Jesus frack.
Spoilers under the cut, as always.
Jacob, who I wish could recap my, you know, life:
When they found New Caprica they just wanted to rest: Kara was tired of the bullshit with Lee and Dualla, so she settled down with her true love Anders and became a wife. Laura was tired of the bullshit with Gaius, so she settled down with Maya and the baby and went back to being a teacher. Chief was tired of the bullshit with his suicidal ideation and leftover feelings about Boomer and Sharon, so he settled down with Cally and became a father. Tigh was tired of the bullshit with the war and he was tired, so he settled down with his wife and tried to figure out their marriage for the first time. Gaius was tired of the burden of having engineered the genocide of humanity, and so he left Gina behind and let himself believe he was a hero: the leader of the first generation of the next human world. They were so tired. They just wanted to lay down their burdens for a little while, and they all got what they wanted. For a year. And now it’s become more true than true, extending into delirious and sickening madness: Kara’s wife and mother to something so much worse than Anders, trapped in a sick parody of the life she tried to construct for herself. Laura’s reduced herself to a position of no power at all, and only watches and tries to help the Resistance without falling into its craziness herself. Chief’s life is about to get simpled up with a quickness, and nothing he does can help the settlement stay clean. Tigh’s marriage is doing better than ever before, as long as he doesn’t allow himself to notice that his wife is hate-fucking evil robots. And Gaius is about to fuck things up so bad that even he can’t write it off as heroism.
For what it’s worth, I think Laura’s retreated even further than that. I think she’s set herself up, in a throwback to her religious bender the first season, as the settlement’s scribe and prophet, and that’s a truly horrific position to put yourself in. And I don’t think Tigh’s ever cared so much about Ellen fracking other guys or girls or robots or pets or whatever, so long as she doesn’t try to get between him and his job, which is what just fracking happened. Holy shit.
I love Tigh so far this season, let me just say. I love hisBrendan Sean Barrett impersonation, the old man too smart to believe the revolutionary rhetoric who believes it anyway but who’ll never let you see that. It’ll kill him in the end, but it’ll be worth it.
I love Sharon’s unshakeable faith in the man her other self shot and killed and betrayed and who wept over her body, I love their fracked-up burned-out relationship and I love where it’s gone. Her mission dependent on faith in a lie, just like the first season and the search for an Earth Adama said he knew existed, all of this has happened before.
And here’s the sick thing about Starbuck and Casey. The daughter of an abuser, looking down at her own daughter, saying, “Sometimes grownups do bad things.” The excuse she herself must have heard a thousand times, after her fingers were broken, one by one, after her face was bruised and bloodied. And her she is, saying it to her own child. I’m not saying Starbuck’s a child abuser. Listen. I’m saying once you’ve heard that said to you in a weak attempt at an apology for something there’s no apologizing for, you’ll never hear it again without a shudder, even when it comes from your own mouth. Even if you mean it, even if you’ve never laid a hand on that child in anger, it’s that we only have so many words in our language and they just get so loaded down with things like this. Leoben found the way to get her and oh, it’s working. Just like the Cylons, we try to do it differently and we end up making the same mistakes. All of this has happened before.
Quick things: Adama. Lee. Doesn’t bear writing about. I want Roslin and Zarek to have their own wacky screwball comedy spinoff. If chamalla still exists, why isn’t the whole camp on the stuff? Looks like it tastes better than the hooch. Cylons have prophetic dreams? Er, by which I mean, more naked Lucy Lawless, please thanks. Adama’s speech left me a bit cold, mostly becausethat sort of thing’s been done. And I howled with outrage when the credits appeared, because I couldn’t believe it was over, so fracking soon.
Is it next Friday yet?
A.