CAUGHT IN A BAD ROMANCE
Click to viewThey evoled. Into free bitches, baby.
Someone to Watch Over Me
This episode is one of those art projects like Unfinished Business. I actually really did like the mood and echoes and how you don’t quite know what’s real, the way Starbuck and Tyrol themselves are probably feeling, and the sad reality that none of them have anyone watching over them, no matter how close and complicated their bonds to each other. Unfortunately, it also makes me nostalgic for the politically progressive, philosophically coherent days of Black Market. (I'm going to be talking about sexual assault and pregnancy issues, if anyone needs to skip.)
That said, I did appreciate the episode for giving me what is probably one last glimpse of sardonic HBIC Starbuck including the following immortal line: “Enjoy your alone time, wank as little as possible, conserve your O2.” And we get Starbuck-Helo BFF time, which makes my heart sing, especially with “I got something that’ll cheer you up” which just sounds like a mockery of a line.
The briefing is, for the first time I can think of, really more mood than exposition. If you find us a place we can live, you get some toothpaste. (Also aggravating. What the fuck are they even doing awake at 6:23 AM? WHAT, THEY ARE GOING TO MISS ALL THE DAYLIGHT? done with space shows after this. DONE.) She tells them that “Six” has their engine assignments, which doesn’t actually tell them who to go to because there are a half a dozen Sixes (IC WHAT YOU DID THERE, SHOW) in the room - things are confusing, there’s nowhere to go. The line about the mutiny is a bit expository, because until now we had no reason to believe that that many pilots were killed during or jailed following the mutiny, but they’re in rough shape.
YOU KNOW WHAT STARBUCK HAS BEEN MISSING ALL THIS TIME? AN ARROGANT OLDER DUDE TO TELL HER WHO TO BE. One who is a musician JUST LIKE HER HUBBY, SUBTLE. When she has an epiphany without some fucker who betrayed her horribly speaking for the divine in her subconscious, then I’ll feel like the story is serving the character well. And really though? It doesn’t even pick someone with worthwhile shit to say. “Something happened to you”? INSIGHTFUL, THAT IS. Kara’s lines about her existential crisis are hard-earned and I like them. What am I; a ghost, a demon? She doesn’t think she could be anything good, though the line isn’t resonant with anything so much as Baltar’s anguished query is she an angel, or is she a demon? I’m not sure Starbuck or Six are either/or with that proposition.
Nobody, though, would think that she is just human any more, like baby Hera (who is so cute I EXPLODED. BOOM.) She’s tapped into something that’s manipulating all of us. Ellen doesn’t actually go in for the idea of a benevolent deity, it seems, or she’d have said “guiding” instead of “manipulating.” So the Watchtower song wasn’t Cavil flipping off the switch? THE MAGIC CONTINUES.
I LIKED BOOMER, WHY DOES SHE HAVE TO BE THE EVIL WAKEFIELD TRIPLET? WTF. Even if I do love the way we’re revisiting those first few episodes, with Tyrol covering for Boomer again, only this time he damned well knows he shouldn’t. Boomer’s manipulation of him is hair-raising, though I don’t quite blame Tyrol for not figuring it out; he doesn’t understand projection, he’s destroyed by now, he does think for a moment his wildest dreams have come true. Roslin is exactly right, personal feelings are what Sharon Valerii preys upon, and she does so expertly. But ew, he made her, this is even worse than it looks.
I don’t blame him for being taken in; I do blame him for acting on it. Tyrol has decided to take over for Lee as the character who KNOWS when I am starting to genuinely like him and thereupon decides to be a DICK. You don’t have to kill her! Here, kill another Eight! One who was trying to help save all of our lives fixing the ship! Also, if he could look at her and tell if she was Boomer or another Eight, I’m not sure how he thinks he’s going to be able to hide the switch for long. And when the fuck are they going to learn to put an actual security system in the brig?
That scene in the bathroom with Helo is so fucking disturbing on every level. She’s so clearly giving off DNW vibes but he keeps pushing, which really damages my opinion of Helo. Does she actually have to fucking fight him off? If we weren’t supposed to think they were acting as a married couple, would anyone really think this giant dude who locks her into a room alone with him and corners her against the sink was going to take an actual no for an answer? But…they are married…and Helo is a Good Guy….so NOTHING BAD COULD HAPPEN HERE, OH MY GOD, ARE YOU SERIOUS. I mean, it’s not wrong for them to ever be alone together or for one partner to try to initiate sex, but they have their own suite, yet he follows her into the bathroom when she fails to make with the delivery ass, and then prods her into it over her reluctance to even kiss him hello.
But he’s also victimized here, in exactly the same way Athena did to him as Boomer back on Caprica. There’s absolutely no way he would want to have sex with someone who wasn’t Athena, and the last thing he would think about doing would be to cheat with another Eight, because it would force her to deal with the implications of her Cylonness that I don’t think he’s quite faced. She’s a Cylon and it would be wrong to hurt her just because she is a Cylon, he thinks that and he’s okay with it, but it’s not that she’s a Cylon, it’s that she’s a Sharon and there’s more than one of her. This is exactly what freaked him the fuck out back on the base star with the other Eight accessing Athena’s memories, which Boomer seems to have done as well, since he doesn’t even notice during sex from anything she does or says that she isn’t Athena.
Mmmm. Okay. See, if the Cylons have a seat on the Quorum, then they are part of the Colonial state, such as it is. From which it logically follows (a) that she cannot be extradited, because she is already within those borders and (b) that they have no authority to set up their own tribunal to try her for treason. They can go ahead and try to convince Roslin to prosecute her, they have every right to do that. They either have sovereign authority, in which case they do not get a seat in the Quorum, or they do not, in which case they do not get Boomer. WHAT NEXT, OVERWROUGHT INAPPROPRIATE NAVEL-GAZY CLOSING ARGUMENTS FROM THE STAND? OH WAIT.
Even if I accept the world that makes no sense on its own terms, it still doesn’t hold water. Cylons cannot possibly have laws about treason if they’ve been considering each other as one body all this time. You don’t make laws about the impossible. For example, we do not have lanes in the sky to handle jet pack traffic, because, no jet packs. And not that they’re immoral for what they’re doing, but they are rebels from what they clearly consider a sovereign nation/nationality, which means they have no authority to prosecute treason because they are traitors themselves. She didn’t infiltrate their ships, she just voted nay on some of Six’s proposals. Basically this show defines “treason” as “shit the people with the guns don’t like.” That’s exactly how you don’t want to define treason if your argument is that there should be legal checks on state power. I’m not shy about using ugly language when it’s a rational description of a situation, I think that much is probably clear by now, but this is just gratuitous.
A shocking and kind of fantastic thing about that scene though? Sonia announces the rebel factions’ intent to execute Boomer and Lee just shrugs and congratulates her on her election. He’s little OTT, a little smarmy, a little too clearly aware that he’s going to need her for something and impressed with himself for remembering it, a little more Roslin than Roslin. It’s part that he’s the kind of guy to carry a grudge; he’s made a skeptical arms’-length peace with the Eights generally (though he’ll toss them all out an airlock the moment they give him half a reason), but Boomer pretended to be human and then shot his father, so they can fucking have her. But it’s still a signpost for how far he’s come.
I’m only marginally less annoyed by Tigh’s co-opting of someone else’s suffering than I am of Bill’s, but since there is nothing not nauseating about the Caprica pregnancy storyline, I AM HAVING BILE ISSUES. Caprica thought she was Mary Mother of God there; she’s way more fucked up about the miscarriage than Tigh, who didn’t even seem to want any part of it until we were by some ungodly measure Man Pain deficient. Not that it doesn’t suck for a wanted pregnancy to end in miscarriage, it does, but the way the show frames it is really problematic. Hey, remember back in what was apparently a completely different series when people knew the difference between a fetus and a toddler?
I mean. “His eyes were open”? First of all, at four months Cottle would have done a D&E (which involves vacuum evacuation) because that would be safest for Caprica REMEMBER HER? especially since as we know from Athena she has a pretty fragile reproductive system. (And seriously, just how much more are we going to traumatize Six by way of her vagina? YOU KNOW WHAT, DON’T ANSWER THAT.) Even going with the idea that Cottle would do unnecessary SURGERY on a being he is fully aware he doesn’t understand, Tigh was what, peering through the curtains watching? I’m trying to have some empathy here, because it’s a shitty situation all around, but the prioritization of Tigh’s grief combined with the unquestioned attribution of personhood to a non-viable fetus just for the sake of continuing the pregnancy drama is tough to swallow in context of the show’s other gender issues. If I keep taking this seriously I am going to have a conniption, so let’s just say, 4.5 so far would have made way more sense with Juno MacGuff involved and she was fool enough to fuck George Michael Bluth and think she wasn’t making a terrible mistake. In conclusion, I’M GONNA PUNCH THAT SAUL TIGH KID IN THE WIENER NEXT TIME I SEE HIM.
If Laura just fucking died, alone, in some worthless trance, caused by STUPID TYROL AND BOOMER, I SHALL BE VERY CROSS. RANT AHOY. I was always cognizant of the possibility that her cancer could come back. We’re obviously not fucking around with ancient prophecy here (except with Cylons having been around for 2000 years but really only 50 WHATEVER) but I’m really not dealing well with it. At first it was wrenching my heart because it’s LAURA, which means it was at least working on an emotional and story level, not least because she was out and about doing awesome things and and being scary but having my trust anyway and not having her story eaten by cancer.
But now we’ve spent more time watching Bill brood about the “old girl” (also: that phrase is a gross sexist TOTAL OXYMORON and I want it to die now pls) than we have spent with Laura as she prepares the fleet and herself for her death (and the fleet does come first because she is LAURA FRAKKIN ROSLIN, which I remember even if the show apparently does not). HERE LET ME SPELL IT OUT FOR EVERYONE: IMPORTANCE OF LAURA’S ISSUES >>>> IMPORTANCE OF BILL’S ISSUES. MATH!
I am watching my hero, the character I have waited lo these many years to see and love, be STUFFED INTO A FUCKING LIQUOR CABINET. We’ve completely abandoned the illness as part of this epic story of faith and doubt and seizure of agency in the face of forces so unknowable we can’t even classify them as divinity or science, to fucking fridging. Agency. That is what I have loved about Laura and her story. She has agency and she doesn’t abuse it but she’s not ashamed of it either. And the story has strapped her down to it away from her with its eyeteeth. I’m not hurting for her anymore, so much as I’m hurting for me and for the total invalidation of the strength she’s had and inspired for three and a half seasons. That isn’t good storytelling. That is laziness and manipulation and sexism and lazy manipulative sexism. I don’t even know that I care what happens in the finale because the show is just so fucking clear right now that it doesn’t give a flying fuck what I think.
miscellaneous
- “Bad Romance” was actually my Lee/Kara song when they were being particularly adolescent back in early S3. You know Lee would pretend to hate Gaga and everyone would see right through it. And now it is my season 4.5 song. I WANT ITS UGLY, I WANT ITS DISEASE.
- The in-episode music just makes me miss Gaeta.
- I know the show’s trying to evoke the idea of bars, but really, wouldn’t it make way more sense to have at least as many growhouses and smoke rooms? It’s probably as easy or easier to have around than the liquor once they got a crop started (and if you know any potheads, you don’t need to be told that they found a way to get some seeds off New Caprica), and really, do you want a population of people crammed into small spaces getting drunk and belligerent, or do you want them giggling for forty-five minutes and passing out? Especially for military types, you are much better off the morning after pot than drinking too much OR SO I WOULD IMAGINE, NOTHING TO SEE HERE, OFFICER.
- I just left a comment about Wesley on Gabs’ Revelations poll because it is all about WWP before he even existed really (because I am Wesley and it is all about me) and OH MY GOD, MY WES LOVE AND MY GAETA LOVE. SAME. SAME. Love my idealistic ruthless romantic lying big-picture-seeing sexually shameless boys. love forever. You’d think Lee would remind me of him, with the actually-justified Daddy Issues and terror of love and chilled-steel spine. And he does a bit, but Wes dresses over the ruthlessness inside that he’s always had while we’re watching Lee harden against his nature. (The Wes crossover I really want is him going to the Dollhouse and seeing if he can have (AtS s5) Fred yanked out of Illyria, even though duplicate-actor crossovers usually make my head spin. But second after that, he and Laura would get on like an ethical but terrifying house on fire, wouldn’t they? *dares the internet*)