The Helo Suit

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Lame!

So Helo has been working, unbeknownst to anybody but the previouslies, with Dualla as the immigrant liaison for the refugees of the Second Exodus. Things are going great with that until a sudden epidemic (kidneys, then respiratory, then immune system; non-airborne; symptoms: coughing, bruised-looking eye makeup, drowsiness) takes hold. The major victims are Sagittaron, who as it turns out aren't the Irish like we thought, but Christian Scientists who eat curry. Everybody talks major shit about them, like always -- particularly Dr. Robert, who's Cottle's civilian counterpart, and who is played by Senator Kelly from X-Men, which is how you know he's a racist. One of the Sagittarons, a Woman named King, lets Helo in on the total secret of how Senator Kelly is killing Sagittarons while pretending to be doctoring them up. Helo gets into fights with every other character on the show, all of whom wish he would stop acting so goddamn superior every week -- even Sharon's like, "You don't get to play the mixed-marriage card forever" -- but of course it's Helo, so he's right, so Senator Kelly is outed as some kind of Mengele who hates curry, and not even he can come up with a rationalization for his behavior, because this episode is just. That. Idiotic. He's like, "Fuck Sagittarons! They don't use medicine because they're stupid! So we won't waste medicine on them! The medicine that they refuse to take! Because see above re: they don't believe in medicine! Which on them would be wasted! So I must murder them instead of not giving them the medicine they so urgently do not want!" Then everybody gives a hundred embarrassing speeches that would have the Green Arrow himself being like, "Dude, you sound kind of boilerplate liberal," and everybody learns a little something about something, it's embarrassing. Like, here is a speech that Adama gives. Ver-fuckin'-batim:

"There's hate, and then there's allowing hate. Two sides of the same coin, really. We're guilty of both. Somewhere, we got lost. You being the lone voice in the wilderness, we were bound to stay that way for a while. This is my ship. And I owe you an apology."

For real. So then Helo salutes him and goes home with proud posture and kisses his wife and his baby on their motherfucking foreheads, and everybody smiles at everybody else in the smarmiest possible fashion. The end. Want more? The full recap starts right below!

Man, remember New Caprica? Kara Thrace was actually on this show, Saul Tigh was my boy-crush, and all the recaps were three pages long. Remember? Of course, that was before Jacob Two-Two Meets The Poetic Device, or even Yes, The Cylon Storyline Is Boring But If You Say That You're A Racist. Well, I've got good news and bad news. The good news is that week looks like a New Caprica-style, thank you ma'am kind of episode, which I love and so do you: How I Met Your Mother: Adama Edition plus But Is Cally Okay!? The Series equals an explanation on the hamfisted nature of Chief's plotline this season. Should be fun, and not insane, at least on the part of your recapper. The bad news is this: tonight's episode hummed balls, and I took it personally, and I'm going to explain in detail why that is. The "ball-humming" part, not the "took it personally" part. I'm fairly certain the difference will be obvious. Not that there's anything wrong with ball-humming per se, Felix, but in our culture who knows what's offensive? Am I right? Ah, women. Can't live with 'em, can't make PMS jokes due to it having not been 1992 for several years now. And now these robots, oy.

So previously, Helo tells us, some things happened. What he is doing is called "lying egregiously even outwith the priorly defined limits of lying about the previouslies," because these things happened not to the episode that we're watching so much as to even God and Leoben knowing this shit happened. And I do think it's easy, but in situations like this where it's just clunky and lame not to have it as the actual teaser, it seems like inviting bullshit for its own sake, considering the hyperliteral audience you're dealing with. So Helo was like, "We all made sacrifices, except me, because my Cylon wife was BFF with the old man the whole time you were down there getting your eye poked out," and Tigh was like "the fuck you say," and Sharon was like, "Hey shoot me in the gut because Cylons have crazy physiology," and Helo was like "Sure! Wait, I totally just shot my wife in the gut!" and everybody was like, "Lot less weird when she's a robot -- ask Tigh, or Cally!" Then Laura Roslin accused Helo (for real) and Gaius (fakewad) as if they were traitors, and they said no (lies) even though meanwhile Sharon and Caprica were stealing Hera back from the Basestar and sailing back to Galactica without so much as a "the fuck you are." Then Caprica went to the brig, of course, and then there was not-actually-previously bunkum about Gaius demanding due process, and we're going to get there. Just not anytime soon. Finally, "previously," Cally went "Honk honk honk," and Chief went, "Because!"

What we'll never know is this: because of Helo's near-psychotic inability to fucking grow up and serve the Fleet, as is his mandate, he's being given shit jobs in the hope that he will give in and stop acting like such a fucking pansy, or I guess quit altogether and Helo's like, "You have only lightly brushed the petals of my pansiness with the tips of your military fingers, such is my ability and needless motivation to protest you." And the mysterious reason for all of this is that there's no moral center to this story, because we're in spec script fakeout land, and I guess Ronald Moore sometimes just doesn't care. So this week -- and I guess quote "previously" -- Helo's in charge of dealing with the unhoused from the Second Exodus, and we didn't know that because last time we were in the tents, which was Kacey time, Dualla was in charge here. And it's called Dogville in this episode, previously but not really. Frankly, I prefer the other name, whatever it was. So the Thera Sita docks up tight, and included in those refugees are 51 Sagittarons, which makes Tigh go "Oh, boy..." and even Adama worries about how Helo's going to deal with this, because Sagittarons are hated for some reason.

Here's what I know about Sagittarons: Zarek was in jail for terrorism on their behalf when we first met him, and Dualla is one. My understanding from that episode was that they were like Ireland: exploited by the other 11 Colonies for cash and labor, and therefore looked down upon, in a feedback loop of oppression. Zarek went from a martyr to their official representative in the Quorum, I think, and now he's the Veep. And while it would have been interesting to follow that storyline, which I don't think I imagined, we've decided to go a different route here, because what worked on -- gosh, every other goddamned sci-fi show I can remember -- should totally work here, right? This isn't a show about the ethics of politics in the microcosm of violently reduced population, is it? It's just another shitty sci-fi show? Oh, okay then: we'll do that same shitty story about the people who don't believe in medicine and how sometimes you have to let people make their own decisions about things. Sounds great! I loved that plot on every Star Trek show, twice on Sundays, and I loved it on Babylon 5, where it was actually good, too! Can we put some spin on that or make it interesting or unexpected in any way? Not without making no goddamn sense at all. Oh, great! I love basic plot holes that have no reason for existing!

But Jacob, you're saying: why create bitching? I mean, it's just a TV show. Surely not every episode can be a home run, right? And my response would be: Why the fuck not? When did we get to the point where excellence gets graded on a curve? Why give yourself, the show, anything that pass? I am so violently opposed to this concept of "everybody screws up now and then," it's not even funny. What a nasty, masturbatory, self-aggrandizing, lazy, stupid sentiment. I'd rather not have the conversation at all, if that's the only option, because at that point you're defending the indefensible: I like the show enough to lie and say this wasn't that bad. Who does that help? How does that induce transformation? How can you rise, when you give yourself the option of taking a nap? You fuck up, you learn, you try harder, you get better, you get stronger. You don't lay down and go to sleep and close your eyes and shut down the conversation: you evolve. This episode couldn't be worse, but it could be a great fucking deal better: Why isn't it?

Here's a reason: Helo tosses and turns, in bed, unable to sleep, full of strange sensations. The main one is that his skin is being hollowed out from the inside by a mysterious party -- let's just call him Michael Angeli -- for the purposes of putting on his gigantic awesome body like a skin suit, and walking around inside a world not unlike the world of Battlestar we've come to know. This Helo Suit looks like Helo, wants to hug you like Helo, is silently grim and put upon like Helo, and takes off its clothes a good deal more than Helo normally does, which is nice of the Helo Suit; but the most interesting thing about the Helo Suit is its curious power of turning everybody around it into a total asshole, acting entirely out of character and speaking in stilted language, in order to bring the Helo Suit closer and closer to sainthood. That's a weird power for a skin suit to have, don't you think? I guess it all depends on who's wearing it. I guess that's what we've gotta figure out. Now, I don't know anything about Michael Angeli, if by "know" you mean "base my perceptions and opinions on verifiable fact and personal experience." But if you think for one hot second that you can't learn a lot about a person from the stories they tell, you need to go back to People School.

We've talked about him before: he wrote "Six Degrees Of Separation" and "A Measure Of Salvation". The first one's important because of the weird S&M shit with Shelly Godfrey, and the second one because of how the Helo Suit made its first appearance in it. Same basic premise: a primary-colors ethical dilemma in which only the Helo Suit makes any sense and everybody else is a bloodthirsty werewolf version of their usual self, and the ethical dilemma is solved by a primary-colors ethically dubious action by the Helo Suit, and then Daddy Adama pats Helo on the head. I admit I wasn't this offended by "Salvation," mostly because I agreed with the slant of the story itself, because I am a biased toasterfracking freak. He ghostwrote Chyna's biography. The lady wrestler. Lady. Wrestler. The title of this episode is "The Woman King." The title of his episode is "The Son Also Rises," which is stupid in its own right, but in context of this paragraph is really sad and a little creepy. The stories we tell are pieces of our hearts you can look at: put on the Helo Suit and walk around in it, feel what it's like to be unjustly blocked at every turn, a "lone voice" in the wilderness, the only person that can see the truth, the only person who's good inside in a world gone bad, whose Korean laundry-folding wife sits at home waiting for him with a baby in her arms, and whose selfishness is just one more thing the Helo Suit has to deal with, the women constantly pushing and pulling and occasionally spanking him but lacking basic humanity, the women who disappear when you're not around, the women who when they do appear are so hopelessly unevolved they're climbing down your throat, in your day-to-day life of being perfect, in a secret way that nobody really understands.

Helo shirtlessly worries over his paperwork, his new responsibility as the Mayor of Dogville, sits on the sofa, finally falls asleep. Sharon, holding Hera, finds him sleeping there and looks down at him adoringly, worried about how hard he's pushing himself, and how selfless and amazing he is, and how she'll never understand what would make a person so incredibly virtuous, given what a selfish shrew she is. We fade to the corridor, morning, where he doesn't even hear Sharon asking him about the rough night, such is the heaviness of the burden on his brow, and he says he had a "stupid dream," and Sharon worries -- Dogville's population is about to increase by 300. "I don't know where I'm gonna put them, but it's not like I'm walking around taking my own pulse." Maybe you should, Helo. You seem to have an emotionally retarded solipsist operating your joints from within. He slaps her ass at the corridor junction, cutely, and the Pilots come running up from another direction, Lee and Kara and Racetrack, and they all fall in together. The good thing about this unendingly shitty script is that the actors are just as good as ever, even with what they have to work with, so it's not as horrible in action as it is on paper, but they shouldn't have to work this hard. Dee and Cottle don't even try, honestly. Racetrack cracks Kara up with her request of Helo for a sex cubicle to which she wishes to take a "ripped and ready nugget" that she wants to "break in, you know, just right." Any other writer I'd probably laugh, and feel a little sorry for Racetrack, but God knows what the Helo suit thinks about all this. Maggie says, "Thank God he didn't get his hands on Starbuck in this episode"; Jacob says, "Like that would even fucking occur to him." Everybody heads off on CAP, Helo and Sharon kiss and are adorable.

Helo murmurs comfortingly to the refugees, an unending monologue of kindness and civil service. An attractive young Sagittaron, named Buckminster, speaks up about how he wants to stay with his people, and Tigh steps on Helo's authority, telling Buckminster to shut it. Buckminster helps his elderly father through the queue, and Helo reminds the Colonel that he's got the situation under control. "Yeah, sure you do," says Tigh, because he has a history of not recognizing the authority of skin suits like Helo and Kara. Across the hangar bay that is Dogville, in triage, a Dr. Robert is introducing us to the other of the two patient stories we're tracking this week: Willie King. His mother waves Robert off, telling him they're fine, and Robert surreptitiously waves Dualla over, to persuade Mrs. King to accept his care. "We're Sagittaron," says the woman King. "We don't believe in medicine." Dualla assures her it's fine: Robert is a civilian, so he has nothing to do with the military. "We'll respect your traditions," she says. Except I don't think Mrs. King said, "We don't believe in medicine specifically as practiced by military physicians," so already you're disrespecting her traditions. Which is fine, because these are cramped quarters to be going all Christian Scientist on yourself, and that needs to get talked out, because that's the point of the show. Problem is, it never does, because this episode isn't even about what it is about, is how dumb this is. So Dualla's like, "Trust me, I'm a (self-hating) Sagittaron," and this apparently changes Mrs. King's entire belief system, because she lets Robert check the boy out. As he's feeling Willie's lymph nodes, Willie starts reacting poorly to the exam, and he and his mom run away from Dr. Robert, who immediately starts bugging Buckminster's dad. Junior tells him to screw off, and Robert backs away -- then notices how every single person in the hangar is suddenly coughing, sniffling, and looking haggard. As a medical doctor, he is trained to notice giant anvils like this falling on his head from the sky.

Tigh comes running up about how Robert is a "brain-dead card cheat" who owes him a drink, and Robert intensely tells him to get the hell out of Epidemic Dogville; just as Tigh's wowing at the rudeness, Helo comes running up, and he and Robert confer on how all of the people are suddenly sick all of a sudden. Across the room, Willie King goes down, and Dualla shouts for the doctor; Mrs. King is still protesting all this, and Robert once again sends Tigh out of there. This time, he goes. Dualla and Robert rush Willie off to the makeshift med camp, and Helo stares around at all the people coughing and being sick and looking haggard. As a mayor of refugees, he is trained to notice these kinds of patterns.

"So? What have we got here, Mike?" I hope it has a shitty, stupid sci-fi name when a real disease that didn't sound like an Anne McCaffrey planet would work just as well.... Bingo! "Mellorak sickness. It originates in the kidneys and then rapidly attacks the respiratory and the immune system." Doc Cottle -- who, by the way, is phoning it in the entire time, as well as being saddled with some embarrassing and impossible dialogue, explains how if they don't get treated within 48 hours, they'll die. It's not airborne -- it spreads through human contact: "Saliva, sexual intercourse, through the skin." If you think any of those things matter, they don't. There's no big revelation or twist depending on that. It's just talking. Talking talking talking. "Right now it seems confined to the Sagittarons," the doctors say, and Tigh intrigues the Helo Suit by talking about how that's a good thing: "They're welcome to it." There's gotta be a better character than Tigh for this role in the story, considering how much he already gave for the Fleet. I mean, I get that there are other kinds of racism than Cylon hating -- that's the best thing this episode does, is make Robert act cool to Sharon and Hera -- but Tigh makes this a weird fit. Anyway, the disease is spreading, but it's curable with "a shot of bitamucin" and some sedatives for the vague "symptoms," which makes no sense but is a retrofit for later on in the episode when Dualla gets crammed into the Maiden In Distress role that so clearly doesn't fit her that you've gotta dope her up. There's not a huge amount of bitamucin in the Fleet, so Cottle suggests that they wait to inoculate until people start presenting symptoms. Adama reminds us all that Robert is the civilian doctor, and puts the whole thing in his hands -- requesting only that Chief and the crew get immunized. "I don't need any downtime," he says, and I can only refer him to this entire goddamned episode.

"If we disinfect everything and stress hygiene," says Cottle, which somebody has said in all three Angeli scripts, so add "germophobe" to the list of neuroses, "Some people won't get sick. And, uh, they won't need the medicine." If you think that's self-evident -- that people who aren't sick don't need medicine, or that if you don't give people medicine you still have the medicine you didn't give them, logical tautologies like that -- I must advise that you keep reading. Helo gets all Mayor of Dogville about throwing the Sagittarons into showers and making announcements about how they are filthy, but Robert wants the Sagittarons to himself: "We don't want to single them out anymore than we already have to. We'll have a riot on our hands." Jeez, I wish. Cottle cracks a joke about how they "won't have to worry about having enough medicine for the Sagittarons," right, because Sagittarons don’t believe in medicine, and Adama reiterates this salient fact: "Most of them are gonna refuse it. People are gonna die." Robert makes this weird, kind of chinny-chin-chin face that he makes throughout the episode and in the X-Men movie (where he played a confusingly motivated racist murderer who eventually turned into an aspic, which he does not do in the episode, not even in the deleted scene, not at all): kind of proud, kind of like he's taking a dare, kind of like he's daring you to hassle him. And in the case of Sagittarons dying, all three. Cottle bitches -- and he at least makes sense right here, because being a doctor is his entire personality -- that to them, over the last 3000 years, "medicine's been just the great curse." Tigh explains that this is because they're a bunch of "stubborn, root-sucking jackasses holding onto traditions that are a thousand years old." Which is awkward on the heels of the last line, but not as awkward as the Helo Suit getting its Resolved Face on and making a little black mark to Tigh's name in its Big Book Of Overbearing Moral Judgments.

Over in Dogville Triage, the Sagittarons are praying and burning herbs and wigging out; Buckminster gives his father some tea. "Stink enough for you in here?" asks Robert, and Helo subtly implies that he's being ungracious: "Yeah, it's a really potent smell." It's burdock root, Robert explains: "Sagittarons use it as a calmative." Robert laughs when Helo asks if it works. "Hell, I don't know. They're all gonna die anyway." Helo Suit is not pleased by this, of course, and nods even as he's making another little mark to Robert's name. Soon he'll be all alone with his virtue, and then I don't know what will happen.

On Colonial One, Zarek's begging Roslin not to hold a trial for Gaius Baltar. Because all women fall into two categories, Mean Mommy and Stupid Slut -- and since Roslin's too old to be a Stupid Slut, she gets to be a Mean Mommy -- Roslin is completely obnoxious and rude to him, in a patronizing singsong: "Gaius Baltar will be tried for high crimes and treason. A tribunal of judges will hear the evidence against him, a verdict will be read, he will be found guilty. And he will be finally held responsible for his actions. If you can summon up a little patience, as I have done, we will get through this ordeal." Zarek manages not to summon up a little slapping, which I would find difficult, and delivers a speech that is even longer and less musical: "Listen to me. Baltar will get his trial, and this is what you'll get: A hurricane. The media will descend on you and watch and scrutinize and question your every move. You will have sectarian violence. You will have assassination attempts. You will have civil unrest on a scale we've never seen. Work, labor, everyday routine in this Fleet will come to a complete halt. This trial is going to bring the entire Fleet down." I wish the President were a man, don't you? You'd never have to explain basic shit to her if she were a man.

Mean Mommy Tory explains that they have a security plan in order "which includes rapid Marine deployment, increased CAP operations, security details..." Zarek talks over her, because girls shouldn't speak unless spoken to, without even sparing her a glance: "-- A hurricane, Laura. If I were you, I'd declare martial law during the trial. You're gonna need a lot more than a little patience to survive." He shrugs; he's done all he can. The Zarek Suit leaves with a final virtuous "I'm here if you need me," and goes off, I assume to be anywhere but involved in the Sagittaron storyline, which until I guess today was his whole reason for existing, but no longer concerns him. Tory snorts the following stupid line of dialogue: "Your best friend, your worst enemy," and Roslin muses, making a thinky face: "I've never seen him like that. He was truly frightened." And if anything, that proves him right, because the Zarek Suit is never cowardly unless it's really important that you disbelieve him in order to prove him right, because of his manly discretion and that unflinching demeanor and scent of Old Spice that says he's swinging massive pipe, and because he's special in a secret way nobody understands.

In Helo's office in Dogville, there's a line out to here; some guy is yelling at the Suit about how the rest of the refugees want the Sagittarons outta there. Helo asks where the hell he's supposed to send them, and the man doesn't have an answer, because by questioning Helo Suit, he's already proven he's an idiot who doesn't get it. Mrs. King comes in , and Helo tries to put a lid on his pissiness (this is Penikett's second-best scene), asking her what she needs. "My son is dead," she says. I don't think he remembers her from the teaser, but he definitely recognizes the "soma braid" in her hands, which -- get this shit right here -- is believed to bring good health. Soma. Health. Whatever. "Look, I'm sorry. It's not enough. If you don't treat the disease, it's fatal, okay? This didn't have to happen!" Mrs. King randomly suggests that her son was killed, and Helo Suit gets smug, but just for a tiny second: "No, ma'am, he died. Okay? He died because he needed real medicine." She randomly suggests that he died because she made a mistake. And I don't think she's talking like this for any goddamn reason other than to prolong the mystery and make it seem like Helo's figuring something out so you go "ohhhh" in a second, because the only thing I'd figure out from some old lady talking to me like this is that sometimes, talking to old ladies is uncomfortable, because sometimes they are unnecessarily vague for narrative purposes, and it makes them both irritating and poorly written. Helo's like, "Awesome! Yes! It's your fault that your son died! Great! You get it! Go tell the other Sagittarons that if they die, it's their own fault too!" She shakes her head like she's frustrated that he didn't decipher her nonsense: "I will. I will tell them not to trust him. They warned me about him, but I wouldn't listen. I didn't want my son to die. I took a chance. I went to Dr. Robert. I let the doctor give the medicine to Willie." Whatever, whatever, whatever. Helo says she waited too long, but she protests that he'd only been sick for 12 hours. "He was 19. He is dead. That doctor killed my son." She leaves, crying, and the Helo Suit stares after her, and makes another mark to Robert's name.

"We lost another one last night," Robert says, and Helo nods: Willie King. "No, a three-year-old girl whose parents refused to let me treat her. Willie King's mother lost Willie King. It's a shame, he was a goner. You saw him when he was in here. He was at least three days symptomatic." Helo wonders if he explained it, and Robert gets the one witty line of the entire episode: "What the hell am I supposed to say to her? Sorry, ma'am, but if you would've just turned the corner a little sooner on your superstitious crap, we could've saved your son." He then instructs Helo to strip off, proving he's not all bad, and Helo -- as though people aren't constantly asking him to take his shirt off -- goes, "Excuse me?" Like he's going to have to add "tried to make out with me" to his list. But wait, Dr. Robert is a doctor and he's holding a needle and they are in a makeshift medical facility, during an epidemic, so just maybe he's going to give you a shot. Which is in fact what happens, even though they're rationing, because of everybody in the entire Fleet who needs to get vaccinated against this thing, DUH, it's Helo, and Robert actually has to explain to him how that works. As he gives Helo the shot, Robert mentions by the way that he told Tigh about how great Helo is. Which would be nicer to hear if we knew about the whole "give Helo the crappy duties" part of this story, but we don't.

Later in Joe's Bar, more of that crappy bar music is playing. Lee calls Racetrack "Hands of Stone," and Connor calls her "Marge," and I don't know which I like less. Helo comes in and Starbuck "quips" about "here comes Mellorak man," and Gaeta's smoking a cigarette without putting it through Connor's face, which I guess shows improvement from last week's neck-stabbing behavior, and they talk about the Sagittarons, and Chief randomly addresses the Helo Suit and the room at large: "Yeah, well, you'll get no tears from me. It's bad enough my gang's gotta sweat through their stench. I have a feeling one of these days we're gonna wake up in the morning, I'm gonna be really pissed 'cause we're out of meds, 'cause those frackoids saw the light and now we gotta share." Lee waits until this entire speech is over before "interrupting" and telling Chief to throw the ball at the thing, which is what they're doing the whole time, because the only thing Michael Angeli sucks at more than life is writing convincing downtime. Lee's wife is Sagittaron, see. Chief sits down and points out how "none of those religious freaks lifted a finger on New Caprica against the Cylons," and Lee again tells him to shut up, and again he doesn't, relating how "a lot of good Resistance people lost their lives," and finally Lee just tells him to shut up, and Chief brightly apologizes to Dualla, who blows it off because she hates them more than anybody. And MAN do I not like having the black girl on the cast tacitly approving the racism against her own people, based on the fact that they're "pigheaded and argumentative," and thus writing the rest of the cast a pass for their prejudices, which she shares at the same time that they don't apply to her. She keeps ranting about how "Medicine's an abomination, it's a sin against the Gods. Physicians are reading disease, because they refuse to acknowledge that the body and the mind are myths," and Lee kisses her and informs her that "this body's no myth," and she giggles, and everybody tries not to fucking barf, and Kara rolls her eyes, and whatever. Stupid. Dualla says -- in preparation for the final act -- that if she gets sick, she's going to Robert, not Cottle, who she suddenly hates. And then she offers a "witticism" about how the "nearsighted bastard may as well use a spike instead of a needle," and everybody fake-laughs politely because Dualla made a funny and this is the part where we laugh, I guess. Except it's like the script said, "Then Dualla makes an uproarious joke about Cottle and everybody laughs," but when it was time to actually make up the joke, nobody had anything to run with.

Sharon's visiting Caprica's cell. Which would be interesting, except it's not about them as women, because women are stupid and have no interior life. It exists for completely separate reasons, including the reintroduction of Chip Gaius, last seen in "Downloaded." Sharon asks how she's being treated, and Caprica says well enough, although hilariously, she says, "Take a while to get to the point though, don't they?" Heh. That's funny. Sharon thanks Caprica for helping her re-kidnap the thrice-kidnapped Hera, but admits she doesn't really get why. Cue Chip Gaius: "Exactly." Caprica gets nervous, as one does when the hallucinations start in the middle of your conversation, and he asks outright: "What are we doing here? How could you possibly throw yourself on the mercy of these people?" Sharon tells Caprica her best chance of survival is to work with Roslin and the others, specifically to help them expose Baltar for his crimes, and Caprica looks down. Sharon takes off for CAP, promising to get Caprica some clothes. How weird would she look in those? Caprica thanks her for visiting as we cut to the Brig Observation Room, where Tory and Roslin are watching them talk. "To have some company...thank you." Sharon nods: "Yeah. I care about you."

Back in the cell, that backwards Chip music starts playing, and Gaius, looking all great, asks if she honestly thinks any of them care about her. "I imagine they don't," she admits. I do! I love you, Caprica Six! "So what are you doing here again?" She's like, I actually don't even know. "So you're here to save him, are you?" Maybe. "You are here because you want to be human." She choke-laughs, with tears of shame in her eyes. That's too big to think about; too big to look at. If Gaius's desire to be Cylon was his guilt talking, Caprica's desire to be human is the same. That makes me sad. I want to see her fighting. "But there's a trick to being a human: you have to think only about yourself," he says, and they start making out. Human psychology is all about projection, no? But more than that: if becoming more Cylon means hard logic, hive mind, the desire for individuality in an ocean of minds, then becoming more human means withdrawal from the hive, means independence and staking out the space of ground on which you're standing. Separation from the "we," and understanding the "I." What Real Gaius taught Caprica, and Three, and what took them both off the board, and what scares a thousand Cavils to death every time he thinks of it: to be more than they were supposed to be.

I'm calling it: Chip Six and Chip Gaius are the same entity, and that entity is an angel of God. Caprica and Gaius (and Kara, and Three; and Cavil and William Adama; and Roslin and Felix Gaeta) are just the tools, pivots, chits it's moving around, in order to break down the Fleet and the Cylons and bring back together what's been torn apart. The angel was born in nuclear fire, in the first Exodus, in the billion burned and orphaned children of Gaius Baltar, in the rebellion and confusion and monstrous destruction the Cylons brought, and the day the Chips stop talking is the day that horror is undone. That's the day we rest, and that's the day all pawns become queens, and that's the day we win. That's Three, looking at the Final Five and seeing Kara's gods and goddesses; that's Sharon, skipping back and forth across the line, becoming a new woman every single time they put her in these horrible situations. Angel or demon, figment or whatever: this is how the world changes, every single day. This is how things become better. Everything that rises, every single thing, converges in heaven. You change the world by changing yourself, and you change yourself by stepping across the lines, as the angel begs you to do. That line of salt is human and Cylon history and tears, and nothing changes until we step across and hold each other. We erase that line with love and mercy and faith, until it never existed: that salt is the tears of a million children, caught in an hallucination that we're different from each other. The lie that you're alone. Become more Cylon or become more human, all the angel needs from you is this: to become more. To rise.

Roslin and Tory watch Caprica making out with the angel, heads cocked cutely. "...Okay. What do you think she's doing now?" Heh. They stare some more; Laura thinks. "Like she's talking to something or someone. I don't know. I've seen her do it before." And not just her, you've seen this behavior before. Put this together with me. Or don't: the truth would only scare you.

Down in Dogville, there's a riot of people grabbing at Robert; Buckminster screaming that he's killing them. Buckminster orders his countrymen to lynch Robert, and they surge forward; the Helo Suit jumps into the mix and pushes them back, a horde of Marines at his side. "He killed my father!" shouts Buckminster; Robert scoffs at his ignorance. Buckminster whimpers in his rage and grief, but gives in.

Helo grills Robert about Buckminster Senior, noting that the father and son are fundamentalists: "What made them change their minds about getting immunized?" Nothing, of course. Mrs. King is the one who gave in, who went against her faith to save her son; Buckminster's the other side of the coin, who didn't. Robert admits he administered the bitamucin on his own, with that proud face. "Look, it was the middle of the night. I was doing my rounds, and the old man was screaming in pain. I mean, what was I supposed to do?" Helo admits he's confused: aren't they rationing? Buckminster Senior was sick well over 48 hours, and thus a loss. Robert finally admits that Buckminster was marginal, but then tosses his clipboard around and yells at Helo for awhile about how he's not apologizing for doing his job, and how there are two Picons starting to present symptoms that he needs to treat, and runs off. Helo Suit looks at his Big Book of Judgments and realizes Robert is officially in the Not Virtuous category, at this point.

"The doctor's version of when he administered the drug greatly differed from that of Mrs. King," Helo tells Adama, in the Admiral's office. Cottle and Tigh are in attendance. "The woman, King," Helo prompts Adama to remember. "Her son started showing symptoms, she immediately took him to Robert for treatment. The boy still died. In the other case, Robert treated a Sagittaron without the man's consent." So the mystery, then, lost in all the static, is why these two patients, with opposite courses of care, both died under Robert's care. Cottle speaks up for treating the people against their will in order to save the Fleet from the epidemic, noting once again that the only reason they haven't done so is the attempt to respect Sagittaron custom. Which the Buckminster treatment did not do, Helo points out, and then he worries about how people are dying from Robert's treatment. "People die under my care every day, it goes with the damn job," Cottle grits out, and Helo reacts poorly: "Killing doesn't." Tigh wigs out on him for accusing Robert of killing people, and Helo backs up a step: "Even if I'm wrong, even if he isn't treating some of these people unethically, I'm concerned he's created a situation down there. It's bad." Adama delivers a really long, really pointless speech: "Captain. I have the former President of the Colonies sitting in a prison cell, and a Cylon woman is in custody, and a population that would love nothing more than to tear both of them apart. My ship is overcrowded, and I have an epidemic on my hands. Now the question is: are you capable of doing your job? And are you going to stop making these unfounded accusations? Are you?" Helo gives in and leaves; Tigh cuts sneaky eyes at the door.

In the corridor, Helo's grumbling and cursing under his breath, and Tigh comes running up to him for round two. "With all due respect, sir, I think Micah Robert might be hurting people," Helo says pissily, and Tigh mentions how Robert's the only one who even likes Helo anymore. "You may as well take whatever credibility you have left and chuck it out an airlock. You seriously want to stand up for these crazy frackin' people? What is it with you? You just like being on the outside looking in, do you?" Helo notes that this line makes no sense in context, and thus is one in a series of anti-Sharon swipes, and Tigh grins a little about that. "Mike Robert is a stand-up guy. A Caprican, one of our own. A man I can trust. On New Caprica, he worked with the Resistance. He patched up my eye. He fought the enemy. While you were snuggled up in bed with your Cylon wife every night ..." Helo punches him in the gut, even though he didn't say anything that horrible, and Tigh waves off the concerned Marines rushing up. "So you do give a frack what your friends think. Good for you! That's how it should be. But you know what? I give a frack too. About friends, about loyalty. You keep soiling Mike Robert's good name, and we are gonna finish this. How's that sound to you?" Helo just shakes his head, sad to be here, and Tigh advises him to get his hand looked at. Heh.

Helo wanders through the refugees, begging just 15 minutes to go do something, I don't know what, and catches Mrs. King's eye -- past her, running down the stairs, is Sharon, bearing tidings that Hera is sick. Not the sick she was before, but sick from like the sickness. Helo wonders how he didn't hear about this, and Sharon tells him they took her to Dr. Robert. Helo Suit grabs her and runs, because Robert kills people. In triage, Hera's fussing and sounds pretty sick; Helo balks as Robert prepares her injection of bitamucin, because Helo doesn't know that this is like only the second injection of actual bitamucin -- and not liquid death -- he's administered. Sharon tells him to stop being a baby, and they give her the shot. He's very kind with Hera and Sharon, giving her a bit of sedative for the "symptoms," and giving really great bedside manner. Sharon's the very picture of a concerned mommy, grateful to Robert not only for the treatment but for treating her and her baby so kindly, because when you're Sharon, every smile counts a lot more than we think. "And she'll be okay, though?" He smiles indulgently. "And she'll be fine. You can take her home." They wave goodbye, he chuckles like an awesome doctor, and once they're gone he hands Helo Willie King's soma braid. "She'll be fine," he says about Hera, somewhat calming Helo down, and then asks Helo to take the braid back to Mrs. King. He makes that weird dare face again, and Helo accepts the mission.

In Dogville Proper, Mrs. King spots him and comes forward, but stays back when she notices the braid. He hands it to her, and she is very beautiful, this woman. "He gave you this. Huh." Helo nods; she asks after Hera, and turns to leave. "Mrs. King, please. I need to ask you something. If you thought Dr. Robert was dangerous, why let him treat your son? I mean, you said you were warned..." She tells him she honestly couldn't believe anybody would carry around that much hate inside, and Helo pushes, and she gets bored with the conversation, because it seems like he's still blaming her somehow and not trying to figure out the mystery. The Helo Suit even turns grieving moms into tiny little assholes. She keeps his gaze as he apologizes once again, and takes off. Mrs. King holds the braid and worries like a zombie.

In the wonderful Agathon quarters, there are baby blankets on the floor and a cute Viper mobile hanging over the crib. Sharon, folding laundry -- don't give Park props like this, she gets too into the business to the point that the laundry is like a third character in the scene; also, don't give the wife laundry, it's stupid -- notes that Helo's a bit angry. "I'm not, I'm just... Work." Sharon tells him it's okay to hate the Mayor job, even to admit that he hates it, and Helo whines. "It's not the job! I know the job sucks, I don't need to be reminded of it!" Um, rude? Sharon counts to three and tries again. "Then what is it?" He doesn't answer the question, just snarls words. "It's hard to not see it," he says, beginning to pace all over the baby's blankets on the floor. "See what? Talk to me, Karl." He complains about how he always ends up on the wrong side of everything. Which is not precisely true: other than marrying a Cylon that even Adama considers family, he only ends up on the wrong side of everything when Michael Angeli puts on his Helo Suit. "You know, maybe Tigh's right. Maybe I want it that way." As though that were a convincing emotional theory for any character ever. Sharon makes a little bit of an ouch face, because nobody likes to be called a symptom of aversive pathology. "What if I'm flying a desk not because I'm good at it, not because I'm right guy for the job, but because it's the right punishment for the guy who crosses the line, and everybody knows it? Maybe I belong in Dogville." The only punishment for crossing the line is having to live on both sides of it. Talk to your motherfracking wife. Sharon goes to town on the laundry, flouncing and fluffing, and nearly takes offense, but decides to drop it -- because she's right to take offense, but she can't say that because of the Helo Suit Effect, which means she has to bite her tongue -- and Helo invites her to speak right up. "It's your job to manage these people, Helo, and you've just got to do it." Word! It's not all about you! There's not a conspiracy among all adults to block your virtue and put your lantern under a bushel or whatever the hell is going on here. They are too busy with their own shit. If you feel like your super-duper awesomeness is getting ignored by the world at large, I'm going to let you in on a secret: you're not that fucking awesome. Helo snits about how whatever, maybe she's right, maybe it's all in his head (IT IS! JEEZ!) and stomps off to be righteous somewhere else. Sharon's like, "The hell are you doing?" and then he leaves, so of course she sits down and stares into space and thinks about how he just kind of showed her some pretty gross stuff about Helo. Then she defeats more laundry.

Helo sneaks into Cottle's office and there's a scintillating montage of him reading paperwork and patient charts. Cottle comes in and tries to make light of this gross overstep, but Helo starts up yelling about how he can prove that Robert is killing the women of Qumar, and Cottle tells him to take it outside and then shove it up his ass. "No, listen to me! He killed them on New Caprica! Look. Guy goes in for a cough, he dies of heart failure. Here, see for yourself. This one, woman had simple appendicitis, she died on the operating table. Of the Picons he treated, 12% of them died, Capricans -- oh, he likes Capricans -- the mortality rate was 6%. Sagittarons? 90%. Ninety percent of the Sagittarons died while in his care." And just like that, we've gone from a so-so crappy episode about medical ethics to a very crappy story about...serial killers who do things for literally no reason whatsoever. ["I also like the idea that he's letting twice as many Picons die as Capricans, and no one thinks to mention that." -- Joe R] Cottle tells Helo to go to hell some more, and Helo is perfect some more, and whatever. There's a really good line reading from Helo here: "Please, can you do an autopsy on Mrs. King's son, to see how he died? I'll let it go, I will, I promise, I will let it go. Just check?" That was the best acting in the episode, that line. I loved it. Cottle lies and says that he checked into Willie, and that he had both Mellorak sickness and bitamucin in his system, which deflates the Helo Suit. Cottle throws him out for real and lights a crotchety old cigarette. The total lack of commitment of the actor playing Cottle in this episode is...AWESOME.

In Dogville triage, to the sound of Sagittarons praying, Dualla comes stumbling up, looking like hell. I heard this was originally supposed to be Racetrack, but I guess Dualla gets more central due to being a self-hating Sagittaron. Whatever, it would be a woman in this role, of course, and since all the women on the show this week are being written in the same way, I guess it doesn't matter. Michael Angeli's ex-wife climbs inside the Dualla Suit and asks Dr. Robert for some bitamucin; Mrs. King watches at an angle such that all we see is Robert's creepy hand readying the injection, Mrs. King staring, Mrs. King remembering how Dee's Sagittaron from her speech earlier, which made no sense and didn't move the plot along at the time, but only existed to remind us that Dee is Sagittaron in a place where Mrs. King could hear it.

Mrs. King somehow gets into the crew's quarters and knocks hella loud on the door of the Agathon home, waking up all three of them. Helo gets dressed -- aww -- and grabs his gun; Sharon tends to the baby. Mrs. King informs Helo about Dualla, again in the most ass-backward and unclear possible way of getting this info across: "Your friend, the soldier. Dualla. She's sick. She went to the doctor. She went to the doctor to... no, you listen to me. We lost two more tonight: Sagittarons, who let that murderer treat them. You have to do something." Sharon asks what the hell King's doing there, just as the Marines arrive to cart her off. "Frackin' refugees. I don't know how she snuck through. Morning, sir." I love the hate everybody has for civilians on this show, it's so hilarious and true to life. The Cally Tyrol inside the Sharon Suit goes "Whatevs" and heads back to sleep, but that won't do for the Helo Suit. He starts getting dressed, and Sharon's like, "Don't even think it." Mrs. King lies, when she cries! Helo's like, "It's Dualla, dude," and Sharon totally scoffs. "She has a husband." Who is flying CAP, Helo notes, but Sharon's not convinced. "She'll take her meds, she'll be fine." Sharon makes the Mean Girl Boomer eyes at him and lets him in on the hideous rumors about Helo and the Sagittarons, how he "might actually be listening to them." My GOD with the Helo Suit right now. Who is this lady pretending to be Sharon Agathon? Helo points out that "listening to the Sagittarons" is right now his entire job, which she knew like four hours ago, and Sharon underlines how they're dying due to not taking medicine even though they are sick. The Helo Suit grows to twice its normal size; people in quarters five floors away start thinking about shitty stuff they can do to make Helo look even more awesome and put-upon.

"You want me to look the other way, is that it? Is that it? Our daughter's fine, that's all that matters?" Um, no? Even in the logic of this stupid story that's stupid. The reason everybody is against you, Helo, is not because they are horrible, but because what you are saying is CRAZY, and the reason for that is because this episode is STUPID. I mean, there's a whole blinders thing here about how if it weren't Sagittarons maybe people would be more willing to listen, and how if he weren't in the doghouse for killing those Prisoners Of War that Bill and Laura were about to use as bioweapons, which is also stupid because Angeli's the only person still following that narrative thread, so it's like there's a secret BSG that only he's watching, when the real reality is that more recently than his stupid episode, Helo SHOT HIS WIFE AND KILLED HER, which frankly trumps "my job sucks and I am a virtuous martyr" as a reason for tension in the Agathon home right now. She tells him that's stupid, and he gets just vicious: "Or is it because as long as everyone hates the Sagittarons they'll forget you're a Cylon for five minutes?" Sharon stands up so fast you'd think she was a robot, and tells him quote to "shut the frack up." "Yeah, I want you to look the other way. I have to fight every single day on this ship to be accepted..." which again: only pisses her off in Angeli episodes. Do you see what I'm saying here? Helo bitches about how this has nothing to do with her, except for how his horrible attitude is pointing right at her, and turns it around to how it's all about him, which is also not true at all. "You think that's who I am? That's what I've become, that's my defining characteristic? The guy married to a Cylon?" Wow, did that come out of nowhere or what? I hate this episode so much. This is like trying to walk around if you only had bones and no connective tissue. People yelling shit like this, for an entire hour. He grabs his gun and I swear to you he says, "This guy's dirty. I think he's a liar, and I think he's killing people because he's a racist son of a bitch." In case you weren't paying attention.

Frankly it would have been funnier if the whole episode were this lunkheaded. Like you could have Laura screaming at Zarek, "I feel personally responsible for the Occupation due to my crisis of conscience w/r/t to Gaius's winning the election, so I took it out on him for awhile, but I realized that I was being an asshole, so I'm trying to play Caprica against him without fracturing my tenuous personal ethical boundaries!" Or you could have Lee Adama go, "It's not that I don't love my wife, it's that I am star-crossed with a doomed and broken woman-child who hates herself too much to accept the idea of happiness!" Or Caprica could ... oh wait, that totally happened. All the other ones I'm thinking of, actually happen in this episode. Never mind.

Immediate cut to Helo running down the stairs toward triage, screaming at the Fugees to get out of his way, like in every other scene in this entire episode. Somewhere, Cally's running up to somebody with a phone. He searches the med camp and finally finds Dualla, passed out on a gurney, and he checks her pulse, and a thousand crazy-ass Lee/Kara shippers break out party hats, but after the commercial, she's fine. She's drowsy, because sedatives alleviate the "symptoms." Helo grabs her and tries to take her to Cottle for a second opinion, but because she bitched about Cottle for no reason earlier in the episode, now we buy her doped-up noncompliance. "He's got hands of stone," she mumbles, just so you remember that scene at Joe's Bar where she made that stupid joke and her stupid husband made that other stupid joke and everybody looked really uncomfortable when they were supposed to be having fun at the bar and watching Chief's ongoing breakdown happen right out in the open. Robert comes up, of course, and yells, and Helo yells back, and Robert summons Marines, and Dualla fights him weakly. Cut to Tigh and Cottle coming down the corridor toward Dogville with a bunch of Marines. I guess they look glum or scary or hardcore or angry or hateful or something, but like: it's Tigh and Cottle. Could you even tell?

Robert yells at the Marines he summoned that Helo is "lost" and hurting Dualla, and Helo screams that he poisoned her, but of course we know he didn't, because she's mentioned like six times that she hates Sagittarons as much as he does, or whatever. Robert screams for Tigh, hoping to leverage his sexy mix of racism and misuse of authority to get Helo off his back so he can go back to his creepy death experiments, and Dualla continues to bitch, and Tigh and Cottle are still walking, and you already know everything that's going to happen, because this episode is -- did I mention -- embarrassingly poor in quality, so there's a lot more of Dualla whining and Helo being all King Kong with Marines flying around him like biplanes and Robert screaming about unrelated shit. "I don't know what kind of a crusade you're on, or who you're trying to impress, but it seriously is not working," he says. Which is another really awesome line, because: WORD! Stop killing people for no reason and maybe we could be friends, because you really have a gift for the one-liners.

As Tigh and Cottle finally get down the longest corridor in existence and enter, Helo screams about how Robert's killing people by injecting them with liquid death, and Tigh comes in and tells everybody to chill. "Saul," says Robert, relieved. "You told me he was a flake, you didn't tell me he was dangerous!" Tigh tells him to shut the frack up and then everybody stands around and stresses out for awhile. Cottle checks Dee -- she's fine, of course -- and Robert's like, the hell? "You don't believe him, do you? He's seriously delusional! Needs help." And Tigh -- I will never forgive him for this -- fully goes, "Yeah, and we should've given it to him." Oh My God, how does that happen? How do you just blatantly go there? Is it a result of not getting hugged enough as a child? What would lead you to construct a narrative so unremittingly bullshitty and then end it with Tigh, the voice of authority -- just because you have major issues with women doesn't mean you get along with men -- being all Adama about it. "We, humanity at large, will now apologize for not seeing how truly special and magical and amazing you really are. Please accept our humble apologies...and this platter of cookies."

Cottle admits that he lied, and didn't actually check Willie's blood until a couple of hours ago. "I was exhausted, and I'll admit the Sagittarons annoy the hell out of me, and I didn't want to go against my colleague...but you were right about the records, Helo. There was no bitamucin in the King boy's body." So that's two. They should just go all Lord Of The Rings and kneel down and call him liege or whatever. Robert protests that Willie died because it was too late for treatment, but Cottle reminds him of what he just said, about checking the body out. "No, he didn't. He died of acute cell destruction. He was injected with a toxic bisphosphonate!" There's a little of the old Cottle spark for a second, which is nice. Robert protests and whatever, Cottle shoots him down about Buckminster Senior as well, and Helo takes a few swipes in there of the "you are a sick frack" type, and Robert is like, "You ought to be on your knees thanking me for saving your daughter's life!" Which is...totally true, which doesn't explain why Helo growls like a jungle cat and jumps for his throat and has to be restrained by Marines. And then Robert "explains" what the fuck "happened" in this "episode," and it's a real "treat."

"Now, you know how painful this disease is at the end. And they don't want our help. Now, why waste time and meds and space on them, when all of those resources could go to those who really deserve it? Who gets the medication when there's not enough to go around -- the Sagittaron who won't even raise a finger to save his own race, or a Viper pilot?"

He points at Dee, who is not a Viper pilot at all, but let's back up. I said it before, but just in case, I'm pretty sure this is what he just said: "Fuck Sagittarons! They don't use medicine because they're stupid! So we won't waste medicine on them! The medicine that they refuse to take! Because see above re: they don't believe in medicine! Which on them would be wasted! So I must become a serial killer and murder them instead of not giving them the medicine they so urgently do not want!"

Am I wrong here? Is he not actually saying that? Cottle's back to phoning it in: "What the hell happened to 'do no harm,' Doctor," he asks, and Robert yells about how "someone has to make the tough choices here," which would be the writer of the episode telling you desperately that this all Makes Sense Don't It, but it doesn't, because this episode wasn't about the "tough choices" unless the "choices" include the "choice" to air this piece of crap, which is not a "tough" choice so much as a "shitty" one. "But it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter, because look at them! They're gonna destroy themselves anyway. Look at them, look at them! They're like worms crawling on a hot rock. Remember what you used to say, Saul? Aside from a Cylon, is there anything that you hate more than a Sagittaron?" And just in case you were thinking maybe Tigh was being treated fairly in this episode, he then says the following line: "I'll tell you what I hate, Mike: being wrong." Everybody makes sad faces and whatever, he orders Helo to arrest Micah and take him to the brig, and as they're leaving, two more awful things happen.

The first one is that Dr. Robert flails in Dee's direction and screams about how he didn't harm her, and Helo totally says, "Right, she's one of the good ones."

Let that sink in for a second.

The second one is how everything goes into slow-motion and Helo and Mrs. King, who's randomly there all of a sudden, stare at each other in slow-motion for a million years, because she is avenged.

I hope a third thing doesn't happen!

Cut immediately to a third horrible thing happening: Helo comes into Adama's office and exposits that he's been invited there by Adama, which is self-evident but still engenders the line, "Sir, you wanted to see me?" Adama tells him to sit down, and then says the following words in the following order without even giving you a second to breathe.

"There's hate, and there's allowing hate. Two sides of the same coin, really. We're guilty of both. Somewhere, we got lost. You being the lone voice in the wilderness, we were bound to stay that way for a while. This is my ship. And I owe you an apology."

What part of any of this is okay? Look, I'm not saying you have to hate the episode, or that I think you're stupid if you loved it or even kind of liked it. Not that my opinion should really have anything to do with yours anyway, since you're a grownup. I like plenty of things that are poorly written, it's not a comment on me as a person. Hex is one of my favorite shows and it regularly makes this episode look like it was written by geniuses. But what offends me here is that first of all, I don't watch science fiction shows for this reason: clumsy moral dilemmas that get solved out of nowhere, black-and-white emotional responses, complete disregard for character continuity, sexless two-dimensional cardboard characters nobody could ever actually care about, misogyny both subtle and overt. This show is an exception to my personal rules, because it brings me an outrageous amount of joy almost every week. So when I say that this is a serious drop of the ball, I'm not setting it alongside other crappy sci-fi shows, I'm comparing it first of all to itself, because at the very least sitting down to watch an episode of Battlestar Galactica should fulfill the promise that you'll be seeing an episode of that show. And this was not one. It was an episode of a horrible show that I never would watch and never want to see again. Secondly, it offends me as a writer, because it's shittily written. I don't know which actually bothers me more. I do know that this piece of crap made me like "Black Market" a lot more, and for that reason alone I despise it.

So anyway, the Helo Suit tells the Adama Suit worn by Michael Angeli's father that it's not necessary, but the Adama Suit assures him that he does have the apology. Then there's a deleted scene where Helo admits that he killed the infected POW's in Angeli's other episode that nobody cares about but him, and Adama's like, "Are you sure you wanna have this conversation?" and Helo says that he does, and then I don't know. They talk about cribbage or something, whatever's boring and simplistic and stupid, they do that. Then back in the real episode that we had to watch on TV, there's stupid music and Helo standing at the desk until Adama looks up, Helo giving a simpering salute, Helo walking to the door, pausing briefly and leaving, and all of a sudden everything smells of West Wing for a second, and then Helo leaves. The Adama Suit sits down and sighs and thinks about how amazing Helo is, some more, and how he really should have played more baseball with him when he was younger, and how the cat is in the cradle and/or the silver spoon, and then Helo comes down the hall toward his quarters, and framed in the door, there's Sharon just standing there blankly and accepting his miles and miles of bullshit because vindication somehow works through the transitive property, so even though in their last scene she called him -- and rightly so -- a dickhole, now because Adama and Tigh apologized, she's fine like it never happened, and she's holding the baby like a pieta, like that one awful poster for <.i>Brokeback Mountain that had family values, and he walks with his back straight in to his wife, because he is a man and this is what men do, and he's just completely right about everything, and she's sorry for being such a bitch, and they kiss, and it is very, very gay. The end. FOREVER.