i need you to jump off a cliff.
cylon citizenship proposal
I love this idea of selective Cylon citizenship. I haven’t kept it as much of a secret that I don’t accept the metaphor of Cylons for a marginalized and demonized subset of humanity because (a) they are not generally marginalized in their world, (b) they were not, until the reveal of the Final Five, demonized, but rather accurately assessed on their horrific actions and (c) THEY ARE NOT HUMAN and so it is super fucked-up to have them as a stand-in for any group of people who are routinely dehumanized. I think the treatment of the Cylons has been an interesting exploration of the darkest depths of humanity and how we feel justified in acting in revenge and fear and rage. But it hasn’t been an exploration of the perspective of The Other until now, so much as how one group treats The Other. That’s a slightly different set of issues to examine.
So I’ve been in a weird spot with their rights, because obviously we’re operating in a world where “human rights” and “universal rights” are not synonymous. It’s almost this spot where Cylons have what in our world would look like super special animal rights - while they don’t have the guaranteed legal status of human colonials, they are such complex creatures that the bar for “unconscionable cruelty” is almost always where it is for human beings. Part of that, throughout the series, has been actual species difference - airlocking a Cylon wasn’t killing them so much as deporting them, which shouldn’t be done capriciously or cruelly but doesn’t stretch state power by almost any measure; however, physical, sexual, and psychological torture of a Cylon has the same effect as it would on a human and is therefore wrong. And part of it's just that their system and ours operates under a framework of "human rights" and the Cylons...aren't. So if some of them are going to be allies or to voluntarily assimilate, either the framework or the Cylons' place in it should probably change.
So the distinction makes sense (and lets me accept Laura while condemning Cain, which I realize is morally irrelevant but gives me the warm fuzzies nonetheless), but it’s an analogy I’m obviously uneasy with. But giving the rebel Cylons and our four sleepers Colonial citizenship (coinciding, not insignificantly, with their new mortality; they have the same stake in signing the social contract as the rest of us now) takes us out of the murky realm of the difference between human and universal rights and eyeroll-worthy arguments about SOULZ and into the realm of the rights granted and responsibilities incurred by citizenship under the Articles. That’s a much more even-handed and logical way to handle the skin job conundrum, and so I really hope it works out.
The Face of the Enemy
I am not even going to say I have a giant crush on Gaeta because we have been over that. But oh, he does make even more sense now. I mean, I actually thought he made perfect sense without the webisodes, Gaeta has reason enough to hate and never trust the Cylons even without the relationship with the Eight, but it adds some intensity to what he was thinking. He really was right that there wasn't a whole lot of objective reason to trust the Cylons, even if it later turns out that at least some of them are reliable. And Gaeta, for all his uniform and his political ideals and his romantic soul, is a scientist first and foremost and would put Occam's razor to this the same as any other situation.
I really liked Hoshi too! I mean, we didn't really get a whole lot of time with him, but he just seems like a sweetheart. That relationship is pretty great, too. It's just relaxed and affectionate and neither a gratuitous public production nor a big shameful secret. It just is. Hoshi doesn't look like he's embarrassed when he tells Tigh about his feelings for Gaeta, he just looks like it's a tough thing to talk about at such a horrible moment. (And good on Tigh for being cool about it. I suppose he's in Ellen-still-alive-somewhere afterglow. Which, ME TOO, BRAH.) I absolutely believe the characters in this universe, and the actors on the show, don't have any issue with queerness. THE WRITERS, THOUGH. GAH WHAT IS WITH YOU PEOPLE. Maybe Hoshi will get with Anders once Kara leaves him for Lee which seems inevitable at this point, MY GOD DO IT OR DON'T, and THEN I CAN STOP HAVING CONNIPTIONS.
Not for nothing, but Gaeta says "god!" and not "gods!" at one point (the way he would if it were purely a habit from before); I'm not arguing he's a believer, but he's absorbed a little bit of Baltar's talk against all his conscious judgment.
Damn, though, that boy gets around, doesn't he? Sharon, Hoshi, Baltar (whatever, it's not even subtext any more), and that's what we know about. Also, Sharon, who has taken it upon herself to nail every damaged, handsome nerd in sight. I say this in deepest Heloesque sincerity, she is a lady after my own heart.
Ohhh though how sad is it that it's Baltar in that last scene with Gaeta instead of Hoshi? Was Hoshi too angry with him, was he too embarrassed, was Baltar in the end just more important to him? Or maybe we just missed that goodbye.
No Exit
FIRST THINGS FIRST, KIDS.
How bad do you want to have cocktails with Ellen, the Lucilles, and Karen Walker? Especially since they would all dramatically HATE EACH OTHER.
WELCOME TO EXPOSITION THEATER! I mean, anything was going to feel a little bit bleh after OMG!GAETA! but except for the OMG!ELLEN! and the Laura-Lee scene, it’s just meh to me. The intro card sequence kind of made me roll my eyes, but it’s an episode that has to happen. LOOK, EVERYTHING IS GOING TO MAKE SENSE. PROMISE!
But then I had to get very very angry. ONE WAS SACRIFICED? SACRIFICED? ARE YOU KIDDING ME? BE KIDDING ME. BECAUSE BY SACRIFICED I AM PRETTY SURE YOU MEAN MURDERED IN COLD ELECTRONS. *loves Ellen* *hits Tigh* But damn if the transition to the episode proper didn’t make me jump. OMG poor Ellen being murdered, not knowing, and waking up with a fucking Centurion standing over her.
Ellen is actually one of the original programmers Cavil has claimed to speak for all this time, but he’s doing exactly what she didn’t want him to do. There’s an inherent philosophical divide between the seven and the five, where the five wanted to help humanity while the seven, um, not so much. I’m so so so squicked by Cavil I think I might hate him even more than Leoben OH MY GOD SO MUCH HATE. Thinking about O/P just makes me want to hurl even more now than it did then. Cavil wasn’t just sleazily abusing her the way he would anyway, it was absolutely sexual abuse as a weapon of revenge against her for giving him his body.
Really, the abuse shown in O/P was the culmination of the person he made her when he stripped her memories and sent her to the Colonies. Because Ellen-the-imprint, as much as I enjoyed the hell out of her right away, was a more selfish, petty, small person than Ellen as she actually is. She gravitated toward whoever had power (Zarek in Colonial Day), tried to manipulate her people into doing what she wanted which was to try to improve her status (early 2.0), and resented people who saw through it (Bill). But Ellen is someone who takes huge and important initiative in her own right, to her own because she believes it’s kind and good and right. He locked away what was good and strong and admirable about her, and took away her very purpose, in order to make her a caricature of a woman. You know, kind of like Leoben tried to do to Starbuck.
She still has a lot of the same underpinning characteristics, though. She loved Saul and loves him still, I think, even after O/P. She’s certainly not lacking for ego in either incarnation, she still loves her pretty things (it is cold in here, FETCH ME MY COCKTAIL DRESS, Ellen ilu forever), she grounds herself in the goals of the group, she is calm and snarky and calculating and fabulous. But when she can reach for her belief in something greater than her own satisfaction, she’s transcendent. I’m so sure she’s going to end up on the favorite list, though I have to see more of actual-Ellen (as opposed to shallow-construct-Ellen) to really decide.
Cavil’s actions do make sense, though, in context of his hatred of humanness. (I’m not sure humanity is the right word here?) He loathes his humanesque form; he hates his real name. What Ellen calls vengeance, he calls justice, and this is really gorgeous and appropriate after the Gaeta-Zarek drama of the last episode. He’s particularly resonant with Zarek, who like Cavil used historical abuses of power to perpetuate violence and injustice rather than just breaking free from it when given the opportunity. And he’s the faithless priest he’s always pretended to be, but for the Five, not the gods. (Maybe, I suppose. Are the Cylons supposed to be representatives or incarnations of the Colonial gods? I’m reminded of now-Athena in early S2 talking about the tomb of Athena, “whoever she was.” Tyrol, I can see as inspired by Hephaestus, in particular. Puts Apollo in a bizarre spot, though, so I don’t know where I want to run with this.)
He’s trying to turn Boomer into himself, but it’s a doomed effort for so many reasons. She’s trying to leave her memories of humanity behind as best she can (the way Athena is trying to squeeze out all thoughts of being a Cylon), so the sharp divide of his worldview is appealing for her, but she really quite liked being a human. And of course Ellen reminds her that she’s fundamentally different from Cavil, because she can love, and oh, can the Eights love, and it’s her love for Tyrol that helps tip her onto Ellen’s side.
I’m actually kind of shocked One was even capable of making the rest of the personalities for the Five, to be honest. How could someone like Cavil even conceive of Anders or Tyrol? It’s not that there’s no darkness to those characters, particularly Tyrol, just that I don’t know how he could even imagine a personality where the darkness didn’t overwhelm the strength and goodness. Wonder which model Daniel, the Seven, he was an artist was. It would fit with Anders the musician; would also fit with Tyrol, in a way, especially since he’s the one we saw standing in front of that painting in the Earth flashback.
This is the thing with the “free will” question, though. Because if the Cylons were evolving - actually changing and becoming something other than they were at the start of the second war - that’d be one thing. Faulty programming, or angels of death from a vengeful god; nobody blames the flood. But as it were, if the Seven have had free will all this time, then they, you know, CHOSE the nuclear holocaust. Yeah, Cavil fucked with them, but they had the tools to know better. Seriously, how many MILLIONS of innocent people who never did shit to them do they get to kill before “OOPS OUR BAD” doesn’t count any more?
I mean, I want everyone to get along non-violently because it’ll be easier on all of them, but I just don’t have any reason to root for the vast majority of the Cylons, even the rebels. It isn’t some huge cosmic shirts vs skins and that’s how it has to be; Cavil’s and Zarek’s obsession with revenge for past slights is wrong, but if we’re going to accept that the Cylons are beings with free will, then these beings themselves intentionally caused an awful lot of grief to completely innocent non-aggressive civilians, and then decided that wasn’t enough, they had to chase the survivors around the galaxy to blow them out of the sky for the lulz. We are as we choose to be? Fine, the second generation chose to be mass murderers, can’t very well expect people to want to play nice. Non-cruelly, without living for pointless retribution, sure, but you’re damn right they’re allowed to have a problem.
The Five are obviously separate because they were consciously acting to prevent catastrophe; the Boomer personality, sure, she didn’t know; Natalie turned her back on the violence (as, strangely enough, did Athena) and Caprica seems to be trying to, so I hold out a little hope for them; but for the most part? I just don’t care. I don’t even particularly want them to suffer or PAY, it’s not like there’s any making it right so it’s just pointless, I’m just not sure if I want them to do anything besides fuck off already. Well, they can help fix Galactica, it is the least they can do, since they put those cracks in it and all. Then they can fuck off. THE GALAXY IS BIG ENOUGH FOR ALL OF US. I don’t know if that’s me being live and let live or if it’s even worse than Gaeta’s rage.
Now that I’ve written it all out, it looks exactly like what Lee would say. Not in front of the press or anything, but to Laura, and she’d think he was being a little overly optimistic, but she’d hope he was right.
Which! Laura-Lee! The Bartlet-CJage of these two, I can hardly take it. I want to say how much I love their rapport but ALL OF THIS HAS BEEN SAID BEFORE. Except for this ANOTHER GIANT LEE TANGENT AHEAD BUT IT IS OK NOW: I actually think I can really love Lee after this scene, if he manages not to majorly fuck up between now and the finale, because he has the best line he has ever had, which is obviously, “I’ll try and be smarter.” I laughed so hard I can’t even. I hold you all responsible for not warning me to have an oxygen tank nearby for this episode. THAT’S THE BEST IDEA YOU’VE HAD IN THREE YEARS, CUPCAKE. THERE IS HOPE FOR YOU YET.
“And wronger” I think is funny but also a little bit more complicated and good than it lets on at first glance, and this is the part that’s really tied in with Laura’s line that spurred this UNPARALLELED DEVELOPMENT IN HIS CHARACTER, which was: “My only concern with you is that you’re so hell-bent on doing the right thing that you don’t always do the smart thing.” The important thing about this line is Lee needs to hear this stuff out loud because he is a hot mess when he’s in that cruel echo chamber inside his skull. But, I’m not sure it’s quite right, or that it’s not the whole truth. I’m loath to say Laura is wrong, because NEVAR, but also because she might just be telling the closest thing she can to the truth that she can be sure will get through.
I think the truth is that Lee is so desperate for any kind of certainty that he clings to what he sees as right, when he can make up his mind on it, because that offers some confidence, and then he sticks to it come hell or high water. This pulls in my reading of Lee as someone who’s really at his best when he’s unsure but he has to make a call, because he really is capable of giving an idea a thorough interrogation, it just freaks him out for his decisions to have any counterarguments at all. Until recently, he’s had to be dead right, or it’s all wrong.
When you’re talking about this many people’s lives, the smart thing to do is the right thing to do, but to recognize that you have to put the principle of protection of life and then of civilization (which serves in the long run to protect life, so it’s all the same) over all of the other principles AND MY GOD HE HAS SO MANY, HE PROBABLY HAS A MORAL ISSUE WITH CHEESE FRIES, but prioritizing means choosing and that kills him. This is permission - exhortation - to adjust his meanings of right and wrong (which he has never done all this time), because in accepting the presidency, it’s his job to do everything he can to protect the four freedoms for these people, and that is what is right. It’s not that he needs to be less right, so much as he needs to recognize which type of right will win out, and that sometimes it won’t.
He doesn’t need to be wronger, he needs to learn to deal with the inevitability that he will sometimes be wrong. Lee’s always afraid he’ll be wrong and he can’t stand the idea and that’s what pulls him into foolishness or passivity, or makes him so suggestible to people who are sure of themselves.
This…this is exactly what I wanted to see all this time from Lee. (Well, walking out on Bill and whacking Tigh didn’t hurt either, NGL.) I wanted him to recognize that he has fucked up and will do so again, and trust himself enough that he’ll be able to go on, and to trust someone else (specifically Laura, to whom he doesn’t have to bend himself out of shape to be similar or different) to help him avoid it when possible and get past it when not. That’s what’s happening when he resolves to be “smarter, and wronger.” It’s “the approval you’ve always craved,” but he’s the good son, not the renegade Cavil. As well as what I’ve really wanted to happen between the two of them, and if Laura has forgiven him for Crossroads I suppose I can too. LEE DON’T FUCK THIS UP. DO NOT BLOW THIS. SIT. STAY. GOOD BOY.
Also, because I, like my new bro Lee, am nothing if not a smug pain in the ass: “Our daily lives are defined by the ship we’re on.” WAY TO CATCH UP WITH STUFF I WAS SAYING IN S1, LEE. SEE? SMARTER ALREADY.
I hate to see Laura step aside. I also kind of hate this just appointing Lee - the admiral’s son - as the de facto president. I don’t think he’ll do a bad job, especially since Laura will get to break him in OH GET YOUR MINDS OUT OF THE GUTTER during his first few weeks - while she doesn’t want the weight of the world on her shoulders any more, she enjoys what she does and won’t let it go entirely until she has to - it’s just that, didn’t they go through this whole thing to protect democracy? And now Prince Lee Adrama (kind of embarrassed it took me this long to come up with that one but BETTER LATE THAN NEVER) just gets to swan on into even higher office the way he’s done everything else he has ever done? It’s not that he sucks (anymore). It’s not even that he wouldn’t be elected fairly, because I’m sure he would, or that Laura doesn’t have the right to appoint a VP, especially one who is the seniormost/only surviving member of the Quorum; no, she hasn’t been elected, but the people have clearly accepted her leadership all this time, she’s surely legitimate and well within her rights. It’s just this transfer of power makes me uneasy.
Anders gets to be all mystical like Kara here. It is more than a little bit expositiony magic, but they’ve gotta wrap things up somehow, and he’s a really interesting choice for it because, like Kara, he’s a big ball of thorough but changeable feelings and loyalties (and, obviously, they had to keep Trucco in bed, poor guy; it’s been fairly clear since the idea of the Final Five was introduced they are all probably safe until the big family reunion so he had to make it somehow). Like they’re both the way, which pulls them closer together for a reason besides having gotten drunk and run off to a preacher one time.
As much as I <3 when Anders gets to do something besides be a lovable oblivious jock, and even setting aside the history of all the frakking worlds babble, nobody in those scenes makes any kind of sense at all. It feels as if whoever wrote this knew they looked like they were pulling the mythology out of their asses, so they didn’t bother to make anything about the expository scenes vaguely resemble the rest of the series except for the faces saying the words. Kara fucking knows better than to stand there and yell and distract someone who’s trying to do their job in a life-or-death situation. THIS GIRL IS A FIGHTER PILOT, REMEMBER? It’s not like this is the first time someone she loves is in a terrible spot, we know she knows how to act, it’s just pointless.
Then, and I do understand why he and the other Cylons want the answers he’s finally starting to be able to provide, but dude, if that aneurysm busts, nobody is getting any memories ever; surgery okayed if they even want a chance to figure it out. Unclear why nobody mentioned that. Also, I don’t really know how effective this is IRL, but given that we’ve not only suspended disbelief but dropped it off a cliff at this point, couldn’t they be hypnotized into remembering, if their brains are human enough?
Bill and Tyrol got a fair amount of screen time, but it’s really not quite as engaging to me as the other parts of the episode, though it’s nice to see these two make some peace with each other (and to realize just how much Douglas’ voice is deep and gravelly enough to match EJO’s). HE NOTICED A TEAR IN THE SHIP DURING THE MUTINY AND NOW HE IS FIXING IT AS HE IS GETTING BACK TOGETHER WITH THE ADMIRAL SUBTLE SUBTLE STORYTELLING SHOW ICU. Bill is really conflicted; inviting Tyrol to come back as the Chief but forbidding him to put other Cylons on his crew. It looks like unjustified suspicion, but as we’ll find out, he is accidentally completely right to separate the Five from the Seven. Tyrol for his part can’t decide which part of himself to prioritize (be the human-passing Chief again? or stand up to Bill’s Cylon suspicion?).
I like the nod to the very beginning. Wasn’t having technology on the ship the first big A/R conflict? And now he’s agreeing to have the ship turned into a hybrid of its own sort. Because the ship’s made it - like all of our characters, like humanity itself - through more than it should have been able to handle, and it’s going to have to fundamentally change if they’re all going to live. But it can.
After seeing Ellen again, seeing Saul and Caprica together is even creepier. First of all, “all the stuff that a baby needs.” Daddy Saul is the worst fucking idea I have ever heard in my life. Worse than Uncle Gaius babysitting. Six might in some ways be better for Tigh than Ellen, though, the smell of the booze - YOU KNOW IN THE AIRTIGHT GLASS BOTTLES - was making her sick. K. Don’t know if she was manipulating him out of drinking on purpose or subconsciously but either way, well done.
Tori is so much more interesting here. Unlike the Seven, she didn’t participate in the genocide, but what she wants is to be a part of the winning team. There’s always an alternative strategy for victory. She saw the Cylon attack as a show of strength over human weakness, and she signed on with them knowing what they’d done. The others at least have the….mmm, it’s not mitigating, but at least partially explanatory…experience of having been led astray by the Ones. Tory doesn’t think she needs power to help others the way Roslin does. She just wants to know she has it herself.
So we really should be calling the Final Five the First Five, no? (And where the hell are the copies of the other four of them?) I suppose it doesn’t matter, since, as Tyrol points out, it’s all a cycle. We didn’t invent resurrection. We reinvented it. If it’s all just a little bit of history repeating, can Kara even lead the human race to its end? There is no ending to a true cycle. Doesn’t that really mean she’ll lead them to their next beginning? Or that she already has? MY HEAD HURTS.
I’m trying to put my hard-learned skills of just going with it for the show’s mythology, but if anyone can help me out here it’d be much appreciated. Centurions somehow - without free will, which Natalie gave them - made the Five sometime between the first Cylon war and the attacks. The Five went to Earth as the Thirteenth Tribe of Scripture about sixty years ago. Everything went ‘splodey. So within twenty years but really three thousand years (WHAT THE HELL DO YEARS EVEN MEAN WHEN THERE IS NO SUN TO REVOLVE AROUND, THIS IS WHY I TOOK SO LONG TO GET INTO SPACESHIP CRAP), they’ve gone back to the corner of the galaxy where by the Colonies and made 1-7, giving them free will, which they then used to go “lol genocide” and attack in revenge for the slavery of the Cylons who did not have free will. John Cavil One whoever, we will just go with Fuckface, knew who the Five were; nobody else did. Which got us to…this, somehow.
other thoughts
- “If I can just complete the circle” - MAYBE WE WILL GET ALL THE CYLONS TOGETHER AND SING KUM BA YA FOR A WHILE AND BLAMMO, EARTH FIXED! (Doesn’t radiation have to disappear eventually? Couldn’t they just float around for another couple of years their time and millenia Earth time and then check it out?)
- God came from the Centurions? gah! OH MY GOD Baltar in the corridor, have they told you about God, and the Centurion is like PLEASE ENLIGHTEN ME, BRATTY LITTLE MAN. And of course Six didn’t give them free will, she gave it back to them.
- John fucking Hodgman, lol. I’M A PC, BUT THIS KID HERE, HE’S A MAC.
- omg the Four Freedoms. how how how have I missed this. I have to go think about Roslin and FDR and pass out for a while. BRB.