BSG 4.04: Ellen!Six FTW
Some metaish thoughts on 'Escape Velocity' (I know I'm behind, oops).
I'm not sure that most of this makes much sense, so feel free to point that out. This episode just put so many thoughts in my head that I had to try and get them out somehow. :)
The episode’s theme is undoubtedly guilt and all the ways to deal with it. Whether it’s human or Cylon, guilt is powerful, and to a few, guilt is power.
-- Chief embraces guilt because it helps him remain human.
-- Tory turns guilt off and tries to live without because she is perfect and does not need it.
-- Tigh uses guilt and pain to find clarity and gain strength. Guilt is suffering and suffering makes you stronger.
-- Six learns what it means to be human from guilt.
-- Baltar sees himself as perfect, like god, so he doesn’t acknowledge guilt as anything bad, it’s a part of what makes him perfect.
-- Roslin doesn’t have time for guilt if she is to leave the world as she wishes it to be.
-- Lee’s guilt causes him to believe too much in ideals and not see practical realities.
-- Papadama’s guilt takes the form of history revision.
Specialist Tyrol
Chief (yup, I’ll keep calling and thinking of him as Chief, can’t help it) continues to break my heart, and I just want to hug the crap out of him, not that this is new. He’s needed hugs since season one, and my episode notes from season two contain some variation of “Chief needs a hug” on notes from every single episode. The difference now is that he scares me. Aaron Douglas said in some interview about season four that he is consciously playing Chief differently as a Cylon, and boy does it show. It’s great. Douglas is showing how awesome he is, which makes me happy. I think Chief’s Cyloness is adding an element of unpredictability to his character that makes me so very worried for him. I have no idea what he’ll do next, but I have the feeling that whatever it is it’ll be frightening compared to what we’ve seen from him thus far. Oh Chief! *clings*
Of course I loved Chief’s poetic words at the funeral, but they did seem more like disconnected ceremony than sincere. Was that some kind of traditional funeral recitation? It seemed a bit cold even for that. Oh man, but contrast those words with what he said to Papa in the bar. “You were the breath in my lungs, the blood in my veins, the light in my eye” at the funeral and then “I settled for that shriek, those dull vacant eyes, the boiled cabbage stench of her” at the bar. Cylons use such wonderfully image heavy speech! I’m completely fine with Chief’s freak out here and his anger at settling for “the best of limited options.” I really only liked Cally because I thought she was making my Chief happy.
His acknowledgement of how much loosing Boomer frakked with him was good to hear. Poor Chief. He said over and over “I didn’t know” meaning he didn’t know Boomer was a Cylon and he didn’t know he was a Cylon. What would have been different had he known or had he found out sooner? “This is not my frakking life” seemed like something he’s been thinking for a while. Actually the whole speech seemed like a hell of a lot of feelings bottled up spilling out in the worst way, not just disbelief at being a Cylon. He says he picked that life and it’s fine only he didn’t pick it. Maybe he meant that he picked that life but he wanted it to be with someone else. Or he thought he picked that life but maybe he was programmed to pick it. Or maybe he picked his life only he didn’t choose to be a toaster. Any way you see it, the Chief is in a bad way and I’m so very worried.
“Tell me I frakked up” speaks volumes about Chief’s guilt. It’s obvious he feels responsible for Cally’s death, but his role in what happened to Racetrack and Skulls pains him more. He’s wanting someone to tell him he frakked up because a) he doesn’t want to believe he did it on purpose as Cylon sabotage, and b) he needs to feel flawed like a human because he is desperately clinging to his humanity. In Baltar’s speech at the end, he says “love your faults, embrace them” over a shot of Chief, and that’s just what he’s doing. He needs to believe in his flaws so he can continue to be the man he was.
A Good Woman and an Adama Man
I could watch the bar scene between Papa and Chief all day. So good and so many layers of awesome all woven throughout. They are having about 50 different conversations during their exchange and most of the time they are actually talking about the same thing. I did want to point out Chief’s dig at Papa when he says “the ones we really want are dead or dying or turn out to be Cylons.” Poor Papa’s all smitten and worried and listening to funeral preferences and carrying purses, and Chief has to rub it in his face that his woman is dying. Awwww. Hugs for Papa too!
The part of this scene that pertains to Papa and what he does with guilt is when Papa says “Don’t do this to her memory” and Chief responds with “I won’t make an angel out of someone who wasn’t, but I can see you have.” And right there, that is what Papa does with guilt. He ignores the bad and keeps the good. He turns his wife’s memory into something good, something he should revere, something he should respect all because he feels guilty about not being there for her or his children. He makes her a saint to ease his conscience at being a crappy father. He once told Sharon that he doesn’t do guilt. He means that he doesn’t do guilt about decisions he’s made, and I suppose he doesn’t feel guilty about them if he can just rewrite history in his mind. It turns out to be a nice contrast with how Chief is viewing his history with Cally in the form of brutal honesty after she’s gone.
Roslin in this episode was very interesting as well. Her speech to Baltar in the brig made it clear that she plans on leaving her mark on the fleet and saving the hell out of it before she has her “quiet little death.” I think guilt for her falls into the category of something she isn’t in the mood for now. She doesn’t have time for it, so she does what she has to do to save humanity. Rock on.
The Tight and his Ellen
Oh boy. The Tight’s guilt is considerable, no doubt about it. So considerable in fact that he projects the object of his guilt onto another object of his guilt: Ellen, the woman he loved and killed, turns into Six, the representation of his Cylon self hatred. Whew! And then his manifestation of guilt/self hatred says she can give him absolution! Holy mindfrak, Eyeman! Let’s not even get into the whole sadism/masochism thing they have going on.
Tight buys into what Six says about learning from pain and wanting it so that she can understand humanity. He tells Chief that he’ll have pain at Cally’s death and see her everywhere, but he also says to be a man and feel what he needs to feel without risking he and Tory. So feel, but know where to draw the line. He seems to be going along with the suffering makes you stronger approach to life. He encourages Chief to feel the pain just as Six tells him he should feel pain to find wisdom and clarity. Guilt and pain are tools to help you find out who you really are, but maybe that’s a bad thing when you hate yourself for what you really are. I think that’s what Six realizes when the Tight asks her to continue hitting him, so she gives him the opposite. I’d like to take this opportunity to say that I was in no way squicked out by the Tigh/Six kiss and that I think it made sense. *ducks* I’m attributing this to my unconditional love for the Tight, just so you know. :D
The Tory Power Surge
I’m still undecided on whether I actually like Tory or if I just like anyone who can bring the funny out in Baltar and the Tight. She’s definitely interesting to watch, and I find her whole response to discovering her Cyloness fascinating. She always seemed confident to me, but being a Cylon makes her a downright force to be reckoned with. Like she tells Chief, she shuts down guilt, turns it off, and lives without it. This makes her much like Roslin in a way - they both don’t really have to explain or justify their actions. What is different about Tory is that she doesn’t have a time limit nor does she feel like her power might run out.
All the lines are either being blurred or things are being turned upside down for her. She said it herself to Baltar, “pain becomes pleasure, bad becomes good.” She’s turning what was thought to be bad - being a Cylon - into power and into an identity for herself I don’t think she had before. Baltar’s speech about perfection at the end speaks directly to how she’s feeling. She believes she was made to be perfect so she can do no wrong. That’s incredibly empowering and frakking scary.
Lee Frakkin' Adama
We know from ‘Crossroads pt. 2’ that Lee feels a tremendous amount of guilt. This is guilt that has haunted him probably all of his adult life but was heightened and made known after the Cylon attacks. We also know that he is very idealistic in nature (“He’s doing what he thinks is right.” “Well yeah, he’s Lee.”) and has a great respect for the laws of the government. I think his turn to politician is easily explained by these factors. He feels so badly about everything he’s had to do that is questionable that he has to look to ideals and morality to balance out his world. And in a perfect world, the government is the place to put his ideals into practice, the place to get things done and make the world into what it should be. After he rescues Baltar (heeeee!), he tells him that he doesn’t do these things for him and Baltar responds that “You do them because your god compels you to do them.” Lee’s god could be the unbearable guilt that causes him to believe too idealistically. He is doing what is right, even Roslin and Papa know that. I think they both admire him for that. What Lee is seeing with Baltar’s ‘we are perfect’ speech is just how right Roslin is about him and about the “pragmatic realities he refuses to face.” His look is one of disgust and disappointment in doing the right thing over the practical, realistic thing. He knows Roslin is right and hates how his ideals have failed him. His journey now will be deciding just how idealistic he can afford to remain.
Other random things:
-- I was completely convinced that Racetrack was dead. I was so scared for you lint138.
-- Racetrack calling Chief Galen was adorable.
-- Tight wuvs babies!!!!!! Why the hell didn’t we get a shot of him holding that kid?!?!?!
-- My gods was this a violent episode. Maybe I’ve become accustomed to seeing violence play out on TV, but this was just brutal and pretty graphic. The blood pouring from Baltar’s mouth and Tigh’s pulpy face was enough to push it over the edge, but they go ahead and show a full-on attack of Baltar’s harem and Baltar’s attack of the church service. Chaos or blood in every other scene.
-- The Kara/Sam scene was totally WTF for me, but creepy as hell. Baltar’s voice over was saying “when we know ourselves we can see the truth about others.” Poor, poor Sam really wants to believe he has a Cylon wifey.
-- Dude, I’d totally believe in Baltar and probably attend the Church of Jesus Baltar. That speech was pretty damn perfect.
-- I don't really have a problem with the all-over-the-place vibe most got from this episode. I liked the progression and felt it was mostly cohesive.
Next week: Leoben and paint! Less thinky episode, pwease!
I'm not sure that most of this makes much sense, so feel free to point that out. This episode just put so many thoughts in my head that I had to try and get them out somehow. :)
The episode’s theme is undoubtedly guilt and all the ways to deal with it. Whether it’s human or Cylon, guilt is powerful, and to a few, guilt is power.
-- Chief embraces guilt because it helps him remain human.
-- Tory turns guilt off and tries to live without because she is perfect and does not need it.
-- Tigh uses guilt and pain to find clarity and gain strength. Guilt is suffering and suffering makes you stronger.
-- Six learns what it means to be human from guilt.
-- Baltar sees himself as perfect, like god, so he doesn’t acknowledge guilt as anything bad, it’s a part of what makes him perfect.
-- Roslin doesn’t have time for guilt if she is to leave the world as she wishes it to be.
-- Lee’s guilt causes him to believe too much in ideals and not see practical realities.
-- Papadama’s guilt takes the form of history revision.
Specialist Tyrol
Chief (yup, I’ll keep calling and thinking of him as Chief, can’t help it) continues to break my heart, and I just want to hug the crap out of him, not that this is new. He’s needed hugs since season one, and my episode notes from season two contain some variation of “Chief needs a hug” on notes from every single episode. The difference now is that he scares me. Aaron Douglas said in some interview about season four that he is consciously playing Chief differently as a Cylon, and boy does it show. It’s great. Douglas is showing how awesome he is, which makes me happy. I think Chief’s Cyloness is adding an element of unpredictability to his character that makes me so very worried for him. I have no idea what he’ll do next, but I have the feeling that whatever it is it’ll be frightening compared to what we’ve seen from him thus far. Oh Chief! *clings*
Of course I loved Chief’s poetic words at the funeral, but they did seem more like disconnected ceremony than sincere. Was that some kind of traditional funeral recitation? It seemed a bit cold even for that. Oh man, but contrast those words with what he said to Papa in the bar. “You were the breath in my lungs, the blood in my veins, the light in my eye” at the funeral and then “I settled for that shriek, those dull vacant eyes, the boiled cabbage stench of her” at the bar. Cylons use such wonderfully image heavy speech! I’m completely fine with Chief’s freak out here and his anger at settling for “the best of limited options.” I really only liked Cally because I thought she was making my Chief happy.
His acknowledgement of how much loosing Boomer frakked with him was good to hear. Poor Chief. He said over and over “I didn’t know” meaning he didn’t know Boomer was a Cylon and he didn’t know he was a Cylon. What would have been different had he known or had he found out sooner? “This is not my frakking life” seemed like something he’s been thinking for a while. Actually the whole speech seemed like a hell of a lot of feelings bottled up spilling out in the worst way, not just disbelief at being a Cylon. He says he picked that life and it’s fine only he didn’t pick it. Maybe he meant that he picked that life but he wanted it to be with someone else. Or he thought he picked that life but maybe he was programmed to pick it. Or maybe he picked his life only he didn’t choose to be a toaster. Any way you see it, the Chief is in a bad way and I’m so very worried.
“Tell me I frakked up” speaks volumes about Chief’s guilt. It’s obvious he feels responsible for Cally’s death, but his role in what happened to Racetrack and Skulls pains him more. He’s wanting someone to tell him he frakked up because a) he doesn’t want to believe he did it on purpose as Cylon sabotage, and b) he needs to feel flawed like a human because he is desperately clinging to his humanity. In Baltar’s speech at the end, he says “love your faults, embrace them” over a shot of Chief, and that’s just what he’s doing. He needs to believe in his flaws so he can continue to be the man he was.
A Good Woman and an Adama Man
I could watch the bar scene between Papa and Chief all day. So good and so many layers of awesome all woven throughout. They are having about 50 different conversations during their exchange and most of the time they are actually talking about the same thing. I did want to point out Chief’s dig at Papa when he says “the ones we really want are dead or dying or turn out to be Cylons.” Poor Papa’s all smitten and worried and listening to funeral preferences and carrying purses, and Chief has to rub it in his face that his woman is dying. Awwww. Hugs for Papa too!
The part of this scene that pertains to Papa and what he does with guilt is when Papa says “Don’t do this to her memory” and Chief responds with “I won’t make an angel out of someone who wasn’t, but I can see you have.” And right there, that is what Papa does with guilt. He ignores the bad and keeps the good. He turns his wife’s memory into something good, something he should revere, something he should respect all because he feels guilty about not being there for her or his children. He makes her a saint to ease his conscience at being a crappy father. He once told Sharon that he doesn’t do guilt. He means that he doesn’t do guilt about decisions he’s made, and I suppose he doesn’t feel guilty about them if he can just rewrite history in his mind. It turns out to be a nice contrast with how Chief is viewing his history with Cally in the form of brutal honesty after she’s gone.
Roslin in this episode was very interesting as well. Her speech to Baltar in the brig made it clear that she plans on leaving her mark on the fleet and saving the hell out of it before she has her “quiet little death.” I think guilt for her falls into the category of something she isn’t in the mood for now. She doesn’t have time for it, so she does what she has to do to save humanity. Rock on.
The Tight and his Ellen
Oh boy. The Tight’s guilt is considerable, no doubt about it. So considerable in fact that he projects the object of his guilt onto another object of his guilt: Ellen, the woman he loved and killed, turns into Six, the representation of his Cylon self hatred. Whew! And then his manifestation of guilt/self hatred says she can give him absolution! Holy mindfrak, Eyeman! Let’s not even get into the whole sadism/masochism thing they have going on.
Tight buys into what Six says about learning from pain and wanting it so that she can understand humanity. He tells Chief that he’ll have pain at Cally’s death and see her everywhere, but he also says to be a man and feel what he needs to feel without risking he and Tory. So feel, but know where to draw the line. He seems to be going along with the suffering makes you stronger approach to life. He encourages Chief to feel the pain just as Six tells him he should feel pain to find wisdom and clarity. Guilt and pain are tools to help you find out who you really are, but maybe that’s a bad thing when you hate yourself for what you really are. I think that’s what Six realizes when the Tight asks her to continue hitting him, so she gives him the opposite. I’d like to take this opportunity to say that I was in no way squicked out by the Tigh/Six kiss and that I think it made sense. *ducks* I’m attributing this to my unconditional love for the Tight, just so you know. :D
The Tory Power Surge
I’m still undecided on whether I actually like Tory or if I just like anyone who can bring the funny out in Baltar and the Tight. She’s definitely interesting to watch, and I find her whole response to discovering her Cyloness fascinating. She always seemed confident to me, but being a Cylon makes her a downright force to be reckoned with. Like she tells Chief, she shuts down guilt, turns it off, and lives without it. This makes her much like Roslin in a way - they both don’t really have to explain or justify their actions. What is different about Tory is that she doesn’t have a time limit nor does she feel like her power might run out.
All the lines are either being blurred or things are being turned upside down for her. She said it herself to Baltar, “pain becomes pleasure, bad becomes good.” She’s turning what was thought to be bad - being a Cylon - into power and into an identity for herself I don’t think she had before. Baltar’s speech about perfection at the end speaks directly to how she’s feeling. She believes she was made to be perfect so she can do no wrong. That’s incredibly empowering and frakking scary.
Lee Frakkin' Adama
We know from ‘Crossroads pt. 2’ that Lee feels a tremendous amount of guilt. This is guilt that has haunted him probably all of his adult life but was heightened and made known after the Cylon attacks. We also know that he is very idealistic in nature (“He’s doing what he thinks is right.” “Well yeah, he’s Lee.”) and has a great respect for the laws of the government. I think his turn to politician is easily explained by these factors. He feels so badly about everything he’s had to do that is questionable that he has to look to ideals and morality to balance out his world. And in a perfect world, the government is the place to put his ideals into practice, the place to get things done and make the world into what it should be. After he rescues Baltar (heeeee!), he tells him that he doesn’t do these things for him and Baltar responds that “You do them because your god compels you to do them.” Lee’s god could be the unbearable guilt that causes him to believe too idealistically. He is doing what is right, even Roslin and Papa know that. I think they both admire him for that. What Lee is seeing with Baltar’s ‘we are perfect’ speech is just how right Roslin is about him and about the “pragmatic realities he refuses to face.” His look is one of disgust and disappointment in doing the right thing over the practical, realistic thing. He knows Roslin is right and hates how his ideals have failed him. His journey now will be deciding just how idealistic he can afford to remain.
Other random things:
-- I was completely convinced that Racetrack was dead. I was so scared for you lint138.
-- Racetrack calling Chief Galen was adorable.
-- Tight wuvs babies!!!!!! Why the hell didn’t we get a shot of him holding that kid?!?!?!
-- My gods was this a violent episode. Maybe I’ve become accustomed to seeing violence play out on TV, but this was just brutal and pretty graphic. The blood pouring from Baltar’s mouth and Tigh’s pulpy face was enough to push it over the edge, but they go ahead and show a full-on attack of Baltar’s harem and Baltar’s attack of the church service. Chaos or blood in every other scene.
-- The Kara/Sam scene was totally WTF for me, but creepy as hell. Baltar’s voice over was saying “when we know ourselves we can see the truth about others.” Poor, poor Sam really wants to believe he has a Cylon wifey.
-- Dude, I’d totally believe in Baltar and probably attend the Church of Jesus Baltar. That speech was pretty damn perfect.
-- I don't really have a problem with the all-over-the-place vibe most got from this episode. I liked the progression and felt it was mostly cohesive.
Next week: Leoben and paint! Less thinky episode, pwease!