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[isosarei]

I look forward all week to SciFi Friday, more than ever these days, and this week's batch of shows did not disappoint. I am enjoying SG-1 so much, SGA makes me insanely happy for so many reasons (though many of them are named Shep), and BSG -- damn, I'm just along for the ride even if I have to hang on to the side-rails for dear life every week.

Comments

[raincitygirl]

Really, really excellent points about Helo, and why it was so interesting to see him interacting with the larger cast. That said, I don't think he's going to have an easy ride once they get back to Galactica. Unless he repudiates Sharon, which he's highly unlikely to do, a lot of people are likely to think he's a Cylon collaborator, or at least a sympathizer.

I also think it's going to be a little harder for him to compartmentalize his experiences the way he's been doing up until now once he's back. At this point he's all "Sharon is good, the other Cylons are evil. There is no commonality between them. Period." Which is a good short-term coping strategy, allows him to avoid feeling like he has to kill the woman he loves, and given that everybody *else* on the show keeps trying to shoot her or put her out an airlock, he needs to focus on the external threats for now.

But at some point Sharon will not be in immediate physical danger any more, he'll be back with his crewmates realizing that not only he but virtually all of them have lost their families and there are only 47,000 odd survivors left out of a civilization of billions (I'm not counting the ones left on the Colonies, who are all going to die once they run out of anti-radiation meds anyway, if they're not rounded up for lab experiments by the Cylons). And he's going to have to face the fact that Sharon is on the human side solely because she loves him.

She believes passionately in the Cylon God who seems to be big on genocide, she hasn't morally repudiated the attacks on the colonies, she doesn't seem to give a damn about any human beside him, she isn't especially troubled by forcing human women to act as lab rats in the Farms, in short, there are some serious ideological roadblocks to them having a functional longterm relationship. And I say this speaking as a Helo/Boomer shipper! Maybe that's *why* I'm a Helo/Boomer shipper, because her moral ambiguity makes their story more interesting than the usual star-crossed lovers thing.

[isosarei]

I really enjoyed these comments, and I'm glad to hear you're also closely following this storyline. Because when everything inevitably goes to pot, like it has for everyone else this season, at least I know someone will be suffering along with me. This is a great show.

What I really like about what they have done with Helo is that, while he picked "trust Sharon (somewhat)" over "shoot her, shoot her now!" on Caprica, he is never at ease with that decision. I think a less challenging show could have made him just support her unreasoningly after that. But in every scene where it is clear he loves Sharon, it is also clear that he never forgets how fundamentally at odds that is to everything else. And this makes Lee's question this week of whether Helo's also a Cylon seem not only spectacularly petty but also very, very simplistic (not that I fault Lee, because what else could he be expected to say? but it just underscores how much more complex Helo's situation is).

Tied to this is how fascinating it is that Helo doesn't seem to be saying, "Sharon is a Cylon, but I love her anyway." He has two thoughts that are incompatible in the BSG universe -- "Sharon is a Cylon" and "I love Sharon" -- and he lets them both coexist in his head. This obviously causes him distress, but I think he is coming to realize that they aren't really incompatible thoughts, but "merely" ones that challenge everything he believes in and that are thus difficult and uncomfortable for him to deal with.