, with a conspiratorial grin. He sighs. "I've been thinking about some stuff, Kara." She indulges it, but you can see she's done with him; you can see underneath it that she isn't. She's got him caged and he's trying to get control, so he engages in some very fucking lazy dialogue of the Makes Sense Don't It category. "Like, what that crazy skinjob Leoben said about you and a special destiny. I mean, what if there's something to that?" She's silent for a second, gathering her armor, and then breaks out in a grin, cracking that "Kara Thrace and Her Special Destiny" sounds like a bad cover band. The joke's crappy enough that it works on an emotional level; I cannot say that this was the author's intent. "Think about it, though. Why did I survive all those months on Caprica, waiting for you to return, if I was just gonna walk out on you? And you, I mean, did you go through that hell, locked in the fake house with that fake husband, just so you could ditch me?" Can somebody explain this speech to me? That makes zero sense. "I married you knowing you were totally going to fuck me up, so doesn't that prove that you're an alien"? I really don't get this part at all. She won't answer him, and he theorizes some more, and then suddenly: "Do you love him?" Her jaw drops and her stomach drops and her eyes: "...What?" But he's not employing enjambment: he's talking about Lee. That was Kara that filled in that particular blank with something really fucking creepy. "Lee, Kara. Do you love Lee?" She nearly stops crying: relieved, and then a whole new level of pain. She sets her jaw, gets right with it. "Maybe," she says, and he exhales. Finally. "I don't know." Sam shakes his head. "Then you gotta go to him." She stares at him silently, without answering. "Go to him," he says, like she doesn't know the door's open: there's no cage at all. He's been waiting for this; the door's always been open.
Apollo comes home, gets into his civvies. As he's changing, he tells Dee he's heading to the bar. Dualla's tired of being caged: "If you're gonna see Kara, just admit it." Apollo protests, and she sniffs, angry now. Righteous. "Yeah, you both told me: Lee won't cheat, he's too noble. Only problem is, it's all a crock, isn't it?" A technicality. The end of a line, with nothing to stand on. "You know what the only problem is? The only problem is that you don't trust me. That's it. And this is just your own frackin' insecurities talking. Same as always. I mean, right from the get-go, I...the very first morning that I proposed..." Seven-letter word for pussy; what a house does as it ages; what a plaintiff does when they're tired of fighting. "You know what? Forget it. This is fracking pointless." He heads for the door but he doesn't mean it; "No, you're right," she says. He turns, surprised. "I did see this coming. And I was naive enough to marry you anyway. And you want to know why, Lee?" She inhales, tears up, guilty and ashamed and angry. "Because I loved you. I loved you so fracking much. I thought I was lucky! That's right, lucky." He looks away and nearly starts crying; he knows what's hanging from that word. "That I could have you. For just as long as you or Kara would let me." The shame in that. The sickening amount of settling she did, and how much it cost. He can't handle it, comes to her, sad, takes her arm, murmuring: "Come on." The kind of love that wouldn't watch her say this out loud. She whimpers, and pulls away, and looks him in the eye. She's sad, and strong, and soft, and hard. "It's not a marriage, Lee. This is a lie. You want to be with Kara? Go ahead. I won't stand in your way." He shakes his head. "It's over." She stalks out, he doesn't follow. He built this one himself; he keeps building.
Kara shakes her head sadly, and he roughly pulls back the curtain from their bed. Their marriage bed, a bunk in the middle of the pilots' quarters, and all around them doing paperwork and writing letters, pushups and reading magazines, the tiny lives all around them and the way we dramatize our own. Her dormitory life and how he tried to fit into it. "This was fun," he says, and she pulls him in for another kiss. The kind of love that hated hearing him say goodbye. "I love you," he says, but she couldn't believe it until he hurt her. Until he sent her to Lee. Alone, she snatches the curtain closed and nearly takes a drink. In her hand she holds a chain, and on that chain is Zak's ring, Apollo's tags; on a chain you can see all the boys she killed or drove away. She built this one herself; she keeps building.
Cottle prepares the needle, Layne Ishay assisting. She's the one that saved Adama when Boomer shot him, she's always around. She is not Racetrack! New things every day. I was always confused about that. Gaius swears he's a human being with rights. He doesn't understand the way the world works anymore. Ishay wipes down his forehead; her hand becomes Chip Six's and his pleas shift to her. "Please help me!" She's not really being very sympathetic this week. "I'm not sure I can, Gaius. Pain is one thing, but this... Without free will, what are you?" Exactly what Adama wants, apparently. "Can God even pity such a creature?" Baltar speaks to Chip Six, but it's Roslin who gets hit with the gap this time, at the end of the line: "Why not just admit you're doing this for your own satisfaction?" Right between her eyes. This is the last crack; this is rock bottom. I kept asking? This is it, finally. "That's the truth, isn't it?" It is. "I don't know why you're not putting the needle in yourself." He screams as Cottle injects him; a new song begins to play, and he goes out. Adama tells everyone to avoid loud noise; orders Ishay to "put the head strap on." I was already crying, so this line just made me hiccup and feel sick. The last thing we see is Roslin, stepping forward. Into the light.
Baltar wakes up in dark, unending water. Not the stuff of resurrection, but close: the ocean everybody's got in there. He screams, nothing to stand on, nothing to sight on, just black water below and black sky above. "Where am I? Oh, my God, where am I?" A light shines down on his face; he floats like Lee, arms thrown out. Hair down to here and beard wild and woolly, with his arms thrown out: abandoned by God and Man both. Shouldering the sins of entire worlds and races; tied up with destiny. Still human.
"What are you saying?" asks Lee. Kara repeats: if she leaves Sam, will he leave Dee? Proving Dualla right once again? He tears up, surprised by enormity: "My Gods, Kara. I mean, you know, how do I know that tomorrow you're not gonna pull another 180?" You don't; she will. "I mean, these are our fracking marriages we're talking about. It's not some stupid dogfight we can just jink our way out of." She couldn't believe it until he hurt her. Until he went back to Dee. Her lip curls: "Think about it, Lee. That's what you're best at." She stalks away; he chokes and almost follows her. He keeps building.
Gaius continues to scream; Adama's voice booms out like a kakapo, like the voice of Zeus himself. Like the voice of God. "Can you hear my voice? Can you hear me, Doctor? I'm looking for you, Doctor. We can't find you. Can you tell us where you are?" Gaius tells them he's in the water; the drums start slapping. "It's cold, and it's dark." And he's alone. He begins to thrash wildly in the water, scared. "I can't see anything." Adama asks if there's anything at all he can sight. "Look for the light. Can you see the light?" Adama tells him to reach for it. Somebody asks Gaius Baltar to reach for the light. Roslin stares down at him, pity dawning. The light becomes Baltar's eye, becomes the nuclear bloom on Caprica. "Caprica Six. She saved my life. Shielded me from the explosion." He remembers. Ask him how he finds his way, how he charts space, how he fills in the gaps, ask him to reach for the light: Six. Six, every time. Screaming his lama sabachthani, floating in a dream, he calls on angels. Roslin asks straight-up -- irritated as usual with Gaius taking time to deal with Chip Stuff -- if he conspired with Caprica to subvert the Colonial defense system. Treason laws always start big conversations, for the same reason there are pre-nups and faithfulness clauses: there's no rule that says, "You must follow these rules," because that makes no sense, so the rule that says that has to be appropriately huge and deadly and scary. Being a citizen and being in love both take place at the end of a line with no punctuation: it's up to you to decide where you stand. But did he fall, or was he pushed? "Conspiracy requires intent!"
Gaius goes off here on a really inadvisable word ramble about all the stuff we either already knew and didn't need confirming, or which is beside the point and muddles the issue. Sometimes you'll have a scene -- rarely on this show, to be fair -- where you get scared that somebody flipping past will see it, and think to himself or herself, "Now I know what that show is about, and it is not for me." And this is one of them: Callis devouring scenery at a furious rate, without anybody to act against, in a crazy stupid monologue that sounds like anime, that goes like this: "I never intended...but she said deep down, I'd always suspected. But I didn't know. How could I know? Did I conspire? Did I? No! No. I don't know. No. It wasn't my fault. It wasn't my fault!" Seriously, just like that. I would say it's the big flaw of the episode, but really it's just the same flaw, writ large: too big in concept, too hard to pull off. A for effort and A for ambition, but kind of an F for being embarrassing and unbelievable in the same way as watching somebody sing karaoke. Roslin stares at Adama as Gaius begins to weep. "I am not responsible!" shrieks the Doctor, scaring Ishay, who knocks over a tray and sends the whole MKUltra scenario off the deep end. The imaginary water starts roiling around Gaius, and the apocalypse happens on Caprica, and there's his eyeball again, and he remembers Caprica in the pool of his old-slash-imaginary condo, and then he's raising her in the hallucination, out of the water.
More Sin City bullshit talk over various on-the-nose clips of the variety where he says "hand" and there's a hand, or "seduce" and she's kissing him. That kind of thing.
"She...Caprica Six...she chose me. Chose me over all men. Chosen to be seduced, taken by the hand. Guided between the light and the dark. But is she an angel, or is she a demon? Is she imaginary, or is she real? Is she my own voice, or the voice of...?"
I mean...and this is the half of the episode people liked. "She chose me, over all men." "Is she an angel, or is she a demon? Is she imaginary, or is she real?" Fuck you. I realize he's an eight-year-old boy that thinks like this, but he didn't write the script. You did. And it's very nice, which makes the shitty stuff really stand out.
He pushes her under the water or into fellatio or something, and then begins to drown, all alone. "I can't stay afloat much longer!" Adama demands "details" about the Cylons and threatens to let him drown (which he pronounces with a very East-L.A. /d/ at the end, like the past tense) "alone, in the dark." Adama turns off the light; the water goes black. Gaius's face, both in the lab and in the water, contorts with fear, and when he screams, he screams in two voices at once.
Lee spins his wedding ring on the bar at Joe's, stabbing his finger down as it slows. Chief approaches, and signals for a drink. He's really sad. It's really sad. "Why is it so frackin' hard?" he asks, but Lee has no answer. "Why can't we just get back to normal?" He laughs, wondering what the hell "normal" means anyway. Remembers when she forgave him, and they got married, and Baby Nick was born, and it was dirty but they were happy. Normal. Apollo sips his drink, Chief stares into space, into the gap, imagining conversation after conversation. Lee makes a decision and his lips go firm. "Chief, you can tell me if I'm out of line here, but, um...do you ever think about Sharon?" Chief stares at his glass, blurts, "No," then chugs. Lee refills his drink and presses: "Come on. You never wonder...what if?" Chief picks up the glass and looks him right in the eye: "No." He chugs the drink again, and bashes the glass down on the bar, and wanders away, leaving a gap, a tiny little space for Lee to fill with anything. With guilt. Turns out he's alone in that club after all, he decides, although he's wrong. It's a parallel we didn't have time to make before, but it's valid. Lee stares at his ring and wonders how we get back to normal -- how everybody gets out alive.
"Look, don't leave me! Don't leave me. I know I'm flawed. I never claimed to be... Yeah, mistakes, mistakes were made. Terrible mistakes. Were they mine? Am I solely to blame? I was a player, that's all. I was a player. I was struggling, trying to find my place in God's plan." It's Gaius talking. Who'd you think? Can you name a character who isn't screaming this throughout the entire episode? Roslin begins to cry.
"I never intended for certain things to happen! Doesn't that matter?" (Still Gaius.) Adama brings up his trip with the Cylons to the Temple of Five, asks about the Eye. "What did it tell them? What did it tell them about Earth?" Gaius can't find the words to explain how for the Cult of Just The Two Of Us, Earth was secondary to stuff that's none of Bill's business; the light comes back. "What were you looking for, Doctor? What were you looking for?" A thousand things he doesn't have words for, so he'll substitute Three's. The black ocean becomes a resurrection pod, but there's just water in it. He looks very clean, and very beautiful. Hands caress him, all around, and many voices sing, wordlessly. "Their faces," Gaius says, "But they wouldn't show them to me." Roslin asks whose faces; "The Five. The Final Five." Roslin wows. The camera pulls back to reveal the owners of the hands: the burned, dead children of Aerelon, of Caprica and Geminon, of Picon and Sagittaron, Tauron and Virgon. All his victims, his orphaned and his irradiated and his burnt and starving, the legacy, the billion children of Gaius Baltar. God looks nothing like that! Everybody knows that.
"I thought I might be one of them," he says. As the burned children still surround him. "I told them I wanted to be one of them." He'll always call himself a victim, Bill will say. He'll always elect to be among the children of the end of the world; without that, what is he? Surrounded by his legacy. All those burned children: Kara Thrace and Sam Anders, Anastasia Dualla and Lee Adama. Saul and Ellen; Laura and Bill. Gina. Boomer and Athena, Helo and Hera, Cally and Chief. Remember when he was President, and ruled a planet full of orphans? Remember how the world ended, and keeps ending -- all on his shoulders, every time -- and all these orphaned children are just trying to get back home?
He leaves it blank and he's not talking about those kids, or the one in the visions either: he's talking about the Cylons. Roslin fills in the blank; he lives in the blank right now. "A Cylon. Why?" He opens up as the children resume singing: "All my sins forgiven." And the children could come unto him, and be healed, and none of it forgotten. As far as I'm concerned he just indicted himself. "Are you a Cylon, Doctor Baltar?" In the dream, he shakes his head; in the lab he nearly tears in two: "No." The children pull their hands from the water, not touching him. He's alone. "That's not good enough, Doctor," says Adama, intimately, into his ear. "Tell me. Tell me what you told the Cylons. What do they know? Tell me or I'll let you go, Doctor." The lifeline; the sherpa. And see what he does. "I'll have to let you go. Tell me or I'll let you go, Doctor. I'll have to let you go. I'll have to let you go. I'll have to let you go."
A child climbs into the pod, astraddle him, pushes him into the water, deeper and deeper, hands around his throat. She doesn't kiss him. They fall past the frame, away from the light, into the darkness; all you can see is black water. There's nowhere to focus on.
Lee stumbles down a corridor, coming home again; he brushes against a crewman and shouts to watch where they're going; his ring tings to the floor and he begins to crawl. People stare and whisper and watch, but he's all alone on the floor, nowhere to stand. He shouts, a shame; he begins to shove crates to the ground, tearing into the cargo stacks looking for the ring. One of the first things you learn in the Academy is that symbols matter: they're like pieces of your heart you can look at. He falls against the wall, crying; stuck.
"Admiral, we're losing him. That's enough." Roslin nods, sad, agreeing with Cottle. "I'm putting an end to this freak show right now."
In Adama's office, Roslin's reading from her Scrolls as Bill pours the three of them (including Tigh) a drink. "Now, listen to this. Five Final Cylon models. 'Five pillars of the Temple, for the five priests devoted to the One Whose Name Cannot Be Spoken." How beautiful would it be if Laura was the one who figured it out? After all this? Tigh calls it "mumbo jumbo" but Laura's seen it before, seen the world line up to prove this stuff right. "He's holding a lot back, Admiral. I'm sure of it." Adama suggests "more direct methods," like the civil rights abuses to date -- the once so horrific even Laura Roslin blinked -- just haven't been effective enough, and Laura is totally grossed out. (Meanwhile Tigh's like, "Direct methods? I'm listening!") Bill sits and he drinks with Saul. Laura's still thinking. "We tried the stick, it's time to try the carrot. The thing he's most deeply afraid of is [that] even if he talks, we'll kill him." Tigh thinks this is rather smart of him. Bill can't look at anybody, because Laura's right and he just realized they're in the Circle and they didn't even know it. "We have to ease his fear," she says, picking her words very effing carefully and with maximal plausible deniability, which is another word for that gap. "Make him believe that if he collaborates, at the very least he'll have his life." Adama's like, "Not buying it." She sips her drink; it's harsh on her throat, and she shivers but she keeps talking. "We have to find someone he trusts." Bill looks at Laura hard. The enjambment kicks into high gear. Watch it spin!
Gaeta stares at Gaius, huddled against a wall of his cell.
"As perverse as it may seem, I may actually owe these people a debt of gratitude."
Dualla stares at Lee, sitting in Joe's Bar.
"You know, I realize there's probably nothing I can say that can make this right."
She says nothing, but the tears are coming.
"But there's something you need to know. I asked you to marry me because I was in love with you. Just like I'm in love with you now."
"They forced me to admit my failings."
On camera, Gaius continues: "And now that I have, I feel positively liberated."
Dualla hasn't touched her drink. Love is the Turing Test for people. There's no relativity to the apocalypse which means Gaius's betrayal, or not, equates exactly to Lee's, even if it never happened. Or the rules Bill's breaking in himself.
"You were right, I loved Kara. And you know, maybe there's a part of me that always will."
"In my heart, I know I have always done what I've had to do." Gaius again.
"But I married you." He almost breaks down; his voice goes quiet. "I married you. And you know, when I look back at our marriage, at the time that we have spent together... You are good for me, Dee. And I need you. And I don't think I ever really realized that, till I knew that I was losing you."
Gaeta: "I can't promise you a trial, Doctor. But I'm sure that if you'll give them something."
It's Dualla's face, but Gaeta's voice. The tears coming down now. "...Anything."
"But please just give me another chance. That's all I'm asking. Just give me a chance. Please." Who's that talking? Everybody. Nobody. Anybody who ever betrayed anybody else. Anybody who ever loved.
From above, we watch Gaeta step forward, spread out star charts on the table. "These charts that I've been using, to plot our course to Earth..." He sits, nearly comfortable at the table, back in place, asking for approval from Dr. Gaius Baltar. Roslin watches this scene play out. "I've never been confident of my calculations."
Gaeta puts down his pen; Gaius picks it up again, back in his role. Unaware how easily Gaeta just caged him up again.
"That's lucky, because the calculations are wrong. I detect a number of inconsistencies right off the bat. You see, these figures here are wrong."
Gaeta stares up at the camera for a moment too long; Gaius notices before Gaeta can stare at something else that doesn't exist.
"The Cylon navigation systems are far more advanced than our own, but I have managed to commit many of their algorithms to memory," he says. "If you can offer them this kind of help, I'm certain at the very least they'll spare your life." Gaeta is smooth, buttered, a traitor. "Maybe we can even get you out of this cell, and offer you some proper quarters," he says, almost excitedly. Gaius looks at him and watches him say this; if you pause it, you can see the exact moment his heart breaks.
There are rules you don't question and there are things you don't do.
Dualla watches Lee weeping for awhile, with her tears coming down; she takes his hand. When he looks up, she nods her head, just a little.
In exactly the same position, Gaius stares at Gaeta: "Creature comforts. There's the clincher."
Gaeta pretends ignorance; it's too late. "Where is it?" asks Gaius, ashamed of himself for believing even this long. How much of this was theatre? Is there a time going back that anything was real? Where's he supposed to stand? "Um, where is what, Doctor?" Gaius drops any semblance of anything; he's over it. His wrists flap as he gets sardonic: "Where is what?" He stares at the ceiling. Gaeta is worried, and sick, and sad. They both look up into camera. Roslin goes fuuuuuck. "So much for that little stratagem," says Tigh. Gaius waves at the camera: "Hello." What happens ?
Lee and Dee are still holding hands, at their table. He opens his mouth to say something, with a sad and somehow obtrusive, somehow perfect pop song playing, like the song for all breakups or fake makeups. Dualla spots Anders and Kara across the bar.
Anders spots Dualla and Lee across the bar. Kara catches Lee's eye, everybody retreats to corners, Kara clears her throat. Anders offers to leave, if she's not comfortable, and she touches his forehead with hers, smiling sweetly. He orders two whiskeys, straight up.
"I should have known that you'd betray me."
Gaius stands and begins to pace, trying to find a way out of this new cage. "What did you tell them? That you stayed behind till the grisly end on New Caprica, so you could what? So you could, uh -- you could feed information to the Resistance? Who do you think allowed you to do that?" Gaeta's jaw drops, grossed out: "That's a lie!" The sad thing is, it's not. There's nowhere to stand. "No, it's not a lie. You think I'm blind? You see, I literally had a gun pointed to my head [unnecessary flashback], but nobody forced you to play both sides." He's been gone all season; this gives him certain forms of blindness about what's gone on, but also certain clarities: Gaeta's not a very forgiving person, as we'll see shortly, but most of it's pointed back at himself.
"So I'm asking you...who is the real traitor in this room?"
Lee Adama touches his wife's forehead with his own.
Kara Thrace laughs, clinking a glass with her husband.
Anastasia Dualla Adama smiles at her husband, swallowing it again, singing along. Helping rebuild.
Sam Anders makes a toast to his wife, and to himself, and to their marriage, and to their recreational drinking: "To the first of many." They down them and order a second round.
Kara doesn't look at Lee, until she does. He's kissing his wife and meeting her eyes. Lee doesn't look at Kara, until he does: she's laughing with her husband. His smile is sad but vindicated: Fine. Somewhere Chief and Cally are working it out. Lee kisses his wife. Kara's laugh carries across the bar; it never sounded so fake.
"I am not a traitor."
Except here, in this room, right now. Except when you're the carrot, Gaeta. But did he fall? Or was he pushed? "Because there are far worse things than being a traitor. Aren't there, Felix? If your friends only knew the truth." He takes him tenderly by the hair, leaning in close. "Don't worry. We'll keep that a secret."
Cut to the camera, looking down as Gaius silently whispers something into his ear; Gaeta's entire body goes stiff with rage. What did he say? It's in the gap.
Roslin cocks her head at the intimacy, and the reaction. Adama realizes they've gotta run, and everybody heads for the brig. Inside, Gaeta throws him down in the other chair: "Get away from me!" He jumps on him, across the gap, astraddle, and shoves the pen through his throat. "Frack you!" he screams.
The Sergeant enters, ordering Gaeta away from the prisoner. "Step away from the prisoner. I will not ask you again." Gaius stares up, betrayed, bleeding out. Noose, hands, pen. Adama tells the Marine to stand down, and orders Gaeta away from Gaius. He's got him in a headlock, like a hostage. How much of this is theatre? "No, no, no, sir, I can't, I can't let him live, not after what he's done." Just now? Or were you waiting all this time?
Roslin flicks her eyes at Bill, and circles toward him: "Mr. Gaeta. Mr. Gaeta, wait please. Look at me. I understand what you're feeling." He shuffles away from her and says she doesn't. I'm starting to feel like that's maybe true. "Yes, I do. The other night, you didn't come here to interrogate Dr. Baltar. You came here to kill him, didn't you? I understand that. I do." She does, but how much of this is theatre? Bill knocks the kid down and Cottle grabs the still-spurting Baltar, while Roslin drops to Gaeta's side. Cottle pronounces Gaius still not dead: "He missed the artery." As Cottle orders a gurney for Gaius, Roslin tells the Marine helping Gaeta up to go easy on him. She just remembered how -- and how close she was to falling into the same gap, with nowhere to stand. Felicitous, isn't it, that once again, circumstances have conspired to stop her before she went too far. I just didn't expect her to be the ones applying the brakes to Bill the dove, of all people. I think Bulldog got to him more than we thought, that's what I think.
In sickbay, Chip Six drops her heels and slides around onto the bed with Gaius, pronouncing him to hold a certain luck in life, a kind of serendipity. "You're not one of the Five, [but] you certainly have the luck of the Gods." He reminds her/himself that he's "the chosen one," and Chip Six, hilariously, goes, "You didn't go tell them that, did you?" He's a little woozy; he shakes his head. He's alone on the bed.
"Everybody's gotta have a secret."
(Deleted and then shown anyway, just out of sequence. Maybe it goes here, I don't know. I hope this doesn't keep happening. I like my secret scenes to stay secret, so I don't have to watch them. Except in magical continuity-creating previouslies, which I now think is cute. Roslin tells the Marines to be gentle as they unlock Caprica's shackles in her brand new cell. She's still wearing her black dress from last week. Roslin smiles at her, sits. She isn't wearing her glasses. Caprica stares at the wall and wonders how sick this is going to get. "All we really know is that Baltar was not involved in the attack," says Laura, "and we need more." Caprica finally turns, hard. "And I need to know that I won't be airlocked." Roslin promises, still grinning that scary Roslin grin: "You have my word." Caprica smiles right back. "Like you gave Leoben your word? Before sending him reeling out into space?" They smile hard at each other, crackling. "Yeah," she says, intense: "He told us."
Even more deleted, so much so that I still haven't seen it, but basically Roslin asks her name -- "Caprica," she says, which think about how that's gonna look to a Colonist -- and at least buys that Caprica loves Gaius for real. Caprica asks aloud whether the Colonial judicial system has withered away along with the human conscience -- which I've been wondering since before New Caprica -- and tells Roslin she's not talking unless Gaius gets a fair trial. If he does, she'll volunteer as the primary witness and share whatever Roslin wants to know. It's not like she's going home any time soon; also, I am in love with her.)
The state of the union is this: everything important takes place in the gap. Humanity, democracy, love, union itself takes place in the gap. It's the end of a line of poetry with nobody telling you what comes , with nowhere to stand and no actual reason to be good, or honest, or strong. Just the gap. And that's you doing the work of creating the poem's total meaning for a second, which makes you love the poem even as the line adjusts your vector, because it's part of you now. It's your life.
Roslin lies on the couch in Adama's office. "I told him I didn't take any satisfaction in seeing his pain, but the truth is I was willing to see him endure a great deal of suffering, in order to get what I wanted. It wasn't some intelligence or some truth. I wanted a genuine admission of guilt." There's a rood screen confessional shadow across her face, by the way, as she's saying this. Just in case you felt like getting slapped by the Catholic guilt with which this episode is infused. Bill shakes his head.
"That's something that you're not gonna get from someone like Baltar. He doesn't see himself that way. It's not who he is. In his eyes he's the victim, not the criminal."
That's everybody, too. She knows he's right; she looks really tired. (But not in a way where she's not luminously beautiful; tired like in her mind.) "It's not too late for him to just disappear," says Bill, still trying to fix her problem, and she sweetly pats him on the arm, smiling sadly. "We can't do that. For all his crimes, he's one of us," she smiles. Halfway there. "So what happens ?" he asks, looking into her eyes, glad all that's over with. William Adama has never seemed so much like a kid as in this episode. I hope he's going to be okay. "We give him his trial," Roslin says, grossed out. He breathes; they sit.
And outside that room, all around them, doing paperwork and writing letters, doing pushups and reading magazines, the tiny lives outside that room, all around them: their people. Their people.