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The long, boring, pointless back half of another disconnected, once-promising season limps painfully forward, exhausting and embarrassing by turns, holding out the trial of Baltar like it's the fucking second coming when really it seems likely to be just as boring as this episode right here, and yet never arriving there. Just discussing it, unendingly, in the most basic and annoying ways possible. Don't freak out that the show has jumped the shark -- the same thing happened last year, and it doesn't mean we turn our backs on the show. Unless it does, in which case, I bid you a fond au revoir, and wish they'd tried a little harder again this week. It's been 49 days since the Cylons were last seen, and you know what that means: shitty episodes of this show, where everybody either turns on each other for no reason or starts freaking out about backstory that, to put it kindly, seems basically cobbled together from the less interesting thoughts of writers best left in the past. Another week, another bullshit fake-moving manhood cliché: Adama hallucinates his ex-wife Caroline for the entire episode, and she goads him to hook back up with Roslin, then in the last ten minutes Lee reveals that Caroline was an abusive drunk, and that somehow everything is Bill's fault, and that he should have been a better father-slash-husband, and played more catch with Lee when he was a kid, and the little boy blue and/or the man in the moon, and Lee responds that while Bill may have loved Caroline, probably she never loved him. Which is a shitty thing to say, and comes out of nowhere, and has nothing to do with anything. Luckily, Roslin/the writers have finally come up with a point to Lee, and he's going to be the Chairman for the Exploratory Committee on how to have a Trial for Baltar, which at this point isn't going to take place until even yours truly has given up on this show ever having a point again. There's some jiggery-pokery about how much Sense this Makes, despite Lee's complete lack of familiarity with the law and the apparently incompatible legal systems of the Twelve Colonies, it's all totally stupid and desperate. Then meanwhile, Cally bitches and moans until finally the airlock gives out, and the only way to save her and Chief -- and at this point, who really cares about either of them? -- is to blow them into space and grab them with Athena's Raptor. They do it, and sadly nobody dies, and then week, Chief goes back into Norma Raye mode, making what, the fifth episode in a row where his actions, motivations, thoughts and feelings show no connection at all to the episodes on either side? I'm so tired right now. Where did the show go? Want more? The full recap starts right below!
Previously, Joseph and Evelyn Adama had a son, William. His first wife's name was Caroline, with whom he had two sons, Zak and Lee. The war killed their marriage, and he got furloughed after the war ended, and then he was all alone. Later, his second wife Anne got him back into the Colonial Fleet; he followed up by getting Tigh reinstated later. I don't know what happened to Anne, but Caroline was engaged to be remarried at the time of Galactica's decommissioning, also known as the end of the world. Then Olmos started calling her "Carolanne," creating something of a Crisis On Infinite Ex-Wives which was resolved when they suddenly became one person, even though the timelines don't make sense, because wives get a shitty shake here in S3.5. As long as they're shrieking harridans that abuse their children and/or lovers and husbands, that's good enough. Or...or I guess I can buy Carolanne, no matter the name, because this show is all about recreating your family drama, almost as much as Grey's Anatomy is: Lee's mother was a violent drunk who forgot to apologize and never lived up to her own measure; Kara's mother was a drill sergeant with weird ideas about duty and discipline; Adama leaves infinite wives and lovers behind in pursuit of legal and military ideals. Humanity's a Fleet made up of orphans: all they have are memories of the dead, twisted by time. It's not that you marry a woman just like your mom, it's that you marry a woman who makes you feel the way mom did, for good or ill. Very different proposition, and way more on your side of the line than hers, either of them. Human psychology is based on projection.
Down on New Caprica, during a party to celebrate the breaking of ground, President Gaius's memorable imprint on yet another world, Laura Roslin stood in the alluvial deposits of a virgin planet and tried to illustrate for her closest friend what a new world would be like: a world without war and fear and pain, a future that wasn't always rushing toward you, but waiting somewhere on the horizon for you just to walk toward it. I don't know if Bill heard what she was saying, but this was what she was saying: "In the mountains north of here there's this little stream. The water is so clear, it's like looking through glass. I am thinking of building a cabin." She never did. He never got to wash the alluvial deposits off his feet; he never even saw the stream.
Later, on the run again, Chief Galen Tyrol admitted to Lee that he was having trouble with his wife -- their family, for which Bill Adama still feels responsible, started on New Caprica. In some ways it ended there, I guess. They had to start over, and they still hadn't. "Marriages: Why we build bars," Chief said. And Laura lay back on William's bed with her shoes off, and touched his arm tenderly, and discussed matters of political and national importance, and of the most personal importance: how we go on. How we knock the alluvial deposits off our shoes and forget the disappointments and the triumphs of that cursed world, and remember again how we used to do things. How to go back to simply running, after the awful chance to rest.
Now: Bill's younger, in the backyard of a beautiful house on proud Old Caprica; none of that yellow irradiated glow, just wind chimes and birds and a billion birds. He looks out the window, peaceful and strong.
Now: Bill's a whole lot older, onboard Galactica, speeding away from the Algae Planet and the plague and MKUltra; to him lies Carolanne, asleep. A private outside buzzes Colonel Tigh inside, and Saul's eyes dart from the empty bed, where Carolanne never was, to Bill's face, and he wishes him a happy anniversary. Bill looks at him through the mirror. Maybe he nods.
Chief breathes a long sigh and climbs up the ladder to the Tyrol quarters, where Nicky's crying eternally. He's carry a bottle he just made and asks Cally to check the temperature, just in case. Sometimes he hurts people without meaning to. Cally congratulates him on an excellently warmed bottle and he grunts, irritated by everything. "Daddy's tired of burning his wrists." He tells her to get ready and she's surprised and not too happy; they were supposed to spend the day with Nick. Two of the knuckledraggers called in sick and the Tyrols are filling in; Nicky keeps screaming; Chief's headache gets worse. "The fracking daycare workers see more of Nick than we do," she complains, and Chief notes that until they learn to strip a Viper, things have to go this way. He offers to take Nicky to daycare, and Cally snits when he leaves the diaper bag behind, barking after.
Saul exposits that Chief's up to checking the servos in Airlock 12, while Bill thinks of Carolanne; there's nothing else on today's duty roster. "The Fleet's quiet. You could use some time for yourself," Saul says, offering to take the first watch on CIC. "I'll be keeping my schedule. This is just another day," he grunts, and hears Carolanne's voice suddenly, petulant: "Just another day? Maybe I should have married him instead of you." (Except the inflection, for some reason, hits "should" and not "him," like she was torn between them at some point, which muddies the timelines even more. Adama silently snips at her, "I could have sold tickets to that." Saul never would have gone for it. I served with Ellen Tigh, I knew Ellen Tigh, Ellen Tigh was a friend of mine. And Carolanne? You're no Ellen Tigh.) Bill goes back to that gorgeous old house, for a second: looks at their wedding photo. (He looks so much like Hotdog! Heh.) "We had some good times," says Carolanne, over his shoulder. "But more bad." She's dead; this isn't her talking.
"But you keep bringing me back anyway. Just this one day, year after year." Which was where I started to hate the episode, frankly. I'm not at all against it; it's got more patterns and parallels than you can shake a stick at, and some amazing performances if you ignore Carolanne and Cally, but WTF with the voice-over. First of all, it creates a false and clumsy parallel with the Chips, which it shouldn't; secondly, the dialogue is unbelievably silly; thirdly: no voice-overs, please. This isn't a '70s soap opera; there are no giant ice machines (as of yet). In 2007 it's one thing to use it as a framing device, a true thread in the narrative, but it's quite another to use them like thought balloons in a comic book, which is what this is. Olmos is a magic-ass actor: he can carry it without the ridiculous VOs. There are better ways to do this. This show is a behavioralist's wet dream: all of them, but especially Olmos and the pilots, say more when they don't talk. If you don't use that, if in fact you use a device that specifically works against it, with embarrassing expository dialogue, you're one hand fighting the other, hamstringing the greatest strengths of the show while introducing Gaius-on-acid levels of shameful vocalizations. For what? "But you keep bringing me back anyway. Just this one day, year after year. Only thing I can't understand is...why?" Really? Really, Carolanne? Can't figure that one out? Congratulations, you're as emotionally tone-deaf as the script you're in.
"Neither do I," says Bill, and a young Private enters with Bill's coffee, disturbing him from his reverie; he remembers caressing her face even as the kid's telling him his name. He sends the boy out again. "It's going to be a long day," Carolanne thinks. "It always is," Bill says. Oh, and another thing? Bill's functionally an intuitive, he doesn't operate like this: hallucinations in this much detail, physicality, all that stuff doesn't fly given everything we know of his psychological makeup. Maybe the voice-overs, but they'd all be his voice, and he'd be imagining a million conversations that could have happened, not one conversation about what's going on around him. Whatever, you know what, it's a good story -- two good stories -- with good acting and pretty camera work. I refuse to create bitching this week of all weeks, when even Cally's cute and Seelix is actually likeable.
Group head, where the deck crew is getting ready for the first shift; Chief informs Cally that Nicky didn't even cry when he dropped him off, then ignores her for a second, pissing her off, while he checks in with Figurski and then calls Seelix and Cally to join him on checking Airlock 12.
Down there, Airlock 12 is a total mess. "Cylons blew the hell out of it. Nobody's been down here since damage control plugged the holes." He calls out to Seelix, who's behind the glass, just like she was when she was murdering collaborators, back when we started airlocking each other, thinking that would shake the dust off. I say this not to get back on the Seelix thing, or God forbid the Cavil thing, but to point out that it had to be pilots -- the ones the deckhands send out to their deaths every day -- that saved Chief and Cally Tyrol for their son, and it had to be Sharon, and it had to be Seelix and Saul, and it had to be Adama: all these people had to be there, to save Chief and Cally Tyrol. It had to be the twins, under Bill's eye, saving the dirty-handed family of the Fleet, and their own. It had to be Seelix and Saul, from the Circle, to turn Airlock 12 back into a place for life; it had to be Sharon, shedding Boomer for good, to save Chief and Cally. It had to be Adama, to forgive himself for letting them go to New Caprica in the first place, to bring balance back to his declarations of heartlessness back in the ring. In this way, "A Day In The Life" bookends Verheiden's last episode, "Collaborators," a lot more neatly than that crap last week, and it's more satisfying as a result. Separately I always said that "Unfinished Business" was as much about Bill's relationship with Chief than anything else, and this feels like a nice close for that too, alluvially speaking.
Sorry, we're talking about all this stuff up front because the plot hits heavy and hard and it's pretty much like watching dominos at that point. So Seelix and Chief establish that they can talk through the glass; it's beside the point to say you can't touch through glass, but we're not there yet. Seelix looks around for the electrical schematics on the airlock, and discovers "somebody's year-old lunch" in the process; inside the airlock Cally asks after her son, irritating Chief even more. She points out that he could have dragged anybody down there with him, and Chief piffles that she knows the gearing systems best. "What do you want me to do, give you special treatment because you're my wife? How would that look?" Okay, I don't date video game boys very often and this is why: "sit quietly and watch me read this boring comic book or play this boring video game" is in fact not equal to "let's spend time together," no matter how confused you are about this point. Boys, you're not fooling anybody with that shit -- just let us go out and have human fun. You can stay home and make love with your computer all you want; we'll talk to you when we get home, okay, and we promise not to hold it against you. I always knew Chief was a gamer boyfriend, but gah man I hate to see that stuff. Sorry, flashbacks are over now. So Cally finally blows up and ushers him away from the mic so she can explain the episode in a belabored, stilted fashion: "We keep trying to pretend like nothing's changed, that our lives are exactly like they were before we went to New Caprica. But it is different. We're married, we have a son." Looks way cuter this week, still can't act. Chief blows this off as "just a rough patch," and outside, Seelix works and we can hear Cally catching on to how this show works. Finally. "What if rough patches are all we have left?" What if there's no cabin, ever?
Cally complains that they said they were gonna raise Nicky themselves, and Chief counters that they "swore a lot of things," which I don't know, but that "the Cylons didn't exactly cooperate." He starts to work, and something goes nuts; the doors all start to lock themselves, with Cally and Chief inside and Seelix rushing and rushing around. Chief yells at her and she's like, "Dude! I didn't do anything!" Then she does something: observes a pressure differential inside: "Nothing drastic, but you guys are definitely losing air..." Chief nods, and it makes sense: they're in space. Obviously it wouldn't take a huge leak to freak out the spaceship, thus the doors dropping. "I feel safer already," Cally snarks beautifully, and Seelix is like, "...So the hull of the ship's been breached?" He calls this a dramatic term -- more like a rough patch -- and starts looking around for the hole so he can plug it. "One of these patches must have cracked when we came in." Cally -- locating her rage in the most pointless, stupid place as usual -- immediately wants to find the person who built the walls (decades ago) which contain the seals that have now sprung leaks (after four trips through atmosphere, at least one through a star cluster, and three firefights with the Cylons, understand) and "kick their asses." Because clearly their shoddy work ethic is the problem here. Chief's like, "Okay, before that, let's not run out of oxygen, okay?" and starts looking for the leak, because the only problem he can't solve is...obvious. Outside, the leak is scary, but you know what? I'm just so proud of Lee Adama that he's somehow ended up on the outside of this room, because normally wherever air is slowly leaking out of something, there you will find Lee Adama, fighting for breath. Maybe he's growing up. This episode would desperately like you to think so.
41,398 souls in the Fleet, but 90% of the loss was Sagittaron, so who gives a fuck? Am I right? Adama walks on river stones, back on Old Caprica, looking at his son's toys and thinking about his children. The ones he forgot and the ones he failed, and the ones he can't stop saving. "Leeson takes first watch. Leeson takes first watch. Kinsey checks the roster. Kinsey checks the roster. Jaffee brings me coffee. Jaffee brings me coffee." Carolanne's amused that he's still doing his memory exercises; still jealous of the war. "Do you really think they expect you to know all of their names?" More embarrassing exposition and then: "Now hurry, you're going to be late meeting Laura."
As he walks down the corridor, Carolanne wonders aloud if she, Laura, possibly has a "thing for bad boys": "She wouldn't be the first." I don't know what that has to do with anything, unless he's being "bad" in some way I cannot identify, or there's about to be a return to the whole Laura/Zarek/Bill/Saul thing that always seems poised to take over when New Caprica comes up, which would be hot in certain ways, I guess, if a little too Primal Scene for yours truly. Adama shushes Carolanne, back in the old house for a moment: "She's the President of the Twelve Colonies." Carolanne -- and I don't want to be too hard on the acting, honestly, because she does freak-out really well, but mostly, this dialogue is screaming-meemie bad -- "Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, of course. Since you've created one godlike facade for yourself, why not invent another one for her?" I don't know, Adama's nuts. I can imagine that he actually thinks in these bombastic, over-explanatory Star Trek sentences, but it's really jarring to hear this stuff on this show. "It's another excuse to keep your distance," Carolanne helpfully voices over further, just so we're all on the same page. That page being huge and made of posterboard, with CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT written on it in bright highlighter letters, with glitter and gems pasted all over it, and a picture of a unicorn being ridden by a very frowny William Adama, and a hot dog flying into a giant crack in the side of a mountain, and a stick figure of everybody's mommy hitting them. Everybody in the whole world.
Roslin welcomes the Admiral to her temporary office, I hope but can't prove it's the same one she got giggly in before the debates that time, and she nearly blushes at him. "I'm sorry, I'm sure this all could have been done over the wireless, but very frankly, I was going a little stir-crazy on Colonial One, and had to get out." He nods, mentioning that "deepspace pilots call it OBE," which he explains -- in a way that calls to mind the sexiest, most debonair corpse ever to go walking -- means "Overcome By Events." Come on, you know this is his version of flirting. She laughs wildly, as though he has not only made a funny joke, but a joke that was very, very funny, which is her version of flirting. Which has the bonus effects of being A) flirting and B) totally hot, because she's totally hot when she laughs. "And you're always welcome here, you know that," he finishes up earnestly, and it's taken in the spirit that it's given, but she laughs again. "Well, you may not feel that way after you finish this. Tory actually drew up an agenda." They dance around with alluvial deposits on their shoes and talk about Gaius some more. "Can't we just give him back to the Cylons?" asks Bill, and Laura smiles. "Oh, you know how much I love that idea. Unfortunately, given what little I was able to glean from the Caprica Six, I don't think the Cylons would take him back." So they'll have to try him: but apparently the Colonies didn't have any federal systems set up, which goes a long way explaining both the Sagittarons and my beloved Geminons. "Under what law? Caprican? Picon? Tauron? Do we give him a jury trial, do we set up a tribunal?" There's like only one lawyer in the Fleet, whom we'll be meeting soon and who I've always found to be about the sexiest human being to wear a bowler hat. They don't even have a comprehensive law library. Athena's the goddess of law, but that's Roslin, and she's throwing up her hands. If only there were another god associated with the law, just hanging around and not doing anything at all.
Adama spits about lawyers, and she's surprised: wasn't Joseph an attorney on Caprica? "Yes. And I told you that I didn't get along with him very well." Awkward! She makes that embarrassed yee face for a second, and then moves on. "Right. Okay, I need to set up an organizing committee, though frankly, trying to get a room full of legal scholars to stay on task is like herding cats. And so I need to set up a chairman of this committee, somebody who can make a hard decision and who won't get seduced and bogged down by all the legalese." Specifically Lee. "Like grandfather, like grandson, perhaps?" Bill can't say that Lee would be bad at it, because who's more judgmental than Lee Adama, or more in love with rules when he's not breaking them, but then, that's how his relationship with Laura has always worked. "Here's the thing," she says. "We need the lawyers to parse the law, but we really need people who actually know the difference between right and wrong. That's Lee." Kinda. Unless it's "Black Market," or there's treason to be done, or he gets bored with the holy sacrament of marriage. Bill promises to talk to Lee, and Roslin nods. "Good. Admiral, I was wondering if you'd mind if I stayed on your ship for the rest of the day." He of course obliges, and she grins again. "This is very difficult for me to say, but I'm going to go to the gym." He reminds her that this is an aircraft carrier: "On its best day it smells like the inside of a shoe," he gruffs. Such a way with the ladies, our Bill. She just laughs, and sighs, and thinks about Bill and how hard it is to get laid after the apocalypse.
Airlock 12: Chief's still snapping at Cally about getting that leak patched, and she's still snipping right back.
Bill makes his way past pilots and deckhands, watches them grow quiet and respectful as he goes past. "You're getting better at ignoring all of that. That sudden hush, those sidelong glances. That really used to get to you," Carolanne says. And there's a key here: this is an episode about marriage. Love is always some percentage projection: what you see, not what I am. How much magic or hatred you offload on other people, that takes them out of the real and into your projection; the godlike façade she was talking about. We put each other on pedestals and down into pits all the time: look at Cally loving Chief when he didn't notice, and what happened ; look at what Bill and Lee do to Carolanne in her absence. Human psychology is about projection. But the only people on this show who are the same on every level -- symbolic on the show, symbolic in the Fleet, symbolic to each other and everyone they meet -- are Laura and Bill. Laura is the head of government, Bill is the leader of the military. The difference between them and their pedestal selves is a lot slimmer than, say, that between Chief and Cally's image of Chief. Or the enormous amounts of bullshit the twins regularly offload onto each other. Hell, Caprica and Gaius have made it into an actual religion and/or art form. But the only people on this show that actually have to negotiate being that every single day, besides I guess Sharon Agathon, are Laura and Bill. Marriage is hard because love is partly me and partly you, and because in the movie of your life, you're a Laura and a Bill, and when you fall in love they become a Bill or a Laura, and marriage is about taking the bricks out of those pedestals one by one, until you can actually see each other. Naked, without all the hero worship and the family drama and the Just Like Dear Old Mom and the specialness getting all over everything and constantly disappointing you with reality. Marriage in Spanish is casarse, to build a home with: you build a cabin, and live there together.
In the old house on Caprica, Bill jokes with Carolanne that he never seemed to intimidate her, and she nods. Pedestals. "I knew you long before you were the Admiral: back when you were just Bill, the husband who wasn't there. The father who left." She wonders aloud what a Bill Adama really is; she wonders aloud if she'll ever get an answer. She's not the one asking. She's dead.
Noel Allison -- that Pegasus pilot I always call Nacho and is apparently "Narcho," but is I'm sure just as delicious -- follows the rest of them into the briefing room, wowing about how there's been 49 days since the last Cylon sighting. I wish somebody'd mentioned somehow that he was originally on Pegasus, because what we need right now -- with New Caprica, the Circle and the Second Exodus still so close behind, with Caprica in the brig -- is to remember the Pegasus, and hope we burned off what didn't work. Starbuck jokes that his crap flying has probably put the fear of the Gods in them. Helo and Hotdog sit down, Sharon in the row behind, Hotdog making weird faces and finally just digging right the hell up in his batch, like he's not in public. "I've got the weirdest rash," he tells Helo, and Sharon grins as Helo moves one seat over, away from him: "Hope she was worth it, buddy." After the fifteen plagues this season, I'm not convinced we're done with Hotdog's crotch just yet, frankly, and clearly it's still on his mind as Apollo enters, strong and harsh. "Before we get started, I want a show of hands. How many of you boneheads know how to count?" Slowly, the hands go up; Kara raises her hand with a smug grin as Adama enters from the back. "Because I keep hearing numbers being thrown around the hangar deck. 47, and then 48. Now 49 days, since our last enemy contact. I realize that any higher math's probably beyond most of you, so I'm gonna make this real simple for you: one is the only number you need to remember. Because all it takes is one pilot to let his guard down, one ECO to miss a dradis contact, and suddenly the Cylons are on top of us. That's when people die."
"He's like both of us," Bill thinks, flashing back for a second to that house, "proud, stubborn, and angry." Back to the briefing room: "But he's coming into his own. Especially in the last few months." Carolanne gets intense: "Don't tell me, tell him!" Or, you know, better yet, show us without telling anybody at all, since this is the first we're seeing and/or hearing about it. Bill shrugs that Lee knows, and Carolanne speaks up on behalf of Rabbit Angstrom and every other man who ever needed a hug in the history of the goddamn Western literary canon: "Knows what? That the Admiral's going to give him a good performance review? Or that his father loves him?" TAKE IT OUTSIDE. FUCKING A. Why is it every time a writer on this show -- no, every male writer ever -- wants to tug your heartstrings and can't figure out how, they go straight to the Easy Rider/Iron John place? And just baldly repeat it, boilerplate? If you'd actually illustrate this stuff, that would be one thing; that's personal and real. But constantly pulling out the Your Personal Father Was Not Demonstrative With His Affection card every other second, without regard to setting it up or making it anything other than what it blatantly is, is lazy. Almost as lazy as everybody's drunk mommies hitting you with sticks all the time. I get it if this stuff applies to you personally, and you feel connected to it -- and in this case, have I got a literary canon for you! -- and I'm certainly not going into my personal shit with you about it, but there's a difference between a single reader's response and objective quality and craftsmanship of writing. "I liked it" is different from "it is well-formed." Every little kid has lost at least one pet, but I don't wanna read a hundred novels about dead pets written by five-year-olds, either. So fucking whatever: "Don't tell me the Admiral's facade extends to Lee too."
Apollo continues to, apparently, "come into his own": "Formation flying. Deflection shooting. Tactics. Doing touch and goes until every last one of you hits an okay three. Red and blue sections will go first, yellow and green will follow. Skids up in ten minutes. Dismissed." The Pilots leave, Starbuck stays, to scoff and flirt and actually be nice. He tells her to shove it, but she's proud of him, and it shows all over. "My only problem is that you didn't preach that sermon a week ago." She reminds him, however, that the whole "one fatal mistake" line is a Bill Adama classic. As Bill walks up, Lee -- who looks damn good in this episode, and normally I don't really notice his looks -- quirks a smile and returns her vibe, a little bit: "Well, if you're gonna steal, steal from the best." I miss the twins so bad. Kara takes off, winking or something at Bill, and they're alone. Oh, maybe they'll hug, or he'll give him a set of Paul Revere's steak knives, or tell Lee he's always thought of him as a son, or something. Because if there's a person that Adama doesn't think of as his own personal child, I have yet to meet him or her. Not to mention that "he's always thought of Lee as a son" is...sadly apt.
Bill deadpans about how tough Lee was on the squad, and Lee pronounces "a kick in the butt" to be worth "a thousand words." "Gods know you kicked mine enough," he says, I guess on the few occasions that Bill was home. He asks his father sweetly -- the two actors have great chemistry, and a lot to work with, so it's always good to see them together -- if he's okay, and Bill nods wearily. "President wants to take the fast track on Baltar's trial. She's looking for someone to take charge of the preliminaries, help cobble together the legal framework. She wants me to assign you." Lee pauses for awhile before expressing surprise. "She's gonna need someone she can trust, you definitely fit that," says Bill. They've met? And we didn't have a fake previously to tell us about this apparent relationship between Laura and Lee that never existed before? Or did we somehow remember their awesome friendship and tendency to commit sedition? Because if we're going back to that well, I'm prepared to fall in love with Apollo all over again. Then there's some more awful dialogue that I don't even know what to say about: "I remember when you were younger, you'd go visit your grandfather's house, and you were fascinated with his papers and his law books." His "papers," you see, and his "law books."
"And there was me thinking I was being sly, sneaking off into his office all by myself. Yeah, I guess it's a pipe dream now, but for five minutes there I really did consider 'lawyer' as one of a dozen careers that I could go into, before I joined the service." They both make poo faces having to spit out this impossible, unmusical, jangly, consonantal, awkwardly constructed, unrealistic, over-wordy speechifying, and Bill's like, "I never knew that." Probably, Lee explains, this was during one of his "angry at Dad" phases. (Which: is gorgeous, because only Lee Adama would rebel in that way. "Fuck you, I'm going to read your estranged dad's 'law books' and 'papers'!") Bill's face at this, the mention of Lee having "angry at Dad" phases, strikes him like a blow. (Compare the video game boyfriend with the military-career father: don't go anywhere or change or grow or resent me until I get back in like five years, okay? Projection.) Lee realizes he really can't: "CAG's duty is already 24/7, even on a light week." He makes a funny frowny face when he says this, and Bill nods softly, suddenly torn. "Yeah, I assumed that." Narcho calls Little Boy Blue away to duty, and the Man in the Moon looks down at his hand; outside the old house, he drops a child's ball, and in the briefing room watches it fall, invisible. At least it looked pretty that time, but my God. Kid's toys, now.
In Airlock 12, the alarms are going crazy! "Seelix, check the pressure. If that patch holds, we're gonna equalize in a few minutes. This door's gonna open." There's a sudden whistling sound: the patch is blown and the hole is bigger. The Chief and Cally don't really have much to say, in terms of adding to the conversation, although they scream profanities. Here's the thing about Chief: he never wanted to be married. Not on Galactica, not in the Fleet. He and Boomer were going to wait until they mustered out, when the holocaust came. He didn't even notice Cally until New Caprica. He wasn't going to get married, build a cabin, lay it down, until he knew he was safe. Until he knew they'd be okay, and he could keep them safe, and be strong. He didn't want to make any promises he couldn't follow through on. He wanted -- and this is all Cally's been saying -- to wait for the day when they'd have time. And he had that taken away from him, that ideal, and everything since has been his cruddy attempts to reconcile what he thought was happening with what's happening now; he's still waiting for something to happen, and make it better. And if they don't die in the process, he's about to get his wish.
Finally, somebody else on Galactica notices the alarms and the hole in the side of the boat, and Adama comes storming down the hall, flanked by Saul and Lee. Majel Barrett's like, "This is a condition three alert...hull breach on deck 14..." They come running up to the glass, standing alongside Seelix, looking down at the head of the Resistance and how well he fits back into his life now. "Admiral," he says, air growing thin and cold, "I seem to have turned this into a full-blown fubar. You'd be doing us a hell of a favor getting those doors open." Bill's face falls.
"The airlock's designed to lock down if the pressure increases unexpectedly," Lee starts to explain, and Bill snaps at him. "-- I know the system. We have redundancies..." Nope. The manual override is down and they can't get the inner doors open. "The thing must've taken heavy damage on the way out of New Caprica." Tigh nods sagely. "Whole ship's taken a pounding. We'd need six weeks in dry-dock just to hammer out the dings, let alone tackle the structural damage." I don't know why that line made me laugh, but I think it's the immense crotchetiness with which it's delivered. Like if he still had both eyes, he could just glare the dings out. Lee explains -- he's experienced in these things, remember -- that a hole that size means "half an hour, maybe less." There's a billion years of explaining so that the hyper-literal nerds won't start with the "actually, they could have just blah blah blah blah," which is A) never going to stop them and B) doesn't add to the plot at all, not to mention C) if you think like a hammer, everything's going to look like a nail, and if somebody's determined to pick and pick and pick, they're going to find something. And yes, I do understand the irony, thank you, but honestly, there's a difference between subtleties of characterization as built up over years of both written words and expertly tuned performances, and the made-up physics of a made-up spaceship in made-up space. So in case you were thinking you might offer the made-up people some advice and get them out of this in a jiff, Tigh and Lee would like to inform you that it would take an hour to cut through the blast doors, they can't blow the glass because it's "strong enough to withstand a tylium explosion" and would kill Chief and Cally bad, and finally: there's no solution. Bill wigs out because if there's no Chief and Cally, then he might as well have killed them the day they broke ground, and if there's no Chief and Cally, there's no cabin, and if there's no Chief and Cally, that's two more children he's abandoned. If he loses Chief, who will punish him for losing Chief?
The twins stand with Sharon in the hangar bay, timing how long it takes Sharon's Raptor door to close: seven seconds. It feels weird to be in here without Chief, like we're all dancing naked with porn on Geminon or something. "Then another ten to repressurize, since we'll doing this in open space," says Kara. "That's pushing it." Sharon asks whether anybody's ever tried anything like this, and just in case watching it happen needs to get hyped some more, Kara's like, "No one's ever been crazy enough!" They're totally going to do a Barn Swallow! Into the arms of a Cylon! Specifically an Eight! That is SO AWESOME! This episode is not bad! Lee's like, "No talking, we're done. Prep for launch. We've only got 18 minutes left." Sharon's down, and starts getting amped, but I'm wondering about Kara right now, like has she ever dreamed about this? Saving someone from getting airlocked? If she'd never seen Laura murder Leoben, if she'd never prayed for his soul, how would she have felt about the Circle, when it came for her? That one small body, traveling under enormous pressure, out into the endless gap of space, without air or warmth or light, on an eternal trajectory: how much hate would it take to watch that happen? How could you not dream of it?
("What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff -- I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I'd do all day...I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be.")
Airlock 12: Chief and Cally put on their oxygen masks. They look so tiny and thin; they're shivering. Chief tries to patch the rough spot again. Cally calls him over to Adama, at the glass. "Airlock's still jammed, Chief. Overrides are not responding." Chief notes that they're running out of options. What do you do when you can't get out? Turn into something else: "I'm going to take you out through the front door," Adama says, with all the grace and gravitas he's got. Chief nods, getting giddy and hypoxic: "You'll put a ship out there and rig up some kind of docking collar?" There's no time for a collar, of course: time's almost out.
Adama stands at the glass, looking down on Chief and Cally. "Sir, if you're talking about an EVA, we don't have pressure suits." He shakes his head. No options. "Athena's gonna position her Raptor in front of the airlock, hatch open. We're gonna blow the bolts right off of that door, and when it opens, you're gonna have to jump for it. Now, listen to me, both of you."
Cally and Chief stand at the glass, looking up at the Admiral. "You can do this. People have been able to live up to a minute in exposure to vacuum without a suit." True, apparently. Chief gets worried, Adama cuts him off; he can barely look at them.
It's later. Sharon's Raptor is away. Cally stops. "Wait. What about Nicky?" Chief's flagging, bends his back to Chief work, moving everything toward the door so they don't get crushed. "Galen...we both know what happens to kids in the Fleet when their parents aren't there for them." I thought Lee saved all of those kids? I mean, I suppose she means it sucks for them, is what happens. Abandonment by parents, gone to the war and never coming home. Humanity is a Fleet full of orphans.
We stand at the glass, looking down. "Apollo and Dee," he says, as though it's obvious. "They'd take care of him." She shakes her head. "No. No pilots. He's not going through this twice." No more parents going off to war and never coming back. The Cylons have been gone 49 days, but their damage continues to take and take. She comes to the window. "Sir? There's a civilian family, the mother's name is Susan Deckler. She has a little girl. If anything happens to us..."
Cally and Chief stand at the glass, looking up at the Admiral. We don't see him speak, but he says he'll see to it. Cally holds her husband and cries, terrified. The Chief holds his wife, and apologizes for the dust on his shoes: "I was being selfish. I wanted you with me, like old times. I didn't think about Nick."
Adama looks down at them, crying and shivering, and his heart breaks. "I'm sorry," the Chief says. "I'm sorry," Bill says, silently, to nobody in particular. Cally promises her husband that the Admiral will save them; the Admiral looks down on them, through the glass. They share oxygen. In the airlock, on the site of murder and worse, Chief and Cally wait for the Cylons to take one more thing from them, and they share breath. I mean to say that Seelix looks down on them, through the glass, and Saul, as they step across the line of salt and wrap their arms around each other, tighter.
"More than a few seconds out there, we're talking severe exposure. Decompression sickness. At the very least, hypothermia. They could freeze to death," says Saul. Bill orders somebody to make sure Cottle's hyperbaric chamber is ready. "I'm sorry," Cally says, and holds him in the whistling and the cold.
The Raptor comes around, Kara and Lee inside with Sharon; Lee calls their position in and Chief and Cally put their masks on. Adama and Seelix and Tigh look down, through the glass, scared to death. The Raptor comes alongside. Lee points out to Kara and Sharon that stuff is going to be flying out at them when they blow the doors, and Sharon assures him she can handle her bird. "Let's just get this done," says Kara. The Raptor door opens.
"Okay. No matter what, you hang onto me. Don't let go."
Adama's voice is nearly shaking, as he counts them down; Tigh almost shuts his eye. "Do it," says Bill. Ready to let two more children go, to try and save them from the war. The door flies out at the Raptor and hits her; Cally and Chief are among the crap rushing out. Lee and Sharon shout back and forth, working together: tactics and muscle, coming into their own. Chief and Cally slam onboard and Sharon closes the door. It takes seven seconds; for Bill I'd imagine it felt longer. "Raptor secured and pressurized. They're in rough shape, we gotta get 'em to sickbay right away."
Later, Lee comes in through the hatch and hangs back, until his father calls him in. But are Cally and Chief okay? "They're alive. But Doc Cottle's still evaluating their condition." Lee sits and gives him the hard look; he's coming into his own. "So are you gonna tell me what's going on with you?" Bill shows his son the picture: William and Carolanne, on their wedding day. Lee blushes, having forgotten. "Probably seems foolish. Especially the way that it all ended up, but...still. It still means something to me. We've never talked about it" -- Lee chokes -- "the divorce, your mother...it was a bad time for all of us. Your mother gave you and your brother a home. Stability." And for once the stilted talking means something: he's asking to be lied to; he's lying to himself and asking for help. "Dad, I know you want to believe that, but um..." He lets it go, shaking his head, lips bitter and his eyes on the floor. "You have something to say, son, just say it." Lee draws the line between four walls and stability; between the image of Carolanne as Mother and the wife that Bill knew. The projection Bill kept in his mind, thinking she'd never show that part of herself to their sons, as though she were two different women altogether. "The mood swings? It's why you left her?" Bill pleads, in his stoic way: "We had problems, but she cared deeply for you and your brother." Lee shakes his head. "Things changed after you left. I mean, there were times when she lost control."
Carolanne speaks, talking over her son. "Don't listen to him, Bill." Lee talks about her apologies, promises to make things better. Just Like Dear Old Kara, down there with the dust on her feet, making promises. (But you know her mood swings: they're why you left her.) In the old house, Carolanne laughs and pours another drink, trying to distract Bill, but the projection is coming closer to the here and now: Lee's talking about drinking: "...And then all of her good intentions would just go out the frakkin'..." There's steel behind Bill's voice as he asks her: "Is it true?" Her face goes acidic, she becomes the other woman. "I can't believe you'd even ask me that," she hisses. "Damn it, is it true?" he shouts: he knows. He knows, he always knew, it was always happening, it's happening right now. If you're wondering how painful it is when these projections come crashing down, just ask Three. You know? Talk to Brokeback Boomer about what it's like, when you ask the question that ends the world. Ask Gina what happens when you have a second to think. Ask Starbuck, aiming right at Scar, remembering to live. Ask Lee, who dies over and over again. To projection! It's why we build bars. "And then one day, finally the apologies even stopped." Bill nods. "That's enough," he says, to somebody. To nobody in particular.
"You walked out on me! The brilliant Commander who could lead all of his men into combat, but he couldn't find a way to live with his own family! Never lived anywhere for more than six months, just following you around from one base to another, waiting for you to come home. But you weren't here for any of us! Whatever was easiest for the great Adama!" She's dead. He's accusing the dead: "They needed you. They were our children." Her lip curls; we flip back and forth from the old house to Galactica, sitting with his son, faster than we have before. "They needed a father. All through your glorious career, you have prided yourself on being a leader of men, judging people. Always making the hard call. But when it came to the biggest decision of your life... Oh, Bill, you blew it. We were wrong for each other from the start, but you just couldn't accept that." She grins, with wicked satisfaction: "That's it. That's why you keep calling me back. Because if you had made that mistake..."
Bill stands on CIC, freaking out; she keeps talking: "It would just call into question all of your other decisions." He touches her face, in the old house. I don't know what the fuck she's talking about, besides Lee and Zak; I do know that carrying projection, that being on any kind of pedestal, is way heavier than loving anything ever is, in terms of burdens, and he's had to carry it all alone for way too long. Longer than we even thought, apparently.
"She was still your mother, Lee," Bill says. "I loved her." Lee agrees; he knows that. "I just don't think she ever loved you." Bill thinks sadly, but doesn't say anything. I say this: love has as many definitions as there are people in the world, and until you shake off the dust and fantasy and alluvial deposits from your shoes, you're always going to be stuck on New Caprica. Which is not, if you'll remember, the awesomest place. I'd rather be in love on shitty, horrible, scary old Galactica than living a lie or getting fake-married on New Caprica. Maybe that's the point of S3.5 after all: so much of S2.5 was heading toward New Caprica, laying down burdens and building cabins, believing that the world would give anybody a chance to stagnate like that.
If the overwhelming conclusion we can draw from the first half of this season, the whole Everything You Wanted deal, is what happens when you get lazy, then this is what happens when you leave that fantasy behind: deal with Everything You Don't Want, again. The way God intended. I always thought the Cylons existed to make the humans better, but now I think it was just New Caprica making them worse, you know? Burning off what didn't work. The Second Exodus is about stretching, getting stronger, getting better, becoming more, and all the resentment and pain and self-sabotage and refuge to fantasy that that entails. Of course it's hard, of course it's gross. New Caprica was eating lotuses and building cabins and getting naked under the moon, and then New Caprica became eating shit and the occupation and the exodus. Pretending you'll leave Dee just because you've always been in love with Kara; pretending you don't love Sam because you've always been in love with Lee. Pretending you're unified in the search for Earth while 57% of you are falling in love with humans and joining crazy religions or the Colonial Fleet. Pretending you can erase the pain of New Caprica through hate and fear and murder. Pretending you can erase pain.
Seelix comes into sickbay, bringing Nicky to his father. Chief's weak, lying in bed. But is Cally okay? "Doc Cottle says she's gonna be okay, but it's gonna be awhile before she's 100%." I am absurdly happy to hear that. This show messed up my mind. Seelix helps him to his feet: the victim of the airlock, rescued from space by a Cylon -- Seelix helps this man to his feet. The hero of the Resistance, once-lover of the sleeper that shot the Admiral. She's going to be okay, I think. Post-Circle, turning airlocking into a way to save lives is like finding out guns literally can shoot you in the cancer.
The Chief takes Nick to see his mother, in the Doc's hyperbaric chamber. Her eyes are black. (Sometimes space hurts people, even though it doesn't mean to.) They stand at the glass, looking down on her. "Cal. Cal, sweetie. Look who's here." She opens her eyes, and tries to smile; you can't touch through the glass. He's going to try. Seelix leaves, locking eyes with Adama; he forgives her.
"No matter what -- I don't know how -- we will manage. Find a balance."
"You and me. We will take care of Nick, okay," says Chief to his wife. "I love you." She holds her hands to the glass, and Chief leans down, holding his son's hand against the glass. Bill watches Chief, a father, with his son in his arms, and he thinks about fathers and he thinks about sons.
Lee comes home quietly and sits down at Dualla's side; she wakes up and smiles sleepily up at him. They kiss, and he notices a package: "It was here when I got in. It's from your father." He asks -- per telling his father hours ago that his ex-wife never loved him -- whether it's ticking. She smiles. "He left you a note." She married him to be an Adama. (That's like me marrying Hera so I can be an Agathon. Or marrying Caprica so I can be a Cylon. WHOA, I just thought about me and Six getting married; that would work to like a scary degree. "Who is Number One?" "You are, Number Six," okay, and we'd laugh but then we'd blow up Parliament or something. But damn would we have some awesome clothes, on the other hand. Throw outrageous parties; be golden. Start religions and revolutionary movements every five seconds. Plus, I always knew I'd marry a Canadian. That's like Dualla marrying Lee so she can be an Adama... And we're back where we started. I am going to think about this some more, I'd imagine.) She married him to be an Adama; everything he does is for the same reason. "Caprican criminal codes. These are my grandfather's law books." But what about his papers? "Your dad must've had these in storage all this time. Why's he giving them to you now?" There's an inscription.
For that day when we all have the time.
No matter what, I don't know how, we will manage. Find a balance. And that's the day we win, and that's the day we rest. And when there's no more war, Lee can orchestrate peace, and Bill can build a cabin, and lay down his burden, and step down from that pedestal. Or everybody steps up, onto theirs, so he can look them in the eye.
"I'm glad you stopped by," says Roslin, her body language crying out. "I have something for you. This was given to me by one of the Colonists, down on New Caprica." She holds out a silly old paperback, like they both love. Tory found it, in a pile of old clothes. Blood Runs At Midnight, it's called. "Don't let the title fool you, it's a pretty good mystery. I think you'll like it." Books for these two are like the lost language of flowers. After the mutiny, after they forgave each other under the Gods' watchful eyes on Kobol, to keep her alive, he said "fuck story logic," and he gave her a book. It is their policy never to loan books; only to give them. This is the language of their love, whatever definition is yours. "And it's not a loan. It's a gift." She gets -- is she nervous? She keeps packing, fidgeting, getting her makeshift office together, to go back to Colonial One. Unless he speaks.
He speaks. "You ever...think about the times...much? On...New Caprica?" She looks at him a moment. "I try to think about the good times, yes." Her eyes go wandering. "I do." He clears his throat and/or staves off an impending vomit attack. "One in particular stands out in my mind. You were wearing a really ... bright...red dress." Dude, me too. She was retina-violatingly hot in that thing. "Said you wanted to build a cabin." She leans back, in the international posture for Bring It The Fuck On, speaking like she kind of remembers what he's talking about. "It was at Baltar's groundbreaking ceremony." She grins. "I got a little silly that night." He takes his time replying. "You ever wonder what would've happened if the Cylons hadn't have come back?" She considers him. Say too much and you're a fool; say too little and you get Apollo'd right out the door without any nookie at all. The tree doesn't fall far from the apple, right, but also: it's hard when godlike façades come face-to-face. That's like playing poker with tarot cards. "I think...given Baltar and the terrain, we couldn't have made a go of it." She lets that sink in, and begs him to be the one to give in: "What about you? Do you think you would have stayed on Galactica? Or do you think you would have settled?" He goes gamer: "It's pretty hypothetical, isn't it?" Without thinking, she gives the proper answer: "It is. Until it isn't." The "you pussy" at the end of that sentence is silent. He doesn't fill in the blank.
She breaks into gorgeous laughter, nearly doubling over for a second, appalled at herself. At her daring. At the tiny bit of alluvial deposits, so small you could miss it, she's let herself keep hidden. Like a silly girl: "Did I just say that?" Any Adama's better when he's not trying to run the game, be a man, hold back -- any Adama's better when he forgets himself, watch: "It's worth it just seeing you laugh like that," he says. They sober up, because those were some magic words right there. And some magic laughing. "We've been at war so long sometimes we forget what we're fighting for," he says. "Raise our kids in peace, enjoy one another's company. Live life as people again." Fine. You knew she'd go first, didn't you? That's the kind of person she is: give you every chance to prove yourself, but eventually she's going to get tired of fucking around, and then she'll airlock your ass: "Like that night on New Caprica, that's really what we are talking about, here, now. Isn't it?"
"That, and...other times..." Um, like every scene you two have together? Like that? With the incredible sweetness and really confusing hotness? "So," she says: "If the Cylons hadn't come back?" We swore a lot of things. "But they did." He smiles, so sadly. He's really...beautiful sometimes. Edward James Olmos, that face is a lot to have coming at you. But I swear sometimes he's really just -- and I don't mean this in a gay way or like he's pretty, because he's not, but because men have never been commodities, we don't have enough words for men, or for male beauty, without it coming off that way -- he can be really beautiful. He comes closer to her, as he's pulling away: "We have certain responsibilities." Somewhere Carolanne wins, and whatever happened before Carolanne that made him like this. Or he's right, and titans shouldn't ever clash in a sex-type way. I like thinking about unions that would actually ruin everything, like if Romeo Corp and Juliet Industries came together, they would create a monopoly and kill all infrastructure or something. There have to be checks and balances, I guess. Maybe he's right. Or maybe he's just running, still. These are walking wounded: other words for Zak include the Wall of Remembrance, Kat, his wedding photograph. Olympic Carrier. Billy Keikeya. How can you risk wanting more, when you lose everything you love? Who can love in wartime?
"Yes we do, sir," she says, all packed up. "And, uh, I will be back. In a few days. And if you'd like, we can...talk more about that night." That, and other times. Tell us more about the other times! She turns back, at the door, putting her tags in so that even an Adama can't ignore it, while still staying true to her own circuitous shit. "Bill? The answer's yes." Dur. But just because she's a creature like no other: "I absolutely would've built the cabin." She smiles and leaves. Thirty-love, dude. Consider yourself spanked. He smiles to himself, and thinks about how in fifteen years he's so going to make his move. Once the war's over, and Nicky's grown, and Hera, and he has enough time, he's so going to get laid. Or ask to hold her hand, or accompany her in a turn around the garden, or something.
Carolanne speaks to him, as he pours a good stiff drink. "Go ahead. Put it away, like you have after every anniversary." I love how even the script is like, "Bitch, not about you. The whole point of you is that it wasn't about you, which either turned you into an asshole or was because you're an asshole, but we're betting on some admixture of both considering that William Adama is incapable of having a family smaller than Every Single Person There Is, which is the point of this episode, and the series, and every Lie About Earth he's told since the show started. Put it away, Bill." She asks him to promise he won't take it out again. She's dead, human psychology is built on projection, he's asking himself if this is the end. It's never the end. "It'd be easier to hate you. But that would be a lie, Carolanne. And there's been enough of that, through our lives." If you had to look at how much of your life is the kind of lie that keeps you alive, you'd die. Him more than most, but not by much. "We had something, didn't we?" asks Carolanne, finally regretful. He nods. "Yeah. We had something." She kisses him, sweetly, all her poison drawn out; his self-hatred self-healing. I don't think we can survive unless the man at the top finds a way to forgive himself. Sometimes he needs to be reminded.
The guilt, the regret, whatever it is, it's no longer speaking through her dead mouth, now that Saul and Seelix have cried in an airlock, and Chief can hold his son again, and he can take the books of law from the father that disappointed him, and hand them down to the son he disappointed, and know there's time to find a balance. There's time to drop all the projections and pull Jenga on all those pedestals, and bring it all crashing down, and build something better. Like he did with Sharon, up in the sky over New Caprica. That kind of bravery, and that kind of love: that's all Laura's asking for. To be naked, to build a cabin, to stop ignoring the alluvial deposits all over that proud ship, the lines of salt and broken seals, and learn the balance. To figure out that the day we finally have the time is today, and tomorrow, and all the days and years that follow.
"See you year," he says, and puts away the photograph, and takes a drink, and says goodbye to her for a while longer, and climbs back up on that lonely pedestal again.