Sacrifice
After my happiness Scar, I was kind of riding a BSG high but I was well aware, in the back of my head, which episode was coming up and I wasn't looking forward to it. Sacrifice is an important episode because of how it shifts character dynamics and, let's be honest, that scene with Laura in the morgue makes me cry every time (so, apparently, Daybreak actually isn't the only episode that fills my tear ducts). But . . . I've never liked this episode. I mean, it's no That Episode Which Will Not Be Named, but it has quite a few problems. So, yeah, I was a little reluctant to harsh my BSG mellow but, when it comes down to it, I want to finish this disc this weekend so I can finish season two in the next week so that means I just have to force myself to watch episodes I don't like and write reviews about them. Such is my lot as someone who tasked themselves with watching and reviewing all the episodes of the series.
So, let's get to it, my friends. Walk, at an acceptable pace, to the cut.
1) Sacrifice begins with 49,590 survivors, three less than Scar. Those three are accounted for: JoJo, BB, and Riley, all killed by Scar.
2) I'm not kidding you all. My notes for this episode are paltry. It's easily the smallest amount of notes I've taken on an episode yet, and we're something like twenty-eight in. I have, literally, only five points. And two of them aren't even important! That, to me, signals something about this episode's most fatal flaw: It's frakking boring. I was incredibly disinterested in what I was watching. Not in the same way I was disinterested in the story of That Episode Which Will Not Be Named, because at least this plot line made some sense, but I had almost zero interest.
I think it was a bad idea to have the focus of the episode be a character we've never before. I feel for Dana Delaney's loss of her fictional husband, but I don't sympathize with her any more than anyone else in the fleet who lost everyone they'd ever loved. I mean, think about it. At least Dana Delaney had six or so months with her husband, time that some would argue was borrowed.
I think Dana Delaney does a fine job in the role, but there's not much for her to do, really. And I'm not really rooting for her to win or lose. I was just waiting for something more interesting to happen.
3) I did find it amusing that Ellen thought Lee was coming on to her when he was ushering her, for her safety, to the bathroom. And she was totally going along with it. Ellen's reputation, it would seem, is not at all unfounded.
4) Also, aside from not being particularly three dimensional, Dana Delaney needs to conceal her weapon better. Lee could see that gun poking out of her trousers from across the room.
5) See? I told you I had two unimportant points.
6) Okay, so let me actually try to talk about the important parts of this episode, because there were some. First, let's talk about how Kara shoots Lee.
So, um, Kara shoots Lee.
The End.
No, I'm just kidding. It's actually kind of interesting coming off of what Starbuck was going through in Scar. In that episode, her reckless behavior was endangering the people around her. I mean, I can't really blame the deaths of JoJo, BB, or Riley directly on Starbuck, but JoJo wasn't supposed to be on rotation when he died. Kara was. So, yeah, recklessness, right? Here, it comes back to bite her again. Adama asks her to send someone in as a maintenance man in order to scope out the situation. Starbuck goes herself and when there's a small hint that her cover's blown, she whips out two concealed guns and just starts shooting. One of Dana Delaney's henchmen is killed, two marines are downed, and Lee, who gets in the way of Starbuck's shooting range, gets shot in the upper chest.
Frak, right?
Good ol' Starbuck shooting her pseudo brother/crush. In what could have been an entirely preventable situation.
Her reaction to it is kind of interesting. She's obviously stunned, probably because she didn't know at first if Lee was alive or dead. But when she watches Dee with Lee in sick bay, her look is kind of hard for me to interpret. Was it simply a look of extreme guilt for shooting her non-Helo-BFF? Or is there something else in her expression? Maybe regret, mixed with guilt, over the state of their relationship in general and his obvious closeness to Dee?
I don't know. I tend to ere on the side of extreme guilt, but it did give me something to think about.
7) Okay. So . . . Billy.
Poor Billy.
Now, BSG fans (if you're still out there) please don't hurt me, but I've never really gotten the appeal of Billy. In terms of presidential aides, I've always been on Team Tory (not a spoiler. Of course Laura gets another aide. She's a president for frak's sake). I've never found Billy particularly compelling even when he was standing up to Laura as she escaped from Galactica's brig (though I do love him for smuggling in some chamalla for her).
That said . . . I was sad to see him go, especially in this kind of an episode. And talk about adding insult to injury. His scene with Laura in the halls of Galactica was kind of cute. They were really close. Laura later says that Billy's certainly the closest thing she has to family and I'm sure he could have said the same to her (aside, I suppose, from Dee). So, he basically tells Laura, "BRB, Mom. I've gotta propose to my GF" and Laura's like, "Smirk. Go get her, Tiger" and then everything goes to hell.
You know, when Billy discovers Dee with Lee (ugh, annoying rhyming names) on Cloud 9, I was really impressed with him. And I think he's totally right. It would seem as though Billy and Dee always had a very straight forward, honest relationship, so for Dee to be pining for Lee behind Billy's back and to actually be on a date with him the same night she rejects his proposal is really underhanded and not something I'd expect Dee to do. I mean, this can't be the same Dee who shamed Adama into going back to Kobol, can it?
And then, Lee's shot and Billy has to watch Dee weep over his body. Billy, good guy that he is, tries to comfort his just-barely-ex-girlfriend over her new beau and still keeps her first in his mind. He's trying to figure out a way to save them all. And, of course, that's what gets him killed.
I do think that Billy died a noble death. He died trying to protect Dee. But really? You're going to kill Billy in this episode?
Death can be seriously random. One minute you're alive and the next minute you're walking into a nightclub and getting held hostage and shot. So, it doesn't bother me that Billy died in some random episode in the middle of season 2.5. It just bothers me that the focus of this episode was Dana Delaney. Billy wasn't my favorite character and he wasn't a main character, but I kind of feel he deserved more than to bite it in such a boring episode about a woman we'd never even met before.
8) But, frak. That scene with Laura in the morgue . . . It guts me. Because Billy is all she has and, looking back at this episode from the perspective of having seen the entire series, I feel it's a real turning point for her character. I think there are three Laura manifestations in the series. Pre-Billy. Post-Billy. Post-Crossroads Part II.
But, aside from that (which I'm sure I'll discuss as we get to the Post-Billy episodes), it's just a really moving scene that Mary McDonnell (and Edward James Olmos) plays perfectly. Her inability to look at Billy's body as she enters. Telling Adama his "calculated risk" wasn't worth it. Grabbing for the wall with her grief. Fixing his hair in a very motherly way. Gasping out, "He's so young." It slays me, seriously.
This is something many BSG fans lament about so it's totally redundant but I have to throw my hat in the pile (is that the expression?): How did Mary McDonnell never get nominated for an Emmy for her role on this show?
9) I suppose you could blame Billy's death on Adama for sending in the seriously dead Boomer instead of Sharon. But I do think it would have been reckless to have killed Sharon for a couple reasons. First of all, you can't give in to the demands of terrorists because it'll only cause them (and others) to have more demands. Secondly, you can't kill such an important military asset. The fact of the matter is that Sharon has saved the fleet a couple different times.
10) I actually did find it interesting that Sharon told Adama she wouldn't divulge the identities of the cylons in the fleet. Help a fellow out, Sharon. But what does it gain her to keep quiet? She's in a vulnerable situation. She can't actually be rooting for the cylons in the fleet to carry out their likely nefarious plans. I mean, Adama has some serious leverage over her. He has her life, Helo's life, and their unborn baby's life in his hands. It seems as though she'd have more to lose not telling him than in telling him.
Well, what do you know? I improved a few notes so this review wouldn't be too paltry. Congratulations, me! But I recognize that I may have done a poor job articulating my issues with this episode. It pretty much comes down to the fact that I thought it was boring and that an episode where such an important character is killed deserves to more than second fiddle to the story of a character we have no connection to. I doth protest! That is why I'm giving Sacrifice 2.5 out of 5 airlocks.
So, let's get to it, my friends. Walk, at an acceptable pace, to the cut.
1) Sacrifice begins with 49,590 survivors, three less than Scar. Those three are accounted for: JoJo, BB, and Riley, all killed by Scar.
2) I'm not kidding you all. My notes for this episode are paltry. It's easily the smallest amount of notes I've taken on an episode yet, and we're something like twenty-eight in. I have, literally, only five points. And two of them aren't even important! That, to me, signals something about this episode's most fatal flaw: It's frakking boring. I was incredibly disinterested in what I was watching. Not in the same way I was disinterested in the story of That Episode Which Will Not Be Named, because at least this plot line made some sense, but I had almost zero interest.
I think it was a bad idea to have the focus of the episode be a character we've never before. I feel for Dana Delaney's loss of her fictional husband, but I don't sympathize with her any more than anyone else in the fleet who lost everyone they'd ever loved. I mean, think about it. At least Dana Delaney had six or so months with her husband, time that some would argue was borrowed.
I think Dana Delaney does a fine job in the role, but there's not much for her to do, really. And I'm not really rooting for her to win or lose. I was just waiting for something more interesting to happen.
3) I did find it amusing that Ellen thought Lee was coming on to her when he was ushering her, for her safety, to the bathroom. And she was totally going along with it. Ellen's reputation, it would seem, is not at all unfounded.
4) Also, aside from not being particularly three dimensional, Dana Delaney needs to conceal her weapon better. Lee could see that gun poking out of her trousers from across the room.
5) See? I told you I had two unimportant points.
6) Okay, so let me actually try to talk about the important parts of this episode, because there were some. First, let's talk about how Kara shoots Lee.
So, um, Kara shoots Lee.
The End.
No, I'm just kidding. It's actually kind of interesting coming off of what Starbuck was going through in Scar. In that episode, her reckless behavior was endangering the people around her. I mean, I can't really blame the deaths of JoJo, BB, or Riley directly on Starbuck, but JoJo wasn't supposed to be on rotation when he died. Kara was. So, yeah, recklessness, right? Here, it comes back to bite her again. Adama asks her to send someone in as a maintenance man in order to scope out the situation. Starbuck goes herself and when there's a small hint that her cover's blown, she whips out two concealed guns and just starts shooting. One of Dana Delaney's henchmen is killed, two marines are downed, and Lee, who gets in the way of Starbuck's shooting range, gets shot in the upper chest.
Frak, right?
Good ol' Starbuck shooting her pseudo brother/crush. In what could have been an entirely preventable situation.
Her reaction to it is kind of interesting. She's obviously stunned, probably because she didn't know at first if Lee was alive or dead. But when she watches Dee with Lee in sick bay, her look is kind of hard for me to interpret. Was it simply a look of extreme guilt for shooting her non-Helo-BFF? Or is there something else in her expression? Maybe regret, mixed with guilt, over the state of their relationship in general and his obvious closeness to Dee?
I don't know. I tend to ere on the side of extreme guilt, but it did give me something to think about.
7) Okay. So . . . Billy.
Poor Billy.
Now, BSG fans (if you're still out there) please don't hurt me, but I've never really gotten the appeal of Billy. In terms of presidential aides, I've always been on Team Tory (not a spoiler. Of course Laura gets another aide. She's a president for frak's sake). I've never found Billy particularly compelling even when he was standing up to Laura as she escaped from Galactica's brig (though I do love him for smuggling in some chamalla for her).
That said . . . I was sad to see him go, especially in this kind of an episode. And talk about adding insult to injury. His scene with Laura in the halls of Galactica was kind of cute. They were really close. Laura later says that Billy's certainly the closest thing she has to family and I'm sure he could have said the same to her (aside, I suppose, from Dee). So, he basically tells Laura, "BRB, Mom. I've gotta propose to my GF" and Laura's like, "Smirk. Go get her, Tiger" and then everything goes to hell.
You know, when Billy discovers Dee with Lee (ugh, annoying rhyming names) on Cloud 9, I was really impressed with him. And I think he's totally right. It would seem as though Billy and Dee always had a very straight forward, honest relationship, so for Dee to be pining for Lee behind Billy's back and to actually be on a date with him the same night she rejects his proposal is really underhanded and not something I'd expect Dee to do. I mean, this can't be the same Dee who shamed Adama into going back to Kobol, can it?
And then, Lee's shot and Billy has to watch Dee weep over his body. Billy, good guy that he is, tries to comfort his just-barely-ex-girlfriend over her new beau and still keeps her first in his mind. He's trying to figure out a way to save them all. And, of course, that's what gets him killed.
I do think that Billy died a noble death. He died trying to protect Dee. But really? You're going to kill Billy in this episode?
Death can be seriously random. One minute you're alive and the next minute you're walking into a nightclub and getting held hostage and shot. So, it doesn't bother me that Billy died in some random episode in the middle of season 2.5. It just bothers me that the focus of this episode was Dana Delaney. Billy wasn't my favorite character and he wasn't a main character, but I kind of feel he deserved more than to bite it in such a boring episode about a woman we'd never even met before.
8) But, frak. That scene with Laura in the morgue . . . It guts me. Because Billy is all she has and, looking back at this episode from the perspective of having seen the entire series, I feel it's a real turning point for her character. I think there are three Laura manifestations in the series. Pre-Billy. Post-Billy. Post-Crossroads Part II.
But, aside from that (which I'm sure I'll discuss as we get to the Post-Billy episodes), it's just a really moving scene that Mary McDonnell (and Edward James Olmos) plays perfectly. Her inability to look at Billy's body as she enters. Telling Adama his "calculated risk" wasn't worth it. Grabbing for the wall with her grief. Fixing his hair in a very motherly way. Gasping out, "He's so young." It slays me, seriously.
This is something many BSG fans lament about so it's totally redundant but I have to throw my hat in the pile (is that the expression?): How did Mary McDonnell never get nominated for an Emmy for her role on this show?
9) I suppose you could blame Billy's death on Adama for sending in the seriously dead Boomer instead of Sharon. But I do think it would have been reckless to have killed Sharon for a couple reasons. First of all, you can't give in to the demands of terrorists because it'll only cause them (and others) to have more demands. Secondly, you can't kill such an important military asset. The fact of the matter is that Sharon has saved the fleet a couple different times.
10) I actually did find it interesting that Sharon told Adama she wouldn't divulge the identities of the cylons in the fleet. Help a fellow out, Sharon. But what does it gain her to keep quiet? She's in a vulnerable situation. She can't actually be rooting for the cylons in the fleet to carry out their likely nefarious plans. I mean, Adama has some serious leverage over her. He has her life, Helo's life, and their unborn baby's life in his hands. It seems as though she'd have more to lose not telling him than in telling him.
Well, what do you know? I improved a few notes so this review wouldn't be too paltry. Congratulations, me! But I recognize that I may have done a poor job articulating my issues with this episode. It pretty much comes down to the fact that I thought it was boring and that an episode where such an important character is killed deserves to more than second fiddle to the story of a character we have no connection to. I doth protest! That is why I'm giving Sacrifice 2.5 out of 5 airlocks.