proud mary, keep on burnin'
TWO FANTASTIC LAURA EPISODES IN A ROW. THIS SHOW LOVES ME.
The Ties That Bind
Secrets - why we have them; why we need them; why they’re necessary; how far is too far to go. One can keep a secret but could be lulled into complacency at any time; three can keep a secret, if two of them are willing to kill; seven can only keep a secret if they don’t know it and they’re willing to kill each other to protect it; fourteen can keep a secret if none of them get mouthy.
I was so hoping they’d sent Gaeta with Starbuck. His being there shows that they’re taking the search for Earth seriously, not Adama just hoping against hope that there’s some mystical power guiding Starbuck. In fact, Adama sent an awful lot of important people on this - Helo is the CAG; Athena is one of their best pilots. (Wonder who’s taking care of Hera?) Anders and Seelix I understand; they’re hotshot newbies and therefore expendable and willing to take the risks they’ll need to take. I do wonder how the rumor got out with the rest of the fleet.
“I only married you because it was safe and it was easy, Sam.”/”We were really married, weren’t we.” Kara’s right, when she says both of those things; she means them both, and that’s not necessarily bad. Love can be safe and easy, I think; it’s that Kara can’t possibly conceive of it being that way. Of course it’s not safe and easy any more - because of her destiny, because of Lee, because he’s afraid she’ll kill him and thinks there’s a chance she’s like him all at the same time.
There’s just enough relationship talk in this, that is to say, very little, so there is lots of time for political drama. Which. LEE IS JUST THE BIGGEST SPLAINER IN HISTORY. It’s one thing for him to bring up EO112; even if he GOES ABOUT IT ALL WRONG LEE WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU, that really is his job, and his critique clearly has a lot of merit. But, when he starts off his entire political career by lecturing her on what she should tell the fleet, AS IF SHE NEVER CONSIDERED IT AT ALL, he’s just being grossly condescending. He’s not doing it in good faith, concerned about her political strategy, because if he was, he would have brought it up with her. He just wants to jump in and MAKE HER LISTEN to him in front of everyone. Oh, really, you were in the military, WE HAD NO IDEA! I just cracked up seeing her put him in his place. “I don’t feel the need to have a junior delegate appoint himself my spokesman.” DO YOU KNOW WHO HE IS, LADY? He is LEE! MOTHERFUCKIN! ADAMA! YESSIR BY GOD IT’S HERE THE LEE! THERE THE LEE! EVERYWHERE THE LEE THE LEE! SOCIAL-LEE! POLITICAL-LEE! HOW WILL HE ACT? INSUFFERAB-LEE! Though it is tough to blame him entirely for his presumption that the world REVOLVES AROUND HIM, considering that professionally, absolutely everything falls into his lap.
I do wonder if an EO is like it is for us, where Roslin could sign it on her own and have it be, or if the Quorum is half cabinet/half legislature and has to approve it. I mean, they’ve probably been rubber-stamping everything anyway, but still. Laura has a particularly bizarre set of incentives - she doesn’t expect to live long enough to stand for re-election, and Zarek is right that what she wants is to save them all - and even at less desperate times she’s pretty ruthless. So she has absolutely no checks on doing whatever it takes. She and Bill balance each other and make the good decisions between them, but there’s nobody outside who means anything. This is the episode where Laura really chills me. We’ve known all along that she’s a true believer and she’ll do anything herself, but the power she has over the few people who can provide checks on her is shocking; the potential for abuse is huge.
As for EO112, and leaving aside that Lee could not even let someone finish asking about food for his constituents LEE WHY ARE YOU LIKE THIS, he does have an excellent point about judicial independence, which is why he has an obligation to stop being a damn fool about his job. Laura’s idea of having a start to a judicial system is for her an almost absolute gain - she can appoint the judges she wants, think the fleet is in good hands, and let Zarek or whoever succeeds her sort out the technicalities. That doesn’t make her wrong to want to get something off the ground, but it also means the Quorum does have a responsibility to hash it out while they have some power over it.
He is so fucking easy to manipulate. It is astonishing. Zarek hasn’t challenged Laura, or approached anyone else on the Quorum to do it. It might have something to do with Zarek having a lot less capital than he likes to fancy himself as having, though if he can pull enough strings to orchestrate an appointment to the Quorum I tend to doubt that, and his time as domestic terrorist seems to have been forgotten by everyone but Laura and Lee. No, he puts it on Lee and sits back and watches the chaos unfold, as he knows it will.
And Lee…doesn’t really question why that is; at least, not enough to think before he runs his fool mouth. He just thoughtlessly tells Zarek that “I didn’t take this job to help you undermine the president.” And of course, once you make that clear, Tom Zarek will always back off. I’m not sure how to evaluate Zarek’s insistence that he’s on Laura’s side in all this; whether he means against the Cylons or in her political goals or what. Zarek is the one that stands to take the presidency if the cancer, if assassination, if anything, and so he’s going to be in favor of executive authority, and yet it’s going to be useful to him to have Lee give him more trust than he deserves.
He also uses Lee’s work a the trial against him expertly, saying that it was “unforgivable” to Roslin, as if she looks at politics as a series of grudge matches. Zarek knows that isn’t true (it’s not about forgiving with Roslin, it’s that she doesn’t forget anything, and keeps a running score to see who’s the most useful to her and how), but Lee doesn’t know any other way to look at the world than in a blur of hostile emotion, so he sells it. Also, not for nothing, but Zarek being all high-and-mighty about executive secrets is fucking rich, considering he was the one authorizing secret extrajudicial executions. Laura hasn’t done that. Her influence is insidious and in some ways more dangerous - she’s setting up precedent for a whole civilization based on circumstances so bizarre, her actions will have to be perverted beyond recognition once the dial turns even a little towards normal (and yet isn’t that how it always happens?) - but it happens within her ethical boundary of saving humanity.
I’m trying not to rag on Lee too hard here because of his general ridiculousness, I CAN LOL AT THAT ANY TIME, but this stuff? Serious issues. If he is so fucking entitled that he can accept such a hugely high position in government without even considering that there might be strings attached, that’s a problem because it’s foolish, and because it makes him less likely to have the tools to question power dynamics that reward privileged people like him while squashing everyone else. If he thinks so little of the president - because she’s a woman and he’s a man, because he’s young and she’s middle-aged, because he’s healthy and she’s ill, or what the fuck ever - that he can assume she has no idea how to do her job, it’s a pragmatic issue because he’s going to have a tough time working with her, and it’s the same moral and political issue about privilege. If he’s willing to cut other delegates off while they’re dealing with the basic necessities of life for their constituents, it shows he’s not prioritizing those basic necessities. That stuff is a problem. He’s smart enough to know all this, and it’s not about him any more, and if he didn’t understand that, well, it would be sad that he doesn’t have anyone he trusts to tell him what’s the what the way Laura and Bill do for each other, but it’s also downright negligent for him not to try to find someone. He wanted power, he got it, it’s time to suit the fuck up and pay attention to what it is he is actually doing, not just what he wants to do.
But it's really all about Cally. The show has a really blatant pattern of keeping someone in the background but building them up, giving them one good episode, and then axing them at the very end of it - Billy, Kat, now Cally, and it’s just a tell. At least Cally, like Billy, got to have a great role in a very good episode, but it’s still obvious. God, if you’re going to kill her just kill her. I was kind of hoping to just deal with the effect Tyrol’s changed sense of self would have on Cally and Nicky, rather than fridging, but here we are.
She’s been messed up since the nebula too, so much so that she’s on a psych cocktail that almost rivals mine. Combined with motherhood, a difficult job, and a terrible marriage, she might have gone self-destructive even without the shock of finding out that Tyrol was a Cylon. Tyrol really was giving Cally every reason to worry. Not for the reasons she thinks, obviously, and it’s not his fault, but I don’t blame her for her suspicion.
That didn’t happen, there’s no way that actually happened. OH MY GOD THAT HAPPENED. I love the callback to Six’s talk with Gaius on Kobol. Murder is your heritage, Six tells Gaius. We’re not inhuman, Tori says, and then murders Cally. Tori’s clearly in control of herself when she does this; does what human beings do all the time, kills for her own self-interest. It’s not about evil, she doesn’t let Cally take Nicky; in fact, she puts herself at great risk to save the baby. (I am wondering a little bit where Tori got the strength to smack Cally unconscious like that if not from special machine muscles.) But all that does is prove that she’s entirely in her head when she does it. And it would be pretty easy to make it look like suicide; she could put the keys back in the airlock and leave Nicky by the door and likely no one would think to ask any more questions. It’ll be interesting to see if that’s what she did.
Tori’s murder of Cally is mirrored in the willingness of the humanoid Cylon generals to engage in a power struggle and take each other out. It started at the end of the last episode with Six. She has no idea the threat she’s unleashed. That’s probably true. The Cylons bluff and double-bluff each other into what’s actually a battle with stakes (unlike Six shooting the representatives she was sure would resurrect). This is the logical end of the Cylons’ attack on humanity, and then of their own gaining of humanity - they’re now in it for something. For power. To protect their rigid hierarchal plurality, or to transcend it into something greater. And they’ve started to look for reasons why. Six’s goal, unite all 12…it’s like find Earth; mystical but possible, and they have no idea what they’re in for. I really hope Six gets her way on resurrecting Three.
Bill’s role in this episode is almost strictly as caretaker, with the exception of a couple of lines to the press, and it’s probably good for him to do this once in a while. With Laura, though. Bill. What are you even DOING. He’s trying, he clearly is, and I love the way the two of them meet time and again over mysteries. But IN THIS CASE why does he think she’ll want to listen to him talk about DEAD BODIES during CHEMO? BILL WHAT IS THIS. DO YOU EVEN THINK. Also, he starts in from chapter one and she looks a little surprised to see him; maybe they’ve just made up from their fight in the last episode? It doesn’t seem that way, since it’s been three weeks, and she doesn’t seem all that surprised to see him; a little, but not shocked, maybe I’m reading too much into it. But we just see him sitting with Tyrol, looking back at his stone face. He can distract Laura, he can have hope on her behalf even if she can’t bring herself to, but Cally is gone and there’s nothing he can do for Tyrol.
Escape Velocity
Apparently it is Aaron Douglas’ turn to rip my heart out and show it to me. He has to stand up there in front of everyone and lie about what he thinks about the lords; he doesn’t even notice because it’s nothing compared to the lie about himself that he’s both bought and sold. Seelix says the worst possible thing to him, that you’re only human, that she believes the lie.
Then he will turn around and lie just as viciously to Bill, he’ll do or say anything to get himself off of Galactica where he can’t be a danger, and where he thinks he won’t be reminded of Cally everywhere he looks. I don’t think he loved Cally like he loved Boomer, but he didn’t think of being with her as settling, either, until the unreality of his existence turned up and made him question everything. I think they were happy. And Tyrol does too, under it all, but Cally’s apparent suicide shook everything he knew about the memories he is sure about, and so there’s nothing he’s sure about any more.
Surprising but not all at the same time to see the president at a knuckle-dragger’s funeral - there’s a huge difference between them, but then, I bet she tries to go to all of them. She kills me to tiny pieces when she leans over to Bill and whispers, “I want you to know what I like.” (Bill is a HUGE DICK here. “This is a beautiful service.”/”It isn’t for me” AND IF YOU ARE AN ADAMA IT MUST BE ALL ABOUT YOU.)
But oh, Bill, with the book. “I like it so much I don’t want it to be over.” But he’s pretending, the same way he was faking his confidence a couple of episodes ago about her chances for survival. Laura’s lying too, that she doesn’t remember how it ends; she falls asleep to the sound of his voice. This is what they can do. They can pretend to have more time.
I don’t know why Laura didn’t get another transfusion from Hera, to be honest. It’s not like it’s bone marrow, it’s just a quick blood draw, and I don’t see Helo and Athena refusing and forcing her to die out of spite. Even if they did refuse, I don’t see Laura pushing the issue for herself the way she would it were someone else; I do see Bill having the hulk rage if they turned her down.
‘I don’t know how it doesn’t go nuts’ - Tigh did go nuts. H’s been looking for that off-switch for years, and sometimes he thought he would find it just one drink lower than the one before it. Love that he sees Six slipping into and out of Ellen’s appearance. It’s not really her and it doesn’t feel like an Ellen appearance, so I’m not as excited as I for sure would be. But Tigh’s guilt over what he’s done has to come to the surface, and to have it done in this way is really neat. Six doesn’t know what he is, though she might have some connection to him (I can feel them from a few episodes back) that she doesn’t quite understand yet. It doesn’t matter, she would offer him absolution anyway, but she seems to know what he needs in a way maybe she wouldn’t otherwise.
Tori has embraced her perfection. She found that off-switch Tigh’s looking so desperately for when she pulled Nicky off of Cally, and she hasn’t looked back. Think about what we can do. All those rules that were keeping her in check, don’t apply any more. (It’s amazing in context of her first appearance. There’s always an alternative plan for victory, ma’am. Still true, but there are more alternatives than she imagined in her wildest dreams.) Baltar is right to be scared of her; wrong that he doesn’t think through why he is. He doesn’t listen to his instincts on her. She doesn’t believe in Baltar’s crap about God, she believes she is more than and that’s enough. She’s really brazenly there during the cult meeting at the end, completely not caring that anyone (including Lee) could see her.
It’s a great Baltar episode as well. We finally see some physical interaction with head!Six, with Baltar getting up off the ground in a way that you just…wouldn’t do naturally, especially if you were hurt. Head!Six shows up when he’s uncertain or afraid. Head!Gaius only showed up when he was working to benefit himself, rather than keep himself from losing ground.
I thought for a moment Baltar was going to be Gaius at his best and say that the woman with the pendant should pray to all of her gods, that he hoped it would help, that he didn’t pretend to have all the answers. But he notices her just after the attack when he’s defensive anyway. And his anger is one thing, but going on the offensive on the temple is hugely foolish; and while his accusations toward Zeus are quite true, but the flinging of “witch” into the priestess’ face - the Christian attacking the pagans - that’s an ugly history he’s bringing up.
And Laura isn’t having his bullshit, Laura will arrest or threaten or whatever she has to do to contain him. “When people are dying they don’t care so much about rules and laws and conventional morality.” Chilling. She absolutely knows what she’s doing. And she doesn’t care. Then again, she’s never been one for conventional morality in the way, say, Helo or Lee are. She does right and wrong that she can handle. But throwing it in Gaius’ face means she’s recognizing that. She’s looking the fact that she will do anything square in the eye, and embracing it because maybe it will do some good. It isn’t just that, as Bill put his finger on a couple of episodes ago, she wants her death to mean something. If dying is what she’s doing, it’s one of the cards in her hand, and she’ll play it if and when it does some good. Anything. Everything.
I don’t actually think Laura is making the right decision with the group. Splitting them away from Gaius won’t actually change anything, they did form without his knowledge while he was on trial, so there’s not enough of an up side to justify it. She does it because she feels better while she’s cracking down; because 99% of the time things are better when Laura Roslin is in control, so it’s not actually that unreasonable a thing to think. But in this case, there’s not enough of an upside to justify it. And it’s not a smart thing to do, really, it doesn’t make him any less of a martyr than locking him up did, and the threats to the group will continue for whoever is with Baltar.
In fact, this follows the pattern almost exactly of the abortion episode. Laura makes a decision she doesn’t agree with based on Bill’s prodding, and she’s politically challenged on it. She’s been making the hard choices for so long that she doesn’t trust herself entirely on all the right choices, and that’s when she buckles down. But before, she could have some hope, she could think things would change, she wasn’t facing this horror from within and without and around and before and after in quite the same way; now she doesn’t cry. She spits now vote at them and walks out of the room. And I worry about her political strength, now that she’s been overruled by Lee Adama for the sake of Gaius Baltar, twice now.
She throws New Caprica in Lee’s face really deliberately, almost exactly the way she did to Helo in AMoS. Because they don’t all know what it was like. Lee was swanning around the commander’s quarters in the Pegasus. That isn’t really what she means, of course; New Caprica was awful but it really doesn’t compare with the fact that she knows what happened with the genocide. And she really doesn’t have any reason to believe he’s changed. We do, because we’re in his head from time to time, but she has every reason to believe he has willingly collaborated with the Cylons twice now and is amassing followers among the humans. Her terror of his influence might not be right, but it isn’t irrational. And she really wants it to be his fault. They’re provoking violence when they gather in groups. It’s for their own good. This group is different. This Roslin, after New Caprica, wouldn’t have thought twice about stealing the election.
So - YOU KNOW HOW IT HURTS ME TO SAY THIS - I think Lee ends up being right about allowing the group to meet and live together. But Laura’s equally right in her criticisms of his decision-making process. “Sometimes the right thing is a luxury, and it can have profoundly dangerous consequences, and it’s almost as if he just doesn’t want that to be true.” But no one does. Lee just thinks he is special enough that he can will a better world into being. He doesn’t even bother to have looked into Baltar’s group before pitching his argument. No, it shouldn’t matter, but it does, and he has a responsibility to at least try.
This. This is such a fantastically-drawn, consistent character. Because these are exactly my issues with the way he acts with Kara. Lee would be horrified if he realized how far and how hard he pushed her emotionally sometimes; if he let himself know how much the things he says mean to her. He wouldn’t be able to even relate to her again, he would treat her like she was glass, he would clam up entirely. But instead of dealing with it and eliminating that vulnerability, he doesn’t think of it at all. Same thing here, exactly. He would be shocked if he was as alive to the danger they are all in as Laura is. Shocked. He would buckle down too. Probably harder. But instead of dealing with it, of figuring out a way to make his peace with the decisions he has to make, he goes based on feelings and theory rather than facts. And sometimes that’ll lead him to uncompromising brilliance, but it’s more likely to steer everyone around him into danger.
I don’t do these things for you - no, Lee really doesn’t, he really does do them because standing up for the most hated person is how you stand up for everyone. In theory. And in some ways it’s courageous of him to do it, or it would be, if he would be willing to face that difference between theory and reality. You do them because your god wills you, Baltar answers, and that’s not quite right; Baltar can’t imagine wanting to make a decision because it feels right, and that’s how Lee makes his decisions. But still. There’s a singular spark within every living being. What Lee calls morals, Baltar calls God. Does it matter?
It’s not, in the end, all that different from Six’s lesson to Tigh about pain. Doubt is just as necessary for ideas. Our beliefs and actions have to stand up to scrutiny, especially if they’re going to have a huge effect on others. But Lee shuts down and blocks it all out, exactly the same way he did at the trial. There are pragmatic realities he refuses to face. He won’t, can’t have a crack in the wall or all his uncertainties come pouring back in. And I sympathize with that, I do, but this is the job he signed up for, he’s got to let himself have the tools to do it right, or he’s dangerous; far more dangerous than Laura could ever be.