magnificat anima mea dominis
He That Believeth In Me
That card at the beginning about the four of them living in secret isn't actually true at the beginning of the episode; they haven't had a chance to come clean. It feels like such a long time to me because we took all that time to press pause for Razor, but oh, everything has just happened for them. Tigh is so terrified of what he might do that he can't quite do his job. Anders suits up but he's terrified, and can't bring himself to snap the fuck out of it. Tyrol, though, is absolutely amazing. He's barking out orders, mobilizing everyone on the deck, and getting Anders on in the plane. He's the Chief. The rest of it's irrelevant.
Tori, interestingly enough - perhaps because she's not in a position to contribute directly to the fight the way the crewmembers are, but close enough to the president to be able to do a great deal of damage - seems to be the one who considers letting on. "Maybe something's changed." It's not that any of them have changed, but everything has changed for the four of them. Tigh, though, stomps on the idea of outing themselves, though he's the one who's in the least control of himself even when he's not subject to some remote Dylan song. There's a moment where Tori, Tigh, and Tyrol are lurking behind Laura, Bill, and Lee while they're considering what to do about Kara, and while it's such a fun moment, it's also kind of unusual; do they really have that level of clearance that they should all be in on this talk?
I don't really know what the smart thing for them to do is here. It looks like a suicide pact at first, but then we see Anders with Starbuck down by the wall. So it's not clear. That would also be a monumentally foolish thing to do, as Anders tells them. Anders being a Cylon is what got them to back off the fleet; them being around can help. If their goal is to continue to do their jobs protecting the fleet, they're even better-suited to do that than they thought they were.
Maybe he's suggesting that one of them should take out the other if they seem to be acting on remote programming? But that doesn't make any sense either. It can all happen so quickly, the damage would be done before they could handle it (Tigh himself imagines shooting Bill in the head, realizing that it would all happen too quickly to stop); and besides, they know they can all be triggered at the same time, so one of them wouldn't be able to stop another from carrying out their parameters.
On the one hand, it's thrilling to see them take this idea of being who they choose to be to its logical conclusion. For them, it might be a choice between being an enemy or being dead and nothing at all, and dying is what will make them into the people they choose to be. And yet on the other hand it sets off my suspicion because it's Tigh who suggests it - Tigh who thinks in terms of killing the enemy rather than accomplishing any particular objective. His willingness to kill Ellen for being the enemy sets this up perfectly - he's the enemy himself now.
Who else would he be? It feels a little contrived that Six and Athena don't know who the Final Five are, to be honest, but I'm hoping it will be explained. It's also going to feel a little bit strange if they don't talk to Sharon. Everyone else, I can see them maybe deciding it's not safe - Kara's not kidding when she tells Anders she would shoot him; Roslin would for sure take them out if she found out - but they need Sharon if they're going to learn how to control their programming. (It also seems a little unusual that she didn't hear the song? For some reason it was directed at these four characters rather than all the Cylons.)
All the suspicion, though, falls on Kara's head, and not unreasonably so, to be fair. It's just so discordant but great to see her be exuberant, triumphant Starbuck when she hops off the plane joking and yelling out for Tyrol and joking about vacation snaps. Then she's absolutely genuine when she starts telling everyone about her feeling about Earth, and frustrated when they won't listen to her; though I can see why they don't buy it, and not just because she could be a Cylon.
Bill wants to believe her but he just won't be burned again. (This isn't the first time Starbuck showed up alive when she should by all rights have been dead; they've all been through too much since S1 to have hope any more.) And yet Bill's skepticism is starting to look a little like denialism. "Do you believe in miracles?"/"No." But...they're starting to have a little reason to do just that. He can't let himself believe just to have Kara yanked away yet again. "You once said you loved me like a daughter..trust me on this one"/"I can't afford to." God, poor Kara. It's not that he meant it when he disowned her, it's that he didn't ever really mean it when he said he loved her like a daughter. Lee will underline it for us when he asks Bill "what if it was Zach?" suggesting that Bill's response would have been different if it was one of his own children.
The most hard-line against Starbuck is Laura. She knows where they're going, and she's not going to trust this maybe-Cylon with changing her plans. It's kind of great to see Laura as the voice of skepticism here, even though I'm inclined to believe Kara when she says she had some mystical experience and has been to Earth. (Or this could be Roslin's gut instinct telling her something along the lines of what the hybrid said to Kendra about Kara in Razor - yes, Kara will take them somewhere, but it will be a place they don't want to go.)
Because she's become a figure of prophecy and a much more literal religious person (if she was religious at all before the attacks; it's quite possible she wasn't) it's easy to attribute all of her decisions to fundamentalism, but really, it's just her own way of weighing costs and benefits showing up. At first, it was worth pretending to be looking for Earth because it helped people get through the day. Then it looked like there was a little bit of a chance it was real, and what the hell, they had to be going somewhere - pretty much nothing to lose, but everything to gain, so it was worth going for. The stakes go higher every time they find a clue, to the point that they do risk lives going after the Eye of Jupiter, but at the same time, every clue they find points to the literal truth of Earth if not necessarily the literal truth of their gods. So when Kara shows up claiming to have had this impossible experience, Roslin doesn't just have faith the way she might have a couple of years ago. She doesn't trust anyone's instincts but her own, first of all, but she also has some reason to think that they're heading in the right direction.
Oh, I liked that Bill-Lee scene in the amphitheater. I don't know when Lee had a chance to get all self-reflective, but it really is a good talk. Or when, exactly, did "the government" have time to try to poach him, exactly? It all just happened yesterday! And I'm not sure who in "the government" was going to actually go recruiting him during the trial, when he was fucking things up for the government and especially the president. Maybe Zarek? That would be an interesting route to go for sure. Laura might put it behind her if she senses Lee is useful enough, but I'm not sure she's quite there yet.
They just seem to be getting a chance to make some peace with each other. Bill is great, recognizing Lee's genuine contribution to the battle and offering him his wings back. Lee, for his part, seems to have had some clarity about why he did the right thing for the wrong reasons in leaving the military, and it's not a vicious fight when he sticks to his guns on it. Just an explanation. He's also the only one besides the Cylons to decide that the person you love is the person you love, whether or not they're a person at all. He tries to tell Bill how he feels about Kara, I think, but he never quite gets there; maybe it's irrelevant or maybe he doesn't trust Bill with it.
"Is she still saying in your quarters?"/"Just till we find a place to put her up." This is what I mean about the show being weirdly oblique sometimes on Laura/Bill. Why does Bill feel the need to pretend to Lee that he's not in a relationship with the president? Why not just say yes? Lee isn't being a dick there, really, just doing what Bill and Laura do for each other all the time, forcing Bill to acknowledge that he may not be completely impartial when he's making this decision and reconsider, and that's really important. (I also don't know why Lee doesn't just say that though; he doesn't seem as if he doesn't want Bill to have this chance. We all deserve to be happy. OH RIGHT BECAUSE IT IS ALL ABOUT HIM.)
Baltar, for his part, is Pontius Pilate on the ground and Christ in the air. His cult seems to be the fantasy life he pretended he had on the Cylon ship and New Caprica, maybe not with the luxurious trappings but with the adoration of pretty young things all around him, though whether it's for real, or whether the actual responsibility of people looking up to him in this way, remains to be seen.
Baltar's prayer. Oh. He's finally come to recognize what he's done. If he'd been convicted, he never would have thought through, he would have been so angry at the incorrectness of the trial that he wouldn't have acknowledged what it is that he did, but as it were, he's faced with suffering right in front of him, and he can't abide that, so he falls to his knees and for the first time hopes for something he doesn't understand. And whether it's God or gods or the little boy's immune system, we get a little chance to believe in the future as the child is spared.
I actually got a couple of chuckles out of this plot line; it's not that I find what's happening not believable per se, but that the Baltar storylines always have a little bit of absurdity and humor to them, and this is a fantastic example. Like how they thought to throw an orange towel over his head FOR THE STEALTH. Which does make a little sense when you check out their headquarters and it becomes clear that someone thought to bring along some of that New Caprican grass. And how much did Baltar's acolyte remind you of Hilary Faye with her talk about smiting in the name of God's love? You know she would take a crowbar to someone for the glory of the OTG. AND HOORAY FOR THE HAIRCUT FINALLY. (Also kind of loved Six's red Palin blazer.)
Gah that last minute at the end! It's almost exactly the shot of Gina shooting Cain - I'm pretty sure Gina was wearing army surplus stuff when she marched into Cain's quarters. Except Starbuck doesn't have the same reasons as Gina. Gina killed Cain in revenge, not for any particular purpose; Laura's done nothing wrong here but Starbuck's doing it towards a legitimate purpose.
Six of One
It's always a question with this show, what makes us do the things we do? But this is the episode where it gets dragged to the forefront, enough that it's commented on at least once in every grouping of major characters. All the major events lately have a secular explanation and a metaphysical one. Which explanation the characters will choose to believe seems to depend on how much control they think they have over their world - Tigh and Adama, the officers, come down on the side of skepticism; Kara the prisoner and Laura the cancer patient have accepted that they're not in control of their lives and so they choose to believe that something good is, because that's a way to keep it together, just enough to get through the day.
Which. Kara. karakarakara. What are you doing. "I wanna hate you so much." And the fact that she says that shows she doesn't; that she can't. They're on the same side, they're fighting so brutally because they're so passionately dedicated to the same thing. And Laura, at least consciously, takes what Starbuck does as confirmation of her worst fears (they really made you perfect), rather than evidence of Starbuck's desperation to find Earth again. I doubt just as much as Bill does that Laura really meant to hit Kara, on some level I think she did doubt, and yet I don't have any doubt that she would do it.
But it was Kara being dragged off that almost did it to me, shouting her belief to everyone who won't listen, and if that hadn't shattered me already, the confrontation with Bill would have anyway. Bill continues his appalling tendency to attack girls when they are completely helpless. She hurts his feelings and he chokes her. The president's illness is his Achilles heel, and Starbuck is brutal in going for it, but that's a completely out of line reaction. Laura, that was one thing, horrifying yes but different; Kara was right, it was about whether or not she was a Cylon, and she convinced Laura she was, and one whose programming was violently on the fritz as well. But she's harmless here! Chained up! BILL ADAMA YOU WERE NOT RAISED LIKE THIS. SHAPE UP. But she still, if not convinces him, manages to move him to acknowledging the possibility of something greater. It was like I'd been there before. Like I never left. All of this has happened before.
Really great stuff going on with the Cylons in this episode. I actually usually don't care so much about the Cylon scenes except to understand the show's worldbuilding a little better, though there's always a lot of intellectually interesting stuff there. They almost never make me actually more sympathetic to the Cylons overall, because the more they're humanized, the more culpability they have for the whole genocide situation (since they straight-up chose it instead of were programmed to do it), so either way it doesn't muddy the moral waters for me the way I think it's supposed to.
But now, it's working for me, because the Cylons are changing and acknowledging that change. It didn't start with the raiders. It started with Boomer and Caprica trying to make the world better, with Athena loving Helo and Six loving Gaius, it started the day their faith spurred them to action rather than compliance. What the Cylons are doing is just fascinating. Usually we look at "you become what you try to destroy" in a negative sense, abyss looks also blah blah blah, but what the Cylons are doing is becoming human; gaining our capacity to doubt, our willingness to love, our subconscious instinct, and even our better nature. The children don't kill the parents, they become the parents.
Part of that is the nature of disagreement. It's not just Boomer splitting with the other Eights. It's Six starting to ask why and Cavil answering just because (which is not all that convincing from someone who says his only god is reason), and then relying on Boomer's humanness that allows her to break with the other Eights and get the Cylons to act like machines. He does evince some belief in mysterious "original programmers," who while not divine, were so wise as to be unquestioned, and so isn't he making them into his own gods? Why is he so sure the final five are anywhere but with the humans? They're humanoids! Where the hell else would they be, tennis camp? In the end, Six will continue the cycle, giving the Centurions that same gift of reason that the humans gave the Cylons. All of this will happen again.
Team Sekrit Cylon continues to have fantastic meetings. I really enjoy getting to see Tyrol's mind at work. It's always been quite clear that he was very smart, but that it's overlooked by everyone around him. Here, it's the way he's the one to think to target Baltar for information. Tigh's the one who does the most blustering, but the Chief is the one they listen to. Tigh runs with it by being crass and ridiculous at Tori, and good on her for standing up to him about it while still going about her mission.
I am a little surprised, though, that Tyrol hasn't brought up anything about Nicholas yet. If Hera really was an evolutionary step forward, so is Nicholas. If they're after her, they're after him too, as soon as they figure out he's real. Tyrol is really the one with the most to fear besides death, and it makes me feel for him, but it also emphasizes just how dangerous they are when they're not saying anything.
But out of these four, it's Tori who will do it to me in this episode. Oh. My heart just breaks for her. She doesn't do it for information. She goes across his path to protect herself and the other three, true, and to find out what he knows about the fifth. And then she does it because he doesn't know, or maybe because she thinks he suspects but is the one person who won't care; because when she hit it off with Sam they fell into bed as a man and a woman and stood up as faulty, deadly machines, because she's so afraid she doesn't get to choose what she's done and what she does that she just doesn't quite care. Gaius is bizarre and clueless as ever with her but also really as genuinely kind as he's capable of being about it. Which is exceptionally jolting, with our Gaius having been at his smarmiest with his followers, and then seeing him have it out with himself instead of Six as he's trying to puzzle through what's going on with Tori.
I think it's the Laura/Bill fight that underlines for me more than anything else why they work together as a couple. I love seeing Laura bark "sit!" at Bill (DOWN BOY! ROLL OVER!) and seeing him do it. They're completely honest with each other. Bill isn't hiding his uncertainties from her; she's snapping at him instead of putting on a gracious show the way she does for everyone else. And they're like this to the point that each consciously knows the other better than themselves. They don't particularly like it - "You can stay in the room but get outta my head."/"You're so afraid to live alone."/"And you're afraid to die that way." - but they do clearly need it. And yet it hurts me that she we don't see her call for him when she starts pulling out her hair. He throws her fear of dying alone in her face, and then leaves the room just for her to have to watch her own life slip through her palms, alone. WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU, BILL. SUCK IT UP.
I finally get my wish to see the crew have a legitimate wild party in the mess, on the occasion of Lee's departure. Which. OMG IT WAS ZAREK! YAHTZEE! Oh, this is so interesting. I absolutely cannot wait to see this develop. YES I DO TALK ZAREK EVEN WHEN HE HAS NOT BEEN ON SCREEN THIS SEASON. It certainly answers my questions about when "the government" started approaching Lee; Zarek would have swooped in the day he saw Lee sitting there at the trial in his suit, if not the day the trial started. Their fascination with each other is so, so rich with potential. NOT IN THAT WAY I C U. (Funny how Zarek and Lee are all okay with nomination instead of democratic elections when they're the ones who get to make the call, no?) I so so hope this means that we'll get to see more of the political drama of the whole fleet.
Zarek....I think he realizes Lee is useful. Lee has great potential because of his own strengths as well as his position as the Adama heir. And he's most useful specifically to whoever gives him his start. He's suggestible. He flounders when he starts something, no matter how well-suited he is for it, because he takes his responsibility very seriously and has no faith that he can live up to it. But there's also this vibe of...sullying purity, almost. Lee genuinely believes in the things he does. So to get him to challenge those beliefs, or to change them, is a challenge and a trophy all on its own over and beyond his usefulness.
Lee, for his part, is equally fascinated by Zarek. He doesn't want to rebel, quite, but he wants to be free and to be able to prove it to himself. And that's not quite rebellion. He didn't break out of jail with Roslin or join Baltar's defense team because he wanted to stick it to Bill - leaving the military impulsively during Crossroads was sweetened by that but I don't really believe that was about rebellion per se - he did it against all of his instincts. And so he's captivated by these individualists, however awful they are, he thinks he can walk that line, that he's exorcised all his violence and is ready to embrace his mental power. And so when opportunity knocks, Lee answers the door, even if it means leaving on the arm of the devil.
I was completely successfully manipulated at that scene where Lee leaves the Galactica. Of course this is what gets Bill to respect him. He did everything Bill said, everything, and he has no idea what Bill meant; then again, neither did Bill. Oh. His face. He doesn't think these people ever respected him, ever cared about him, ever even noticed him as more than the voice barking orders at them. It isn't sad, because he's doing the right thing by the future while getting the chance to celebrate his past; it's right, it's good, it still breaks my heart.
But oh, the most heartwrenching is the scene in the brig. I believe you. And I think he does, in that moment, even if he never would if it wasn't Kara, even if he never believed in the lords or in Earth or in any of it, even if he starts doubting again as soon as he walks out of the brig. This is the kindest, most selfless, most genuinely loving thing we have seen him do. This isn't asking for anything, this isn't pushing anything, this isn't throwing off their tense equilibrium. This is trust. This is faith. This is a gift, the one that means the world to her, the one he has never in his entire life been able to give until now. It's absolutely beautiful.
Lee gets a dramatic send-off with everyone there, Kara gets Bill and Helo taking the cuffs off her. So fitting that Helo is the one Bill works with to set up this mission. He's the one who figured out Kara's visions, who's always matter-of-factly accepted her and been there to support her. I love their friendship.
At the end, Kara does finally get her wish, for Bill to actually love her like a daughter. They're on the tarmac where they were when Lee left. He's putting trust in her like he's put trust in no one. He's saying, I might believe you, and that's more than I've ever done. Even the music in the background is the same theme as the one that was playing when Lee left. I'm hoping she won't be gone for too long, though.
I continue to absolutely adore the character work in this show. There's no dark half/light half situation with these characters, and they're not self-contained either; they're a bunch of fully-formed people in Three's hall of mirrors; you drop one of them in the center and they all stare back from different angles. It's beautiful. You could just about take any two people from the main cast or even most of the supporting characters and learn so much about each one from the other.
other thoughts
- So, okay. Did they know developing all of these characters that they were going to be Cylons? Or were they assigned as they went along?
- I don't even feel happy at joyful Kara/Lee moments like when he hugs her as she gets out of the plane. It just left me gasping for air. Oh, kids.
- I seriously watched these two episodes and wrote this whole post in one day, not 24 hours one day, and I'm so sure I'll do it all over again tomorrow. This. Oh my GOD THIS SHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW.