do you trust me?
The Road Less Travelled
How do I make you believe? How does Baltar sell his religion to the masses, to Tyrol, to himself? How does Tory convince Tyrol and Tigh to abandon their self-made humanity and become more like her? How does Leoben convince Kara of her DESTINYYYYYY(TM)? How does Starbuck sell herself to the crew of her little pirate ship? (Fitting, then, that we don't see Laura and Bill in this episode - they're never going to convince the other, and they've both made their peace with that and moved well past it.)
I'm never quite going to get over the awesomeness that is BALTAR RUNNING A RELIGION IN HIS BATHROBE. BEST SHIT EVER. OK HEF. Baltar's pitch for his religion is so interesting. He uses the same critiques of the gods he used when he was arguing against the existence of any gods at all - I'm sure if I looked up those flashbacks to Caprica with Six. But really, people don't have any more reason to believe him; in fact, they have a lot less reason to believe him. Baltar is just running his mouth about one true god. The stuff he says about something perfect inside all of us is really quite beautiful, and his philosophical discussions of calling something "God" rather than believing in personal gods is very in line with the character; you can tell he really has thought about it. But at the same time. They've found the Eye of Jupiter, they saw the bizarre storm over it, they do have some reason to think at least some of the stuff in their ancient scrolls is true, and Laura Roslin is dying again.
Maybe she was afraid of you. Tori plays Tyrol expertly here. She's afraid he's starting to suspect her, or maybe she just wants to pry him away from petty human connections the way she's been able to do for herself, or maybe this is part of her power trip of what she can do - she's above other Cylons as much as humans. She's exactly right here, of course, Cally was terrified, and it's the thing haunting Tyrol. He doesn't buy her talk about an accident; he thinks antidepressants are magic and always work and Cally had no illness that made her kill herself. (It looks like Tyrol didn't end up getting reassigned from the Galactica, if he can haunt the airlock and Baltar can find him easily, but I doubt he's still the chief.)
Maybe it was god's will. Tori is accepting Baltar's preaching. Whether she feels it's true because she's with Baltar now, or because she has some connection to the Cylon monotheism (emotionally or via programming), or even just that they got to her at exactly the right time, she's accepted the idea of a larger plan without questioning her perfection or her superiority. I enjoy Tori so much in this that I kind of hate to be annoyed, but the fact that of the four people who have identity crises it's the one woman and POC who goes homicidal with her new power. That's unfortunate.
I love this episode for showing us that Starbuck and her mystical destiny or whatever isn't any kind of separate from angry, stubborn, belligerent Starbuck. This is who she is, and who she always has been; in that way, her story is a lot like the Cylons'. She points it out herself when Leoben tries to convince her she's changed from New Caprica and she says no, it's always me.
This isn't the first time one of them has come offering a truce. The last time it was Cavil. Leoben is, if anything, even less trustworthy than Cavil. Cavil you could at least tell was a smarmy jackass. Leoben, he's slippery, he gets people to doubt themselves and each other. Especially Starbuck, no matter how good a show she puts on, and he does eventually manipulate her into ordering one more jump.
"It's like I knew you were out there" - it looks like we're really supposed to buy that there's some mystical connection between Kara and Leoben. Which is so the single most appalling thing this show has ever done. Like there's anything that could possibly validate what he did to her on New Caprica, like there's anything that could make him on some level with her. At best, he's a computer that gets mystical emails about where Starbuck and Earth are; if the Cylons really are more than that, he's a mass murdering, attempted rapist, controlling piece of shit who wants to change Starbuck to something more like his disgusting self. His desire to break her specifically - Starbuck with her short hair and cigars and muscles, who's not proud of anything she has except her wings, Starbuck who still needs to learn that she deserves to be loved as much as she loves, Starbuck with her uniqueness and her singular destiny - into his little woman at home is just so fucking....Mad Men. eeeeurgh.
I do think he genuinely believes his visions though. "An angel blazing with the light of God," he calls Starbuck, and he wants to make her his angel. And he accurately describes Earth - "a blue planet, surrounded by clouds" - which he could only have done if he'd had a vision or could read Starbuck's mind. Then he refers to "our people" - does he think Starbuck is one of the Final Five? or does he think the skin jobs and humans will become one people? or does he agree with the hybrid that she'll end the human race, and he's referring to the Cylons? In contrast, he says "War has broken out between the Cylon" - implying that Cylons are one body rather than many entities. Whatever, he's the worst. GO TO HELL, LEOBEN. Seriously, someone explain the redeeming value of this asshole to me or LIE TO ME and tell me it'll make some sense in an episode I haven't seen yet. (Not like, people have to explain themselves for liking him or any other character. I just want to understand why people do.)
BUT ANDERS IN THE JAIL CELL. Anders kind of goes from quite likable to STEALTH AWESOME, huh? I always liked him but I wasn't all WANT MORE OF THAT GUY, YESTERDAY the way I am now. Good choice on machinifying this one, show. His point of humanity is Kara, and that's all there is to it. Leoben's a threat to that, so Sam is against him. He has the same kind of face-off with Leoben that Tigh had with Six, though Anders doesn't have anything to be absolved for, and Leoben isn't offering. They both just want to understand. Tell me who I am. Then Helo's removal of Starbuck is a threat to her position, and therefore her ability to protect him and his ability to stay out of her way enough to hide while he figures himself out, so, let's all think about what we're doing here.
The crew isn't having it, though. "He's going to realize this is all just a pipe dream." The Cylons all believe in Earth too, though; Athena has claimed to know more about it than the humans do (and Leoben does know more). And and! "The Cylons want us to rescue them. Well, that's....novel." Gaeta all snarky and scruffy? I'LL TAKE THINGS THAT MAKE ME HAPPY TO BE ALIVE FOR A THOUSAND, ALEX.
I adore Kara and I understand why she buckles down after Mathias' death, but the crew's right, here. Also not for nothing, but it's really not mutiny if CMC 10 allows the XO to relieve the commanding officer. (Didn't Lee try to remove Tigh at one point using that provision? Can't remember clearly.) It's a shitty call to have to make and one assumes it's really a last resort thing to make the XO feel better when forcing out the commander but still, it's perfectly legal, and they're well within their rights to do so in order to keep their obligation to Adama's order to report back.
I love how the show seems only to be able to remember one toddler at a time. Seeing Helo and Athena argue about whether or not to follow Starbuck's orders, without Athena mentioning Hera? That's unbelievable to me. I don't think that's why Athena is making the decision she does; she's being completely rational. But Helo is governed by his emotions, and Athena knows that, and she should be doing the best she can to win this argument. If she reminded him that they're going to orphan their kid if he follows that order? Article 10 nothing, he'd have locked Kara in the brig until they were back with the fleet. I understand him having to shut her out and focus on the task at hand, I dont' think they're bad parents (even if I do find it a bit supercilious that they were both willing to leave her on this suicide mission) but Athena is able to step back and look at the big picture in a way he's just not; she's the one that can bring that wall down, and she should, for all of their sakes.
The scene at the end of the episode between Baltar and Tyrol is for sure my favorite one of the episode and one of my favorite Baltar scenes ever. He acknowledges that he was wrong, he respects Tyrol's atheism, he honors Cally respectfully rather than showing off for the people around him. And he has nothing to gain politically or in terms of his religious power by going alone to see Tyrol, who isn't going to be a convert. Gaius is learning how to do right; he's internalizing his own teachings. As ever, as he started doing way back in S1, he's taking the workings of his own mind and calling them god both because it absolves him of responsibility and because he wants there to be something more. But it's not just about being chosen and having devout followers any more. It is about the message. The test will be if it all goes away.
Faith
This. This is one of those astonishing episodes of this show, where the action alone is enough to keep you involved, but every plot line folds in over the others and the same thing keeps happening and doing something completely different to every one of the characters and it's guuuuuuuh. Even if on reflection I actually HATE at least one major thing about every single plot line - AND I DO, I actually watched this before bed this morning last night and woke up angry twice - it's so skillfully done.
This...isn't really about faith, the movingness of Laura's and Emily's talk aside, except maybe that faith in others is just as unsupportable as faith in the metaphysical and maybe more so, and oh, the inevitable counterpart of Part I: you probably shouldn't believe me. It's about what happens when we ourselves are the enemy. On the Demetrius, it's not just about the mutiny (which parallels the Cylon civil war), but about Sam shooting Gaeta, and then Helo refusing to take him to safety, leaving him to be threatened with lethal infection by his own leg. On the base star, it's Six turning against her ostensible ally, and then Six killing Six, and then a centurion murdering Boomer (because of the reasoning granted them by her ally Six). The cancer is the most individual display of this; their own bodies turning against themselves. About Tori, who might be the one person Laura trusts (besides Bill, maybe) being the enemy. About Kara, who thought she was saving humanity, just to hear that she is the ultimate angel of death.
AND IT THROWS DOWN WITH SAM SHOOTING GAETA. Sam what are you doing? His rage at Leoben was understandable in context and he was keeping himself in check; now Sam is opening fire on a completely legitimate power exchange. The fact that it was the right thing for Helo to relieve Starbuck gets underlined when Starbuck buckles down and comes up with her plan after Gaeta gets shot. She really didn't internalize that she was endangering her crew. She should have come up with that before, told the crew to go back and refuel, and set up another meeting point with them.
Gaeta is a shockingly good manipulator even when he's on morphine. He asks for the promise first, then points out the worst-case scenario, then hints that he wants Helo to bring him back to Galactica. Why they can't bring him back and then go back to get Starbuck, or even send him back in one of the raptors, is beyond me, since they definitely won't be back in that short an amount of time. And it's probably beyond him as well.
I don't think anyone really realizes who they're fucking around with. I think they think of Gaeta as the good geek, as someone who got under Baltar's nose because Baltar was a drunken idiot, who didn't have to make the tough decisions of the resistance. But that guy has a core of ice in him to match Laura's. He didn't just lie to Baltar. He flew under the radar of all the Cylon models, including Boomer, who actually knew him. And he lied on the stand, calm as you please, staring down Lampkin and not giving away shit, for no reason other than evening a score with someone who liked and was good to him. The fact that he can do all this but is a good guy shows just what a good guy he is, because he could be getting away with anything and everything and nobody would ever be the wiser. He doesn't have to be afraid of rules or chain of command the way the rest of them do; he's sabotaged the president of the Colonies and a giant squad of skin jobs and centurions and put himself above the court of law in the blink of an eye and he's not going to be afraid of anyone any more. Anything, yes; he's afraid of losing his leg, of what he'll see as losing his independence, but he knows how to deal with fear of anyone. (The fact that it's Sam who shot him during this episode about friendly fire suggests even more that he's the last Cylon, but I fully admit that's probably wishful thinking on my part since LOVE THIS DUDE WANT MORE.)
There are layers within layers of the Cylon civil war. The Eights don't just turn on the Ones, but on the Sixes, taking inspiration from their estranged sister - "you showed us we don't have to be slaves to our programming" - but Athena has to see things in terms of lifelong loyalty because it's the only way she can deal with not looking back every day, the way she justifies putting up with the suspicion and fighting for her life the way the humans do (if she's killed, she'll be on the shelf next to Three) and how she resolves her genuine love for Helo, when she tried to mate with him and then kill him like some bug years ago on Caprica. I think she's being a little foolish here, lecturing the Eights, when she needs them immediately and they could be useful long-term, but I understand why she thinks this way.
And Athena will in some way get her wish to see the Eights destroyed, as Boomer, the leader of the Eights and the instigator of turning on the Cylon goal and making the world better, is murdered by the Centurion when it hears the hybrid's yell. But there's no good there, there's no win, all death is pointless.
Then there's Six, who's just as disgusted by the alliance as Athena is, but for her own reasons. I never did anything to her? Oh, aside from murdering EVERYONE SHE HAS EVER LOVED, chasing her around the galaxy, and then brutally oppressing her! IT IS NOT LIKE I MADE HER CHIP A NAIL! JFC. For Six to be suspicious of and hostile towards the girl, to not want to be near her, to want to work with someone else, yes I would support that, but Six herself was consciously in on this stuff. Voted on it, came up with strategy, walked around killing babies getting ready for it, and so she does not get to ask "what did I do to you?" as if all that was not even worth remembering. Oh, I nuked your entire world? THAT MUST HAVE BEEN CINCO DE MAYO, MY BAD, BUT CHILL OUT ALREADY. (I'm also not actually sure how exactly this Six knows she never went after Pixie Cut, because there's more than one Six, and they do all seem to share a propensity for beating the crap out of people recreationally.)
It's not about what was or wasn't justified from the outside, or whether Pixie Cut had neutral intentions or sadistic ones (almost certainly unjustified; almost certainly with sadistic intentions); once Six says that, it's an abdication of responsibility for her role in the Cylon war on the humans, including this human in particular against whom she intentionally escalates conflict (well, from her perspective, since she knows there's a difference between resurrectable and human dead; from my perspective it's already as escalated as it can go), that is what is so shocking it makes me wonder if the character has it in her at all to become good.
I have a real issue with making non-humans the representatives of The Other on some level. Because, what do we say about The Other? That they can fool us. That they're a constant danger. That they hate us. That they're simultaneously cunning enough to be a danger in ways we haven't imagined and yet enslaved to a primitive way of thinking. And they're out to kill us all. And on the one hand, this is the thing BSG does so brilliantly, take our hypotheticals and make them true. The show is basically the ticking time bomb thought experiment stretched out over four seasons. Okay, the Other here does want to kill us and is all of those things, what is and isn't acceptable in how we treat them?
But this Six story doesn't fit. It isn't a Hatfield-McCoy situation, this is about actual victims and actual perpetrators and the difficulties of getting past that for these individuals who have to see each other every day without any government authority or overarching rules to buffer the conflict, and that's a story I want to see, but it shouldn't be confused with a vague historic your people/my people situation. The Cylons (with the presumable exception of the four and maybe five sleepers), up until now, have just been such a threat by any rational means, it doesn't end up being an interrogation of hatred. Without appropriate complication, all this metaphor does is to reify the perverted logic of hatred and suggest that we should consider different means of channeling it. And that makes my hair stand on end way more than Pixie Cut and Six killing each other.
Which is SO FRUSTRATING because otherwise I really like the examination of the eye-for-an-eye approach to justice. The image of Six killing herself - specifically in the name of human justice - puts this right out in the open. Is this what you want? Is this what we all want? Senseless death of our own? Some of them, yes; some of them did until they saw it with their own eyes. Sam, holding the gun and staring down in horror, doesn't even know who his own are any more, and he'll aim everywhere and nowhere and he's so very dangerous and at his very best all at the same time, as he kneels to comfort Boomer as she dies. (He knows this himself, instinctively tries to put his hands in the plasma and get some answers, but he needs to be alone to do it safely - the way the plasma is there to remind us that the Cylons can never be.)
And is it even all worthwhile? What if we do figure it [how to escape the Ones' faction] out...do we just keep running...do we act like we made the humans act? Do we just chase down the hybrids' end of line, is it even worth being reborn, when it'll eventually all end with us on our knees and shot from behind? Emily asks almost exactly the same thing, why do we fight so hard for a few more days, why even bother?
Laura going through this as if the cancer is her story is actually damaging my opinion of the entire show. Isn't that something everyone with a chronic illness fears, that the illness is all there is to them, that it's not just going to take their lives but their spirits and their stories? So then for her to have to go through this...it's not that MM isn't doing a beautiful job, it's that it's sheer emotional manipulation and it's making me unhappy without furthering the story. I can't watch Laura hurt like this. I can't. This is the worst episode ever.
She never even gets to have friends. I hate this so much I can't deal with it. There was Elosha, who died. There was Billy, who died, and now she can't bring herself to let Tory in in the same way, which is good because Tory is skipping merrily down the darkest of paths no matter how much Laura depends on her. And now Emily. She has fantastic relationships with other characters in that they're interesting, but she doesn't have friends. All she has is Bill, and aside from my many reservations about him, that's not reciprocated - he has his son and his crew and Tigh. Hell even the Cylons have each other as co-conspirators, even if they wouldn't choose to hang out for fun. She is so alone.
She doesn't even have her faith the way we thought she did. She doesn't seem to be entirely putting on a show when it comes to the scriptures as useful tools to find Earth, but even she doesn't trust their divinity, not when it comes to herself. "They're not meant to be taken literally, Emily, they're metaphors." And Emily's right that she's talking about herself when she's talking about her mother. Her students would walk through fire for her...this woman, she seemed so eternal...so sure, so holy, so worthy of devotion, of walking through fire or flying off alone to a nuclear wasteland or staging a jailbreak or stealing an election; Laura could be describing herself and she's saying she with all of her courage in the face of everything that's happened to her is still so afraid. I hate this.
But still. Though I hate everything else that happens in this episode. You made me believe. This is the show's language of love. Not flowers or Grand Gestures or extolling of virtues or even weddings (we've seen marriages, we've never seen a wedding) but this. I trust you, I take what you say on faith, you have earned a change in me and now we're each other just a little and I ask nothing from you but the chance to tell you I rejoice in us. I believe you. EXCUSE ME, I HAVE A MYSTERIOUS AND INEXPLICABLE FOGGY GLASSES SITUATION TO DEAL WITH.
other thoughts
- Why do I have this horrible feeling Laura is going to appoint Lee as VP, die, and leave that little shit to smarm and Leesplain at the population unchecked forever and ever condescension without end amen? I WOULD JUST EXPLODE. TALK ME OFF THIS LEDGE, FOLKS. All I want from this show is for Laura and Bill to get that cabin by the river and for Kara to beat up everyone! IS THAT SO MUCH TO ASK?