BSG 3:18-20 More words
Where to begin? The change in the weather that Helo could taste through the air-conditioning? The arrival of Poochie the lawyer (I knew that episode made me think of cartoons)? The distinct possibility that the whole thing was simply a ruse to trigger the Awakening of Lee Adamalus? Hiring Bob Dylan as a scriptwriter?
All of this has happened before. This series was born of cheese and to cheese it returns periodically, like a semelparous eel to the wide Saragossa sea. It could be a magic starlight moment. Definitely that’s a possibility. On the other hand the sheer absurdity of that final sequence makes you want to keep watching. How they got there may have been utterly cracktastic but it has put all the characters in new and strangely appropriate places. Helo is exactly the kind of non-intellectual guy who would describe his sixth sense as one of the five. Lampkin came in like Marty Stu but once the shades were off he made you believe in his bloody good lawyer schtick by hunting down Tigh’s Ellen rat and recognising everything we already know about Lee. Lee himself may have won his dream argument with Papadama, in public, with an Emmy winning confessional then had Dee leave him, Anders turn out to be a Cylon and Kara come back but every moment of it was achieved through quintessential Leeness.
Quintessential other characters too. Adama the Elder has always been a terribly inconsistent father who every so often inconsistently does the right thing. I was suspicious of the not guilty verdict on Baltar, even while wholeheartedly agreeing with it, until he confessed to being the third judge. Baltar has his funny back (butterfingers) and seems over his own psychosis but to have passed it on to a society of religious groupies - be careful what you wish for mein saviour. Laura, I love that the cancer is back and that she’s ready for it this time and her visceral connection with the two Cylon women. Will it be the seven and Hera against the five and Nicky? Will nurture trump nature for those five and Saul Tigh remain a man by sheer force of willing it so?
Finally to his Bobness. Ron, there’s a reason that songfic only works inside people’s heads. It’s probably one of the better proofs of Theory of Mind. And yet the whole baby boomer solipsism of the underlying concept is possibly what pushes it over the edge into working. Eliminate the impossible and whatever remains? Maybe when the realisation strikes that he doesn't actually have what it would take to patch all the unpatchable holes in the fabric of his story the only thing left for the Emperor to do is to burst through his fourth wall, stark bollock naked and proud of it.