Recap 4x15: No Exit
So, this episode was pretty widely criticized when it aired by a lot of people (including me) for having such an ungodly amount of OOC exposition in it. But personally, I've come to appreciate it more in retrospect and I sort of... love it now? So much so that I'm going to give it my most giant-sized refrak picspam and recap yet? You'll understand why it took me so long to post this!
It starts with an extended version of the "Cylons were created by man" opening, so right away you know Something Is Going Down.
After a flashback to her death in season three, Ellen wakes up in a resurrection tub, all naked with a scary-looking Centurion guarding her. She reacts very much like Ellen would at first, terrified as all hell. But in a pretty fabulous moment of Kate Vernon acting, we see the realization gradually dawn on her as her other, Cylon memories come back.
At which point she pulls herself together and immediately starts charming the nearby Centurion, asking it to come over and help her out of the tub. So that answers the question of whether Cylon Ellen would still be awesome.
Back on Galactica, Cottle is tending to Sam after the bullet he took to the head during the mutiny. Specialist John Hodgman is on the way to deal with the actual bullet -- in the meantime, Cottle drills his skull open and drains the hematoma that's pressing on his brain, which Google tells me is a real and serious thing. Kara is still close to him, comforting him even though she's told he can't hear her.
A bunch of images flash through Sam's head, but he just stares off and babbles incoherent poetry, practicing his best Hybrid impression. It's all pretty scary.
Eighteen months ago on the baseship -- shortly after Ellen died on New Caprica and resurrected. She's not very pleased (but not very surprised either) to have Cavil holding her hostage, and they trade barbs for a while. This is where we start getting the Cylon backstory that takes up 90% of this episode, and which apparently *still* confuses some people, so I've decided to provide Cliffs Notes as a public service.
Cylon Cliffs Notes, Part 1: Ellen and the Watchtower Cylons revealed at the end of S3 were the creators of the other Cylon models. Cavil was the first, named "John" and made in the image of Ellen's father, because that sex needed to be even creepier. John has massive parental issues and resents the human limitations he was given, wanting to be more like a machine. He's always known the Final Five were Cylons and was intentionally screwing with them, even though the other Cylons didn't. This was all new information!
Present day. Tyrol shows Adama the huge crack he found in the ship's hull, and I HOPE YOU ENJOY THIS CRACK BECAUSE ADAMA IS ABOUT TO SPEND A GOOD CHUNK OF THE REMAINING EPISODES STARING AT IT MOURNFULLY. Ahem. Even though these aren't my two favorite characters, they have a genuinely sweet little moment here where Adama says "I need a chief and all I have is a Galen", and Galen responds "That you do, sir," which is precious, so Adama asks if he'll come back and be his #1 ship-fixer again, Cylon or not.
In sickbay, where it seems like a ton of people are recovering from (mutiny-related?) injuries, Sam regains consciousness and wakes up Kara, who fell asleep at his side. She immediately starts apologizing and blaming herself, but he shushes her and tells her "a wonderful thing has happened." He asks her to get the other members of the Jimi Hendrix Experience, including Ellen, like it's slipped his mind that she's been dead for over a year and Kara has to remind him. Ouch. Sam brushes this off, smiling with a slightly manic glint in his eyes, and tells her that he. remembers. everything.
So we're about to get exposition from two directions IN STEREO, oh my god.
Twelve months ago. Cavil and Ellen are continuing the argument they've no doubt been having for the last *six months straight*. I'm not being snarky, I really do believe that. There's an interesting thing about him having nightmares when he was a wee baby Cylon and (possibly for this reason) he programmed himself not to sleep at all anymore. She questions why he bothered with the whole human genocide thing instead of just going off to be a super machine, and he claims it's still about the whole my-Centurion-people-were-slaves thing.
Boomer shows up with a tray of food, and Cavil (re)introduces them; Ellen quickly guesses at how creepy things have gotten between them. They do some passive-aggressive fighting over Boomer's head, and then Cavil leaves them alone together, where Ellen offers Boomer an Apple of Symbolism and advises her to make her mind up for herself. (FYI, if your best hope is Boomer making up her mind about something... yikes.)
Sickbay again: Tigh, Tyrol, and Tory are now gathered around Sam, listening to him explain where the heck they came from. Meanwhile Kara worries over him because he still, um, has a bullet in his brain and is refusing to relax because he has so much information to dump. Eventually Cottle kicks everybody out of the room, and Sam is apparently less okay than he keeps insisting he is.
Cylon Cliffs Notes, Part Two: As previously explained, the 13th colony that settled on Earth were old-timey Cylons, from the first time humans on Kobol created artificial life. (Not to be confused with any of the stuff that happened on "Caprica", literally thousands of years later.) The Final Five were Cylons born on Earth. They were all scientists. They were all geniuses. Stop laughing. Saul and Ellen were married (love transcends all!) and Galen and Tory were engaged (never mind! Tigh/Ellen love ONLY transcends all!) and they were all BFFs and created Cylon resurrection together. (Their kind of Cylons had it in the long-ago past but lost the technology once they started having babies and dying naturally.) By the time Earth was destroyed, another victim of the over-and-over cycle of shinier machines becoming sentient and attacking their creators, the Five had successfully made resurrection technology and they downloaded on a ship as soon as they died. They had been warned what would happen by visions.
Oh wow, there are TWO humans and ZERO Cylons in the next scene! That feels so *weird*. Lee returns to the Quorum table that's still all bloody from the massacre, and finds Laura tearfully trying to find memorial wall photos that don't look awful. Lee has an idea about getting a new band together, but this time having the Quorum represent their ships instead of the no-longer-existing colonies.
Laura then breaks my heart by saying (barely a week after she got her groove back and took over a baseship) that she's giving up the presidency for real now and will just stay as a figurehead and leave the real responsibilities to Lee. That... doesn't sound... democracy- oh frak it. Lee is taken aback but accepts, and she gives him a very Roslin-y warning to do the "smart" thing instead of the "right" thing sometimes, so he promises to be "smarter and wronger" for her. OH HONEY, I say this with all the love in the world -- you couldn't if you tried.
Okay, enough of that terribly emotional scene that I genuinely cared about -- let's check on Adama's crack and see how it's doing!
Chief says it's worse than they thought and there are dozens of cracks forming around the ship, and Adama's all "how did this happen?" like it's some kind of shocking revelation that Galactica was kind of a shitbox. He gives the go-ahead for Chief to put a crew together, but he's also like "DON'T LET ANY CYLONS WORK ON IT EXCEPT YOU" out of nowhere, and Chief looks somewhat annoyed that That's How It's Gonna Be.
Back in sickbay, more exposition...
Cylon Cliffs Notes, Part Three: After Earth was nuked and the Final Five had downloaded into new bodies as the only survivors, their plan was to find the other Twelve Colonies like their mythical Earth books talked about. This took 2,000 years because they managed to invent everything but FTL drives. They wanted to warn the humans that (1) maybe creating intelligent machines again is a bad idea, and (2) if they're already created, please be NICE to them for once. But by the time they got there, "Caprica" had happened and the war with the Centurions was already going on. The Final Five went to the metal-looking Cylons and promised to help them ~with science~, giving them resurrection and the human-like bodies they wanted in exchange for ending the war and leaving humanity alone, hence the 40-year truce.
Kara is increasingly nervous about all the exposition Sam is delivering and its effect on his health. He appeals to her by bringing up her magic angel destiny and how it's similar to what he's going through, namely that he's acting crazy but needs her to trust him. And wouldn't she want to know if he had all the answers to her questions too? This clicks for Kara because she's wondering if his revelations *do* involve her. But then everything goes sparkly like diamonds and he has a seizure.
Ten months ago, after "Rapture". (Boomer is wearing the same outfit she almost killed Hera in, A+ continuity!) Cavil tells Ellen what happened with D'Anna seeing their faces and getting boxed. Ellen denies responsibility and claims One True God did it. *shrug* Cavil goes off on his epic rant about supernovas and gelatinous orbs and how his human body ruins EVERYTHING for him because HE WANTS TO SEE GAMMA RAYS and so forth. After he storms out, Boomer asks if Ellen feels sorry for how she made them. And she's like, no, because they're robots with free will and the capacity to love and that's *more awesome than gamma rays*, all right?
The three T's are hovering outside sickbay and engaging in one of their Not-Secret-Anymore Cylon Meetings. (You just know they're really excited about getting to do these in public now.) They try to process all the stuff Sam said, that they're the ones who made the Cylons and indirectly caused the genocide. This is horrible news for everyone, except for Tory who AMAZINGLY tries to turn it around and blame the prehistoric humans for inventing them, because she is girl!Baltar and I love her. Tigh's epic rebuttal: "You point a finger back far enough and some germ gets blamed for splitting in two." ♥
Inside the room -- John Hodgman is here, playing Sam's way-too-upbeat brain specialist! I don't know how I feel about that. This is how Kara feels:
The seizure's done some damage on Sammy, and he's having bouts of aphasia now, unable to get the right words out for his thoughts. (Side note: He, like, physically hurts me doing this. It's such an angst button for me.) John Hodgman's ready to get the bullet out, but Sam is now panicking that whatever happened to his brain will get reversed in the surgery and he'll lose his memories again. Cottle basically says he can declare Sam unfit to make decisions for himself and give the power of consent to Kara as his wife. She agrees, despite his pleading.
Four months ago, when the Resurrection Hub was blown up. A shaken Cavil wakes Ellen up with a drink and tells her what happened. He and Boomer try to compel her to share her resurrectiony secrets again and save the Cylon race from dying off, but she insists (honestly?) that she can't alone and would need all the Final Five together to do it. Cavil thinks she's lying and threatens to slice open her brain and get the information out himself, 'cause he can do that apparently, he's Cavil. And that's the day John made his mom cry.
Speaking of people getting brain surgery against their will! Sam rushes through some last-minute exposition, even while he's being prepped and still doing aphasia stuff like calling Ellen a gazelle. Also, if you listen closely he gets my favorite buried line in the episode, about the visions they had on Earth -- "Galen, you thought you had a chip in your head." I love this show so much. Kara postpones the brain surgery for one second to ask him who Cylon #7 was, and he says his name was Daniel. (A name that is noticeably Not Kara. And also, Not Kara's Dad.)
Cylon Cliffs Notes, Part Four: The Final Fivers, led by Ellen, went ahead with helping the Centurions evolve into human bodies because they already believed in a loving God and thus seemed to have a thing for love and mercy. They made John/Cavil, who in turn helped them with numbers Two through Eight. But he was never really down with mercy and kept rebelling. Eventually Cavil turned on them and locked them in some room where they suffocated. He made the other Cylons forget them, screwed with their memories, resurrected them as sleeper agents, and sent them down to the colonies thinking they were human until the next apocalypse (which they continued to believe after they survived it).
Sam is led into the OR while he tries to get through the most important thing, which is to stay with the fleet -- he tells Tigh this very intensely. And then he shouts to Kara, scared and angry, he shouts that he was on her side on the Demetrius, when she knew things and everyone else was afraid and trying to take that power away from her. He shouts at her that she owes him, and she makes the Kacey face for the 30th time this episode. As a Kara/Sam fan, I can tell you that right there is the most shipper pain this series ever caused me.
Tigh goes back to his quarters, looking for booze until Caprica-Six reminds him they got rid of it because it made her nauseous. I don't care if I'm almost the only person who feels this way? I love these two to pieces. Tigh angsts about what happened with Sam and she gives him a supportive hug. But then she can no longer contain her happier news -- she started to feel the baby move while he was out. They get adorably giddy when they feel it kick again together, and she smiles wide enough to swallow the universe, and he kisses her stomach, and NOTHING BAD HAPPENS TO THEM EVER. THIS IS THE END OF THE SHOW, ACTUALLY. *Nicole covers her ears and hums loudly*
"Two days ago." (Um, this is the first timestamp I have to call BS on. It's been sixteen weeks since Cavil threatened to lobotomize her? What's taking so long? Are they waiting for John Hodgman to come here?) Ellen passes the time to her impending doom by drawing sketches of Saul in his two-eyed prime and arguing with Cavil some more.
Cylon Cliffs Notes, Part Five: The seventh Cylon model, Daniel, was very sensitive and artistic and not at all Kara's father. He was Ellen's favorite, so Cavil killed him out of jealousy and destroyed the genetic makeup for his model, making it look like a very unconvincing accident. None of this has anything to do with anything, it's just important because Sharon's been called "Eight" since season two and they didn't want us to think the Tighs don't know how to count.
Ellen calls him out on killing Daniel and being a whiny child who basically destroyed human civilization to get back at his parents... and probably, in some weird Cavil logic, torture them enough so they end up feeling really sorry and grovelling to love him again. He points out his broken-ness is her fault for creating him that way, and Ellen -- who is sort of fluent in dysfunctional love -- makes a plea for Cavil to be the good boy she loved and GIVE MAMA A HUG etc. Cavil flips out ("Don't you dare!") and leaves, warning that he's totally gonna give her that lobotomy sometime in the next four months.
Back on Galactica, Chief shows Adama the ships' cracks under a psychedlic blacklight that reveals it's rotting from the inside. He suggests using some kind of Cylon baseship resin to heal it, but Adama is suddenly resistant to the idea of Cylon Technology Touching His Stuff. At this point at least 20 Gaeta fans started yelling obscenities straight at the television.
Sam is knocked out for his operation and Kara apologizes to him again -- not for sending him into surgery but for not doing it sooner. She admits she let him keep talking because she thought he might say she was a Cylon. ("I need to be something.") She puts that aside and promises things will be better for them when he wakes up, committing herself not-too-late-at-all to their marriage again.
Adama returns to his quarters to get his drink on and probably brush his teeth dramatically, when he notices there are also! cracks! in his own bathroom! A rather long and scary one cutting across the wall, actually.
It's almost the present day in flashback time and I guess Ellen really *is* about to get operated on. She and Boomer have a quick exchange about whether she still believes Tigh loves her as opposed to accidentally impregnating their sort-of-daughter, and Boomer tries to hand her a white hospital gown that is way too gauche for her. She resigns herself to her fate.
The three T's and Kara are anxiously awaiting the results of Sam's surgery, which is taking longer than expected. Finally Cottle comes out with a gruffly-sweet "I got something for you." And you can just *tell* that for a second Kara thought he was gonna show her that Sam was awake and okay, and instead he hands her THE BULLET they pulled out of his head. Poor Kara. She runs in to see him as John Hodgman ominously suggests he should've woken up already.
Back on the baseship, psych! Rather than take Ellen to Cavil, Boomer tells her she forgives her (for making her sort of nuts) and leads her to a raptor where the two of them escape, jumping away as a couple of raiders half-assedly shoot at them.
Kara has another one-sided chat with Sam, waiting heartbreakingly for him to wake up. (Best line: "You got a room full of rabid Cylon types that can't wait to hear the next chapter of their life story. I think they're hoping for a musical." This is both hilarious and totally plausible.) Medic Ishay, who left her bedside manner in her other pants, interrupts to tell her pretty bluntly that Sam's gone -- he's barely showing any brain activity at all anymore. DDDDD:
To close things off, Adama chugs down some more alcohol until he's numb enough to call Chief Tyrol and tell him to go ahead with the Cylon-infused goo to repair ~our girl~. And he does. I cannot believe we're ending this otherwise underrated episode with Adama Getting Crunk Again, but there you go.
THE END.
screencaps and stuff all by me
Some Questions
1. What did you think of "No Exit"? Was it boring or enlightening?
2. Did this episode clear up the story of the Final Five and Cylon evolution for you, or were there still things you were confused about?
3. Did this episode change your opinion of Ellen or whether you liked her as the final Cylon?
4. How dumb were the writers that they thought "Daniel" was a one-episode retcon and the fans weren't gonna create theories around it? Did you have Daniel theories?
5. What are your thoughts on Kara's feelings for Sam and how much closer she is to him after his injury?
6. Can you believe how much I love an episode with no Baltar in it?
7. QUESTION SEVEN WAS KILLED BY CAVIL. Talk about anything.