Gaius LOLtar
I am so rooting for Baltar in Battlestar. I don't know what I'm rooting for him to do, but if they kill him I might stop watching the show. No. Because it wouldn't work. SOMEhow, he would come back to life.
At first it's sort of hard to figure out Baltar's role in the show. By and large the main characters (both human and Cylon) are all icons of some particular line of reasoning, philosophy, or strength of character. If you tried to come up with one of these for Baltar it would have to be cowardice or wretchedness or something.
We're talking about the guy that not only semi-accidentally betrayed humanity allowing the Cylons to commit massive genocide, but a guy who has repeatedly fucked up in ways that are really quite treasonous (faking results instead of using his actual Cylon-detection test; the whole series of events with the nuke; leading the Cylons toward Earth, etc. etc.). I mean, if Baltar WEREN'T so incredibly insane and flawed, the fleet would probably be doing pretty well at this point. He has a Cylon in his head. He might BE a Cylon, and was one point HOPING he was a Cylon because then he figured he wouldn't feel so bad about REPEATEDLY BETRAYING HUMANITY.
So why do I like Baltar so much? Because he's like a moral underdog! Actually, he's more than an underdog. He's an abused puppy. Yet he keeps...keeps...winning somehow. I mean it's amazing that Baltar is even still alive! He's been captured by the Cylons, who tortured him. Instead of breaking under their torture, he ended up starting a nightly threesome with two of the female models. He escaped from the Cylons right when they were getting tired of him and got captured by the humans. THEY tortured him. But the torture actually worked out PRETTY WELL FOR HIM. If you can believe him (you can't,of course, because he constantly lies about everything), he's gone through some tremendous change of heart as a result of that torture. Now he's in prison and has suddenly written a book that is not only successful, but that pissed off the president. I guess it helps that the president is a tremendous bitch, and anything Baltar does to irk her amuses me to no end.
Also I think I appreciate his sheer audacity. I mean come-on, the title of his manifesto is "My Triumphs, My Mistakes". When he was President, he sat around in his office drinking booze while being entertained by voluptuous wenches! He takes cues from his head-Cylon (who is also, admittedly, hilarious; though less so since she's no longer giving him hallucinitory blowjobs while he tries to talk to people like in the first season)!
Really though, the parallels to G'Kar on Babylon 5 have reached kind of disturbing intensity. But I think it's a deliberate ruse (the writers have to know their fanbase, yeah?). I think Baltar has had a change of heart, but that instead of becoming good, he's just going to become better at being evil. I think he's going to go take over the Cylons, and get a throne, and if the universe really really likes me, an assistant-bot named Lucifer.
My name is Gaius Baltar, and I'm here to help.