BSG Episode Review: s3.04, Exodus Pt2
The second part of Exodus is probably the best episode of BSG since season one;
On the Screen:
We open to a quiet moment on Pegasus, as Lee angsts chubbily over his orders to essentially leave his Dad behind. Dualla is comforting him, understanding his qualms, but reminding him of the responsibility he has to the civilian fleet, to his father's legacy. But everything about Lee is eloquent of despair, all the same. Dee seems emotional, too, and they discuss it in half-broken voices. "No matter the cost," she says, "because you're an Adama." It ends with a nice moment of partnership.
Back on NuCap, Sam is furious: he lost three men - and the entire rescue plan was jeopardized - because of Ellen's good-intentioned betrayal, and he informs Tigh in no uncertain terms that something's got to be done. For Ellen's sake, he hopes Tigh will handle it, but if the Colonel doesn't, someone else will. I don't think anyone's at a loss as to what exactly Sam has in mind.
The title sequences seems almost too brief, and we're back in the bunker with Ellen and Saul; she makes a harrowing confession: sleeping with Cavil, handing over the map... because she couldn't let anything happen to Saul. He listens and his expression is tortured. They hug, and she's crying, and she reaches for the cup that's been conspicious all through the sequence. Something's going down here. Ellen voices the idea that they should have stayed on Galactica; she's exhausted, and Saul tells her "don't worry about any of that now. Just go to sleep."
The cup falls out of her hand: she's not sleeping. Saul's broken voice proclaims his love, but Ellen's dead.
Aboard Colonial One, Gaius is eloquent and the voice of ultimate cynicism in his I-told-you-so's. D'anna asks what he would have them do, and he tells them simply: leave. But the Three doesn't think much of that option. If they leave, and the humans live on in peace, what stories about horrible genocidal murdering robots-that-rebel will humanity's new children be raised on? Will hunting cylons be the new racial sport? A silent, impassive Gaeta, his his idle artwork apparently a sword of Damocles, glances out the window and says "oh, my gods": the settlement's in flames.
Tory musters her civilian rally captains, sends them and a grateful Maya to their ships, as the explosions continue around them. Anders has obviously been busy, and still is. He and his cohorts retrieve weapons stashed under the pyramid court and launch an assault on the detention center where many are apparently still being held. Raiders are flying ominously overhead.
Galactica's CIC is it's usual dimly-lit self, dradis screens and readouts illuminating Helo's and the Admiral's faces. Out in the nebula, that complicated manouver the flight wings were attempting is playing out for real: Vipers and Raptors mustering to launch a series of drones into the cylon's visual range. Back on Colonial One, Gaius is lamenting that the entire settlement was for nothing, but Six tries to comfort him while the rest of the Cylon command are busy issuing orders. Then Boomer walks in, with the news: two Battlestars just jumped into orbit. Adama's back.
Leoben lets himself out of the glorified cell he shares with Kara and Casey, knocking Starbuck unconcious when she refuses to be left trapped during the chaos. He stares at her prone figure a moment and then leaves, locking the door behind him. Laura and Tom, meanwhile, are heading for their ships, but when Laura mentions that her ship - Colonial One - is off in a different direction, Tom mutters about her sense of the dramatic and dragoons a defensive Jammer into going with her and keeping an eye on her. They farewell each other with "see you up there" and some warm grins.
Galactica is preparing for a jump now that the basestars in NuCap's orbit have taken the bait and headed for the drones, launching their fighters on the way. Helo tells the flight pod to prepare to launch the other squadron, and Adama warns all hands to brace for turbulence. Turbulence in space? Um..
On Colonial One, they've figured out the ruse, and Simon (wow, Simon. Hi, Simon!) asks Gaius where Adama is. They'd be better off asking where Tigh and Anders are, because they're the ones firing at the compound gates right now, even if two cylon sentries have them pinned down. And then we find out where Adama is: Galactica has jumped into atmosphere and - obviously not designed for handling gravity - is falling like a rock, and launching fighters as it goes. Suddenly it jumps out again, leaving Vipers in play, and HotDog and another pilot take care of the gates and sentries for Anders and his team.
Inside the facility, they blow the doors, and civilians pour out, the marines and insurgents chivvying them out as fast as possible. Sam peeks through a door and sees Kara lying on the floor, still out cold. The fact that its her, and she's alive, is overwhelming: he kisses her, sounding almost like he's crying, and then hauls her over his shoulder, determined to get her safely out.
Galactica didn't handle the 'turbulence' all that well, displays all over CIC are sparking and flickering. Two more baseships appear, leaving them facing four... and their jump drives are offline. Adama's almost surprised to admit that they're done. He tells his crew it's been an honour, and from all over, Raiders and baseships converge on his battered ship. The camera pans... and more missiles fly in from offscreen: it's Pegasus. But the new ship isn't holding up under fire much better than the old one.
Back on NuCap, Kara wakes up in Ander's arms, but the tender moment has to wait a moment while she insists he put her down. There's our Kara! She asks him if it's really him... just what else did Leoben tell her in those four months, other than prophecy, religion and apparent motherhood? But they don't have time to discuss it, he tells her, summarises the rescue idea, but when she asks after Casey, he's clueless. She snatches the knife off his belt and runs inside, leaving him to straggle after her.
The cylons on Colonial One agree they've lost control of the situation and start to organize an evac. Three offers Gaius a berth on their ship, after all, being right when they were wrong has to be worth something, but the president seems to want to go down with his ship, er, settlement. And Gaeta's more than willing to make sure he does. As civillian ships start to lift off and jump away, and Galactica and her fighters manage to do the same, Pegasus and Baltar are both obviously intent on self-sacrifice.
Gaius talks Gaeta out of a bullet so that he can handle the nuke the Cylons have left on the planet, explaining to Felix that his actions were from his beliefs, his idealism, and they weren't wrong, either of them. But in the end, he's almost begging Gaeta to shoot him. And Lee tells his crew to abandon ship and sets his controls to autofire. Dee tells Lee to get a move on, but Lee lingers, looks around his bridge, and says thank you. As the escape raptors jump away, Pegasus plows into the base-stars, a flaming flight-pod breaking off to collect a third.
Back in the lovenest, Kara screams for the little girl, but Leoben's there, and he has her. He won't let Kara go until she says the words, the same ones he's been telling her she'll say all along. She says it, quietly: "I love you", and the look on his face is rapturous. He demands the kiss, and she closes her eyes and gives in, hesitantly. When they break, she asks "is it everything you thought it would be?" It is, and when he leans in again, Ander's knife comes out of Kara's belt and goes into Leoben's ribs, while Casey's impassive little face watches. Then Anders appears in the door, looks from the child to the dead cylon. "I'll explain later," Kara says as they flee.
Gaius and Six follow D'anna to the oracle's tent, where an enraged Three is destroying everthing, hissing 'you liar'. But when Gaius hears a baby crying and finds a dead Maya face-down in the dirt, her body sheltering little Hera, his mental six appears again, red dress the first flash of colour - other than blood - that we've seen on New Caprica so far. "It's her," she says. "The voice of god's new generation."
The corporeal Six is in amazement, but Three, who comes out of the tent and stares, is even more awestruck. Gaius doesn't resist when she takes the child, but as she walks away with the baby, lifts his gun to shoot her. Six stops him: Three won't set off the nuke with the baby still there. They're safe.
Laura returns to Colonial One; an uncomfortable Jammer looks on as she unwraps the scriptures - or is it her journal - and says she's ready to go, and Colonial One lifts off. And the Galactica, too, is reanimated: Tyrol, falling automatically into old roles, is ushering civillians to the hangar-deck until they can be returned to their ships, but stops dead when he sees on particular person disembark. Kara, with Casey, is laughing to be out and safe, and Tyrol's overwhelmed. "We thought you were dead" he comments, and Kara grins. "So did I."
"Who's this?" Tyrol asks then, ducking his head to peer at Casey; Sam would also like to know - not surprising, given that Kara did mention something about a daughter - and just as Starbuck's about to announce her news, a woman stops and stares and the child's face just light's up. It's Casey's real mother, the one that Leoben took her from, weeks before. While the mother's thanking her effusively, Kara tries gamely to smile, but there's something broken in it, as there is in the aborted attempt to reach for the toddler as the mother carries her away.
Elsewhere on the flight deck, Adama is greeting refugees, among them his own son. "Guess you didn't understand my orders?" he asks Lee, who retorts, grinning: "Never could read your handwriting." They hug, laughing, and before he can greet Dee, Saul's voice reaches them across the deck. There's a lot of respect in the glance they exchange, but when Adama congratulates him, saying he brought them home, Tigh's voice breaks. "Not all of them."
The admiral is swept away, carried on the shoulders of jubilant crewmen, but Saul walks away. He looks lost, and he, Kara and Gaeta are islands in the throng, none of them looking as though they've been saved from anything. And on Colonial One, a tearful Tory reports that Maya and Hera didn't make it off the planet. Laura doesn't blame her. "This is bigger than us," she says quietly. "This is life." Life, indeed. The show closes as Adama, his ship reanimating around him, shaves his mustache and goes back to work.
in my head
Yowzers.
No, really. What an episode of television... I can't compare it to an hour of television that I've ever seen before. Not because it's surpassingly brilliant, because I don't think it is, really, not quite, but because the impacts keep coming, keep coming, keep coming. Like waaaay back in '33', it's relentless, but without even the tick-tock downtime moments to let you catch your breath.
This ties up the first part of Exodus very neatly, rounds out both the Casey plotline and the oracle link, closes the book on Ellen Tigh and reunites Adama (and the rest of us) with the Lee we remember so fondly. It breaks Saul Tigh, and practically dismantles Kara. It gives us back Madame President (official or not) and neatly removes Gaius from suffering the consequences of his actions - or achieving the death he seems to be longing for. It also, at long last, relieves us of the presence of Pegasus and removes the human race from the unfortunate planet they'd fixed their hopes on last season. That's a hell of a lot to do in one hour, and somehow they've managed it without me feeling at all that any particular plotline has received poor service.
If my personal checklist suggests there's any storylines still left uncompleted, they're certainly not ones I'd liked to have seen crammed into this episode anyway. The newer ones - who's president? what's going to happen with all these officers back on the same ship? what's going to happen to Kara, to Tigh, to Sam? - aren't ones I expected to see addressed right away, so I suppose this is as close as Battlestar Galactica can get to a reset button. We have our old clunky ship, a lot of frightened civilians, and an unstable political atmosphere. We've been here before, only right now, it doesn't seem like it. An episode like this really does lead in to an exciting season. I just hope the season can follow through on such a promising beginning.
Moving on to the minutiae: Poor Tigh. Poor Ellen. OMG, poor Kara. At the moment of release, of her having not only Sam, but the one bright spot to come out of her captivity - Casey - and being back on Galactica, she's laughing. Laughing. She looks beautiful. Three seconds later? The emptiness in her face reminds me eerily of that first scene of the season, Kara laying a table, testing the tines of a fork... only this time, I think she'd probably like to use the sharp point on herself.
And Tigh, having now sacrificed not only dedicated but despairing people to the expedient of suicide bombing, has now poisoned his wife, either to punish her, or to spare her the ignominy and hate of a more public trial, or a bullet from an insurgency gun. In the end, he's done what he set out to do, he's got people off the planet, he's back with the old man... and only now he's seemingly realizing that it may have been better for him if he'd never made it off that rock himself. Now he has to live - alone - with what he thought he had to do.
I'm not going to debate the justice of Ellen's execution; the reasons for and against are as many and varied as the reasons for and against suicide bombing, and in the end, we will all make our own judgements because of who we are. The scene itself had amazing pathos. It's obvious to me that she knew what was happening - was almost glad of it - and didn't blame him. Like Gaius, she can't really forgive herself. But unlike Gaius, she wasn't acting selfishly, and so her death pulls far more heartstrings than Baltar's self-pity manages to do.
While Tigh and Kara's stories are the most central, emotionally, at present, there is one 'ship' issue that I need to mention. Dualla? excuse me, Mrs. Adama, but erm... can you stop? Please? the voice-of-reasonable-exposition schtick is getting old. Not to mention that while the scene with Lee at the beginning was minorly heartwarming, it was also full of crap. "Only to me", my ass. Lee's squirming like a four-year-old who needs to go pee, please, mommy, and you're the only one who can tell something's bothering him? Uh-huh. Plus, if the Lee you fell for is the one who's like his dad, the soldier who needs a war, et cetera, et cetera, then why the hell do you always, lately, seem to be trying to encourage him that the right thing is the one thing that's the very antithesis of Adama-ness? Playing it safe. Duty before your loved ones. Fuck off, no.
Not that I don't appreciate her trying to support him, trying to make following unpalatable orders halfway understandable, but if you know Lee, if you 'get' Lee, then you're knowingly encouraging him to do the very things that'll push him further towards self-destruction. So no. Please stop with the unoffical advisor to all men Adama routine. You did a much better job with senior than with junior.
It is nice though to see a quiet moment between the two of them that outlines at least some of the reason behind their relationship. It's the ultimate military alliance, really: the practical, considerate, cover-all-bases commander's marriage. I just wish I could see something more than lukewarm emotion in it. Not even the final scene, arm in arm on Galactica's hangar deck, showed anything more than relief. There was more warmth in the way Lee greeted his father.
I'm also feeling less than optimistic about Kara and Sam right now. He loves her, he was overjoyed to find her, and Kara couldn't believe that it was really him. Promising beginning, right? So where the fuck is he during the pivotal scenes? The woman he wouldn't really want to let out of his sight, and he takes long enough to find her from half a corridor away that he misses the culmination of Leoben's mindfuck? And with crowds teeming on the hangar-deck, with Kara about to splinter into a million pieces, he has a better place to be than right there?
He seriously needs to not be 'busy'. I don't fear adultery or arguments or anything else for this couple right now... what I fear is Kara having to rebuild her world mostly without Sam in it because he's too busy playing civillian hero among the fleet to be there for his wife. It's a real fear, too, because he's a man who acts, who needs to act: he's just like Kara. But if he acts by trying to find a new role, a new position of leadership, or even just a new ship to live on after all this mess, he's going to miss out. All he really should be doing is being there for Kara.
Still, he's very pretty. And at least there's some heat in the relationship he shares with Kara. Alternaship it may be, but I can still tolerate it with more equanimity than Lee/Dee.
All in all, the fabled reset button has been pushed and we're almost back where we started, on the run again. I'm itching to see where they take us, but seriously, seriously, it's going to be hard to live up to the promise of this episode.
Music and CGI were superb... and I don't really need to mention the whole Galactica inter-atmo jump, do I? Or the great battle sequences, or the stunning arrival of Pegasus for her climactic demise. They were all beautifully put-together scenes, though I think the one that touched me - surprised me, that - was the one where we saw the civilian ships lifting off, and one by one jumping away. I wanted to cheer each time they blipped out.
Acting? HMMM. Kate Vernon and Michael Hogan deserve the laurels, but their scene was short and intimate. James Callis and Alessandro Juliani both delighted me in their scene, too. And Katee Sackhoff made me cry, while her scenes with Michael Trucco made me actually approach squee, I was so glad to see a moment of brightness in Kara's bleak landscape. Any or all of these would be stand-out perfomances in their own right. But for nothing else, other than the wordless magnificence of his final two scenes in the episode, I'm going to pick Mr. Olmos for this week's winner. The way he came to life along with his ship, the sly humor of his meeting with Lee and the heartbreak of his meeting with Saul... Adama's back. And so's the rag-tag fleet.
And so's our show. Ten out of ten.
I have no idea what the next ep is about. Don't enlighten me. I am enjoying this season too much to want to angst in advance.
On the Screen:
We open to a quiet moment on Pegasus, as Lee angsts chubbily over his orders to essentially leave his Dad behind. Dualla is comforting him, understanding his qualms, but reminding him of the responsibility he has to the civilian fleet, to his father's legacy. But everything about Lee is eloquent of despair, all the same. Dee seems emotional, too, and they discuss it in half-broken voices. "No matter the cost," she says, "because you're an Adama." It ends with a nice moment of partnership.
Back on NuCap, Sam is furious: he lost three men - and the entire rescue plan was jeopardized - because of Ellen's good-intentioned betrayal, and he informs Tigh in no uncertain terms that something's got to be done. For Ellen's sake, he hopes Tigh will handle it, but if the Colonel doesn't, someone else will. I don't think anyone's at a loss as to what exactly Sam has in mind.
The title sequences seems almost too brief, and we're back in the bunker with Ellen and Saul; she makes a harrowing confession: sleeping with Cavil, handing over the map... because she couldn't let anything happen to Saul. He listens and his expression is tortured. They hug, and she's crying, and she reaches for the cup that's been conspicious all through the sequence. Something's going down here. Ellen voices the idea that they should have stayed on Galactica; she's exhausted, and Saul tells her "don't worry about any of that now. Just go to sleep."
The cup falls out of her hand: she's not sleeping. Saul's broken voice proclaims his love, but Ellen's dead.
Aboard Colonial One, Gaius is eloquent and the voice of ultimate cynicism in his I-told-you-so's. D'anna asks what he would have them do, and he tells them simply: leave. But the Three doesn't think much of that option. If they leave, and the humans live on in peace, what stories about horrible genocidal murdering robots-that-rebel will humanity's new children be raised on? Will hunting cylons be the new racial sport? A silent, impassive Gaeta, his his idle artwork apparently a sword of Damocles, glances out the window and says "oh, my gods": the settlement's in flames.
Tory musters her civilian rally captains, sends them and a grateful Maya to their ships, as the explosions continue around them. Anders has obviously been busy, and still is. He and his cohorts retrieve weapons stashed under the pyramid court and launch an assault on the detention center where many are apparently still being held. Raiders are flying ominously overhead.
Galactica's CIC is it's usual dimly-lit self, dradis screens and readouts illuminating Helo's and the Admiral's faces. Out in the nebula, that complicated manouver the flight wings were attempting is playing out for real: Vipers and Raptors mustering to launch a series of drones into the cylon's visual range. Back on Colonial One, Gaius is lamenting that the entire settlement was for nothing, but Six tries to comfort him while the rest of the Cylon command are busy issuing orders. Then Boomer walks in, with the news: two Battlestars just jumped into orbit. Adama's back.
Leoben lets himself out of the glorified cell he shares with Kara and Casey, knocking Starbuck unconcious when she refuses to be left trapped during the chaos. He stares at her prone figure a moment and then leaves, locking the door behind him. Laura and Tom, meanwhile, are heading for their ships, but when Laura mentions that her ship - Colonial One - is off in a different direction, Tom mutters about her sense of the dramatic and dragoons a defensive Jammer into going with her and keeping an eye on her. They farewell each other with "see you up there" and some warm grins.
Galactica is preparing for a jump now that the basestars in NuCap's orbit have taken the bait and headed for the drones, launching their fighters on the way. Helo tells the flight pod to prepare to launch the other squadron, and Adama warns all hands to brace for turbulence. Turbulence in space? Um..
On Colonial One, they've figured out the ruse, and Simon (wow, Simon. Hi, Simon!) asks Gaius where Adama is. They'd be better off asking where Tigh and Anders are, because they're the ones firing at the compound gates right now, even if two cylon sentries have them pinned down. And then we find out where Adama is: Galactica has jumped into atmosphere and - obviously not designed for handling gravity - is falling like a rock, and launching fighters as it goes. Suddenly it jumps out again, leaving Vipers in play, and HotDog and another pilot take care of the gates and sentries for Anders and his team.
Inside the facility, they blow the doors, and civilians pour out, the marines and insurgents chivvying them out as fast as possible. Sam peeks through a door and sees Kara lying on the floor, still out cold. The fact that its her, and she's alive, is overwhelming: he kisses her, sounding almost like he's crying, and then hauls her over his shoulder, determined to get her safely out.
Galactica didn't handle the 'turbulence' all that well, displays all over CIC are sparking and flickering. Two more baseships appear, leaving them facing four... and their jump drives are offline. Adama's almost surprised to admit that they're done. He tells his crew it's been an honour, and from all over, Raiders and baseships converge on his battered ship. The camera pans... and more missiles fly in from offscreen: it's Pegasus. But the new ship isn't holding up under fire much better than the old one.
Back on NuCap, Kara wakes up in Ander's arms, but the tender moment has to wait a moment while she insists he put her down. There's our Kara! She asks him if it's really him... just what else did Leoben tell her in those four months, other than prophecy, religion and apparent motherhood? But they don't have time to discuss it, he tells her, summarises the rescue idea, but when she asks after Casey, he's clueless. She snatches the knife off his belt and runs inside, leaving him to straggle after her.
The cylons on Colonial One agree they've lost control of the situation and start to organize an evac. Three offers Gaius a berth on their ship, after all, being right when they were wrong has to be worth something, but the president seems to want to go down with his ship, er, settlement. And Gaeta's more than willing to make sure he does. As civillian ships start to lift off and jump away, and Galactica and her fighters manage to do the same, Pegasus and Baltar are both obviously intent on self-sacrifice.
Gaius talks Gaeta out of a bullet so that he can handle the nuke the Cylons have left on the planet, explaining to Felix that his actions were from his beliefs, his idealism, and they weren't wrong, either of them. But in the end, he's almost begging Gaeta to shoot him. And Lee tells his crew to abandon ship and sets his controls to autofire. Dee tells Lee to get a move on, but Lee lingers, looks around his bridge, and says thank you. As the escape raptors jump away, Pegasus plows into the base-stars, a flaming flight-pod breaking off to collect a third.
Back in the lovenest, Kara screams for the little girl, but Leoben's there, and he has her. He won't let Kara go until she says the words, the same ones he's been telling her she'll say all along. She says it, quietly: "I love you", and the look on his face is rapturous. He demands the kiss, and she closes her eyes and gives in, hesitantly. When they break, she asks "is it everything you thought it would be?" It is, and when he leans in again, Ander's knife comes out of Kara's belt and goes into Leoben's ribs, while Casey's impassive little face watches. Then Anders appears in the door, looks from the child to the dead cylon. "I'll explain later," Kara says as they flee.
Gaius and Six follow D'anna to the oracle's tent, where an enraged Three is destroying everthing, hissing 'you liar'. But when Gaius hears a baby crying and finds a dead Maya face-down in the dirt, her body sheltering little Hera, his mental six appears again, red dress the first flash of colour - other than blood - that we've seen on New Caprica so far. "It's her," she says. "The voice of god's new generation."
The corporeal Six is in amazement, but Three, who comes out of the tent and stares, is even more awestruck. Gaius doesn't resist when she takes the child, but as she walks away with the baby, lifts his gun to shoot her. Six stops him: Three won't set off the nuke with the baby still there. They're safe.
Laura returns to Colonial One; an uncomfortable Jammer looks on as she unwraps the scriptures - or is it her journal - and says she's ready to go, and Colonial One lifts off. And the Galactica, too, is reanimated: Tyrol, falling automatically into old roles, is ushering civillians to the hangar-deck until they can be returned to their ships, but stops dead when he sees on particular person disembark. Kara, with Casey, is laughing to be out and safe, and Tyrol's overwhelmed. "We thought you were dead" he comments, and Kara grins. "So did I."
"Who's this?" Tyrol asks then, ducking his head to peer at Casey; Sam would also like to know - not surprising, given that Kara did mention something about a daughter - and just as Starbuck's about to announce her news, a woman stops and stares and the child's face just light's up. It's Casey's real mother, the one that Leoben took her from, weeks before. While the mother's thanking her effusively, Kara tries gamely to smile, but there's something broken in it, as there is in the aborted attempt to reach for the toddler as the mother carries her away.
Elsewhere on the flight deck, Adama is greeting refugees, among them his own son. "Guess you didn't understand my orders?" he asks Lee, who retorts, grinning: "Never could read your handwriting." They hug, laughing, and before he can greet Dee, Saul's voice reaches them across the deck. There's a lot of respect in the glance they exchange, but when Adama congratulates him, saying he brought them home, Tigh's voice breaks. "Not all of them."
The admiral is swept away, carried on the shoulders of jubilant crewmen, but Saul walks away. He looks lost, and he, Kara and Gaeta are islands in the throng, none of them looking as though they've been saved from anything. And on Colonial One, a tearful Tory reports that Maya and Hera didn't make it off the planet. Laura doesn't blame her. "This is bigger than us," she says quietly. "This is life." Life, indeed. The show closes as Adama, his ship reanimating around him, shaves his mustache and goes back to work.
in my head
Yowzers.
No, really. What an episode of television... I can't compare it to an hour of television that I've ever seen before. Not because it's surpassingly brilliant, because I don't think it is, really, not quite, but because the impacts keep coming, keep coming, keep coming. Like waaaay back in '33', it's relentless, but without even the tick-tock downtime moments to let you catch your breath.
This ties up the first part of Exodus very neatly, rounds out both the Casey plotline and the oracle link, closes the book on Ellen Tigh and reunites Adama (and the rest of us) with the Lee we remember so fondly. It breaks Saul Tigh, and practically dismantles Kara. It gives us back Madame President (official or not) and neatly removes Gaius from suffering the consequences of his actions - or achieving the death he seems to be longing for. It also, at long last, relieves us of the presence of Pegasus and removes the human race from the unfortunate planet they'd fixed their hopes on last season. That's a hell of a lot to do in one hour, and somehow they've managed it without me feeling at all that any particular plotline has received poor service.
If my personal checklist suggests there's any storylines still left uncompleted, they're certainly not ones I'd liked to have seen crammed into this episode anyway. The newer ones - who's president? what's going to happen with all these officers back on the same ship? what's going to happen to Kara, to Tigh, to Sam? - aren't ones I expected to see addressed right away, so I suppose this is as close as Battlestar Galactica can get to a reset button. We have our old clunky ship, a lot of frightened civilians, and an unstable political atmosphere. We've been here before, only right now, it doesn't seem like it. An episode like this really does lead in to an exciting season. I just hope the season can follow through on such a promising beginning.
Moving on to the minutiae: Poor Tigh. Poor Ellen. OMG, poor Kara. At the moment of release, of her having not only Sam, but the one bright spot to come out of her captivity - Casey - and being back on Galactica, she's laughing. Laughing. She looks beautiful. Three seconds later? The emptiness in her face reminds me eerily of that first scene of the season, Kara laying a table, testing the tines of a fork... only this time, I think she'd probably like to use the sharp point on herself.
And Tigh, having now sacrificed not only dedicated but despairing people to the expedient of suicide bombing, has now poisoned his wife, either to punish her, or to spare her the ignominy and hate of a more public trial, or a bullet from an insurgency gun. In the end, he's done what he set out to do, he's got people off the planet, he's back with the old man... and only now he's seemingly realizing that it may have been better for him if he'd never made it off that rock himself. Now he has to live - alone - with what he thought he had to do.
I'm not going to debate the justice of Ellen's execution; the reasons for and against are as many and varied as the reasons for and against suicide bombing, and in the end, we will all make our own judgements because of who we are. The scene itself had amazing pathos. It's obvious to me that she knew what was happening - was almost glad of it - and didn't blame him. Like Gaius, she can't really forgive herself. But unlike Gaius, she wasn't acting selfishly, and so her death pulls far more heartstrings than Baltar's self-pity manages to do.
While Tigh and Kara's stories are the most central, emotionally, at present, there is one 'ship' issue that I need to mention. Dualla? excuse me, Mrs. Adama, but erm... can you stop? Please? the voice-of-reasonable-exposition schtick is getting old. Not to mention that while the scene with Lee at the beginning was minorly heartwarming, it was also full of crap. "Only to me", my ass. Lee's squirming like a four-year-old who needs to go pee, please, mommy, and you're the only one who can tell something's bothering him? Uh-huh. Plus, if the Lee you fell for is the one who's like his dad, the soldier who needs a war, et cetera, et cetera, then why the hell do you always, lately, seem to be trying to encourage him that the right thing is the one thing that's the very antithesis of Adama-ness? Playing it safe. Duty before your loved ones. Fuck off, no.
Not that I don't appreciate her trying to support him, trying to make following unpalatable orders halfway understandable, but if you know Lee, if you 'get' Lee, then you're knowingly encouraging him to do the very things that'll push him further towards self-destruction. So no. Please stop with the unoffical advisor to all men Adama routine. You did a much better job with senior than with junior.
It is nice though to see a quiet moment between the two of them that outlines at least some of the reason behind their relationship. It's the ultimate military alliance, really: the practical, considerate, cover-all-bases commander's marriage. I just wish I could see something more than lukewarm emotion in it. Not even the final scene, arm in arm on Galactica's hangar deck, showed anything more than relief. There was more warmth in the way Lee greeted his father.
I'm also feeling less than optimistic about Kara and Sam right now. He loves her, he was overjoyed to find her, and Kara couldn't believe that it was really him. Promising beginning, right? So where the fuck is he during the pivotal scenes? The woman he wouldn't really want to let out of his sight, and he takes long enough to find her from half a corridor away that he misses the culmination of Leoben's mindfuck? And with crowds teeming on the hangar-deck, with Kara about to splinter into a million pieces, he has a better place to be than right there?
He seriously needs to not be 'busy'. I don't fear adultery or arguments or anything else for this couple right now... what I fear is Kara having to rebuild her world mostly without Sam in it because he's too busy playing civillian hero among the fleet to be there for his wife. It's a real fear, too, because he's a man who acts, who needs to act: he's just like Kara. But if he acts by trying to find a new role, a new position of leadership, or even just a new ship to live on after all this mess, he's going to miss out. All he really should be doing is being there for Kara.
Still, he's very pretty. And at least there's some heat in the relationship he shares with Kara. Alternaship it may be, but I can still tolerate it with more equanimity than Lee/Dee.
All in all, the fabled reset button has been pushed and we're almost back where we started, on the run again. I'm itching to see where they take us, but seriously, seriously, it's going to be hard to live up to the promise of this episode.
Music and CGI were superb... and I don't really need to mention the whole Galactica inter-atmo jump, do I? Or the great battle sequences, or the stunning arrival of Pegasus for her climactic demise. They were all beautifully put-together scenes, though I think the one that touched me - surprised me, that - was the one where we saw the civilian ships lifting off, and one by one jumping away. I wanted to cheer each time they blipped out.
Acting? HMMM. Kate Vernon and Michael Hogan deserve the laurels, but their scene was short and intimate. James Callis and Alessandro Juliani both delighted me in their scene, too. And Katee Sackhoff made me cry, while her scenes with Michael Trucco made me actually approach squee, I was so glad to see a moment of brightness in Kara's bleak landscape. Any or all of these would be stand-out perfomances in their own right. But for nothing else, other than the wordless magnificence of his final two scenes in the episode, I'm going to pick Mr. Olmos for this week's winner. The way he came to life along with his ship, the sly humor of his meeting with Lee and the heartbreak of his meeting with Saul... Adama's back. And so's the rag-tag fleet.
And so's our show. Ten out of ten.
I have no idea what the next ep is about. Don't enlighten me. I am enjoying this season too much to want to angst in advance.