Lay Down Your Burdens Part I
Oh, end of season two. How I love thee. You've restored my faith in Ron Moore's ability to put together a show. I mean, i wasn't lying when I said that Downloaded saved the season and, much to my general pleasure, Lay Down Your Burdens Part I is following quite nicely (though maybe not as awesomely) in its footsteps. We're only one episode away from the finale and it's going to be epic. Truly epic.
Cut, jump, cut, jump.
1) Lay Down Your Burdens Part I begins with 49,579 survivors, the same as in Downloaded.
2) I pretty much love everything Laura is in this episode. Like, truly. Even when she realizes her election bid might be totally frakked, I just adore her.
First: Adorable muttering, shoes off, tearing up talking points in preparation of her first debate with Baltar, a ritual she's had since her testifying-in-front-of-subcommittee days. (And, by the way, I love the idea of Laura testifying in front of subcommittees. Am I the only one would watch a West Wing type show starring Mary McDonnell as teacher-turned-Secretary of Education Laura Roslin?)
Then, she's even more adorable when she breaks Adama's pencil and then get the giggles after he makes a lame joke, a nervous tick she's had since her high school debate team days. (Laura was such a NERD in high school. I probably would have worshiped her.)
But she's so awesome during the debates. She's just so . . . cool. Her voice is so soft and measured and she's just like "Suck on that. Thank you" with such dignity. And when tells Baltar "I'm going to wipe the floor with you, Gaius" and he's like, "You must be losing your mind again" and she's like, "If that's the best you can do you're in big trouble. Good luck."
But here's why I really love her: The Planet. She refuses to go all political and use the planet to her gain. Will it frak her chances at winning the election? Maybe. But Laura's first (and only) priority is the safety of the fleet and she knows that the planet will not be good for her people. Her integrity on this matter will not be compromised. She will not lie.
3) Baltar on the other hand . . .
4) No, okay, so Racetrack and Skulls find themselves a planet. Congratulations to them! And be the wonderful happy coincidence one finds in television shows, this planet happens to be habitable.
Sort of.
Reports indicate that only 20% of the planet supports human life. Now, that's fine in the short term, but what happens when the population begins repopulate? I mean, developing societies have high birth rates. They'd have to be really careful to not overpopulate or they'd be screwed.
Laura also says that all the reports seem to indicate that living on the planet would be really hard. Lee seems to think they'll find good vegetation and animal life in this one delta, but what does he know? And is there enough farmland to feed a growing civilization? Enough animal life? I mean, they only have 20% of the surface on which to live. Some of that land would need to be designated for food. As the population grows, more land would be needed for cultivation.
I get what Tory says about the people voting their hopes instead of their fears. I do. But come on. The fleet is full of whiny little frakkers and Zarek and Baltar suck for pandering to them just to win an election. Permanent settlement is a seriously big deal. I don't know why they'd think that, if Baltar were to win and they were all to settle on a planet that basically sucks, it wouldn't come back to bite them as the people who put them all there.
3) Starbuck finally gets to launch her rescue mission on Caprica to save Anders (and, I guess, the other resistance members). Sharon's there to help, though she's still devastated about the death of Hera. I think it's a testament to her character and integrity that she's sincerely helping the humans in their mission. If I were her and thought (as she did, at least, in Downloaded, that my baby had been murdered), I probably wouldn't be interested in doing anything helpful for all of them.
5) Chief's been having buggy dreams and has been using, for whatever reason, the deck as his sleeping quarters. Seriously, I was most interested as to how he got back where he did in only his skivvies without being noticed.
6) But Chief beats up Cally (which I was okay with) and goes to have a talk with a priest, though some of the stuff Chief says in this scene makes no sense in context of what we learn about him in The Eye of Jupiter, but whatever.
Turns out Chief's been having scary recurring nightmares where he climbs (very slowly) up some scaffolding and falls off (intentionally) to his death.
The priest deduces that Tyrol's having this dream because he's afraid that he's a cylon, just like Boomer. I find this a really interesting character arc for Chief, though I wish they had introduced it a little more in previous episodes, because there's no indication he's struggling with anything but attempts to get over his love for Boomer. But it makes perfect sense that Tyrol would be scared of being a cylon because he was in love with a girl who was afraid she was a cylon . . . and she was! I mean, if I were the Chief, I'd be out of my mind with nervousness and worry.
I like what the priest says to him, though. Chief knew that Boomer was afraid she was going to do something horrible and he knows that she did. He also feels like he might do something horrible. But the priest (we don't know his name yet, do we?) says, "Yeah, be afraid. You might do something really bad but not because you're a cylon. You might do something really bad because you're a human and humans do really bad things to themselves and to each other. Chill out." (Okay, so maybe that was paraphrase.)
But that is one of the lessons of the show, right? The cylons do horrible things but so do the humans. I mean, that alone connects the two races.
7) I'm pretty sure the moderator of the second debate between Baltar and Laura was a Baltar supporter. When Laura was giving her (very important) reason as to why she thought settlement on the planet was a bad idea, the moderator not only let Baltar interrupt her, but he never gave her a chance to finish her original statement or respond to Baltar's attacks. I think that Laura's awesome, "Why don't you go frak yourself?" should have been directly at Baltar and the moderator. Tools.
I know, I know. I didn't have much to say about this episode. I'm not even sure why, really. A lot of stuff happens in a very short period of time. There's almost no time to breathe. But the thing about Lay Down Your Burdens Part I is that, as good as it is on its own, it's really just a set up episode for Lay Down Your Burdens Part II, so I'm sure that the next post will be super long winded, especially because the episode itself is longer than a typical episode. So, as much as I like this episode, it's really mostly a set up so that's why I'm giving Lay Down Your Burdens Part I 4 out of 5 airlocks.
Cut, jump, cut, jump.
1) Lay Down Your Burdens Part I begins with 49,579 survivors, the same as in Downloaded.
2) I pretty much love everything Laura is in this episode. Like, truly. Even when she realizes her election bid might be totally frakked, I just adore her.
First: Adorable muttering, shoes off, tearing up talking points in preparation of her first debate with Baltar, a ritual she's had since her testifying-in-front-of-subcommittee days. (And, by the way, I love the idea of Laura testifying in front of subcommittees. Am I the only one would watch a West Wing type show starring Mary McDonnell as teacher-turned-Secretary of Education Laura Roslin?)
Then, she's even more adorable when she breaks Adama's pencil and then get the giggles after he makes a lame joke, a nervous tick she's had since her high school debate team days. (Laura was such a NERD in high school. I probably would have worshiped her.)
But she's so awesome during the debates. She's just so . . . cool. Her voice is so soft and measured and she's just like "Suck on that. Thank you" with such dignity. And when tells Baltar "I'm going to wipe the floor with you, Gaius" and he's like, "You must be losing your mind again" and she's like, "If that's the best you can do you're in big trouble. Good luck."
But here's why I really love her: The Planet. She refuses to go all political and use the planet to her gain. Will it frak her chances at winning the election? Maybe. But Laura's first (and only) priority is the safety of the fleet and she knows that the planet will not be good for her people. Her integrity on this matter will not be compromised. She will not lie.
3) Baltar on the other hand . . .
4) No, okay, so Racetrack and Skulls find themselves a planet. Congratulations to them! And be the wonderful happy coincidence one finds in television shows, this planet happens to be habitable.
Sort of.
Reports indicate that only 20% of the planet supports human life. Now, that's fine in the short term, but what happens when the population begins repopulate? I mean, developing societies have high birth rates. They'd have to be really careful to not overpopulate or they'd be screwed.
Laura also says that all the reports seem to indicate that living on the planet would be really hard. Lee seems to think they'll find good vegetation and animal life in this one delta, but what does he know? And is there enough farmland to feed a growing civilization? Enough animal life? I mean, they only have 20% of the surface on which to live. Some of that land would need to be designated for food. As the population grows, more land would be needed for cultivation.
I get what Tory says about the people voting their hopes instead of their fears. I do. But come on. The fleet is full of whiny little frakkers and Zarek and Baltar suck for pandering to them just to win an election. Permanent settlement is a seriously big deal. I don't know why they'd think that, if Baltar were to win and they were all to settle on a planet that basically sucks, it wouldn't come back to bite them as the people who put them all there.
3) Starbuck finally gets to launch her rescue mission on Caprica to save Anders (and, I guess, the other resistance members). Sharon's there to help, though she's still devastated about the death of Hera. I think it's a testament to her character and integrity that she's sincerely helping the humans in their mission. If I were her and thought (as she did, at least, in Downloaded, that my baby had been murdered), I probably wouldn't be interested in doing anything helpful for all of them.
5) Chief's been having buggy dreams and has been using, for whatever reason, the deck as his sleeping quarters. Seriously, I was most interested as to how he got back where he did in only his skivvies without being noticed.
6) But Chief beats up Cally (which I was okay with) and goes to have a talk with a priest, though some of the stuff Chief says in this scene makes no sense in context of what we learn about him in The Eye of Jupiter, but whatever.
Turns out Chief's been having scary recurring nightmares where he climbs (very slowly) up some scaffolding and falls off (intentionally) to his death.
The priest deduces that Tyrol's having this dream because he's afraid that he's a cylon, just like Boomer. I find this a really interesting character arc for Chief, though I wish they had introduced it a little more in previous episodes, because there's no indication he's struggling with anything but attempts to get over his love for Boomer. But it makes perfect sense that Tyrol would be scared of being a cylon because he was in love with a girl who was afraid she was a cylon . . . and she was! I mean, if I were the Chief, I'd be out of my mind with nervousness and worry.
I like what the priest says to him, though. Chief knew that Boomer was afraid she was going to do something horrible and he knows that she did. He also feels like he might do something horrible. But the priest (we don't know his name yet, do we?) says, "Yeah, be afraid. You might do something really bad but not because you're a cylon. You might do something really bad because you're a human and humans do really bad things to themselves and to each other. Chill out." (Okay, so maybe that was paraphrase.)
But that is one of the lessons of the show, right? The cylons do horrible things but so do the humans. I mean, that alone connects the two races.
7) I'm pretty sure the moderator of the second debate between Baltar and Laura was a Baltar supporter. When Laura was giving her (very important) reason as to why she thought settlement on the planet was a bad idea, the moderator not only let Baltar interrupt her, but he never gave her a chance to finish her original statement or respond to Baltar's attacks. I think that Laura's awesome, "Why don't you go frak yourself?" should have been directly at Baltar and the moderator. Tools.
I know, I know. I didn't have much to say about this episode. I'm not even sure why, really. A lot of stuff happens in a very short period of time. There's almost no time to breathe. But the thing about Lay Down Your Burdens Part I is that, as good as it is on its own, it's really just a set up episode for Lay Down Your Burdens Part II, so I'm sure that the next post will be super long winded, especially because the episode itself is longer than a typical episode. So, as much as I like this episode, it's really mostly a set up so that's why I'm giving Lay Down Your Burdens Part I 4 out of 5 airlocks.