Adama's recovering from surgery and
Roslin's in the brig, so that leaves Tigh and Baltar
running the works -- the two people on the entire cast
you least want to be in charge of anything.
I think having to bury both lost men put Crashdown
over the edge. He was running on automatic from there
to the end, and I think he was looking to commit suicide
via frontal assault. (Which is part of the definition of "fragged," by
the way -- when a CO of a unit is either unpopular
or sending the group on suicidally dangerous missions,
and is killed by the unit in self-defense.) Chief's
slow, sad, mounting collection of dog tags (including
Crashdown's) really hurt.
So what's with Six's more demure outfits?
What is it a function of? Kobol, where the Cylon god's
will can't reach? Baltar's frame of mind, which stopped
being impressed by short skirts after losing two pints
of blood? Part of her brainwashing technique? She's
stepping that up now, focusing on getting him to accept
the child she's predicted. She hits him at his lowest,
physically and emotionally, and tells him just enough
truth in the thicket of lies for it to be believable
in his exhausted state. She snarls at him, "Be
a man" -- which we interpret to mean "Grow
the hell up," but she's just given a speech about
how creative murder is the defining hallmark of humanity,
of man-kind, and we later realize that she meant "You
will need to choose to kill, so be strong enough for
it." Baltar calls her on the Cylons' murderous
past, and she neatly shifts the blame back to humans,
saying "you taught us well." When he despairs
over her conflicting messages of his fatherhood and
his butchery, Six says that she'll be his conscience,
which is about the most extreme case of the fox guarding
the henhouse I've ever seen on TV. No wonder his cowardly
little brain is scrambled.
More credits weirdness. Tahmoh Penikett (Helo) is
listed, but we don't see Caprica at all this week.
Not that I'm complaining; I'd rather see two stories
done well than three being rushed.
Glad to see Dee is back to normal after her concussion...
I was just delighted to see some of the very issues
I've been wondering about here and with other viewers
addressed right on screen. Why isn't Billy in the brig?
Uh, he wasn't arrested for any crimes. Is Roslin delusional?
She claims everything she's done is logical. Was Adama
right? Roslin and the Quorum say it's an illegal coup.
Where's the press? Held incommunicado by Tigh. I like having
dangling threads woven back in!
Tigh continues to be a poor overall leader.
He's unable to focus or keep his memory straight under
the stress. He lashes out at whatever target comes into
his sights, and ignores courtesy and protocol until
it suits him to use the rules to his advantage. There's
the old saying "To a man with a hammer, everything
looks like a nail," and to this military man who
has almost nothing else to fall back on, clamping down
on everyone with extreme military discipline is the
only tool he has to keep control. Not that the constant
nipping at his boot flask helps, of course.
Roslin's scream after her nightmare was pretty chilling,
not for anything. But I give that guard credit for
standing by his post and his orders, no matter where
his sympathies lay. He prayed, he helped smuggle drugs,
but he did not let her out of her cell without permission.
And Billy was exceedingly clever in using the guard's
faith as a way to work around the system without actually
breaking any rules.
I liked the collar-sashes of the Quorum;
they're vaguely evocative of the robes from Classic
BSG without being cumbersome, and give a slightly alien
but parliamentary feel to the group. Of course Zarek
is right in front glowering about coups and martial
law, but for once he's on the money. Which Roslin
and Adama are both going to be spitting mad about.
If Tigh survives this without any suspension or punishment
I'll be surprised. (But I will bet that Tigh won't
turn
on his wife for telling him that Roslin was out of
her mind and then seeing that she had it together after
all. Lady MacTigh [™ Moulin Rouge, thanks!] really
couldn't have known why Roslin was acting oddly or that
Billy was fixing the problem. And the opportunistic
power-hungry vixen is going to use anything she can
to put herself closer to the top, so if Roslin's insanity
makes Ellen's husband head of the fleet, well...) I
think Roslin realized after the fact, when she came
back to lucidity, that she'd just handed this dangerous
woman a nasty piece of fodder to work with, so it's
possible that she might hold a grudge -- or at
least be more wary on next meeting.
So how does Six know about certain things in
advance? She could easily have known about Galactica Sharon's
mission to assassinate Adama or the plan to have Baltar
conceive a sprog with a physical Six if the chip in
Baltar's head (assuming there is one) is connected
to the Cylon groupmind. But how could she have known
that one of the five would "betray" the others?
Was she making a vague prediction to put the idea in
Baltar's head, so in extremis he would do something
which could be interpreted as betrayal or he would
see someone else's behavior as betrayal? Was she extrapolating
from what she'd seen of the behavior of the other four?
Poor Crashdown; he's so unraveled he has to go back
to Robert's
Rules of Order to plan their insane assault on
the Cylons. It was like a stone-knives-and-bearskins
PowerPoint presentation. I was right about Chief and
Crashdown having a leadership conflict, but Tyrol does
follow military protocol and back his wigged-out lieutenant
over the civilian vice president. (It took me until
that bit of dialogue to figure out Chief was saying "L-T" meaning "Lt," or "lieutenant," and
not calling him a name or nickname.) However, in the
last moments where Crashdown has clearly lost it and
is threatening to murder Cally, Tyrol pulls a gun on
the lieutenant and defends his engineer, rank or no
rank.
When Tigh is moodily running his ambrosia bottle over
the photos of himself and Adama, I noticed they have
eight corners. The dog tags have six. Tigh's speech
notes have eight again. I guess it's the Props department
doing little things to emphasize the slight apartness
which the Colonial culture has from us?
I felt terrible for Cally. She just hit
her limit. As tough as she'd been, this isn't anything
she was trained for, and she finally had it. She simply
couldn't make herself get up and go on this crazy mission.
"I enlisted to pay for dental school," she
says. Doesn't that put a chill down your spine.
At first I thought Baltar was actually starting to
make up for his traitorous deeds, but then I realized
that he's firing only because the toasters are firing
at him, and it's just convenient that his self-defense
is also defending the other three.
Tigh reverses himself and declares martial
law because...? He's feeling utterly out of control
and knows no other way to handle it? He's angry? He's
perpetually drunk? Lady MacTigh pushed him into it?
How is Adama going to clean up this mess? And are we
going to get a non-continuous story again this season?
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