Spoilers after the jump. Click “Comments” or “Read More.”
Redemption comes through working a story out to its logical conclusion and then taking yourself out of it: taking the wish apart and seeing the ugly stuff inside.
So anyway.
So forget about Lee and Kara for a moment. BILL AND LAURA! Lying on the ground smoking together! I’ve watched a lot of TV in my life, I KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS!
I don’t like Cally. I don’t know why, but I’ve taken a real dislike to her relegation to the role of Wife and Mother with a capital W and M, in that all you see her do anymore is bounce the baby and hang on Chief’s arm. I miss the girl who bit her would-be rapist’s ear off and helped Chief build the Blackbird. I miss that chick.
The boxing matches. Ever see video of Ali fighting? Boxing done well is brutal bloody poetry; Starbuck wasn’t far off when she called it “the dance.” It’s like sculpting, like circling around and around chipping your opponent into a shape you recognize. I don’t know how realistic it was, the idea of letting go of all of that military discipline and just bashing it out, and I’ll tell you what I hated: Adama’s speech. Because it was what this show doesn’t often do, tell instead of show, and they’d already shown us. Everything he said was in his eyes when the Chief knocked him down. There was no need to spell it out. People who watch this show, with the exception of the Right Wing Outrage Patrol, pay attention. We got it before he opened his mouth. Still, sweet mercy, is that man hot, and anytime he’s on my screen I’m a happy girl.
Kara and Lee. It played out like I figured it had played out; he got close when he knew she was on the verge of something new, and she jumped in because she knew she had an out, and these two are impossible, and what’s more I think they both know it. I feel for Dualla, I really do. I never felt like Lee went to her just because Kara threw him over and I kind of resent the show for taking it there, as if love’s a bowl of sugar and there’s only so much, as if you’re only allowed to love one person and in one way. I feel for Dualla because even if Lee and Kara never touch each other again, you have to be one hell of a strong person to know you’re competing with that, and gods bless her, from the look on her face at the end it seemed like she really hadn’t known. I gave her more credit than the show did, I guess; I figured she knew all along and loved Lee anyway. The catty part of me wants to say to her, if you just wanted someone to love you, you should have stuck with Billy. He’d have loved you senseless and you’d have been the only woman he ever saw.
Lee and Kara. You get to that point, don’t you, where no matter what you do you’re just going round and round, punch-drunk, hurting each other because you don’t know what else to do. I know people are going to be bothered by it, the spectacle of a man and woman thrashing each other that way, and I’m not trying to get around that with the idea that the violence was metaphorical because it wasn’t. I’m saying you get to the point where you stagger each other, and the hurt is killing you, and it’s holding you up, and you don’t know where the hurt ends and the love begins and it’s just one big adolescent mess, because they’re so fucking young and so stupid. And sometimes you have to punch through all of it before you understand.
As for Kara’s desertion: You face down something as powerful as the two of them together, even for a second, and you run. When you’re young, and you’re scared, and you had this whole idea of a cabin in the forest and a life that you hadn’t planned out beyond the dollhouse in your head, and something like what you had with Lee roars in and rushes over you, you run. Run before he hurts you, run before you hurt him, run before you have to make this work, too, on top of everything else you’ve done this year. I’m not excusing her. What she did was vile, and immature, and assholish. But excuses and reasons are not the same things, and I get her, her fear and her unwillingness, even for a second, to trust in something that had never been anything before but a disaster.
A.
“You say this stuff grows around here?”
Interesting but mediocre episode.
Where were the explosions? I wanted explosions in space.
Where’s the ka-boom? There was supposed to be an Earth-shattering KA-BOOM!!
Athenae:
You may well be geek enough to appreciate this little shop:
http://www.cafepress.com/noaura
I came up with the “Vote Roslin or We’ll Airlock Your Ass,” but the rest, and all the designs, are my partner’s.
I don’t give a damn about explosions.
But I *do* wonder about Adama and Roslin smoking a joint.
I don’t know; this ep was either the best or the worst.
I haven’t decided.
.
I am just happy to see what caused the rift between Lee and Kara. But really the whole episode had the feeling of “we spent HOW MUCH on the SFX this year?!?!” Well we’ll do a charicter driven episode with two sets and save up for the mid season finale.
OK — I’m late to this cause I just now had time to watch. Hands down the best episode this season. I could actually make sense of what the characters were doing and why!
Didn’t start out that way though. My first reaction, when Kara left Anders in bed and threw his shoes back at him, was “this hard ass woman, pissed at this man she supposedly loves – for no fracking reason — and the wimpoid who got all mushy over the possibly toaster toddler” do not go together. Lo and behold, they finally explain an awful lot of Kara’s behavior this season. That is one terribly fracked up child. She threw away her one true love, and knew it, and went looking for love in *all* the wrong places. I’m somewhat at peace with what they’ve done with her now. And I think they’ve now played out the New Caprica story arc and we can get on with the space pilots program. And not a minute too soon. If I never see those fracking hair extensions again, I’ll die a happy woman.
Still don’t understand why there had to be so much angst over her and Lee getting together. She’s clearly not afraid to admit she loves someone — she was willing to love Anders. And she fell in love with Anders long before they found New Caprica. So why not Lee? Don’t appear to be any military prohibitions against it — witness the Chief and Kelli. Does it all get back to Zack?
I had the exact opposite reaction to the shot of Dualla at the end. I thought she looked like a woman who’d just had her very worst fears confirmed. And knew it was bound to happen eventually.
All in all — one of the few episodes this season I could watch without picking it apart while I was watching.
Nits:
The party on New Caprica took place one month after they landed. Kara’s hair sure grows damn fast in a month.
Kara was boxing in a sports bra — and taking some pretty heavy hits to the breastal area. Ouch. I don’t think that’s how it works for girls.
Lee was promoted to Commander when he took over Pegasus. Kara calls him Major at the boxing match — did he get demoted?
Does it all get back to Zack?
I think so, flory, and I think it’s because she killed the first man she loved and nobody’s ever gonna be able to fix that for her. Plus I think when things get tough she burrows in and gets hostile, and that’s why her relationships crash and burn: She doesn’t want to let someone help her in any way. She loved Anders the most when she was saving his ass, not the other way round.
I think it’s about power, and her having been abused. And feeling in control, and flying.
A.
She loved Anders the most when she was saving his ass, not the other way round.
I think it’s about power, and her having been abused. And feeling in control, and flying.
yeah. I think you’re right. which is another reason she can’t let go with Lee — he doesn’t need saving. *and* he’s her boss, which takes away her control.
But the flying part brings up my other nit — Kara explained to Lee that she was mustering out because the flying wasn’t going to be the same — “just traning missions and CAP”. A born pilot like Kara doesn’t give a rat’s ass what the excuse for flying is, its the sheer joy of being in a cockpit that keeps them going. She never, ever woulda left Galactica and voluntarily grounded herself, especially if her whole relationship with Anders was as confused as we now know it was/is…