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Part one of the three-part finale, Re: The Colonial Fleet v. Gaius Baltar. It's been two weeks since Kara's death. Lee, Saul, Bill, and Sam find ways of dealing, such as getting drunk, crying like babies, protesting their military fate, and the like. Lee, Bill, and Laura get into it about whether or not the Fleet's legal system is worthwhile and whether or not Gaius should have a real trial, or the Saddam kind. Lee finally gets his way through the awesome power of his whining, as usual. Baltar's first defense attorney gets blown all to hell, which causes everybody (Cally) to act like idiots and eventually get schooled by Athena. Also by Roslin, who takes a firm stance on bowing to terrorism for the fifty-first episode in a row, and basically says that Baltar will get a fair trial just to fuck with the bomber for being a jerk. The second defense attorney, Romo Lampkin, has so many idiosyncrasies that they almost overshadow his total hotness. Lampkin also gets blown up, but not in a way where it's going to stop the steamy onslaught of his jurisprudence. Romo and Lee, sometimes they're like this, other times they're like this. Lots of really awesome story points for such shitty dialogue, but what else is new.
So the Mad Bomber What Bombs Defense Attorneys turns out to be beefy LSO Kelly, making this the first time he's done anything remarkable, and of course Cally's all over it, but his reasoning...I do believe that it has something to do with Athena not believing in medicine, for all the sense it makes. Adama wigs about whether or not he should let Lee be involved in the trial, since his kids are dying left and right, and they have a big fight about how each one of them misses Kara more than the other, but instead of having this happen in a realistic, non-shitty way, they have an entire conversation about verbatim how each one of them misses Kara more than the other, and how crazy that is. This happens in each scene, as over and over again we are told precisely what is unfolding before our very eyes. It's like having your closed captioning on a very special Michael Angeli Is A Shitty Writer Who Has Problems With Women setting you didn't even know about. Anyway, other things Lampkin pulls off include possibly getting Caprica to flip, getting Caprica back on Gaius's side, or both; or maybe he's a Cylon, or a Final Fiver, or maybe he's doing his job really well; stealing random shit from everybody like a loon; turning Lee and Bill against each other, then bringing them together, then turning them against each other while simultaneously bringing them back together, then turning them against each other in a secret way that nobody notices; and confusing everybody about everything. Love! Want more? The full recap starts right below!
Previously, a man named Gaius wrote a book, and people started reading it. Tom Zarek worried about fallout from Baltar's trial, but even though Zarek's always right, nobody listened. Previously, a man named Ernest went to Spain and wrote a book, about loss and impotence, and the epigraph was this, from Ecclesiastes: "One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the Earth abideth for ever." It was his first novel, this dude gets his dick bitten off by a bull, and that's like all I remember about that book. I'd rather have my dick bitten off by a bull than ever watch another Michael Angeli script, or have to look at a shitty pun like the title of this episode, again. We wanted a eulogy and got another round of Daddy Theater instead. Ernest specialized in negative space: his stories took place in the realm of what's unsaid, what's missing. That is... not really the case this week, on Battlestar Galactica.
Previously, Dualla told her husband that he was a soldier without a war, and told her father-in-law that parents shouldn't be separated from their children. Laura told Bill that his son should take over as guardian of humanity's morality, maybe in perpetuity. Bill disagreed, then agreed, then wondered if he was too remote from his charges, then worried he'd gotten too close, then switched back and forth a hundred times, trying to find the balance between command and service. Sam and his wife's lover managed to reach some kind of manly grace about the whole situation. Then she died. That was two weeks ago. Nobody -- least of all Bill's son, Dualla's husband, Kara's lover -- knew how to walk the line between governance and war, how to be a soldier and a man of the law at the same time. Nobody was there to tell him who to be, anymore.
Now the Admiral's alone, looking through the files: Captain Kara "Starbuck" Thrace, erstwhile CAG and sometime assassin, drunkard and pilot trainer, daughter. He's weeping even before we join him.
On Colonial One, Tory and Laura write the names of every ship captain in the Fleet on little slips of paper, and Tory draws out the names. "Captain Elias Meeker, Gideon," Laura reads out, before the attendees. That's four. Somebody's missing.
A citation for valor and bravery, pilot performance logs, a disciplinary notice for striking a superior asshole, another disciplinary notice, a third: Thrace's file indeed.
Roslin reads out the fifth and final name, for the tribunal -- or she would, if she weren't so surprised. She chokes on it.
Photographs, commendations, the paper trail of a life in service. The physical evidence of a pilot hounded by glory, a piece of his heart he can look at, the cabins she never got to build, the trajectory that ended wrong. There's a birthday card, from Kara: "You were always like a father to me...see the resemblance?" A smirking picture of Starbuck in uniform, a silly mustache scrawled across her face. "Happy birthday, Young Man. Much love, Kara." He breaks a little more. She's with Zak now, another child gone. When we mourn for our children, it's not just for what we've lost, but for the dreams and futures that never happened. "Yeah. I see the resemblance." It's in his smile and the way he loves the nuggets; it's in the shaking of his hands.
It's in the strength of his back, in the shadow on his eyes. Sam Anders stands atop a Raptor, a crowd gathered all around, staring up at him in his extremity. He tosses a cubit in the air and catches it: heads. Again: heads. "Did you see that? Four in a row! It's a frakkin' miracle. Watch this, one more time, it's gonna be -- watch! ... Heads! Every time! You see that? It's heads!" They beg him to come down but he's fine where he is. It's in the slur of his voice, and in the way he nearly misses it in the air, every time.
Lee stands in the Hall of Remembrance, unable to pin her to the wall. He looks down at her, up at Kat, nobody there to tell him who to be, or how to do this. He hears somebody enter the corridor and hides the picture: to be grieving, is this appropriate? Is this too much, or too little? There aren't any rules, not with that much history behind it. What if it's somebody who knows the rules of grieving better? What if it's somebody who shouldn't see him like this? A subordinate? His wife? Or maybe it's somebody who can tell him how to do this. Who to be now. Take away the plan and Lee falls apart.
Racetrack brings Apollo to the hangar bay, where Sam's still landing heads, every time. "See that? My girl's too lucky to check out." Lee knows how to do this part: "Hey, Sam." Sam smiles and calls him Lee; laughs, and calls him "Apollo." It's a hiccupping, stoner Dane Cook kind of laugh: we've never heard him laugh before. We're only hearing it now because he's angry and breaking. I wish we'd known Sam Anders before the storm; I wish we'd known Sam Anders before the attacks. Lee climbs up beside him, to save him like he used to save her, on the bad nights when she got like this: "You're flying. Let's just get down and get some sleep. Come on." Sam pushes himself away from Lee, promising him he's fine, just needing to sit down, to keep flipping coins. He lands hard, down on the Raptor's roof; Lee kneels beside him to see if he's all right. "She wasn't supposed to..." says Sam, and Lee begs him to stop. Sam always knew that she would save him; Lee always knew he could save her. They're both wrong. Who are they, now? Sam falls, hits the Raptor's wing, lands on his face on the cement below. Lee cries out and jumps down besides him, scared: "Sam! Frak! Frak. Is he okay?" The bad nights, when she got like this. Sam groans, bruised but drunk enough. "Ah...I think I fell." Lee just keeps calling his name as he holds him, on the deck. "... She's still alive, right?" Sam's breath is knocked out, he's senseless. No, Lee says, strong for a moment: "She's gone, Sam. She's gone." Sam looks up at him, into his eyes: "I know." Lee's quiet a while. "Yeah." They're the only ones that really know what that means; how a preposition can turn on you, how many places a word like "gone" can describe.
On CIC, LSO Kelly approves Hotdog for a long approach. It's too quiet. Something's missing. "Never thought I'd miss all Starbuck's yakking," grumbles Tigh. Gaeta nods, agrees, stays quiet. The Admiral arrives and Tigh laughs, calling him "Your Honor." "You haven't heard? Where have you been?" Saying goodbye. "They just announced it, you won the lottery. You now own exactly one-fifth of Baltar's skinny ass. You're one of five captains picked to serve on the judge's tribunal." The Admiral takes this in: this tremendous responsibility that's suddenly so trivial.
Racetrack waits with Skulls and Athena, waiting for Gaius's lawyer. Alan Hughes is young and beautiful, a creepy waste of time and energy: "He sits back there and tries to whisper in my ear when he talks. I've got a helmet!" He leans in behind Racetrack, whispering in her ear: "Sorry." He's late. Cally helps him aboard the Raptor, calling him by name; down on the deck Racetrack swears, if he takes his shoes off again, on the way to Zephyr, she'll kill him dead. Skulls complains about the trial: "Everybody knows he's guilty, he gave the Cylons our location." Completely true, just not in the way Skulls or anybody can know. "Why even give the son of a bitch a trial?" Cally explains the justice system, in her usual way: "Um, because he's entitled. Even him. It's called justice?" Skulls clarifies that justice would mean Baltar dead and Starbuck alive, as Racetrack runs her flight check, and then jerks sideways as her Raptor explodes around her. Athena jumps into the smoke and coughing, calling for a medic. Racetrack is alive, Alan Hughes is dead. Is that justice too?
Credits: 41,399 souls in the Fleet. On Colonial One, Laura Roslin is giving a press conference on the murder of Alan Hughes, and his replacement as Gaius's attorney. "Will that be done by lottery as well?" She assures them, in her tired steely voice, that he'll be replaced shortly, from a list of candidates they're reviewing. "In the context of this explosion, which obviously was no accident, do you really think that it's in the best interest of the Fleet to proceed with this trial?" Roslin is succinct, but answers questions that haven't been asked yet: "This administration will never bow to terrorism." It's about what's unspoken: not "is this in the Fleet's best interest" but "how dare you say this isn't in the Fleet's best interest." She's getting better at her job; it's scarier all the time. "Wait. You know, let me say something here to all of you, let me get this clear, all right? As long as I am President, this administration will not allow terrorism to alter the framework of our legal system." Now that, I guess, we've figured out what that framework is. "We will proceed with the trial, rigorously. Thank you, all of you." Adama escorts her out, over the shouting of the fourth estate. Where's Playa? I miss Playa. And that guy who did the election, too. I like many, many reporters in space.
Apollo's briefing the pilots, as best he can. Helo corrects him a few times and puts everybody, regretfully, on double shifts. Narcho in particular is very sleepy and worried about Lee's scattered state. When Apollo assigns Sharon to shuttle runs, Racetrack warns her to check her back seat, and the pilots laugh. Lee tries to join in: "Hey, hey, you got lucky, Starbuck! If I were you, I would seriously consider buying a..." Narcho's smile falls; Hotdog's follows. Lee realizes what he's done, and breaks a little more. "Racetrack," he corrects himself. "I'm sorry." He dismisses them once and they look at him, worried, so he dismisses them again.
"It's so comforting to know that you're not afraid!" says Laura to the new attorney, up in shiny Colonial One. "You're not afraid to represent the most hated man alive," Angeli reiterates for us the scale and scope of what we already knew was going on here, and follows up with a question so stupidly on the nose as to seem rhetorical: "The question is, why?" Oh, is it? "For the fame, the glory," says Romo Lampkin. Romo Lampkin. Sigh. He's dreamy as ever. You know, I even watched Medium once because he was on it. My Badger. Here, he's wearing silly sunglasses indoors, and speaking with a crazy accent as usual; mostly, his name is: Romo Lampkin. Wherefore? Like there was a contest at a grade school to name the character, but somehow Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman and George Lucas teamed up on it instead. Romo Lampkin, the fleet-fingered defense attorney. "You worked in the public litigation office on Caprica," says Adama, hating lawyers but unsure whether Lampkin's lawyer enough. "You think you have the qualifications to handle a case of this magnitude?" Lampkin assures the Admiral he was "born for this," and I think implies that anyone with a pulse could pull this case. Off-camera, someone hurls a cat onto the desk; Roslin reacts like she's having a brain aneurism, for some reason. I always figured Laura would like cats. "Lance belonged to my wife. Don't worry, he doesn't scratch or bite like she did. If it's of any comfort, I despise him [Gaius? The cat?] as much as you do having to hire me. So...there it is. Shall we get started?" Ex-wives are as hilarious as... what's a really lazy joke that's really, really hoary and unfunny? Lawyers? They're as hilarious as lawyers. Oh, wait!
The Admiral puts Lee on Lampkin's security, pissing off Lee no end. "So that's it, you're grounding me?" Not that the Lawyer Bomber is a kiddie ride, but when you've lost two children to Vipers, you're allowed to hedge. Zak knew he wasn't ready to fly, but Kara put him up there anyway. Kara knew she wasn't ready to fly, but Lee put her up there anyway. No more decisions being made by anybody; no more anybody-but-the-Admiral telling Lee who to be. "If whoever set that charge is one of our own, then you're the only one I can trust." Lee whines some more, and Bill tells his son it's "an important job," that he "needs Lee's help." Lee abruptly protests that he's "fine," reading the unwritten, and Bill assures him he's not. Why? "Because I'm not." Lee snits that maybe Bill needs some rest, and the Admiral steps back into command: "Helo will be stepping in as CAG. I want you on this ship. Not up there, not until you can...work this out." Lee nods and whines some more. People don't actually talk, think or act like this, ever, except on TV shows.
Apollo shows Lampkin to his quarters: two Marines outside the door, Ms. Cassidy (prosecuting attorney) down the hall. Head, co-ed showers, the whole bit. Lampkin asks to see his client, and when Lee balks, he points at him: "Pilot." Yeah. "King of the Pilots? We could stand around here and discuss why you got stuck with me, if you want." It's the unspoken again: Romo's natural language, his first tongue, is what's unsaid. Lee offers to take Lampkin to his client immediately, in his cell. Lampkin shies away from the cell, and then from an interrogation room -- "Interrogation rooms give me stage fright" -- before volunteering Lee's quarters. (Remember? The ones he shares with his wife? Who doesn't exist this week?) "Before it gets wired for sound like this place probably is. What's the problem? Forgot to make your bed?" Lee gives in on the location, but refuses to leave them alone. Lampkin moves on this one as well: "It is Major, isn't it? I have the right to consult with my client in private, without anybody eavesdropping or looking in. Whoever cares the most, wins. Says so in there." He holds up a copy of Law & Mind: The Psychology Of Legal Practice, by one estranged-grandfather Joseph Adama. Yeah. "I wanna see my client, you don't care, I win." He puts the book back in his bag, waits just the right amount of picosecond, and muses. "You know, you look like him." Like the grandfather, the lawgiver, the defender: "You knew my grandfather?" Like the one person Bill doesn't give too much credit. "Hated his guts." Like Bill. "He taught me everything I know." Also like Bill.
So we've got parallels, and parallels, all of which are awesome, even if they're built of the usual pointless father/son crap. Lee looks like his grandfather, whom his dad hates for being a lawyer, just like Romo, who was mentored and alienated by Joseph, just like Bill, who was never present for Lee, just like Joseph, for Bill. One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the Earth abideth for ever. There's a division right now in the Fleet and in their military, and in the hearts of our crew, between what's just and what's right: between service and government. There's a division right now within Lee, who's disallowed from taking part in the trial because he's the CAG and disallowed from being the CAG because his sister died, and who now is the head of a Marine security detail: between service and governance lies justice. But Romo Lampkin has already pointed out that becoming Joseph is the best revenge, since Lee and Joseph always did get along: Lee knows Roslin's side of things better than anybody, he's always been the one standing between the two halves of this show. The strings are all there, in place, and Lee's hanging in space now that she's gone, waiting for somebody to start pulling them again. For somebody to tell him who to be now.
Somewhere else there are hands in plastic gloves, putting together a bomb for Romo. In the brig -- not Lee's quarters? -- Lampkin's putting together a bomb for Gaius, and for Caprica. It's in the unsaid: even Lee has signed confidentiality papers. "Papers" is like Angeli's favorite word -- remember young Lee playing with Joseph's "law books and papers"? That's the only reason I noticed at all, because of that awkward construction last time, but now it's like everywhere. Weirdest thing. Second weirdest: Gaius Baltar, who's going nutsier than he's ever gone before, wriggling and jerking and staring, once they get his bulletproof vest off him. "Look, this whole charade's pathetic. Pathetic! Security? Security's already toasting my other attorney's, uh, untimely demise. About one thing that bloke ever did, apart from napping, was, you know, manage to...smuggle out my papers. Papers. Do you have any papers?" Romo pulls out a pad and Gaius begins to write before he's even done thanking him. "The nature of modern life is...obsession." Without looking up, he asks Romo his chances for a fair trial. They laugh about that one. "But you haven't exactly been helping yourself, now, have you?" Gaius worries that he's going to yell about the writing, but that's not it: "On the contrary, keep it coming. This new manifesto of yours shows a great change in you. This little uh...operating manual of yours, well...keeps them all guessing." Interesting choice of words, no? Operating manual. To recreate the Fleet in the image of a perfect machine, to strip away the ugliness and complexity of human life and make everything fair, forever. That's how he got the Presidency, after all: by promising them these dreams. He'll get there again.
Gaius hunkers closer, trusting Lampkin now that he's signed off on the manifestos. "Right, okay. Okay. ... Caprica Six. I'm worried about her. She's the key. They can use her to completely destroy me." Romo nods. They won't have far to go. "We need to get to her. We need to know what she's thinking. We need to...I mean, talk to her. Tell her, uh...tell her that I love her very much. And I'm thinking about her... a lot?" The language of love, it's not Gaius's first language. Whether he's fooling or not, whether the message here is that she needs to buy it or not, forget Three and worship him again or simply love him like she used to, I can't tell. He's too squirrelly right now. He's never been able to tell the difference and he's not about to start now: what Gaius needs, Gaius schemes for. His concept of love has always been tied to his concept of usefulness, and that's Lampkin's language too: "I can sense that, yes." Gaius continues to dart his eyes at Lee, speak in strange half-ciphers. "You need to, you need to find out where we're all...where we're all standing." That's the thing Lampkin knows the second he comes in the room: where everybody's standing. The weak places. "To listen requires a voice. For what needs to be known, requires us to ask. My Triumphs, My Mistakes, by Gaius Baltar." Gaius's smile is beautiful, he's loving this. It's Romo's mightiest yank yet. "But you say it very well," he says, in the moment of etiquette, pretending they are gentlemen, that he's not crazy, with half the world shoved down his pants, that they are scholars together, again. "I've done the reading. Once those papers [Drink!] arrive, I suggest you do yours."
Outside: "Fly me to Colonial One." Immediately. Now. "You don't understand, you can't just jump in a Raptor. These are things have to be coordinated." Except for in a second, when the Raptor they're using just happens to be ready to fly, Sharon in the cockpit, bomb armed underneath. I hate this episode. "Where would you rather be, Major? Here, as the parade float for the bereaved?" Too far, but he knows it: strings behind strings. "... Everybody looking at you like you're bleeding out of your side... " Lee tells him he'll be seeing real blood in a second, and Lampkin looks at him, over his glasses. Watch his eyes: he only lies when he's looking at you. He's like the anti-Adama. Which is of course exactly what Lee's been looking for since he was in his teens. "Oh, there is someone home! Look, I need those files. You come with me, they might just give them to me. I wait, they're gonna discover that Baltar's pregnant before I get them." That's not the game, I don't know what his game is yet, but that's not why he needs Lee in the hangar right now. Maybe it's just the shitty script making up problems for itself to solve, maybe it's something else. I know if Mark Sheppard weren't such a great actor I'd automatically assume the former. "What is your job, anyway? Keep me alive, or keep me from doing mine?" Actually, the correct answer is "command the frakkin' Air Group," but whatever. The pointless and confusing shell game of finding out Helo and Lee's job each week has been a lynchpin of the series since the first season. I actually like it when Lee's with the Marines, because I think he also likes it best, but I have high hopes for this legal thing.
LSO Kelly is the big beefy guy that looks like gay Larry crossed with Peyton Manning, the one football player I know, and what he's doing is giving Lee and Romo the runaround. About what? About that Raptor that suddenly doesn't need to be requisitioned in advance and is just sitting on the deck all gassed up and ready for a joyride. I figured that took place between scenes, but Kelly's the LSO: he shouldn't be surprised that Lee's coming to board the Raptor that he just called up and asked for, so I am going with "this is stupid." Kelly reminds Lee about staying grounded, per the Admiral's orders -- "the father factor," Badger hums -- and Lee begs. "Give me a break, I'm along for the ride!" Kelly asks him not to do this to him, that he's "in enough dung already," and who knows what that means either since it's a strange line coming from nowhere, unless by "dung" he means "pointless and bizarre Angeli hate-motivation that makes no sense at all," in which case I withdraw the objection, because: he's in enough dung already for real. Like a little bitch, Apollo steps around him, nose in the air, and boards Sharon's Raptor. He sits down beside her and nods, and Chief orders the Raptor a tow -- Didn't we used to have shuttles? Didn't we call them "shuttles"? -- and all of a sudden, things get so desperately idiotic that I have to go lie down now.
... Okay, so what happens is that Lampkin's cat either escapes of its own accord and goes wandering out onto the Raptor's exterior, or Lampkin lets the cat out of his bag for some reason, and then the cat goes shooting down the wing like a regular cat moseying around but sped up to hyperfast speed, like somebody just discovered television, and the Chief acts weird about the cat and chases it around, for a good goddamn long time, and Lampkin's running around, possibly calling Lance the cat "JoJo," and then Chief crawls under the Raptor going "Here, kitty kitty," and then he looks up and sees the bomb on the underside of the Raptor, and realizes that it's a bomb, and yells BOMB, and everybody panics. Which is one very long sentence but a very broad kind of embarrassment. There's a cat? The whole point of the cat was to make ex-wife jokes and then randomly lead Chief to the bomb? That's fucking stupid. That's for some other show, a shitty show I don't watch. Unless somehow Romo wanted Lee in the hangar bay to see but not get blown up by the bomb, and manipulated Kelly into becoming crazy and making no sense, and has cat-control powers, and is able to manipulate the Raptor schedule without Lee knowing it, and both does and does not know what a bomb looks like... unless all of these things are true, this episode is shitty in at least one of six ways. And unless all these things are true, it's much more possible that this episode is shitty in all six.
Adama yells at Lee for being on the hangar bay being Romo's bodyguard, when his orders were to... be Romo's bodyguard. Lee points this out, and Adama's like, "Except how your job is not to be led around by the nose," and yells about how the "bastard yanked [his] chain," so he jumped... none of which even happened. I get the point of the scene, and it's stupid, and the dialogue would be stupid anyway, but the motivations don't scan. Apparently Bill's upset because a bomb blew up, so he's acting irrational about it. Which is fine, and appropriate to the ongoing story, but there are two problems with it so far: 1) Bill Adama wouldn't react like this, and 2) nobody would react like this. It's like somebody wrote down a short outline of how the episode was supposed to go, and then that's what turned into the script. BILL AND LEE FIGHT ABOUT KARA'S DEATH AND THE BOMB AND ALSO HOW ROMO IS LEADING LEE AWAY FROM HIS FATHER. And since that's what the outline says, that's damn well what is going to happen in this scene, even if it makes no sense on a character level or even in terms of the proceedings of the episode's plotlines. So all of a sudden Bill's jealous of Romo and Lee, except that hasn't happened yet; Bill's pissed about his child's life being in danger, even though he assigned his child to this danger; Bill's upset because nobody cares that his daughter died, even though everybody totally cares. It's just so stupid. Lee brings up again that he was assigned to security, and Bill just goes off the deep end, asshole-wise, pointing out that even within the context of being wrong in this argument, he's still somehow right, because for "security," Lee sure did a bad job finding a bomb. So dumb.
Lee points out how he tried to skirt the rules by having Athena fly, and Bill responds: "You could've died. Plain and simple, you're a soldier. Live like one, start acting like one." And even though this makes no sense, Lee assumes that he's talking about getting back on track after Kara died, so... now we're going to talk about that. Because that's what was on the outline, that's why! "She's been gone two weeks. I didn't realize the clock was running." Bill tells him to stop, but he won't: "... because maybe we're just built differently." Like love is something you can quantify, right? To say one person's love, or pain, are greater or lesser than another person's love, or pain, is to evince a complete lack of understanding of love. Or pain. "You stop," Bill growls again. "Don't you dare quantify my loss!"
People, living and breathing human people, do not talk like this. What's offensive to me is that, having killed her off, or whatever, you put the episode -- the one that's supposedly all about the aftermath of something that happened moments before the end of last episode -- into the hands of the most tone-deaf, gender-confused member of the writing staff... and what, we're not going to notice? You've got your Kara fans, which is a lot of viewers, and your Kara/Leoben shippers, as shuddery as that concept is, and you've got the Kara/Lee people, who act like jerks when they're provoked... and that's what the episode is about. Resolving that stuff. So you just hand that right over to the one person on staff who seriously cannot do it? Literally does not have the ingredients in his chemical makeup to tell a story of this emotional and structural complexity properly? Or without getting his oily self all over it? Who cannot tell a story of this nature in such a way that it makes sense? Or expresses anything in particular beyond plot and the mystifying actions of characters without any clear narrative purpose or motivation?
It's not that the episode is that bad: the acting is amazing -- Trucco and Bamber manage to make grief palpable -- the story is great, the ideas are wonderful... but there's no translation of idea to living, breathing moment. Just a bunch of "what if" runthroughs of a bunch of ideas about what this episode could be about, without bothering to make the resulting episode a reality. As a Kara fan, though not -- I think -- a frothing or overinvested idiot, and one who clearly enjoyed her exit and what it implies, this nonetheless ticks me off. This show should be better than this anyway, but when you pull this shit right after something you knew was going to freak the viewership out, something that was intended to freak the viewership out... that's disrespectful to the audience in a way that has nothing to do with love of particular characters or storylines, but to do with quality in television and -- frankly -- the ability to produce 20 consistently compelling episodes of television in a season. An ability which two seasons in a row have shown is not necessarily within the grasp of this series, as perfect -- as inspiring, as touching, as challenging -- as it is overall. (Remember the low point of Season One? Well, I don't, I loved it all -- Yes, even "Six Degrees" -- but conventional wisdom says it was "Litmus." Which is not only an episode I adore, but turns out to be central to the story, as it now stands, on like every level. Now picture me saying that about "Black Market" in three years. Impossible, or at least highly improbable, and I'm not so sure I'd stick around for that show, unless it were as good as this.)
Meanwhile, back in the fight that is simultaneously really important and just ghastly enough that I wandered away for a few paragraphs, Lee is telling his father... you know what? Fuck it.
Apollo: You have no idea. You have no frakking idea!
Adama: What, you think yours is deeper?
Apollo: Well...
Adama: -- Yours is greater? In two weeks, there's going to be a trial, and I'm going to do what I was chosen to do, and so are you. You build a frakkin' nest around that man, and you protect his ass.
Commercial, thank God, and then down in the Tool Room -- not to be confused with the setting of the last scene -- Chief's showing the bomb to everybody. I mean everybody, people that have never ever been down there before: Kelly, Cally, Athena. "Frakker meant business this time. That thing had gone off, we'd be picking up Raptor and people parts with tweezers." Kelly goes off on a Dr. Robert Rant that has nothing to do with anything but setting up his deus ex crazy at the end of the episode. "Every day I wave jocks out there. A lot of them are my friends. People I care for and love. It's hard enough watching them die in battle, but rickshawing Baltar's frakkin' attorney around? Frak that." Translation: "My job is stupid, and I'm a background character, but the people hate Gaius Baltar." Cally opines that "the Cylons want us to destroy ourselves, and this is how they're doing it." Translation: the stupider people still kind of love Gaius Baltar, and the nonexistent Cylons dated my husband, who is now slumming. Athena gives her a look that needs no translation, and she starts up again: "By planting bombs, making suspicious of each other. You know what's funny? By the time the Cylons catch up with us they won't even have to attack. They'll just clean up the mess we made. I think they're here." The one that is tells her she's wrong, and Cally for once doesn't act like a jerk for its own sake: "Okay, all I know is I kissed Nicky this morning and it could've been the last time." Chief tells her to settle down and she mentions that he kissed him too: what will the Cylons take from her ? "Some of us don't get a second chance. Or a third." Having had enough of Cally's bullshit -- and outlasting me by at least the last five minutes -- Sharon finally takes off. Workplace bigotry is so Cally's style. The Chief decides to take the bomb to the Admiral, last seen having a hissy fit about bombs.
Apollo shrieks at Lampkin about security measures for fifteen minutes, about how not only doors but also books, shoes, visitors, sunglasses, sexy attorneys, dead girlfriends, estranged fathers, estranged grandfathers, workout gear, DVD box sets: all of these are potentially deadly. Romo's like, "A) Got it. B) If they're going to kill me, they're going to kill me one way or the other, because evil is always smarter than Lee Adama." He then immediately offers a standing bribe to visit "the Cylon woman." YAY!
Meanwhile, in Baltar's pants, he is rooting. His pen is gone, and over and over he's whispering, "The nature of modern life is obsession..."
Also missing? Roslin's glasses, which she exposits while she's giving Lee permission to depose Caprica on Colonial One. Adama stands around being very judgy and weird about everything, because the thing about Daddy Issues is that they make it difficult to write about Daddies, especially if they are awesome. The person who writes The Cider House Rules is never going to be the person who writes 7th Heaven. Unless, of course, Moore and Eick are producing it, I guess. Which would be like the greatest show in the history of the universe. "Yes, okay. Lampkin can interview Six immediately, as long as it's conducted under the same conditions accorded to the chief prosecutor, all right?" Not that we've seen her. The way this trial is progressing, she'll show up somewhere in Season Seven, and we'll meet her three seconds before she becomes a serial murderer for no reason whatsoever. "... Meaning in the interrogation room. Not where you sleep," grumbles Adama. Which, if the best complaint you can offer about your son's tastes in jurisprudence is that it takes place in his bedroom, rethink the fact that you've crowded three ships' worth of civilians into one hangar bay and a newly built saloon. Also: one thing that is unsaid and kind of subtle in this episode is that once Romo mentioned the surveillance thing, it's in place for the rest of the episode (and calls to mind the creepiness of them spying on Gaius and Caprica all the time, even when they're jacking off) and makes Adama and Roslin that much scarier. At the risk of yet more Pynchon: "It can get pretty fascist in here."
Again with the emails. Look. If you think demanding excellence -- of yourself, of your peers, of a television show -- is "overreacting," I imagine that the day-to-day is very easy, if not that impressive or challenging. From where I'm standing, there's no reason not to try. There's never a reason to accept mediocrity. From yourself or from other people. I will never understand that lazy concept, that sometimes things...just suck. Why? Why should anything suck, ever? Why am I insane for asking that question? What's the problem with asking a person, or a show, to perform to its own high standards? If my need for approval didn't get me up in the morning, my morbid fear of failure would do it instead. I don't know any other way to think or live, and if I find you confusing, or if you think I'm accusing you of evil witchcraft or even just settling for piss-poor episodes, that's why: I don't get it, and I don't want to get it. It's not about you, I don't know you. Saying that I hated an episode that you didn't mind isn't an attack on you, it's an attack on quality control. I'm not asking you to be more like me, but I am asking for the space to have an opinion. My opinion is that the show doesn't need to suck. There's not a certain number of shitty episodes that they hand out to each show at the beginning of the year, there's not a quota system for mediocrity. It's not a necessary part of the system, or the equation. Just because some episode of some other show you like also sucked is still no reason for that episode, or this episode, to suck. I would so rather you tell me the "Maelstrom" recap tried and failed, which in some respects I would agree, than for you to just shrug and say everybody writes a shitty recap from time to time. Everybody getting better, everybody trying harder, everybody rising, all the time, or else what's the point?
Lee snits that since Adama's now on the tribunal, he can't be allowed to attend the depo. Which... is so cute, because the fact that Adama's now on the tribunal is SO MUCH MORE RETARDED AND EVIL than whether or not he's privy to any kind of counsel. It's not even OPPOSING counsel, because he's a judge -- and not to mention... you know what, whatever. It has to be this way, narratively, and I'm not going to bitch or lay that at poor Angeli's feet. I just think it's funny that they're going on and on about fairness and meanwhile the whole thing is such a radical kangaroo court monstrosity that they're having to overlook. Surely this could be more elegantly ignored. Roslin says that Lee has a point in leaving Adama out of the interview, and Bill tells her that there is absolutely no way: "I monitored the chief prosecutor's interview. Therefore, same conditions apply. In the interest of fairness."
I think something interesting happens here. Lee mentions again the documents they requested before, and it's Tory, the queen of Plausible Deniability, the stealer of elections, that answers. "Yes, right, I apologize. We've had trouble locating the files. We'll have them delivered to you on the run?" And there's something about the look that Laura gives her, right then, faster than a blink, that makes me wonder who's driving this bus, really. It's intriguing. I can definitely see the kind of passion for rightness turning on her again this way. One of the things I've always loved about this show is the West Wing feeling it gives me, which is hard to put into words and not something I've been interested in talking about, before now. But at this point in the story maybe it would be interesting. If not, skip away. My friend Alison is an attorney, and we talked a lot during law school about the idea of being an officer of the court, about the ideal that is represented (and failed over and over) by service to the people, by being involved in government. I've been queer for civics since I was little: the first time I voted, I addressed everybody as "Citizen" for the rest of the day. Lame but true. Law is a kind of religion: it lets you know when to stop and it regulates those behaviors we don't always control. That's the point of government, of course -- to keep you from eating other people's babies -- but to dedicate yourself, your skills and your mind, to that service is the highest calling an atheist patriot like myself can even handle. This is the reason I love this show so much -- not the God stuff and the Jung and the Tennyson stuff, I can do that any time, on any show, as I've demonstrated all over this website -- and why I get goofy about it. What is higher than that? What is higher than consecrating your life and the work of your hands to people you don't even know? Hard to talk about. I've been trying to talk about it the whole recap and I still haven't gotten there.
But I do know that this calling lies also at the root of Lee, and of Tory, and of Laura. It's the shiny side of Laura's manipulation of Chief in "Dirty Hands," and it's the root of that entire episode: the impossible answers to the impossible questions that a love that fierce forces on you. These are your people. Your people. This terrible beauty is how the election was stolen, and it's why they get so weird and passionate, and why Laura's brief secession was so complex. But I do believe it's a major part of Tory's whole deal, and if so, then I'm right about this scene, and that makes me sad. Anyway. ("That is the secret," Ernest said. "You must get to know the values.") Laura gives her this look like we don't do things like that anymore -- except when we do, except when we justify it somehow, except when we stop demanding more of ourselves and our administration than we do of the people we serve -- and apologizes sincerely to Lee for the delay. She calls him "Major," and thanks him, and sends him on his way.
Caprica's cell, where Athena apparently hasn't brought any new clothes, but did manage to find Caprica's specific shade of lip gloss. As usual, she's a housecat and a shark at once, and so beautiful. Romo and Lee enter; Laura and Tory watch from outside, with Adama. Romo opens with "I understand that you had a romantic relationship with my client," and before you can breathe, she's off. "Gaius Baltar is a brilliant, gifted human being. In the time I've known him, he's made a sport out of mendacity and deception. He was narcissistic, self-centered, feckless, and vain. I'm the one who should have stabbed him." Outside, Laura nearly cracks a smile. "Things are... looking up." Romo considers her, and stop speaking English so he can speak the unspoken instead. Look between the lines. "Love. Precocious evolutionary move, fashioning Cylons to be capable of experiencing it. I don't know if it was engineered as a tactical imperative, but...it's not for the faint-hearted, is it?" No, it's God. And God is not for the faint of heart, and he knows it, and he knows that she knows it, and that's who he's talking to now: the woman who sacrifices herself for God, and for children, only those two, over and over and over. The woman who jumped ship for love a hundred times, who has had her heart broken on every Colony and planet and ship in the Fleet, for love and for the children, and for God. "Maybe you should've been nicer to your mechanic," he says. Oh, Romo. "Well. Perhaps Cylon love is not the same as human love. Perhaps it's designed to hurt a little less." Maybe Bill and Lee loved differently, and that's why they're dealing in such different ways with Kara's death. Because Romo's barely talking to Caprica at all, beyond the pretty simple goals he's set for himself in this interview. He's talking to Lee, and he's talking to Laura, and to Tory, and to Bill. And what he's saying now, to Lee and Bill, is this: there is a difference in the way you love, and your father, or son, is incapable of seeing over the walls of his grief, in order to care for you and help you to heal. It's never going to happen. You're on your own. Get out now: let him go, your son, and let him come unto me. Step away from your father, because I understand your pain.
"I loved a woman. Beautiful, beautiful woman. But so serious. This frowning face, trapped in the middle of a daisy. She had a way of walking. Processional, as if she were on her way to her own execution. We had ten years. Then it fell apart under its own weight." Under the atmosphere of a gas giant, invisible Heavy Raiders on the prowl, caught in the black hole of gravity, a life on the edge, a trajectory that started at Socrata's door and ended in the storm. "Is that what you wanted?" asks Caprica: does love end by choice? Are there things I could have done differently? Does he really hate me after all? Did Three take him away for good? She's on her own among the enemy, caged up and beautiful: TheGreaterFool, on the forums, mentioned something so smart and so sharp and hard that I got kind of winded, when I read it. The reason Caprica's still in her slinky dress, the reason her hair is perfect and her makeup and nails are done, the reason she's looking for all the world like a guest at Club Med and not a prisoner of war, is that the Pegasus is always with us, and Gina will always be with us, and the dead of Cloud 9, and if we thought about that for one second in these closing episodes, we'd never stop. Too big, too sad, too scary. So give the girl a martini and a hug, and stay focused on the trial, whoever's trial it turns out to be. Lee's, for now.
"I thought if I could get over her, I could get over anything. I could endure. Conquer. Be a man, stand up to any and all kinds of punishment. I clung to an empty, spinning bed for months." He has her with that. Her face darkens. Inside everything we say is secret animal language, speech from body to body. You never tell anybody your dreams because they're hearing everything you're not saying: her bed spins, empty, for months, she's weak, no longer enduring, scared and alone. He has her with that. And Lee: "And that... that was when I finally realized how much I loved her. If I needed all that strength, what was the point? I needed to be with her." That's two, maybe three. That's Lee and Caprica, in Romo's grasp. She fills in the blanks for herself. "Did he...ask about me? Gaius?"
Lampkin removes his shades, for the first time. He's the anti-Adama; he only looks you in the eye when he's lying. Watch: "He wanted to know if you were well. He wanted you to know that he misses you. Loves you. Because he can't be here to tell you, he gave me this, to give to you." He produces the pen. "He uses that at the risk of grave reprisal to express his feelings, to put his world into some kind of recognizable order. To be heard. He kept it hidden, because he knows he will not get another. He wants you to have it. Because without you it has no meaning. He wants you to have it because he would do anything, anything to be with you again." That's twice: without you, it's nothing. Without you, he has no place to stand, he doesn't know who he is. You have all the power here, and he has none. And Lee: Kara's gone. And Bill: Kara's gone.
Caprica smiles sadly, catching on a bit to Romo's emergent structures, the way he cages you with words and the silences between them. The unsaid: "Well, that's a shame, isn't it? Since they'll never let me keep it." But the words were never the point, for Gaius and for Romo: they use words to change perceived reality, like any magician. Like any messenger. "You understand that your days are owned and tallied by these people, the ones out there watching us. I think you realize what's likely to become of you." You are in the house of the enemy, and you will never leave it. You have left God and your people behind, and you have nobody to cling to but the person sitting in front of you, telling you everything you want to hear. Giving you everything he won't give you. Lee, are you listening? "I couldn't help you if they paid me ten times what they offered me for Baltar. You won't get a trial, not even a bad one. So...I have to ask you. Does your love hurt as much as mine?" All pain and all love, all those little apocalypses, are equal to the same amount; don't let anyone tell you different. Don't ever let somebody else's love overrule your own, and don't rely on the wondrous fascination of your own pain to ever get your way. He's pushing her to take the Cally option, and doing it in such a way that she can't refuse. Kara, Lee, Bill, Laura, Tory, Caprica: Stay inside your own pain. It matters more. You're all alone. I can help. Caprica stares at the pen, makes out with it a little. Now she has two dream Gaiuses, to keep her company. Two men that love her only.
"I feel like part of the world just fell down," says Laura. Bill, unable to deal with the words behind the words, notices he's missing a button, from his uniform. They're both right. Romo Lampkin wins.
Lee and Romo enter the pilots' rec room, and the guys scatter at the Major's greeting. Alone, Lee begins to wonder. To ask questions; to ask for Romo's words to redescribe the universe again, and tell him where to stand in it. A person who loves the rules as much as me and Lee, as much as Laura and Tory, fall apart when you take them away. "... Why encourage the man to write and then take his pen?" Romo nods easily. "It'll curry more sympathy when we get the word out that he's been silenced. Tyranny, gag orders... very sexy." Lee's getting it. It's like a virus, curling around his spine. He's a good boy. I love Romo, but I don't like this. "Alright, so you steal his pen, then you lie to him, then you lie to the Six?" Romo smiles in his sunglasses, gets vague. "The horror of the age. The great ugly material. The cloak of deceit." Trying to live up to Lampkin, Lee snarls cynically. It looks on him both ridiculous and heartbreaking. He's always needed a father: "The truth. Hmph. Kind of overrated, I guess. You know, when I was nine, maybe ten, my grandfather...he would wave me over. And he'd do this all the time. And then he'd say, uh, 'Lee, be a good boy. Just don't be too good.'" No such thing, Lee. I can't remember caring about him one way or the other, really, before now, beyond certain moments of adoration and the occasional bloodcurdling scream of frustration. But this is like somebody throwing up in your head. They say it all so lightly. "Everybody has demons," Lampkin laughs. "Them, Baltar, you, me. Even the machines. The law is just a way of exorcising them. That's what your father's father told me. You want to know why I hated him? Because he was right." Hop, hop, hop down the bunny trail: "So you hated him because he was right, and I hated the law because it was wrong. Because of what...of what it put him through. I mean, he defended the worst of the worst. I remember reading about him. The outrage. Helping murderers go free. What I don't understand is why he put himself through all that abuse." Don't you love how the concept of defense counsel is like blowing everybody's mind?
"You think he gave a flying frak? Joe Adama cared about one thing. Understanding why people do what they do. Why we cheat our friends, why we reward our enemies. Why we go to war, sacrificing our lives for lost causes. Why we build machines in the hope of correcting our flaws and our shortcomings. Why we forgive, defying logic and the laws of nature with one stupid little act of compassion." Translation: Michael Angeli wanted a job on the Caprica spinoff before it went belly-up. "We're flawed. All of us." So it's okay to fall down. "I wanted to know why, so I did what he did. I spend my life with the fallen. The corrupt. The damaged." Like Lee. He draws the line himself, in a way that Lee can't look away, can't help but admit that's he fallen, damaged. If "Black Market" existed on the record, and I swear on my life that I will do whatever it takes to keep that from being true, he'd be corrupt too. "Look at you, you were so ready to get on that Raptor with me today. The bad boy, the prodigal son." Lee feints to the usual place, the place he jumps a thousand times a day for justification: "No. I was just doing my job, protecting you." Then why, Lee, was your father acting completely crazy and out of character? If not to make you a "bad boy" and a "prodigal son"? (I really hate it when that term is misused like that, but I feel like at this point it's arguing the millennium, and we should just go with it. "Prodigal" now means "estranged," and not "wasteful," as it has to right now. I'm calling it: score one for semantic drift. I'll get you time!)
What follows is an easy joke, but a good one, and well-acted: "Suddenly I'm handcuffed to a serial contrarian?" And Lee gives the obligatory "NO I AM NOT!" before realizing that things are ironic. I wish Bamber were a better actor, but any worries about his skill after the latest ebb were pretty much washed off by this episode. It just sucks that the two speech events in this episode that depended most on timing (this one and the Starbuck/Racetrack mistake in the briefing room) were his least effective moments in the episode. Both times he seems to anticipate his line right before he says it. The emotions scan, but the actual line readings don't, and it's a shame. But he looks really great this season, like way better than he's ever looked before. I'm working on always saying nice things along with the bad, but since I'm incredibly shallow that mostly ends up "But he's pretty!" or "But I like her shoes!" One day I'll figure out a balance. "My bed is made," says Lampkin, referencing their first conversation, the first time he moved into a little room in Lee's life. "I suggest you toil on your own. Now, if this cross-examination is over, I'd like to take a crap." Nice. He stands to leave, and Lee clears his throat. "Romo, that story that you told about the girl, the woman that you loved. Getting over her. Is it true? Hey! ... Was it true?" Romo admits that it's true, but that's not the question. The question is: who's it true for?
Outside Lampkin's apartment, the brimstone of his exit moments ago still wafting down the corridor, Firguski's got a box for him. "Files from Colonial One." I don't understand what anybody's job is anymore. The tiny weak kitten-hold I had on it is gone. week: LSO Kelly as the lunch lady. "Finally," Lampkin twinkles. "I thought I'd get all these after the trial was over." The Marine guards tell Figurski to put the box down for testing (smart, considering Figurski would have been like third on my list, after Cally and Seelix), and Figurski bitches and moans, of course, about how he was there "when Kelly x-rayed them." "It's papers," he [drink!]s. The Marine picks up the box, now certified non-explody, and doing so he notices a tiny little screw on the floor. What seems like light years away, Romo's entering his personal code on his quarters' keypad, and somehow this Marine -- who may well be a Cylon from the eyeballs on him -- notices the missing screw from the pad. He shouts at Romo and crushes him to the floor; they're enveloped in the blast. season, watch for Romo acting squirrelly and making out with an invisible Marine all the time.
(What an awesome idea I have just had!) In Sickbay, Romo's on an oxygen tube, but I'm guessing the Marine's dead, because that's what happened the last two bombings. Major Lee Stressed Out brings Lampkin his bag -- "before the hounds got to it," Lampkin leprechauns -- and Romo tells him to open it. Lee produces first Laura's Roslin's glasses, wonders if he's going over the edge right now or just in a little while, and gives Romo a confused look. "The President's glasses. She looks better without them." They... chuckle. This is one of those scenes that makes me less troubled by Lee or Lampkin or the content of the scene, and more troubled by Michael Angeli, because this conversation is creepy as hell but not in a way that furthers the plot. "They're serious. Serious catches on, in the courtroom," he explains, and Lee nods. Appearances. Deceit. And the button? "Your father's. From the deck. Right after you found the bomb underneath the Raptor. Here, kitty, kitty... heh. Ow. It was hanging by a thread." The President is serious; the Admiral is hanging by a thread. Lee's catching on, like a virus: "They tarnish so fast." The unspoken. "It was like that when I plucked it. Everybody else...Tigh, the others, you...all shiny. The soldier in him has had enough for a while. He'll be glad to sit in that courtroom and fire his missiles there." One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh.
: a sandal, from the co-ed bathroom. "Miss Prosecuting Attorney, down the hall. It's not what you think!" They both laugh in a way that two grown men would not normally laugh, because a normal person wouldn't be "thinking" what apparently in Angeli World you would "think" and then laugh about, which is that foot fetishes come to mind immediately whenever you see a shoe, or whatever's nasty and stupid and indicative of larger sex issues in play. "They were appropriated with the noblest of intentions. See the soles? See how the soles are worn." In this way Romo Lampkin describes a universe; see how Apollo learns who to be now. "She drags her feet." Miss Prosecuting Attorney drags her feet, the Admiral hanging by a thread. And Lee? Just hollowed out. "You're catching on!" It's when he says it out loud that's most chilling. Lee asks about the rest of the crap in the bag, but doesn't think to ask why Romo's showing it to him.
"... My demons. I borrow things. My parents disappeared when I was nine years old. They were kidnapped. Murdered for...for the money they had on them, which wasn't enough. I went to live with an uncle, stole from him until I could run away." Then he became the Batman, or Peter Pan, or any other self-made individual who has no parents at all. Just like Lee likes to picture himself: an orphan in a Fleet made of orphans, made up of a race of orphans, he's still special. It's only him against the forces of chaos. Him and this strange magpie of a man. "So what did you take from me?" Nothing you can see. Nothing you know about, from this sad angle. "I was thinking... the photograph that you carry. The girl, the pilot. The one you're carrying." They already took that. "But you've had enough stolen from you already." Lee nods, and gives Romo another of his chess pieces: you admit I loved her the most. You see the truth behind my strong façade. You see the boy inside the Lee Suit. "I'll try and get these back to her," Lee says, motioning with the glasses. Like he still hasn't noticed that this is wildly fucked up in every direction. He turns to go and Lampkin stops him. "The other pocket. At the back."
Gaius's pen. Lampkin gave it to Caprica knowing it would be confiscated, stole it back from the guards, and now he's returning it to Gaius. From himself. From the man who gave him his voice back, his only true supporter, the only man who has told him, aloud, that the writing is a good thing. That he can buy back his soul through his manifestos and operating manuals. That dissolving himself in a puddle of critique and proletarian theory is the last and final way for him to be a hero, for him to save the Fleet; this time, from itself, for once, rather than from a man named Gaius Baltar. Saul Tigh should write a poem about Romo Lampkin. Maybe he already did.
"We still have a case pending. If you want to help, if you dare help ... get this to my client." Lee wonders if they really do, and Romo coughs. "I have a calling. Eh, it's all the ringing in my ears tells me." The ringing in his ears, like Seelix's; the calling, like Seelix's. Like Lee's, now that he's answering. The final item takes Lee's breath away. "... Okay, you better explain this," he says, shaking with adrenaline. It's a detonator or something, a part we've seen on the other bombs. Romo says he doesn't know what it is, but Lee does. His voice is harsh: "Where'd you get it?" From the guy that "scolded you like a schoolboy," Romo says. "Frakkin' with your head. What's-his-name; Mr. Serious." All in terms of Lee, of what he did to Lee, of why Lee is currently angry and powerless and sad: what they took away, the power that was lost, the LSO lording it over the CAG. He's good. "... Uh, Kelly," he says, like he's barely heard the name. Little does he know that Kelly's been popping up all over the ship for no reason, in like every scene he doesn't belong in, so we'll recognize him at the big reveal in a second that makes no sense.
Lee's stricken, and we cut to the pilots' bunks, where Lee is going all Homicide and slapping bomb parts around and getting in Kelly's face. I... don't know what to do with this. You figure it out, or what it means, or how it happens, because I'm willing to admit that I might just be blind to the point here, because it seems an awful lot like Dr. Robert's excuse that made no sense a few weeks ago.
Kelly: I never would've let Athena go airborne with you on the Raptor. I would've stopped it, you know that.
Apollo: Yeah, I know that.
Kelly: You better lock me up. And I don't want any trial. I won't stop, I will keep trying. I'll keep at it, I will. I did my job, sir. And I have done my job for two years now. Every day I sent people out to fight. I cleared them all to die. So many people...I just got tired of living with that. You ask that man if you had to choose between giving his life up for a Cylon or a human, what do you think he'd say? I had to do something.
I mean... what does any of that mean? "Fighter pilots die, like Starbuck died for example. This makes me hate my job, because I am confused about the words 'war,' 'fighter' and 'pilot.' Also the word 'job,' and also what it is that I do exactly, which is not what I am saying it is*. Somehow, this has to do with Gaius Baltar, because he is not a pilot, and therefore I am blowing up lawyers. I am also blowing up some pilots, like Sharon, because it's sad when pilots get blown up. But not lawyers. But I hate my job, and plus I am crazy now and a serial killer, and will continue to blow up lawyers, and Sharon, to save the pilots from getting blown up, unless I'm the one blowing them up."
(*This one, I'll give him a pass, because who the hell knows anymore. Helo will probably be LSO and the lunch lady week, in addition to being a pilot, the Mayor of Dogsville, and Ombudsman for the Lower Four Colonies and the District of Whatthefuck.)
Adama's office for another round of "Dial 'A' For Adama," in which Bill Adama presents us with a completely new personality every five seconds, because he has no internal motivation, because we're strapping on the Apollo Suit and only one character in the scene has a personality or definable goals at any given time, and everybody else is set dressing. And speaking of set dressing, check out the totally demolished model ship in the background for this entire scene. Pretend it means what you think it means, because in this episode you take what you can get, and at least the director's not terrible at his job.
So Bill's on the phone telling Tigh (or whoever the XO might be at this moment) to reinstate Lee as the CAG, then welcoming him back like somebody else was the one that demoted him to Garibaldi. In a way, it was: the Adama From Five Seconds Ago. "I'm sorry. Because I was wrong, and...I made it worse." Made what worse? The grieving? I didn't see any grieving. The Admiral tries to say that Lee should be back in his element, getting over his losses and adjusting to life, but Lee is SO not having that. "I think I should be with Lampkin!" And my grandfather, and whoever else you hate! "Well, now that we know that it was Kelly, we can ease up a little bit on security," says Adama. Because things normally go so well in the Fleet, what with people not turning into serial killers for no reason every couple weeks. "In his condition," which is on a crutch, which is awesome, because Romo Lampkin is like the Colonial Johnny Cochran with the props -- think what he'll do with the crutch! -- Lee thinks Lampkin needs help preparing the his case. Adama reverts back to the beginning of the episode to say that Roslin's looking for aides that can do that. "Dad, why not me? I'm close to the case, I've read the documents. I understand Lampkin's strategy..." You bet you do. Like a cancer in your mind. "We have things under control. Lampkin will have help." Lee reiterates that he wants to do this, and Adama goes nuts some more and makes no sense. "You're a CAG, you're not a lawyer." But until five seconds ago, he wasn't a CAG either, and there's no deep meaning for that, it's just dumb and overly complicated and silly. "What, and you're a judge?" asks Lee, once again sidestepping that it's not professional experience that makes the Admiral a bad choice for the tribunal, but the simple fact that he's the head of the military and one of the two leaders of the Fleet, which is made up of people who have survived like ten of Baltar's attacks that destroyed all but 40,000 people in the entire human race. "No, but like the four other men picked, I'm capable of listening to the evidence and making an ethical decision." Yeah, until this episode I would have agreed, now I don't know what to think anymore. Lee draws a parallel: "And I'm capable of helping Lampkin." Adama tells him to forget it and says he needs him as CAG. Or, you know, Helo, or anybody else that's available and not currently a serial killer. Or any one of a number of dead girls.
Adama: Forget it. I need you as CAG.
Apollo: Why did you give me those books, huh? I mean, you gave me your father's law books.
Adama: I made a mistake.
Apollo: Why? Why is it a mistake? Are you afraid that I'll be like him?
Adama: You're a pilot.
Apollo: And with Zak gone, and Kara gone, you needed someone to carry the flag, is that it?
Adama: You're a pilot. You're a pilot and you're my son. And I will not look across that court and see you sitting on the other side.
Apollo: See me? Or see someone else.
Adama: Report for duty.
Apollo: Is that an order?
Adama: You're in way over your head. Report for duty.
Apollo: Is that an order?
Adama, taking his glasses off, making no sense: I'm through giving you orders.
Am I an idiot? How am I unable to make even basic sense of this shit? "You're not the CAG, you're the head of security. STOP ACTING LIKE ROMO LAMPKIN or so help me God I'll make you CAG again." Please, sir, do not give me my job back. "Then I'll hate your grandfather some more!" But sir, what about Zak and Kara? Can't I bring them up for no reason? They were both pilots and died in the air, just like you don't want me to do! "Go die in an airplane or I will be really mad!" But I have a calling to serve, which you and Roslin have now given to me and then taken away again sixteen times. "I HAVE NO IDEA HOW THE LEGAL SYSTEM WORKS! IF YOU ARE SITTING AT THE DEFENSE TABLE AND I AM MAKING AN ETHICAL DECISION BASED ON THE FACTS, I WILL HAVE TO FIGHT YOU SOMEHOW!" No, you won't. "GO DIE IN AN AIRPLANE! BECAUSE I LOVE YOU! KARA THRACE IS DEAD! DEAD!" Is that an order? "NO! THE COMMANDER OF THE FLEET DOES NOT GIVE ORDERS TO HIS SUBORDINATES! GO BE A LAWYER LIKE I JUST TOLD YOU NOT TO! "
Adama goes into CIC and tells them to take Lee off the board and reinstate Helo as CAG. "My son has more important things to tend to," he says, and I can't tell if he's reached the Bitchy stage of grieving, or if he's continuing to be surreal for no goddamn reason.
Hall of Remembrance: Lee finally puts up Kara's picture. Sam comes crutching in, out of nowhere (Apollo Suit!) and sees the photo. Apollo asks about his broken leg, but doesn't ask what the hell Sam does all day, or where he lives, or why he was stumbling around drunk in a classified area earlier this episode, or any of the things I'd ask him before resorting to talking about the weather and drinking injuries. Starting with, "You wanna fool around, or... ?" Sam calls it his "lucky break," because being on crutches -- which he still is -- meant that he didn't have to come to the Hall of Remembrance and look at the photo of his dead wife and take part in a ritual that holds ZERO MEANING FOR HIM, because A) only the pilots seem to use it these days, and B) post-9/11 he wasn't lighting candles on Galactica, he was lighting bombs on Old Caprica, and C) Apollo Suit, whatever whatever. Sam calls him "Lee" again, with no laughter in it, and they nod. Lee leaves Sam alone with her picture, and he touches it.
In the brig, Gaius hops around like that merry wanderer of the night in a community theatre presentation of Midsummer Night's Dream, and finally angles himself down to the envelope on the floor. Inside, slightly the worse for wear, is that goddamn pen, and a note from Lampkin. Which he reads as we hear Lampkin's voiceover: "There is no greater ally, no force more powerful, no enemy more resolved than a son who chooses to step from his father's shadow. -- Romo Lampkin." The resulting apoplexy of douche-toolish self-obsession -- too many egos, too small a space, Romo quoting himself, Gaius being all writer guy now, Angeli doing a bang-up job as usual -- causes the entire episode to run backwards from itself and then explode at the very beginning, like it never happened. Yet even still it bends time and space to avoid getting the fuck over itself.
Yeah, I just found a note on my office floor, it goes like this: "There is nothing more poignantly ill-advised, no narrative tremor too pronounced, no pile of bullshit too unready for primetime, that it won't be signed off on with Michael Angeli's name on the cover, because he is holding an NBC executive's family hostage. -- This Stupid Fucking Episode." But I don't know what it means!
week, as I've been saying all season: THE TRIAL OF GAIUS BALTAR! Written by the guy who brought you "Collaborators," "Lay Down Your Burdens, Part II," "The Eye Of Jupiter," "A Day In The Life," and (cough) "Black Market." I'm thinking it's going to be awesome and probably pretty crazy; Verheiden also means that it will be serviceable-to-brilliant, depending on the director, and have the input of Moore and Eick and the whole room, meaning that it'll be big ideas and lots of cool scenes at the least. And I'm guessing there will be a lot of setup for all the wild cliffhangers we've come to expect in our finales. I just hope it won't have the Part One flab we've also come to expect, but I'm not that worried. It'll certainly feel like BSG again, rather than another Iron John & Easy Rider night at Neal Cassady's house. I'm pretty pumped; I'm asking Joe to do the recaplets here on out. So til Sunday, pass me the magic drum or some shit, because I gotta whine about my Dad for awhile. Boom boom boom.