Ok, thoughts on the lovely existential No Exit behind the cut
First reaction: I am totally psychic. The whole 'catatonic Sam' reference in Alone? Boom! Here it shows up in the show! When I get to the point in Edge where all that is relevant, everyone is going to totally think I just reworked the S4.5 plotline, when in fact I came up with it entirely on my own. That's ok! It's still fun.
Wow, what an episode of exposition, but really the most amazing and fabulous exposition ever. I love Ellen as the final cylon. Her reaction to the processing, as she remembered who she really was, and then the awesome, loving way she put up with Cavil's attempts to torture her for a year and a half was just lovely.
Cavil himself is all kinds of creepy, and pretty much to blame for all of the horrible things that have happened on the show, ever. Including everything Boomer went through, which backfires on him! But at the same time, I understand Cavil, even if I can't muster up a lot of sympathy for him, I get why he is the way he is. Which I attribute to Dean Stockwell being amazing.
As for all the Sam/Kara stuff, I really liked seeing her in that situation. I've always liked Sam as a character, despite that K/L won my shipper heart in S1. Watching Kara try to do the right thing for Sam, watching her try not to punch the lights out of the annoying brain surgeon (PC guy, hee!) was just awesome. I'm really curious about where they're headed with this in terms of the relationships. There have been too many odd little moments between Lee and Kara in 4.0 and 4.5 for me to think that they're going to drop that romantic relationship, but there are all these weird clues about the Kara/Sam thing that I'm not really sure what direction that's headed either.
And then there's Daniel. And if one of the Daniel's survived to be Kara's father that makes Sam like her grandfather, Leoben like her Uncle and her Twin-thing with Lee the least incestuous relationship she's had! (If you don't count Baltar, and I don't, on account of that just being creepy!) O my!
And while all that would explain Kara, I can also see Ron creating the Daniel storyline solely to explain why there's no #7 and to give a creepy Cain and Abel vibe to Cavil's backstory. For Kara, it might not mean anything more than a sort of red herring to get us all to speculate while her real explanation is something else entirely.
And poor Galactica is falling apart. I loved that plotline with the Chief and Adama, and I loved the awesome CGI steampunk shots of Galactica's engines!