The Girl Who Fell To Earth

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Gossip Girl here, your one and only source into the scandalous lives of the Rag-Tag Fleet's Massively-Frakked Elite. And do I have a juicy scoop or five for you this week. Let the MILF Wars commence! Spotted: Ellen Tigh, stepping off the Raptor like the first time we saw her, Chief identifying her pilot Boomer with a single sexy-as-hell look, and Adama sending Boomer straight to the brig for shooting him in various poorly edited parts of his abdomen about a zillion years ago. Careful readers will note that Laura's always hated Ellen and has no time for Boomer either, so it's no surprise she shoots stinkface lasers all over the place even after Ellen's reiterated for them that "Final Five" means just that, the Final Five people of all Earth, and isn't that sad.

Also Spotted: the Colonel playing both Tighs against the middle, offering up a half-hearted attempt at telling his wife about the oncoming baby with Caprica -- named Liam, as in William, naturally -- before getting distracted by a bone-athon two years in the making. Then, a little birdie tells me Ellen's first meeting with her beloved Dylons goes... poorly. Tory's still sipping on Hatorade and, after an attack on Caprica in Dogville that leaves any number of fugeez royally mama-bear'd, Chief's down with it too. They agree to a vote -- Saul and absentee Sam, of course, having declared their wish to stay in the Fleet -- and then swing vote Ellen gets blindsided, when a random Six mentions poor doomed Liam.

(Which, much like with Tory and Kara every time they open their big stupid petty bitch mouths, we as the audience get to write off as yet another petty, bitchy woman acting out. As though this show has ever demonstrated so little respect for us or its characters that this could ever be the actual reason, but that's the price you pay when you write TV for nerds who will never know the touch of a woman: obviously, Ellen's ragging on a thousand years' worth of premenstrual syndrome. It's not that she killed herself to save her husband's life, awoke to decades of memory and a year and a half of imprisonment before finally finding her way back to a man she's loved literally thousands of years and the belief that she's regained the only heaven she's ever been able to contemplate, only to have him puss out and lie to her face about having a son with their daughter, no: She's just a bitch. Because that's exactly how simple women are. Barf me out.)

Ellen and the Pres are both spotted having several really fucked up conversations with Caprica about her pregnancy, and Ellen orchestrates a truly Blair Waldorf-level amount of awkwardness shitstorm, playing Caprica against Saul and both women against Saul's number one true love (the Admiral, obviously) that leaves Baby Liam dead in the womb, Saul weeping in Bill's arms, Caprica almost catatonic, and Ellen and Laura feeling like the dicks they always end up feeling like.

Meanwhile, Chip Six is back and helping Gaius retake his cult from the always-awesome Paulla, getting into turf wars with the always-awesome Sons of Aries, revealing the first of what must be many Gaius Bastards to come, and eventually talking Bill into arming the Cult of the One True Living God with some scare quotes and post-mutiny Second Amendment rhetoric. The Jane Espenson "watch out for the funny" rule is in full effect this week, as every hilarious Gaius scene is followed by Saul, Caprica or Ellen getting their metaphorical teeth bashed out in some new way.

Also spotted: Kara not dealing with Sam's coma all that well, which she doesn't know is actually fine because he just woke up, which may or may not have to do with Liam's death, whose gestation may or may not have to do with the fact that nobody's seen the Opera House since Natalie died; Chief continuing to invent new unforeseen ways to be hot, between encylonating Galactica and watching Boomer sleep in the brig; and a moving ep-ender with Laura and Bill -- Literally taking a turn around the ship with her arm in his, dude! -- noting that, once the 268s started putting up pictures in the Hall of Remembrance, the "blending" already done begun.

week: Answers (or at least "answers") about Kara's deal, Sam wakes up hopefully, and we find new ways to do whatever shitty things to Boomer Cally didn't have time to do before that crazy, petty bitch got airlocked. You know you love me.

XOXO, Gossip Girl.

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It's an old story and a new one, but not one we've ever looked at before all at once: Once there was a girl, who fell in love with a boy. She was a special kind of girl, who lived ten thousand days for every day we live: across stars and in secret places, like fingers on a hand. When she was born, it didn't really matter much because it was the hand that was important. She fell in love with a boy, on Caprica. She fell in love with a girl, on the Battlestar Pegasus. She was put into place and she played her part and she fell in love. All these stories and a thousand more poured through her veins, the ocean that feeds the stream that feeds the ocean, and in all of them she fell in love. Gather our biographies in your hands, you'll come with a handful of ocean: trust me, in the end we're only human.

But what does that mean? There were programs in place, for after the ending, what to do with the survivors, how to move on to the stage of the plan, how to procreate. They took away her memories of her mother, and told her that children were objects demanded by their faith. A great honor, supplanting their forgotten parents and making children in their own image. She'd be in charge of the Farm, overseeing their experiments, laboring toward God. She'd be temptation and a goad, fall in love with a man who could never give her a child; who didn't even know her name. She'd be passed over, once again, and Sharon would be mother to the generation. Sharon, the baby of the family. She went walking, saved a child from what would happen . Snapped his neck and wept for him. She never even knew his name.

Philosophy at five in the morning: "Consider for a moment the relationship of a child to its parent. Children are born to replace their parents. That is God's plan. God plans the death of one's parents to be a critical component of a child's development into adulthood. God wants children to grow and develop on their own. He wants them to reach their full potential. And so it is that parents must die. But parents who stand in the way of God's plan, who defy His will... they must be struck down." Humanity's children returned.

After two years, she ended a forty-year peace with a kiss, ageless and naïve at once, like faerie: "Are you alive?" she asked; and elsewhere she was thanking Kendra Shaw for her kindness and running to her lover on the bridge; and elsewhere she was getting the Farms ready, for the greater glory of God; and elsewhere she was pushing her lover down, down onto the floor, out of the radius of a nuclear shockwave thirty miles away. He loved her. He never even knew her name. In those days you didn't need one; in those days, it wasn't words but feelings, not to drown in that ocean but to be one with it, synonymous with it. No names: just let her feel it and she'd fill the fucking room.

Caprica was reborn, after the blaze; visited by an angel wearing her lover's face. She asked again and again, and they told her he was dead. Dead in the blast and never recovered. She lost all that makeup and the dresses, and felt more like herself. She tried to come back to the fold, to be the girl she was supposed to be, but it didn't feel right. She began to feel too much like herself: one girl, drowning in an ocean of memories. She'd begun to swing away from herself, a finger on a hand thinking thoughts of its own. Her selves became sisters. They played her against a Sharon, the sleeper named Boomer, who was coming apart in another way. They were Heroes and they were Villains, threatening the fabric of the world. She counseled Boomer, and Boomer taught her that Gaius was alive, the Vice President of remnants; they saved the life of a secret saint together and taught the Cylon a new way to live, too late for redemption but early enough for love.

Love is cruel by its nature, not by malice. Caprica was restored to him, the man she thought she loved, the man who'd tainted her with knowledge and her singular perspective. The hardness and the quickness of him, the man who would never love her as she loved him, had only become harder and faster. He slipped away beneath her gaze. He became her pet, alive only through her loving care; she fought the glares of Felix, and eventually Gaius lost even his hardness. His confused tangled layers -- herself, the angel, Gina -- had brought the Cylons to New Caprica; what was for her a reconnection was for him the doubled memory of betrayal. She was murdered in front of him to prove a point; the fact that he was able to mourn her was a sign he was still alive: proof. But they saved Hera together, and they saved New Caprica from another detonation. The destruction they'd brought to the Colonies, averted on a second doomed home. The ending dream of harmony, this time heralded by a nuclear blast, came not with a conflagration but on a rainy day.

Caprica took Gaius and Hera back to the Baseship, and tried to love him. She held on so hard she entered into creepy threesomes, and was betrayed by his ambition and the religious awakening of her sister D'Anna: corrupted too by her time in the Fleet, her experience of Caprica and Boomer in the presence of Sam Anders, the first victim of a Cylon/Cylon murder. They left her there, alone, without love and without a child, again: the baby began to die. She'd failed, again. She was the first Six to experience romantic betrayal, the aching loneliness that only humans know; what Athena gave up willingly she had taken away, again and again. She was alone, again. And no matter how jealous she was, of Athena, she loved Hera so much that just the thought of that little girl brought tears to her eyes. Caring for Hera -- snapping necks to defend her -- felt good in a place she could barely remember: the Caprica City marketplace where she committed the very first murder. The Caprica City marketplace where she kissed her lover under a strong sun, under the watchful eyes of a dying politico, and wished it all could last forever. That's when love stole into her heart. That's when robots become human: not the first murder, but the first kiss. That's when she became dangerous.

When Helo shot Athena, the mother of the race of sentient beings, and she downloaded on the Resurrection Ship, Caprica was there. To greet her, this third hero; not a Hero of the Cylon but a woman drowning in oceans of memory, who had been hurt by human and Cylon alike as much as Caprica or Boomer ever had, and still committed herself to bridging gaps. And simply in the look on her sister's face, Caprica knew her time on the Baseship was done. You never run from anything immortal, because it gets their attention, because their existence deforms the universe and our worlds merely turn around them. She snapped poor Boomer's neck, the false mother, to save the child; she escorted Athena and Hera back to the Fleet, her stomach turning over and heart racing, and stood in the scariest place in the universe, wondering whether they'd murder her. And back with the Cylons, her sister Natalie took her place.

She was manipulated in the brig by Laura Roslin, and learned to hate her; eventually she began to share her dreams: taking Hera to see the Final Five, in the truth of the Opera House. She never knew Gaius had had those same dreams and visions, long ago. Roslin took a crack at her programming, daring her to remember the Final Five. To remember that mother's love. She was visited by lonely, sad old Saul Tigh, who told her she'd never see Hera again. He looked older than her, but he was only a boy. He'd only had one false life, and she'd had ten thousand, every single one of those days directed toward one goal: purity and beauty, as cold and savage and bright and lovely as the forest cathedrals she projected on the world. Another green world, untouched by pain and history, ready to begin with something new.

Maybe it's academic at this point, but there's a pretty strong line to be drawn between the femme fatale and the belle dame sans merci. The first was an act, confusing for us as we got to know the angel wearing her face more than we ever knew Caprica herself; when Caprica returned to the Cylon she returned to the second. She remembered herself to herself, cut her makeup use in half at least. The thing about the belle dame is that she's more like Peter Beagle's Lady Amalthea than his Lady Celeno: perfection and immortality are cruel by their nature, they never come to it by malice. Malice comes later, when you fall to earth.

Neither of them knew, what he was to her. A confused, half-blind saint asking for succor from an enemy of the state; Lear leaning on Cordelia's shoulder, Antigone leading Oedipus by the hand. The frightened last unicorn trying desperately to bring a soul back to fallen Zeus, both of them with more memories stolen than the ones that remained. Saul begged for Caprica's help in turning off his emotions; she responded by turning them up to eleven. She beat him bloody and made love to him, and realized something new about the world. Another wall fell down. They'd thought a lack of God's love was what prevented them all from getting pregnant. She'd championed the idea, to keep herself from weeping at night, in her loneliness and jealousy, but having made the jump to the world -- having come willingly into enemy territory for the love of a child, having been given the gift of death by Natalie -- things looked different. Her heart had begun to sew itself back together. And the only thing she'd ever wanted, since that curious, bloody day on Caprica City and further, back to the mother she never knew she forgot, supplant that long-lost memory, and enter the world forever. She would finally be a mother.

Act One: Fun & Games
You Are Cordially Invited To George And Martha's For An Evening Of Fun And Games

There's a hot Six doing the Maggie Chascarillo, spreading Cylon aid and comfort across the struts and walls of Galactica, holding her up and making her strong again, when Bill comes down to visit the Chief. He puts his fingers in it, touches the compound where it sits on an artist's palette. "It's gooey," the Chief explains, "But it hardens, becomes like cartilage. It's flexible, strong. It's what the Baseship's made of." Bill's fascinated, like Laura watching the Hybrid sing: "Is this alive?" Prove it.

Five months pregnant, Caprica walks through Dogsville, on her way from one place to another, holding a piece of paper clutched in her hands, pulling a hood tight over her face like Gaius once did. The Marines are stretched to the brink, barely able to cover the defensive systems and sensitive areas of the ship, but a few are down here, handing out barrels of grain. The refugee desperation, the frantic Brownian motion of them as they starve, makes her nervous. She did this. And then her fears become real: the Sons of Ares approach, as they wait for the Marines to leave, and decide to have a little fun. It's bad enough that she's a Cylon outside the West Wing protective bubble of her lover's quarters, but here in Dogsville they're just looking for a reason.

Sons of Ares more than anything. Their entire purpose, the meaning that they've found at the end of the world, is entirely bound up with fighting back against her religion. They are a group based in hate, anointed by war. She tells them she wants no trouble, and they laugh and pull at her hood. She's still bruised from the mutiny; still wakes up in fear and nausea worrying about her child sometimes. She grabs a throat, breaks an arm, kicks a Son of Ares across the room as they flail and punch at her once-perfect face. And once she's put them all down, she'll pull her dress back together around herself and limp away, while the human wreckage of Dogsville stares and watches their world fall apart a little bit more every day.

Bill looks up at the Six and watches his world remade around him, become an approximate thing, an impure and a hideous bricolage; Galactica's broken bones aren't Laura's cancer, they are his. They've pushed him into dark corners, they've woken him when all he wanted to do was sleep. They've remodeled his soul and his sense of ethics with their aid and comfort, and continue to think up things to take away from him: his daughters and his sons, his dreams, his best and oldest friend. None are equal to this, this awful miscegenation in the blood and skin of the ship he commands; fiddled and tinkered with by a mordant once-friend who spends more time on the Baseship than in the Fleet these days. Bill drinks more than ever now, even as Tigh teetotals for his lover's comfort: Bill Adama is a man who built model ships when he couldn't save his family; who put his favored daughter on her prow the day she died. He was outraged when he learned about the corners cut, fifty years ago when she was born; it pinched at him inside when he was reminded that he dropped her onto New Caprica, the day she fell to that dry earth; Bill's drinking more than ever, these days.

After the attack Saul and Caprica rush to Cottle, who laughs and tells them their son's heart is like a kettledrum. Just like his father's. She's relieved and Cottle is crotchety and caring: "Go on, get out of here! Make room for some sick people." Saul and Caprica smile at each other as her tears dry; he wants her to stay in sickbay for the night. "I don't trust that machine," he grumbles, and this expression of love lifts her higher. She grins at him, and he notices the irony. "The baby's fine. Liam is fine. You know I sleep better at home with you." He sighs and she nods to him, telling him it's okay; maybe you noticed the name and what it means, the first time it was spoken. Caprica only knows half the story, even now.

Hoshi spots Boomer's Raptor on dradis: "Squawks Colonial, but it's not on the roster. It's one of ours, but we logged it as lost over a year ago, sir." So did we. I honestly thought we'd never see Boomer again, after Caprica killed her the last time. Since then I haven't wanted to. She's approached by four Vipers, flying CAP, her wireless request to come aboard Galactica garbled and weak. "If you can hear me," Starbuck asks, "Give me a flash?" She does, and a Six speaks over the wireless. "Red Leader, Red Turkey."

(Well, I teared up. If you hopped in a time machine to 2003 and said that one day a Cylon Heavy Raider would get to fly CAP, I might believe you. Hell, that was so long ago I might have been grossed out. And it's incredibly rough to know that this happened not out of some jump-skipping openmindedness but out of desperation; to know that it's because Seelix and Racetrack and Narcho are living on the Astral Queen and there aren't enough pilots even for a full CAP complement anymore. Forgiveness is a privilege, and a challenge, but more often than not we're pushed to it by even worse shit. It's a small step we're jumping, from Cylons in the brig to Heavy Raiders on CAP and Centurion Marine patrols and ugly living goo covering her steel skin, but a big one too.

The mutiny seemed obligatory, in a way, like "of course this had to happen at some point and FRAK EARTH is definitely the right place for it in the story"; but it's a wicked irony, and genius, that it led to so many more and worse outrages than simply upgrading the FTL drives. Gaius only mentions it once, at the end of the episode, but you should know right now that the administration is actually considering using Centurions to police the dirt towns and lower decks of Galactica, now that there's nobody left to watch them. And if this is even happening on Galactica, these autonomous little pockets of hell, the Ares turf wars and that stuff, imagine what the rest of the Fleet is like. I bet Lee's got more girlfriends than he can deal with! But mostly: the self-indicting, exhausted humor in giving this Heavy Raider the callsign "Turkey"? That's some Galen Tyrol shit right there.)

Starbuck radios Adama that the Six under her command has identified the strange lost Raptor's voice as "a Sharon," and Bill thinks for a moment, musing aloud as Hoshi watches: "An Eight..." He stares up, at the ceiling. He will watch and be silent, but he knows what it means. The entire point of the civil war, the Rebels, the 268s, was that there aren't any Eights left, out there. There's only one left: the first betrayal, the suicidal saboteur, the daughter that shot him in the gut, at the moment of his greatest pride and her greatest triumph. Humanity's children are coming home today. She glides into the hangar bay, surrounded by serpents.

Bill beats it down to the hangar deck as Kara's climbing down off her Viper, looking none too happy. Laura and Lee stand with him for this homecoming, and the Raptor door finally opens, on the shapely gams of a Calfornia blonde. Boomer steps out onto the wing as a Raptor escort does, and Ellen steps out beside her. Laura's jaw drops, and Ellen smiles sweetly at Bill, calling his name warily and lovingly, the way Caprica used to say Felix's name. "How many dead chicks are out there?" asks Hotdog, hilariously. Boomer hops down to look up at her mother and savior and temptress, down from the wing and onto steel earth: that's how many.

"I can't tell you how happy I am to see you," Ellen tells Bill, honestly. He was already in Saul's life before they ever met, according to their memories. According to everybody but her. He came with the package, when she and Saul were just broken people, meeting for the first time. He's the father to an entire race; she respects that as few people can. "Aren't you gonna help a lady down off this thing?" Not interested in Ellen's usual miles and miles of bullshit, and more worried about this distaff sister Eight, he stares at her until Chief steps around to her, leaning impossibly close into her face, looking into her eyes. She remembers his face, every curve and angle. "Nice to see you again," he says, terse and tired and ravaged, and she smiles. "This is Boomer," he says, and Bill orders her taken into custody immediately. She doesn't take her eyes off Bill, wondering if it's still eye for eye after all this time; if he'll count her as a Rebel even though she showed up late. Wondering who she is this time.

Saul enters the hangar bay, and Ellen's heart melts. She spent eighteen months drawing his beautiful face, after he murdered her. Bill and Kara stare, perturbed and disturbed, as they kiss passionately. Kara came back from the dead in this very room and was shuffled off to sickbay at gunpoint. Bill's never seen his best friend happy, in forty years he's never been happy without a drink in his hand, until lately.

I dunno, the big viewer issues with this episode seem clustered around the characterization of Galen and Ellen, and I don't really see a disconnect there. I didn't feel Ellen was hugely sympathetic in the last episode, because as much as I like her, and liked her, she was pretty manipulative then too. It's a certain sort of passive control Final Ellen exerts over situations that isn't even really at odds with the Ellen we met so long ago. She did that shit with Saul when Bill got shot, all "I believe in you so much, don't blame yourself, take control of the ship."

Maybe it's confusing because we're not used to seeing that sort of unctuous nurturing passive-aggression on TV -- well, Laura Roslin is a master at it -- but I thought she and Cavil were pretty much evenly matched, in their divergent arrogance and the way they used Boomer's busted ass for their football: "See what he did to you?" "See what she did to us?" "I love you like I love all my children" isn't all that different from "I'm teaching you to be a better machine." And frankly, "I love you because I made you" is about the grossest thing you can say to a person, because it turns family from a bond built on love to a pair of creator-god handcuffs that I can't abide. So seeing her pull the same shit on Caprica, or being driven by her lesser angels in the whole "stay or go" deal, not that surprising.

Same with Galen: if you bought the whole "be my Chief" thing as some sort of Come-To-Jesus where everything goes back to status quo, then his actions in this episode make no sense. But I mean, his wife died and he spent weeks in a downward spiral very busily and deliberately setting fire to his entire life, we watched that happen, and the only thing that kept him tethered to his humanity was Nicky, who was of course taken away from him in a pretty fucked-up way. My understanding is that he's been living on the Baseship since around that time, so this has just been him coming around to perform as "Chief" on a freelance basis, having been asked to do so by Bill, with whom he's always had an intensely complex relationship anyway. What's left to connect him to Bill, or the Fleet, besides our affection for him?

Leaving the Fleet -- which makes total sense for even the 268s, especially now that Ellen's home and Caprica's knocked up with a magical Cylon baby -- is a betrayal, of a kind. I guess. But I don't see it as much different from Bill's insistence last week that the upgrade team consist of humans, or the fact that Boomer went directly to the brig. And I know it's fun to hate Tory, for saying the true shit nobody else will say. So I guess it's hard to imagine him agreeing with Tory, no matter what the question is. Saul said he would be the man he's chosen to be, until the end; Sam Anders sees no horrible distinction between his selves; seems now to find the entire prospect beautiful. As I would hope anybody would, given enough time to adjust.

But in contrast, both Tory and Galen (who has been wishing he were Cylon since the first season, and started dreaming about suicide after Boomer died) set about wrecking their old personae as quickly and violently as possible when they found out what they were, because they didn't like the people they were: they wanted to become something else they hated less. And if Saul's free to choose the man he would be, can't Galen and Tory be extended the same privilege? Even if it means fumbling around, looking for it? "This is not all we are" is the first Article of Faith, but that's not really very instructive, especially in free-fall.

I mean, whatever, I can't tell you what you think or why because I don't know you, but it just seemed like there was a lot of cognitive dissonance happening with these moves, and that maybe it comes down to a desire to see people as simplified binary switches. Ellen is "good"/Ellen is "bad". Galen is "good"/Galen is "bad". Ellen is a saint/Ellen is a whore. Galen is our Chief Teddybear/Galen is the poorly written victim of character assassination. Which doesn't sit right with me, but especially not when it leads to disengagement from the act of watching the show itself. "I don't understand this, therefore it is poorly written and I refuse to think about it because it's so much easier to write it off than to rise to the challenge of understanding the story I'm being told." I can see spitting out something when you don't like the taste; I just don't understand doing that with dessert. Especially from a chef that has barely, if at all, let you down in five or six years. Wouldn't it be better to roll it around in your mouth for a bit, just in case?

Act Two: Walpurgisnacht
The Violet-Eyed Venus Becomes A Boozing, Tired, Graying "Virago"

39,556 human survivors in the Fleet; many more souls than that. Bill's amazed by Ellen's debrief in the wardroom. "He wants to rebuild resurrection?" Specifically Ellen and Saul and the others, she gestures to Saul (with the two-fingered eye-to-eye salute that means they are a team, think of us as a team, look at us as a pair, give us our due): "I really think Cavil's completely unbalanced, it's... Too much for him. The thought that the only hope for the Cylon people is this desperate grab for... Procreation, evolution. All that messy biological trial and error..." They look at each other; she thinks about how long they tried, like their Cylon children, to make something in their image. Ellen notices the Adamas and Laura staring at her, and laughs. "Oh, dear. I'm totally throwing you, aren't I? I'm still Ellen, you know." Laura, hating that thought most of all, hums in that hateful way, and Ellen shivers, fidgets. "Does anyone have something to drink? Maybe a flask?" She's embarrassed, laughing nervously, like a shaking addict. Bill pulls a flask from his uniform, troubling Laura, who changes the subject.

"So Boomer helped you escape?" Ellen pleads for clemency, and Laura says noncommittally that Ellen need not worry about Boomer. Ellen is discomfited by all the things that might mean, and turns to Bill. He's always been kindest, because he has no choice. "May I see them? The others? Galen, Tory and Sam..." They don't speak. Ellen pours on the charm; surprises herself by how quickly the tears come to her throat, even after all this time. "Imagine, Bill -- Laura -- imagine instead of 50,000 survivors, there are only five. Five people. Imagine how close you'd be. And then to have all that torn away..." She drops her gaze, hurting; Laura gets it. She doesn't want it, but she gets it: what the Final Five are, what they mean. How small five really is; how Ellen measures loss.

"It's all right, Ellen," Saul says. "It's over now." Just as meaningless and well-meant, but she grasps at it, hoping he's awakening. "How much do you remember?" she asks, crying and hopeful. And before he can tell her much more than that he's seen only flashes so far, Lee steps in to change the subject once again. Laura teaches them well, doesn't she? "Samuel Anders was badly injured. He's not responding." Ellen's shocked out of her romantic reverie, horrified, but Saul assures her Sam's not dead yet. Desperately afraid, she begs to see him. "I want to see him and the others," she insists, begging more than she ever has. This is the way Tory felt for Laura, until her heart was broken; this loneliness and fear are what got Cally killed. Laura won't meet Bill's eyes, so he mumbles that they'll see what they can do. Laura and Lee leave, glancing at Bill, who watches their reunion and feels him pulling away, away again. He caresses his wife's hair, and she raises his patch, and Bill leaves them alone.

Their eyes devour each other, passion reignited after two years of pain and captivity. He tries to tell her, about Caprica and Liam, but he doesn't try too hard. She kisses his words away, and throws him down on the wardroom table. For a moment, he sees a Six rising up, pushing against him, but then she's Ellen again. And Caprica, to the Final Five tune, drops her meal of algae mush on the floor of their quarters, and doubles over, and heaves with tears and gasps of pain.

Gaius hides behind a piece of equipment, watching Paulla and Jeanne unload and catalog the weapons and food they've collected. He walks up finally, ready to be beloved; nobody even notices him. He clears his throat, finally, and Jeanne throws herself on him, shouting his name, overjoyed. His joy in returning to her is barely plausible as he calls out to Paulla, who gives him a cold welcome. "We were wondering if you were coming back," she says. Nothing quite so scary as a zealot scorned. Gaius laughs at her, like a silly wayward girl -- "Of course I was coming back!" -- and the girls surrounding him laugh along. He asks what's been going on, and Paulla sighs, tired and pissed.

What's been going on? "Well, it got pretty bad after you left, Gaius. They'd bring us supplies, and men would come and take them away, by force." Jeanne is sad, disappointed: "It was... We were very tired, Gaius." Paulla explains that they eventually realized they'd been abandoned, and had to take care of themselves. The room shifts around her words, as Gaius realizes he's going to have to fight her; even Jeanne looks down and away, ashamed to have lost faith even a moment, trying to spin it. "Abandoned? I... How could you... I wouldn't say that," Gaius burbles, and Jeanne blurts out, uncomfortable with the awkwardness now that he's here, "Abandoned by God." Paulla stares down at her with humorous contempt, and Gaius admits that he would probably say that, after all.

"There were dead men in the halls with guns in their hands. So we took their guns. Now we can protect our food, and we can protect ourselves." Paulla is proud. As she should be. The OTG never let her down, just his prophet. Jeanne points excitedly to the crates and crates of food they've gathered, offering him an out: "We're taking care of ourselves now!" Gaius takes the opportunity and makes their pain a parable: "I knew if I stayed away that you'd find the strength," Paulla rolls her eyes expressively, "And you have. It's one of the reasons why I stayed away as long as I did." Paulla, snotty, finding new levels of disappointment as he digs himself deeper, snarks that he was wise indeed. Six appears behind him in a fucked-up looking Ren Fair dress and points out the obvious: "Sheep have a new shepherd, Gaius." He wriggles uncomfortably. He's seen what Paulla can do with God on her side.

Ellen congratulates Saul on an "impressive" fuck before leaning in and conspiratorially asking who he's frakked since killing her. His mouth hangs open, disingenuous and fake as possible. Saul Tigh is many things but he was never going to be good at this. "Come on. You don't think I know your repertoire after thousands of years of marriage?" He laughs fakely, trying to play it off, and she's like, "No big. You thought I was dead!" Um, yeah. Because he killed you. Talk about the elephant in the room.

Saul laughs, his tone false and light, and tries to put her off. He can't tell her until his pants are buttoned, and even then he won't tell her all the facts. "Well, if you really..." he says, like this is all her fault, "It was a Six. Caprica Six." Ellen's surprise shades into disgust. "We made Sixes. We created her, that's just..." Saul, oh Saul, blurts out that he thought of her, always. It's not possible for her to know just how strongly. She starts to ask, but then gags on it, grossed out. "Oh, please do not tell me I was your mental porn. That's just sad!" she says, somehow managing to close the book on this discussion in a relatively tender way. "Well, are you still seeing her?" He admits that he is, and she turns away, laughing; he zips her up like a husband.

Bill watches the Six applying the resin to his girl, zipping her up, turning her into a half-beast thing, husbanding her into new life. These scenes are repetitive, but they're only a few seconds long each, and make a staccato point that informs the scenes on either side. I think it's elegant. Saul was hers, uncomplicated, a man who would -- and did -- let her fuck all New Caprica, "catting around with all the men," as long as she came home at the end of it all. The man she spent a year and a half dreaming of, drawing his face. Dependable, a good drinking partner, kind and angry by turns, ready for a flareup when their love burned too hot, and ready to laugh when the waters calmed. And now he's got Six all over him, in his pores and on his skin, and in his head. He's becoming something new, made stronger and more strange, something that might not love her like he used to: Ellen's Galactica.

The first Article of Faith is and always should be very simple: this is not all that we are. The Final Five and the Cylon race are Galactica too: falling apart, rehabilitating, stronger and stranger, not fitting together anymore. Cobbled together from shoestring and half-remembered directives and fears. This scene is really sad, in a way: Ellen and Saul join a random Six and Eight, along with Galen and Tory, around Sam's bedside. The Final Five, together for the first time. And the daughters breathe in, joyful, waiting for the single event that will tie up all their loose ends and tell them what they're doing here, mend their rended hearts and recreate the Cylon world they remember, or something better. And nothing happens.

Imagine you spend weeks setting up a lunch date with Dorothy Parker, Scott Fitzgerald, Ursula LeGuin, St. Augustine and William F. Buckley at the Algonquin, and when you get there they're stoned and talking endlessly about like Rock Of Love and what their farts remind them of. That is the saddest thing I can think of.

Paulla should take notes, because she's Gaius's Galactica, and she knows what this is like. These are your saints, girls: One illuminated and pretentious, and still rocked by human jealousies, and one comatose, whose half-dead brain holds mysteries like a dream, a joke. Three still amnesiac and hopeless: Tory trying her best to become more Cylon than the Cylon even as they're trying to be as human as possible, Galen regressing to five personalities ago and trying to have it both ways, and Saul Tigh with his nasty little secrets. Isn't that so sad? When they dreamed of them, and forgot them after waking, they shone immaculate and white, in angelic robes, under frescoes of creation, in a beautiful lost hall with proportions and acoustics fit for a holy choir. Reaching out and welcoming you home... And now finally you see them, you've sacrificed an unbelievable amount both personally and racially to find them and bring them together and explain yourself to you, and they are just these freaks! These broken-ass dirty motherfuckers! That is comedic.

Cottle tells the room full of machines not to unplug anything, and Ellen spots Tory as she enters, gasping softly with joy. The Six shines, seeing the Final Five reunited, and Ellen gets super obnoxious as only goddesses can. She moves from Tory to Galen, caressing their faces. "Yes. This is how it was. Tory, Galen." He searches her eyes for memory; this means nothing to them but what they think it's supposed to mean. She moves to Sam, holding back tears: "All those years. Oh. Oh, the poor boy. Such bad timing..." Tigh looks down, unable to feel any of this along with her. Chief stands and clears his throat, uninterested in family reunions when there's salt to be crossed. The Six nods and addresses them.

"We've been ... Thinking. We belong together. Join us on the Baseship. We'll jump away, start a new life." The Eight chimes in, asking her and Saul to consider, and Saul clarifies that indeed, they mean to abandon the Fleet." He is crusty about it, if you can imagine. The Six tries to explain, lowering her voice because it's sort of rude and Sixes are always polite, but it's something that must be discussed, like a bastard's inheritance: "The priority of the Fleet is the survival..." She knows enough to be embarrassed, just saying the word this way, in this context: "The survival of humans." Eight points out that the natives are getting fairly restless, pointing out the assault on "a Cylon" earlier.

Tory speaks up, which I'm sure will go well: "This is about the survival of the original Thirteenth Tribe, in its purest form." What she means is that it was never going to be possible for her to be a Galactica, because Laura/Tory lockdown for a year and a half on New Caprica already made her half a Razor. In a world without democracy there's not really a need for pollsters, and even those high ideals for which she sacrificed so much -- including, eventually, those ideals themselves -- don't seem to make much sense anymore. Fuck that. These Cylons believe in voting and haven't gunned down a Quorum in weeks now; they won't call her a whore, or make her into one. Tory can get back to doing what Tory loves: making things work, civil and social engineering, without all that messy organic trial and error or human weakness throwing off her plans.

I don't see much of a difference between Anastasia and Tory, actually, from this angle: one of them wanted to tear down the system and build a better one, and eventually died because she couldn't; the other one wants to run away and start over, design the perfect one. Close out all the books and the give and take and the shame and guilt and build a perfect society, where everybody does what she says. Of course, the mutiny in Anastasia's name burned off well too much of the ship and its personnel toward building a new system for both races, but then I don't see a particularly happy ending for poor Tory either. Even Boomer, who has gotten burned by more people on more occasions than anyone has a right to be, came back eventually from the 0/1 Utopias Tory and Cavil want to build.

Saul, of course, correctly nails that this is all Tory's fault, but Ellen's still doing her whole gauzy Stevie Nicks condescending Earth Mother thing: "It won't work, of course. The child Hera is the hope for a new blended future!" I love, love the way Kate Vernon is playing this. Her Ellen is never one thing or the other, but always both: when the words are sweet she makes them treacly-sick, and when the words are petty she adds a deep, wise sadness. She always balances out the saint and the asshole, the virgin and the whore, the surface and the underneath, and makes Ellen a whole person. A whole woman, neither drowning nor flying, rising as she falls to the earth. This show is full of good actors, but this is some Katee Sackhoff shit she's doing here, and just as disconcerting.

"That used to be true," Tory corrects her, "But now there's another way. Caprica Six's unborn baby is pure Cylon." She's proud, happy to have found the least complex, least Galactica, the easiest and least complicated path. She has no idea what she's doing, careless, not once wondering what Ellen thinks about the pregnancy or even if she knows about it. Focused on Utopia. "We can rebuild a pure Cylon civilization." Even as Ellen's figuring out about Caprica, the Six is burbling that they can just live indefinitely on the Baseship somehow. Saul protests that Sam's in no condition, but the Eight promises him they can care for Sam better over there. I was going to say that this worked swimmingly for Hera, but who knows? Sam's a Cylon, whateverthefrak that even means now.

You can hear the countdown to Ellen going ballistic, the happier they get, as she pieces it together. The fool he made of her. "The Cylon family can survive! We can start over!" And if Tory hadn't planted a little ticking timebomb in her head a second ago, Ellen would explain that the Cylon family, like the human family, is now a dead end, and the only future they have is a Galactica one. But the bomb goes off, and Saul jerks toward her as she whisper-shouts, "Caprica Six is pregnant?" I've never spent a lot of time wishing I were Saul Tigh, but I can tell you I've never wanted it less than right now; his one terrified eyeball would seem to agree.

Martha: I looked at you tonight and you weren't there! Finally snapped! And -- and I'm gonna howl it out! And I'm not gonna give a damn what I do, and I'm gonna make the biggest goddamn explosion you've ever heard!
George: You try and I'll beat you at your own game.
Martha: Is that a threat, George, huh?
George: That's a threat, Martha.
Martha: You're gonna get it, baby.
George: Be careful, Martha. I'll rip you to pieces.

After the break there's a complicated series of conversations better suited to the stage; I've wondered how to recap this since the first time I saw the episode, because it's a Bach canon of cross-purposes and sentences that only associate poetically but still carry the scene and get everything across, like two scenes happening at once. I think there's a way to have filmed this -- the entire sequence during the mutiny between Lee and Kara crashing the brig, and Lee and Saul rescuing Adama, was similarly complex and shouty, and suffered on single viewing for the same reason -- but it's a brilliant choice if you really look at it. Ellen's yelling at Saul about the baby, and the Six is waxing happily about the kid, and then Ellen bitches about how this is gross because they are their children, and Chief's trying to get them to stop talking about the damn baby, and Saul says no way is he going, because Sam said not to, and Tory's hilariously like, "Well, he's not saying anything now," and the whole time Ellen's yelling over everybody about what an egregious whore Saul is, and Saul keeps telling her to shut up, and she gives an outrageously awesome speech about how he's just like Cavil, lying to her like this down in the wardroom: "You made us all filthy in this. You just can't stop poisoning me. Poison, more and more, of it until I'm swimming in it!"

Nick: We'll go in a little while.
George: Oh no! No, you mustn't! Martha is changing, and Martha is not changing for me! Martha hasn't changed for me in years! If Martha is changing, that means we're going to be here for days...

Like you wake up with the memory of your son fucking you with your father's face, okay, and you finally think it's fine, and there's your husband, specifically not telling you that he's having a child with your daughter, and it's just gross on gross and lies on lies, and there's no stopping it until the Eight -- of course, of course she can't handle mommy and daddy fighting -- yells at them to stop, so they do. Saul explains to the silence that he's not going anywhere, but Ellen sure as hell can feel free if she going to keep yelling, and the Six tells them it has to be all Five, obviously, because that's the whole point of the Three/Natalie revolution and the civil war and even Earth. The Eight is like, "You have to vote. And then it's majority rule, like you taught us."

Galen, of course, immediately votes to go, because simplicity is something he's been trying to regain since Boomer went all Brokeback, which was the last time he was happy. Tory tries some more lovable bullshit -- "Great. That's me and you. I mean, we don't really know what Anders would vote..." -- and Galen sort of tiredly reminds her doubletalking ass that they do know what he would say. And the whole time Ellen is still freaking out, because she is not done yelling. It's amazing. "All those years we tried to have children and we never could? You must've been laughing your shiny, shiny head off!" Saul's appalled, and even more when she starts yelling about how that must mean that he never even loved her, and in this moment I think she believes it. Tory's like, "Great, he never loved you, knocked up a Six, yadda yadda, what's your vote?" Ellen looks around, and desperate for control and space to think, says she hasn't decided and runs off. She will freak out for about five seconds and then pull a Blair Waldorf and get scary, watch.

Ellen runs to find more booze, Saul runs after Ellen for more yelling, and Tory's headache rages out of control. "Two to go, two to stay. And... the swing vote is walking out the door." I bet even in her dreams she's the Minority Whip. "Look, if we don't get six more votes for the Cupcake Carnival, the Unicorn Majority is going to shit all over Ice Cream Castle. We'll lose the entire Rainbow Swamp. A territory for which, I might remind you, a lot of good penguins died. A lot of good penguins, sir, with families. Look, I've never called in a favor from you before, not even in the Hot Air-Balloon Wars of '76. But I'm asking now."

Paulla's proud, leading Gaius through Dogsville, patting kids on the head, being a bigger and better Gaius than he ever was. "We don't feel the need to cut ourselves off from the rest of the world," she softly nicks him, and Jeanne excitedly tells about the jewelry they make and sell, how they got all the food. I wish she'd shown him some, like peace signs and hemp and stuff. "Gaius Is Still All Right With Me" and "Polytheism Is Not Healthy For Children & Other Living Things" tapestries you can hang on your wall. He's like, "Great, Jeanne. Take a Xanbar or five because your overexcited ass is wearing me out, and I haven't had any tail since... Hello, you." He stops at a perfectly lovely young Dogsville mother, who smiles back at him with guarded recognition; Paulla calls his name about sixteen times before remembering just how chronic his dick's ADD actually is.

Gaius asks the woman's name; she doesn't show her surprise but she feels it; you can see it in her eyes. Her name is Naia. She's happy to hear that her name is beautiful; even happier when Gaius asks to be introduced to her son. And his name, this beautiful smiling refugee child, is "Gaius." Named, he assumes, for him; he's not wrong: Gaius was named for his father. Gaius goes from flattered to terrified to completely oblivious in about one-third of a second, but it registers. Then comes the hunger, in the boy's eyes. He asks Paulla for food, for the child, and she says they have none to spare, and then comes the hunger in our boy's eyes, as he realizes how he's going to win.

"Really, Paulla. Are we going to enjoy this food with children starving? Now ask yourself this question, really." Paulla grins ruefully, seeing exactly what he's doing and unable to stop it or do much more than glare hilariously, outdone. I love Paulla. To be so disappointed, again and again, by the desperate moves of someone you believed in, someone who gave you hope when you were so desperate and afraid you could even believe in Gaius Baltar; to deal with this monumental ongoing affront and still just smile and think about ripping his face off with manicured nails, powered by Jesus. "Look around, look at these chil... It's not just this child here, this little Gaius -- I mean, but he is very cute, this one, yeah -- I mean, it's all... It's all the children, isn't it? All of them. And you're putting the food..." He shouts, in the grip of full oratory, pointing to his own empty mouth, addressing the whole of Dogsville now. "Listen to me! Listen to me! I'm coming back here. And if it is the last thing I do, I will ensure that every single one of you are fed, and your children are fed, as God is my witness!" Naia holds him, so close, and he makes that sad-clown moue face I love so much, hilariously, at Paulla, spitting nails with fists curled up.

George: Take the trouble to construct a civilization, to build a society based on the principles of, uh... of principle... You make government and art and realize that they are, must be, both the same. You bring things to the saddest of all points, to the point where there is something to lose. Then, all at once, through all the music, through all the sensible sounds of men building, attempting, comes the Dies Irae. And what is it? What does the trumpet sound? "Up yours."

I always thought "Utopia" was some weird Tudor-era misspelling from eu-, like euphrasy and eulogy and, um, euphemism. The ironically named Eumenides. A perfect place, εὖ + τόπος. It's not. It's οὐ + τόπος: a place that doesn't exist and never will.

Laura runs after Caprica, putting on her politico voice, anxious to rally the players against Ellen; equivalent the voice Ellen keeps using, but fine-tuned for a schoolteacher who rose in the ranks of administration until she walked the halls of Caprica City's seats of power. That plastered smile I remember from when Hilary tried to give us universal healthcare and got shit on by old fat white men every day for about a hundred years: I get the joke, but the joke you don't know is better, and maybe I'll tell you one day. It's brittle and scary and I don't like it, and neither does she, but we both know what it means and why it's necessary. We never saw her in action as the Secretary of Education -- or when we did, it was framed as a consequence of Adar's infidelity and we didn't get to see the steel behind it -- but we've heard this voice, on Colonial Day and, later, in the election. It's her Gaius voice and it means "Schoolteacher hell, I've put down strikes before and I'll do it again unless you take me seriously."

"Caprica!" She fake-giggles, or gestures toward the act of giggling: "...Oh, that's funny, I don't... I don't think I've ever called you a name before." Caprica, whose pregnancy has now been threatened twice in one day and who has never gotten anything but total bullshit from Laura as long as she's known her, manages to pull it together and respond in kind: "Oh, I think you probably called me some names." Girl, you're new here. You don't even know about the forced abortions and fetal cell thievery. Laura's casual racism -- which she's obviously getting over, obviously -- is nothing compared to the crap she put the last pregnant Cylon through.

Laura laughs, realizing this won't be easy. Choosing her words more and more carefully: "Uh, I haven't had the chance... Well, no. I haven't taken the opportunity to congratulate you, and the baby..." She looks down and asks if Caprica's okay, between Ellen coming back, and having to beat up an entire cult this morning, and all that crap. What would be awesome is if her awesome icebreakers were even more fucked up, like, "Oh, and I'm so glad I finally decided to let you out of jail once Earth was a total shithole and nothing mattered anymore. Way to go on that one!" Or, "Hey, so we're both dying, thanks to Natalie. Now you'll see how the other half lives, huh? Before you die, I mean!" Or, "Sorry I spray-painted WHOREBAG on all the pictures of you down on New Caprica. Yeah, that was me. Guess we both know what it's like to get fucked by Gaius Baltar, huh? So how are things?"

She apologizes to Caprica for the attack -- "on behalf of the Fleet" -- and Caprica's like, "Your ass is going to follow me down this corridor all the way to Saul's quarters, isn't it? WTF do you want so I can give it to you and this gross charade can be over because listen, I am having a motherfucker of a day and the last thing I need is some backslapping fake-ass Laura Bush tea and crumpets right now. Go make more spooky backroom deals with Lee Adama and leave me out of it."

Caprica worries now, all the time. Think about it. I've always thought the 268's sudden willingness to get the hell out of Dodge makes sense, because humans are unpredictable at best, but especially Caprica. She's got the only Cylon baby ever, and people just keep punching her in it or tying her up or stealing her babydaddy from beyond the grave or putting her in jail. No wonder she assumes it's all about her; it usually is, in some way. She thanks Laura for her kindness and tries to waddle quickly away, but Laura's not having it. She gets all conspiratorial and creepy, and Caprica settles in for the long haul. "Caprica, sometimes I think about the visions that we shared, and the ... talk we had." Caprica's like, "Yeah, I haven't had any of those, so I guess there's nothing for us to talk about. Gotta run." They talk about how Laura hasn't either, and Caprica notes that they went away around the same time she got pregnant.

(Which is very interesting, isn't it? If Nicky's the Shape Of Things Too Dumb, and Hera's got her whole thing going on, doesn't that make Liam pretty much the Anti-Hera? Like, a really bad idea? Is it possible that simply by existing, he's like some kind of chronal parasite that destroys the timeline that Hera symbolizes or something? Maybe it's too much X-Men comics as a child or something, but that makes total sense to me, and it means when he dies we'll see the Opera House again immediately. Which is a bummer because I love Caprica, but also because obviously he has to die at some point, given her neck-snapping activities four years ago, but this just piles up the reasons. Because the horrible truth is that Liam's death is her Galactica: he can't exist in this world any more than Cally could, and Caprica's buying into her own/Tory's whole thing about the Cylon nation even as it's going to obvious shit all around them. It would answer every question Caprica has, tie everything into a neat bow, give her redemption and salvation, wipe her slate clean. And I don't know if you've ever seen this show, but: not happening.)

"Oh, that never occurred to me," Laura says, falling into her intellectual mode, wondering about destinies and grace and the future and shit, leaving Caprica behind, forgetting the entire point of this meeting -- reconnecting with her and gaining an ally against Ellen -- because once again Laura's being handed half-assed glimpses of the future. "Are you saying that this ch..." she starts, and cuts herself off, because there's got to be a less-rude way to say it. Caprica, eyes wide with just how bitchy Laura can be when she's forgotten that she's speaking to a person, asks her what on earth she might mean. Six, man I love Sixes. They are like Heinlein's ultimate Competent Man that can change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, all that stuff, but ... crossed with Martha Stewart. Like, nobody is as classy or polite as a Six, even when they're stealing your ovaries or gunning you down in a boardroom massacre, or when you're beating the hell out of them and leaving them in the brig for months on end. Six will always give you the option of not being a dick about it.

"Is this child... important?" Laura whispers, wondering if Caprica's getting other messages or something, and Caprica completely shuts down, grossed out on like five levels: "Yes, I think he's very important?" Like it's hard enough not to pretend to be a living, breathing person without some old white lady asking shitty questions. Laura immediately feels bad -- this whole scene is so Flannery O'Connor, isn't it? -- and tries to backtrack, but Caprica has had it with you bitches. "He's my baby? And I love him? He's very important to me?" Laura jumps back about sixteen feet and mumbles how of course all babies are important, but can't help herself from jacking a little bit of "but seriously, is he magic?" on top of her apology, and Caprica is done. "Mm. Well, thank you for asking about him." Laura's whole mind now blown, she can only offer a weak, embarrassed, "You're welcome..."

There's a guy playing the piano at Joe's Bar, and nearby there's a supercutie who should be playing it, and Kara randomly asks the bartender when they got a piano. (Get over there and play some Philip Glass like Daddy would, girl. Because speaking of the Competent Man, don't you miss the days when Starbuck could do everything better than anybody else, ever? Obviously the only reason she hasn't had as many jobs as Helo -- though she's admittedly come close -- is her horrible personality.) Chief walks up to the bar demanding gin, and Kara's lonely and tired of watching her husband vegetate, so she strikes up a conversation about how wiggy it was watching Ellen and Tigh making out on the Raptor wing. "It's like watching my parents make out!" Imagine Eric Stoltz, whom I've decided is Kara's dad, laying one down on Naomi from Mama's Family and you will see how close we came to true terror.

She slams Sam's bullet down on the bar and thinks for a second, about how far they've come and how hard it's been for Chief, and changes her entire tone. "You go see Boomer in the brig yet?" His reply is a terse negative; he's not interested in any of this, sharing pain; he downs his gin. "You should go when she's asleep," she says, changing too fast for Galen to see what she's trying to give him. "I watched Sam until I just couldn't handle the fun anymore..." Chief grabs the whole bottle and stalks away; she smacks the shot glass down on the bar, and a new song starts on the piano.

Bill touches the cracks in his girl, until he can't handle the fun anymore. There's stuff inside her that he didn't know about; they're putting stuff in her he doesn't understand. The world is changing faster than he can keep up, like waking from a long sleep to learn it was all a joke, all along.

Ellen smiles painfully at her when Caprica opens the hatch of her quarters. "There you are!" Ellen says. "Look at you," she says, waving toward Caprica's belly, and then walks uninvited into their quarters. She's still wearing her party dress from when she escaped Cavil's lobotomizing ways; she looks lovely but it's a funeral sort of party. A wake for Galactica, falling apart all around them both. "You haven't changed much," she says, reminding her daughter that she'll always know more. "How did you get the guards to bring you here?" Caprica asks, as Ellen casually opens one of their lockers and takes a gander inside. Ellen laughs: "I thought maybe we could have a drink. Where's the booze?" (George: "Martha, will you show her where we keep the, uh, euphemism?") There is no booze; there is no euphemism. I wonder if Ellen even knows that yet, how Saul's stopped drinking at the same rate Bill's picking up the bottle. I wonder if it terrifies her.

Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? is two different plays. If you haven't read it or seen it, you at least know it's about one thing: Liz and Dick are terrifying to a young couple with their incredibly terrible fighting and awkward love and hatred, too tired to kee`p from showing the scars, too angry to be good hosts and plaster on that smile. And if you've read it or seen it, you know there's another story going on there. I don't want to tell you what it is, because it's absolutely wonderful and you should watch it unspoiled, because there is some Shayamalania that goes down. So I won't mention it again except to note that human psychology is based on projection. Sometimes what we agree to believe is just as important as what we can see all around us. Sometimes I wonder if that's all love is: a dream we agree to dream together. It's fragile. A doubt, or a betrayal, of the dreams we make together can mean the difference between living and death. All it takes to kill a hope -- or a future, or a love -- between two people is to say: "I don't want to play anymore." Sometimes that's all it takes for the Gods to send their little lightning bolts shooting down.

Act Three: The Exorcism
Drop In For Drinks ... And Brace Yourself!

Caprica guardedly offers the old drunk some tea, and Ellen's like, "Barf." She says "Listen, I wanted to talk to you," which as you know is Jacob's #1 Red Flag to get out of there, because no you don't. Nobody who ever said "I want to talk" wants to talk. When you want to talk, you talk. Open your mouth and let the honesty flow. When you want to manipulate somebody or establish the playing field on your terms or put them on the defensive or otherwise get the upper hand before the conversation's even started, you say: "I want to talk." Caprica's entire body goes Oh Shit, inside and out; Ellen's on a roll.

"Things between me and Saul just got so crazy! I step off that Raptor and boom, we're making love..." -- she pauses so that Caprica can flinch -- "...and less than a day later, I'm... I'm screaming at him. But we were always, always, always like that." (And what's the opposite of "always"? Not "never": just a minute, a second, a brief moment when you thought you were safe.) Caprica starts getting sick; Martha presses her advantage. ("Oh, I like your anger. I think that's what I like about you most. Your anger.") "Anyway, I just... I wanted to assure you," she says, suddenly going vulnerable. Caprica allows herself to hope, even as Ellen's catching her eye: "He didn't tell you about the sex? Oh, I'm... I come here to try to be good and..." The really sad thing is, I think she's only 75-90% lying. I don't think she really had a fucking clue why she was going there, or what she'd do when she got there. I think this is just a shitstorm brewing and an attempt to see what all the pieces look like; I also think this is a woman trying to establish a respectful bond with the parts of life that have gone on while she has been absent. Like it or not, Caprica's pregnant: how do we deal with this? With catty swipes and Mean Girl revelations, yes, but that's not the whole story and Ellen knows it won't solve anything. I firmly believe Ellen acts only with the best of intentions, but then, you know where those lead.

Ellen steps forward: "Look, don't worry." Seriously: "Because you have all the proof right there that he loves you. You know, when we were still trying to have our own, he always brought up the name Liam..." Is that kindness, a momentary reverie, or another horrible blow? A shot in the dark, hoping it will connect, I think. Hoping she's right, and Saul still loves Bill most of all. Caprica cries, looking up to God, grinning with pain. Even this is borrowed. Even this is taken from her, with a smile and a soft laugh: "Pure Cylon baby! If Simon knew, he'd want it so badly..."

Caprica, horrified, steps forward too: "I'll take care of this child." Ellen sweetly flaps a hand at her. "That wasn't a threat, Caprica!" But Caprica smiles; she's been playing this game her whole life. Frankly, she's better at it. Good, better, best, bested. "No," she says almost kindly, "It was a threat." She remembers life with Three and Gaius, how it almost worked. How threes fall apart. (First there is nothing, then there is something. Then there are two somethings, that look upon each other. Then there are three, and threes fall apart. Then comes Simon.) "I don't know why you couldn't have children, Ellen. Sometimes love must not be enough, because he loved you." Kindness, but still past tense. Ellen nods at the honesty, the too terrible honesty: this has all happened before.

We are only women doing impossible math, dividing four hearts by infinity: "Yes, this... This is rough. But what can I do? If I make him choose between you and me, I know the best I could do would be to tear him in half." "Don't," Caprica says. It's unclear whom she fears would be hurt worse. Ellen makes a vow, taking her daughter by the shoulders: "I won't. You win. The man loves you." Caprica weeps, in gratitude; she doesn't know yet what it means that Ellen made her, made the heart that beats in her. With every word Ellen saves and damns the child, up and then down, safe and endangered. Gives love, and takes it away: "In fact, I'd say there isn't much he loves more." She strikes her Anne pose, holding Caprica's gaze, her hands, touching her belly fondly. A mother to a daughter. She smiles and leaves, and Caprica weeps. For Liam and what his name means, for Liam and what he means, for all the ways love is given and denied.

There are no "character episodes," because there is no plot without character, because there is no conflict without desire and there is no desire without the soul. But this is also true: the personal is never political, and the political is only ever personal. The fired secretary, the lone shooter. Without Paula Jones there is no Lewinsky and no impeachment. Without Roe, without Brown, Dred Scott, without Johnson burning flags, there is no change. There is no precedent in law without a face, if you go back far enough. The five leaders of two great races, all that is left of intelligent life in the universe besides God, suddenly might expect themselves to behave appropriately, but it's seriously unlikely.

Nick: Honey? what would you like?
Honey: Ohhhh, I don't know, dear, a little brandy maybe. "Never mix, never worry!"
George: ...Martha? Rubbing alcohol for you?
Martha: Sure! "Never mix, never worry!"

Gaius hands over food to sweet little Gaius, to all the little children suffered unto him. I mean to say that Gaius takes into his hands food, to feed the children of the Fleet. The million still-living children of Gaius Baltar; a gift, to replace everything he took away so long ago. Paulla tries to do both, tries to help and tries not to kick his ass: "The Marines tried this already, Gaius, and people started pushing and grabbing... The Marines have assault rifles, not handguns." He's the smartest man in the universe, girlfriend. Don't start playing chess now, you'll just give him another soapbox.

"Look around you, Paulla, will you? Look around, can you see anybody rioting? Can you? No. There's no uniforms here. There's no... There's no sense of oppression." To Naia, sleazily: "It's just, uh, it's just one soul touching another, isn't it?" Paulla's all, "Um, okay, but we need the food. Actually need it." Just kill him in his sleep already. You're helping him more than that nutty angel ever did. "Paulla, when you share your food, God makes it tenfold. You watch me. You're going to learn something..." And just before he produces a bunch of loaves and fishes out his ass, one of those Sons of Ares studs steps up, ready for his due. Gaius slips immediately into his superiority, the old Cuffle's Breath trick, nose in the air, o to be Caprican, to leave, to be left alone by these primitives, o: "Oh, really? And who will you be?" He orders his "ladies" to cock their guns; Paulla of course immediately pulls hers out because she's been waiting for this day since she was a little girl, but he has to remind Jeanne to take the safety off, just like Cally did the day he saved her life. But the Sons of Ares, their guns will always be bigger. They pull on Gaius and his followers from every angle, and take everything away again. He snatches at food packets as they storm away, but can only grab a couple.

I am glad that we don't see the way Bill pulls Saul off the wagon again, down to join him in his misery. Too easy, and it hurts for Saul. Too hard, and it hurts too much for Bill. But now they are drinking, and they are drunk, and Galactica is still falling apart around them. "So the Five of you, together at last. Any mythic revelations?" (Jane actually wrote something like "earth-shattering," and caught it later.) Tigh's like, "Oh, huh uh." He doesn't explain that on top of the hideous sadness of that fact, they wouldn't have noticed anyway, the way Martha was carrying on: "Nothing to report sir." These two guys, they're just as lovable whether they're having denture fights and breaking hips or giggling in their cups. Do we love them because they remind of the friends we have, or because we want what they have and aren't there yet? Bill pours another drink.

"You were born, right, Saul?" Tigh's eyeball is like, "Left field much?" Bill repeats the question and Saul understands him: "On Earth, yeah. I don't remember. But I wouldn't anyway. Nature of the process, right?" He laughs super weird and Bill joins him: "Not very machine-like of you," he glares, and Tigh chuckles. "Great-grandpa was a power sander!" They laugh and they drink and they smile; it's been well too long. Bill's mind is whirling like a flippy-ship, firing questions and worries out of his mouth in the order that they come. "They're putting the stuff into her." Tigh nods. "If it works," Bill says, "She'll still be the Galactica on the outside, but..." Saul stares. "...She won't know what she is anymore," Bill finishes lamely, trying to squash down what he means -- the amount of his heart that he has torn out and put in those walls and struts and engines, the machine he has built with his blood, over the years -- but of course Saul knows what he means. Saul knows exactly what he means, because his Galactica has always been Ellen. What he hasn't figured out yet is that Galactica isn't Bill's Laura. She's Bill's Saul.

("I can't even express these things properly, because I have to conceptualize complex ideas in this stupid, limiting spoken language," Cavil said. "If I can just complete the circle, I can get the words," Sam said. "Oh, dear," Ellen said, "I'm totally throwing you, aren't I?" And then they tried word magic, Wolfe said. But who's afraid of Thomas Wolfe?)

"It'll save her," Bill says, pouring again. "That, along with Cylons flying CAP..." He stops, and thinks. Aid and comfort of the enemy. To the enemy, from the enemy. The enemy has never once let him down; the enemy is sitting there with him now, drinking. Telling him jokes, and he's laughing at them. "We need their help," he says. Drawing a line in the salt, begging Saul to see it. "I need your help." He laughs in the enormity of it, and drinks, but continues. "Laura and Lee know it. They don't think I see it but I do. I see it." All these words, these useless stabs at word music, when all he means is, "I will die if you leave me. If you leave me, I will die."

"You never told me that the Sons of Ares were involved in this," Gaius whines, and Paulla tish-toshes him. Of course they are. "Did you think they would stay out of something as valuable as food supplies?" (Not a in a Jane script they won't; she won't rest until the whole world is fed.) Six mocks him, how he said he couldn't handle being King of the Fools anymore. "No," he breathes, stepping aside for a quick imaginary confab, "The only thing worse than being leader of this lot would be being one of them." Six asks, and it's in her eyes that this is one of those questions that determines just desperately everything, if he really wanted to feed those people. Those suffering little children. "I enjoyed it, actually." She smiles, believing him. In his conversion. "I did enjoy giving... I loved it, actually. The more I did it... Done it long enough, I'd have given them my heart." That's what they'll take, in the end. Ask Laura. Paulla rouses rabble as they talk, and as soon as Six has given him his due adoration and all that, she smirks toward his greatest student: "Think she's telling them anything as moving as that? Do you think she's giving them hope?" Gaius takes the bait, as Six hums and waits for him to finally get there: "What's Paulla been saying to you? Has Paulla been saying that we mustn't help others?" Six smiles; he's so easy now. "Because I! Disagree!"

"Has Paulla been saying that we can't help others? Because we're too weak?" Paulla's back goes straight, but the words die in her mouth. Good, better, best, bested. "I disagree." With that false sadness he affects: "O, Paulla. I am so disappointed with you." It stings her, still; she worries how far this will go. "I'm disappointed with all of you. Here you all are, I'm gone for three minutes and you're lapping up Paulla's icy pragmatism?" Paulla does that great Jesus, Girl face again. "There is a way to feed ourselves and the people from Dogsville! There is a way to bring hope to the lower decks! To the whole of this poor ship! There is a way to win!"

Right about now is where you should start pissing yourself. Six speaks through him, like the old days. "She thinks we can't get what we need? All we need is strength." ("Old gods die hard. Even among your people. The old Gods are fighting back. People have room in their hearts for one great belief. You or the old Gods. Which one will it be?" And he said, "Why can't I just be a man? Do I really need to take on the Gods single-handed?" And the answer was obvious: "All we need is strength! And strength comes from within.") Six nudges him further: "We can get more guns..." He's surprised, but game. "And... guns! More guns, bigger guns, better guns. And when we have those, we will win!" The angel loves it, of course -- this is practically her reason for existing, as we near the endgame -- but not as much as the crowd, which goes fucking apeshit.

Bill goes back again, to the job site. Sparks rain down, counting hours and days. It's aversion therapy, a way to mark the time, a way to come to terms with the secrets that lie in Laura's body, and Saul's. Ellen was always jealous of him, and he of her in his quiet, soft way; now she has allied with Saul's alien secrets, his terrible history, to take it all away again. This time forever: if they leave, if the Final Five leave, the Fleet will wither and die. He needs them, he needs their help; for that, he'll give his old girl over to the enemy, for their aid and their comfort.

Saul visits Ellen for another round, having made up his mind. "Ellen. Hate me, I'll take it. But this is bigger than that. Galactica needs the Baseship." Ellen laughs, knowing it was going to come down to this. "Why did you even make love to me, Saul, when your real love was at home?" Saul thinks she's feinting back to the Caprica shit, his son, which she's already used to destroy two perfectly useful conversations; she's not. "Bill needs the Baseship. I heard you. Did you hear me? Her brush is where mine used to be. My dresses are gone." She can't know how long he kept them, just for the scent of her. She has amnesia too, born of eighteen months in Cavil's cell. "She shares our bed. Do you remember, I got us that mattress..." Saul's astonished that she went to his quarters, but before he can stutter and pirate-talk about that, the Chief arrives. Then Tory, and Caprica. She welcomes them all in, putting on her warmest face. "What is this," he asks, but he knows.

"We're joining the Baseship. All of us. We can jump away from the Fleet whenever you're ready." The Eight and Six thank her, overwhelmed with fear and gratitude and the promise of safety and Utopia. Saul begins to scream. "The vote is you and Anders, versus me, Tory, and Galen." Case closed: "Caprica, obviously that means you have to come too. Wouldn't you like to raise your child where it's safe?" Caprica's wary, bothered by something behind the bright rhetoric but she can't see it yet: "I want him to be safe, yes..." Saul shouts at Ellen, that Caprica can't know what it means: what leaving the Fleet will do to him, to his heart. What it means to the man he chooses to be. "I used to think Hera was the only hope for us. But clearly that's just not true anymore," Ellen muses, as Caprica learns to hate being her football more and more. More five A.M. philosophy.

"No. Her baby, he's pure Cylon. If we go off and make some pure Cylon culture... That's what happened on Earth, and it led to disaster. Pure human doesn't work. Pure Cylon doesn't work. It's too weak." Martha advances directly toward her point, the crisis she's been working toward, the thing you don't say upon which everything depends: "You just don't want to leave the one you really love." The red wheelbarrow. "We two boys together clinging,/ One the other never leaving." The things she'd say when she was too drunk to care anymore, when she wanted his anger. A little pull on the hair, when he had hair; a little nasty double entendre to spice things up, to goad. Caprica feels the mood shift, they all do; the air gets cold and stale and the line connecting her and her lover twangs softly, weakening. It smells like Colonial One, down in the gutter of the presidency, when they'd put their heads together and drink, their nasty little secrets. So much affected blindness on New Caprica, so many heads turned, it's a wonder they could ever see at all. What is she not getting? "Talk to me, what is this?" And Saul could not be more disgusted: "It's petty. And vile." And it is.

Tory, though, has had motherfucking enough. "She's voted. When's the jump? We can be ready in an hour." Saul decrees he's not going and she reminds him that -- without him ever agreeing to it -- they all agreed on majority rule. "Well frak, apparently we invented majority rule. But I don't remember it, so frak that." I don't know why all these ladies are in love with Saul Tigh but I know exactly why they should be. Caprica tries to calm him down, begging him not to be goaded. Unsure still what this is, but knowing Martha's pushed George clean over. He will not be calmed. "All right, go. Go. All of you. Caprica. Go. Go be pure, and safe, and whatever the frak. I'm not going." Which is exactly what Ellen wanted all along.

Martha: I swear to God George, if you even existed I'd divorce you.

"Do you see, little girl? There is something in the universe that he loves far more than you or me." She steps forward, scary and ugly: "And that's Bill Adama." Saul speaks over her, pointing out that she doesn't want to desert the Fleet either, that she's acting only out of spite and to hurt him for betraying her so dreadfully. (I would say it's worse than that, because really she's doing it because he lied about it, and made her feel stupid. Stupid, blindsided, in front of the children.) "...It's Bill Adama, and the ship, and the uniform..." He asks her how she can sink so low, but he knows; he asks her why she's doing this, but he knows. "...And everything else takes second place. I knew I did, but I always wondered if a baby would. Guess I know now."

they tried word magic. Caprica drops to her knees, sick. Ellen is horrified; her entire body arcs toward her daughter like a river, like an ocean, as Saul screams for Cottle, and she realizes she's never fucked up quite this badly before. This badly or this well. Malice comes after you fall to Earth, and not before.

Martha: Truth or illusion, George; you don't know the difference.
George: No, but we must carry on as though we did.

So say we all.

Cottle marvels at the suddenly terrible state of healthy old Caprica, who hasn't seen an episode yet that she didn't get the shit kicked out of her, body or heart or soul. Often all three. "But he's fighting back. That's all I can tell you." Ellen swears she didn't mean to cause this, but Caprica knows better. ("Our minds were designed based on your minds," she told him once. "We learned things about how you work that you've never known.") I love how even in the midst of a race-ending miscarriage in progress Caprica still has time to gently and politely call Ellen a bitch: "Yeah. You did."

Cottle works and Ellen swears she didn't mean it, but Saul knows better too: "You knew how I would have to choose. You knew what it meant." (Of course, what we're missing here is that so did Bill, which is why they were drinking together, because on a light day Bill Adama is twice as manipulative as all these blondes would be working in concert, but we'll let that slide for now. I could go the four episodes without ever seeing Bill Adama called to the carpet for a single goddamn thing, because I love him.) Ellen basically shrugs, but it's like this intensely apologetic shrug her words belie: "Of course, Cylons and humans need to stay together. But I always intended... I just, I didn't think." And then she gives possibly the greatest apology of all time, because boy howdy if you could just say this every time you were thinking it, there would be no war and everything would be free and we would all be living in the DMZ of No Bitchery Eutopia: "I only wanted to hurt you! Not her." Which I love in every way, because not only did Ellen just explain the plot of literally every Gossip Girl episode, but also just titled my autobiography, both without even trying.

"You didn't think I would hurt her if I let her go? It never occurred to you? No wonder we had to invent some compassionate God for them to believe in. We couldn't have them deify us, could we?" Ellen fights him on that, since he's amnesiac about even God and getting his facts muddled, and Caprica -- eyes rolling like a horse at this point and screaming through her oxygen mask, I mean literally, it's hilarious how far they've stretched her sanity -- screams at them to shut the fuck up, for God's sake, because she's bleeding out and they're fighting over whether or not God exists, and Ellen's like, "My bad. Again." She thinks about tiptoeing away and Saul tells her to fucking bounce, and her heart breaks but she goes. And when she turns at the curtain, and sees him crying, all the words stop. She puts her hand on his shoulder, like a wife. And he clutches at it, desperately afraid and terribly grateful.

Act Four
"Never Mix, Never Worry"

Out in the world, out in the darkest recesses of the old drowning girl, Bill watches them working on her, rebuilding her future, eliminating purity in the hope of something better. Fixed is not unbroken: you can't move backwards to the time before you broke your arm, yourself. But you can wonder at the newfound strength, once it's knitted back together. How much stronger we can be, at the places we were once broken. How much stronger our souls are at the places where we put our dreams away, or watched imaginary futures die, and moved past them into better futures that hadn't been written yet. He will put his pure futures to rest inside her bones, and accept the change that's already come. The fresh wind and the morning light, the dead skin of a dead dream of Earth, and what comes . She's been mother and wife and womb to him, as he became something beautiful; she's drowning now but she will live. She will be stronger. Stronger at the places she is broken, even as pure futures die inside her:

Caprica sleeps. Ellen whispers word magic, the knowledge of a goddess and a queen, an Empress: the intuitive leap that brings the system back online. "Talk to her. Tell her you love her. It's what she needs. It's what the baby needs." Saul's uncomfortable. This tragedy began in the wardroom, as the words turned to ashes in his mouth. As he played for time, stuttering and stammering, afraid to say the words. He leans over his lover, whispering too. "Caprica, listen. I love you. All right? Can you hear me?" He shakes his head, every fiber angry, outraged, terrified. "This is nonsense. She knows it. I don't need to say it. I shouldn't need to say it. To anyone. Isn't it enough that I feel it? I feel it. For her. For you. For Liam. Shouldn't need to spout the words. I feel it less with words. Just let me Godsdamn feel it and I'll fill the frakking room." He shakes and stares at her, feeling it; it shines out of him, filling the room.

Bill watches her fall apart around him, at the end of something and becoming something else. Nobody knows what that something else will be. And out of the change and uncertainly and the wrongness of the leaders grows fear and desperation, and hunger stalks the streets. Through it all there was still only one certainty, though no one saw it yet. America was still America, and whatever new thing came of it would be American: Purely Cylon, and purely human. New, and beautiful. But first the pain, the death, all the change as it rips through her; if it didn't hurt it wouldn't count. Steady on. Steady as it comes.

Cottle admits that Liam's leaving. The kettledrum is slowing. Saul apologizes to her desperately, as if there was something he could do. As if there's something he could still do. She thinks about babies, and God. She still projects the forest sometimes, I suppose, if she's still projecting at all, but that's not what she's seeing now.

Caprica: How small they are.
Chantara: I know. But they grow up so fast.
Caprica: May I?
Chantara, laughing: Sure... There.
Caprica: So light, so... Fragile. Shh, shh. There, there. It's okay. You're not gonna have to cry much longer.

"Cut him out. Even if it kills me. He'll live if you cut him out right now. Cylon babies must be strong, right? Hera was born early. Cut him out." Cottle tells her flatly no, not with four months left. Caprica begs to die, shaking and weeping. And Ellen leans in, with that mommy voice, tenderly naked of any power or control or manipulation; full only of love.

"Caprica, listen. I have to tell you. He loves you more than he ever loved me." Caprica weeps, terrified; how the time goes by when you are mortal, when you're a mother. "You are the mother of his son. The boy is alive, I can see his heartbeat on the monitor. And that's proof." Caprica cranes her neck, to see him on the screen. "Proof he loves you. He loves you so much it's shining out of him." It is. Out of all three of them, in the midst of horrors. "You and he can stay on Galactica. I'll go away with the others, and you can be together." Caprica weeps, unequal to the kindness. "A little family. I promise it."

Saul turns to look at Ellen, amazed by her again, smiling with love. And Liam goes, and one great race goes with him.

Cottle calls the flatline and Saul grasps, greedily, at blame and causation, begging to bargain, swearing it was him, a momentary wavering only, just a little love for his wife, surely they can't hate his love so much as this. Not when he loves them all, so much. "I take it back," he says. Pleading with Cottle. Pleading with nobody. "I'm sorry!" And maybe it's a thing, maybe it's not a thing, nobody knows. But I do know that Final Five or not, Cylon or not, bigamist or not, old or young, officer or non-com, this has all happened before. Does it matter if it's magic when you're mourning? You are still here, looking for a reason, begging to be blamed. And Liam is still gone.

Cottle ushers them out -- "The lady and I have some work to do here now" -- and Saul cries out, desperate to change it back, to feel more strongly, to speak his love more elegantly, to hear that flatline beep again; to tear at the universe and get his son back. To find the thing he did wrong and to do that something better somehow. Caprica weeps, drowning, feeling it go; it slips from her drop by drop. And Ellen pulls him away; the strong one, again, pulling him away so Caprica's life can be saved. "Saul. She's in good hands."

Adama tosses Gaius and his idiotic plan to Lee and Laura, growling that he's off: "To the head. Do something constructive. A little project I've been working on." Gaius tries to stop him leaving, but it's Lee that steps forward, with a hand on his father's chest, and asks Gaius to explain. And all through the ship they are moving, and changing, and she's getting stronger and stranger, and there are not enough pilots to fly CAP and there are not enough Marines to keep her safe. Even Laura's listening.

"What you have right now is starving civilians with no representation, no recourse. They're broken, they're exhausted, they've had enough. That's not a mutiny, Admiral, that is a revolution." Lee scoffs a little bit and Bill tries to leave, but Gaius is on fire.

"Listen to me. Listen please, Admiral! Galactica is slipping away from you drop by drop. You are pouring Cylon blood into her veins. I see the Cylon pilots, we all see them. We all see the Cylon workforce. Where are they going, into the far recesses of the ship? When are you inviting the Centurions over to join in all the fun we're having over here? Of course, when you do that -- that very moment -- this becomes a blended ship. Only half human. And right now I am here to tell you your people... Your people are not ready for that." Word magic; he's got Laura on board as Bill tries a third time to leave, too afraid he's about to agree. Gaius grabs his arm: "Listen to me, Admiral. I am offering you the last human solution you will ever be presented with." In the end, he's saying, we're all just human. But what will that mean?

The Marines deliver guns to the cult; even Paulla's impressed. "I told you, Paulla, I told you. You do good deeds and you are rewarded..." -- he ejects a clip accidentally onto the floor and snatches it up again, ungainly -- "...You're rewarded tenfold and then... If you give, then you receive, don't you?" Jeanne's scary hazy eyes just about cross: "That was beautiful." Paulla, turned on past any line of his bullshit as she cocks her mighty BFG, can't even argue. It's beautiful indeed.

Boomer sleeps in the brig. Chief watches her sleeping.

Sam lies in sickbay, all alone; his brain begins to move and shift again, life pouring back into him.

Bill stands up as the hatch opens, and Saul falls into his arms like shot from a cannon. There aren't any words, at the end of the world. Only apologies, from no one to no one. "Liam," Saul chokes. A gift, to replace all he's ever taken. "His name was Liam." Bill crumbles against him; these two boys together clinging. "It's a good name," Bill says, in thanks for the gift. Saying the word, so Saul will know. "Short for William." Saul shivers against him, guilty now for even mourning him: "It's not like Zak, I know. I know it's not." I don't know how they stay standing. There aren't any words.

He's not in need of learning, of introspection; he's not inflated, high on grace, looking for deflation. There's no learning to be had here, just more pain without cause or purpose or result. He was created to love, and be loved. But all he's had is hate. There's no learning there. He knows where he is blind, and where he is small. Saul Tigh isn't a man who needs more pain, to learn: He needs more love. Saul Tigh needs, and deserves desperately, to be loved. More, and more, and more love.

Time passes. The Baseship nestles in the Fleet. Bill and Laura walk arm in arm, watching the upgrade team working, together. They pass a Six and an Eight, hauling supplies, staring at the them as they pass, hauling supplies up into ducts. They pass a squad of pilots in the Hall of Remembrance: some human, some Cylon. They look alike in their flightsuits; little maids all in a row. A Six in deck gear pins a photograph to the wall, sad and lonely for a long-lost sister; once she's gone, Laura pulls him over to see. "These are the Cylons that have died with us since the alliance. I didn't know they were doing that, did you?" Bill shakes his head: "It's already happened, hasn't it?" Laura nods, and hums, and Bill reaches out to touch the photo: an Eight. The first daughter he ever lost, out of the light and into the darkness: they look so much alike. Steady as it comes.