With thanks to the people who e-mailed this to me (spoilers for Season Three therein):
So no, I don’t “mourn the loss” of the Cylons’ mystery and menace: that’s evolution. Heaven for everybody. I think any story that wants to responsibly talk about war and genocide had better get its shit together about this, and I think this show is clearly doing so. Frankly, jihad and terrorism could stand to lose a fuckload of mystery and menace, we could all stand to read up on the Quran, because that’s how you move forward. Other people don’t need your mystery and menace, they need your strength. How you draw the line between that and saying the show’s jumped the shark, or I’m a bad American or a shitty writer for loving the Cylons, is your business.
But really go read the whole page linked there.
Spoilers after the cut.
It’s so interesting to me, that distinction Jacob’s drawing, because I never felt the Cylons getting less scary or less threatening or less “enemy” somehow, the more the show tried to teach me what they’re about. If anything, the opposite, and maybe it’s to do with New Caprica and the whole Starbuck/Leoben dynamic and being a woman: There’s nothing so scary as somebody trying to subjugate you out of, because of, fucking with love. That life is the same for them as it is for us, that we all go around and around screwing things up the same way but in different outfits, that didn’t surprise me that much, that revelation. All of this has happened before and all of this will happen again. You hear it as hope and condemnation no matter what god you worship.
And suck it, Freepers, basically, and just because I threw my lot in with the humans on this show and I love them more than I care about Boomer or Gaius or Six doesn’t make me on your side. I don’t go anywhere near your side without garlic and a stake.
So. There’s this TV show.
Here’s what skeeved me out about the chemical fracking-over of Baltar. As they’re injecting him with this stuff, he’s yelling, “I have rights.” And that’s just a phrase we’re so conditioned to hear as a code: as a code for stop, for you can’t do this, for back off, for this has to end. As Americans, we expect that phrase to mean something to the people we say it to. We expect it to strike a chord.
And I don’t think I considered, ever, until about four years ago, what it means when people hear that and go, “So fucking what, huh?” I don’t think I considered, because I grew up white and middle class and fairly whatever-passes-for-normal, and apolitical, what it would mean if the phrase “I have rights” meant nothing.
It’s supposed to strike a chord, but what happens when all the keys are broken? What if the thing you’ve held onto as your “get out of jail free” card for your entire fucking human existence turned out to be a crumpled old coupon that expired? What then? Who are you then?
This is what happens. Because it’s Baltar saying that phrase now. It was the tribunals after the coffee riots, and it was the murders of the collaborators. It was the Circle; all of this has happened before. We can’t do this to each other no matter how much we want to and “I wanna” has got to stop being a reason. And as I’m watching Roslin in the room with Baltar, and I love Roslin like I love sunshine, I’m thinking, “This is why murder victims’ families don’t carry out sentence.” Not even because they wouldn’t be right. Because they can’t. All we’re doing is watching Roslin and Adama take more and more sickness on themselves, and Cottle, as always, is the voice of compassion for its own sake. I want a Cottle episode. I am going to stand outside Ronald Moore’s house and picket until I get a Cottle episode.
Would y’all still love me if I just WROTE a Cottle episode and posted it up here? I love him so much.
Speaking of lying and torturing, oh, dear God, I think I just kind of fell in love with Lee a little bit, in that you can’t be with somebody who loves you and hates you and loves you and hates you, that that drama might start out feeling like love but after your twenties it’s just exhausting and he was right with the dogfight analogy. Starbuck’s always gonna be in a dogfight, and you’ll never have more than that with her. She needs somebody who gets that and doesn’t care, not somebody who’s pissed about that and wants to change it. Sam’s good for her. I like him a whole lot.
And speaking of marriages and other states of union, erm, exactly what was with the Presidential/Admiralty Snuggling going on there at the end?
A.
1. while I still think the symmetry/minuet stuff with the two couples going through their shit in exact tandem is too, too neat, I was a little more drawn into them this week. Just a little- mostly Sam and Dualla because I think they are clearer on what they feel and what their “motives” are and I can feel them. Not so much with the Lee/kara- that’s still a little black hole for me. But all this felt outside of and separate from the rest of the ep and I grew impatient with it.
2. The Baltar/Roslin/torture stuff really fucked w/my head. Roslin fucked with my head. I didn’t expect it to go that deep that fast but when i saw that some time had passed on Galactica when the ep opened, I knew we were in for it. I have to watch it again. I think you nailed it though. And as for the glidey fingers…
3. OMG. Gaeta?!
4. I laughed when Roslin asked, “Are you telling me we have some of this drug on board?!” Because I was expecting the next out of her mouth to be ,”And you didn’t let ME have any back when I was total kamala-head?”
LOL, Virgotex!
And ditto on the OMG. Gaeta!? BuggyQ’s question o’ the day: What exactly did Baltar whisper to him?
Laura/Adama–that was my mental takeover of Moore and CO. Ever since the snuggle scene flashback on New Caprica, I’ve been sending my telepathic suggestion to those guys. It finally worked. Now I’m sending telepathic commands to Dick Cheney to resign, confess to war crimes, and demand to testify against Dubya. Wish me luck.
Speaking of whom, Baltar *is* Dubya. The narcissism, the laziness, the arrogance. Which made the chem-torture scene even more difficult to watch. At least now I know I’m still human–there are some lines I couldn’t cross, even with Dubya.
Finally, re: Starbuck and Lee. You’re absolutely right. That kind of love is consuming and destructive. I hope Lee can give Dee what she deserves. And I hope Sam can survive living with Starbuck.
Silly side note: does anybody else still think “I am your DENSITY!” every time somebody talks about their destiny?
BuggyQ, *luck*!
My God, if I could prescribe an episode of BG after every one of 24, the country would get a little unclenched and unclogged with the Rightness of Our Goals crap that excuses torture because cute boys and girls perform it.
Baltar, I knew, would crack except in all the ways that count — what he could have said:
a) Hi, I’m possessed by Cylon consciousness, which helped me create the Cylon detector, just about every good discovery made by me since the holocaust, and preserved me when the *Cylons* tortured me, of which you are pikers, compared to them —
b) If percentage of Cylon content gets you airlocked, after *you*, Madame President.
c) *How* did Caprica Six save me from a nuclear blast? No, really how? If we knew the secret of that, it would *blow our minds*
d) How’s this mixing-up of gods working for y’all? And did that Chamalla-addict seer get rescued?
Beyond that, how can they reveal enough, without ending the show?
And, as always, about Dualla’s pitiful, self-pitying sodden trap of a marriage: Billy. Keikeya. You godsdamn fool.
Funny you would find something to like about Lee tonite and I found something to dislike. I think he’s trying to fool both himself and Dee that he loves her. He wants to love her because he sees Starbuck and Sam trying again. But he doesn’t love her — and both he and Dee know it. And I’m totally losing sympathy with Dee — she’s known all along he doesn’t love her, no matter what he trys to convince himself — but she lets herself get played. Professional victims annoy me.
And now that I’ve dealt with the priority issue, lets move on to that torture stuff.
[yawwwwn] Booring…
It was all so frakin’ obvious. Let’s make Laura do the pushing because that’s *really* casting against type. Let’s have Cottle play the good hearted doctor, cause that’s not. Let’s try to keep up some totally non-existent suspense as to whether Gaius is a cylon or not.
Gaeta…WTF?
On the other hand — the video is a hoot. And Jacob is some amazing writer, isn’t he? But he did miss one obvious point — why have cylons look like humans if they’re not going to become human-like…not some scary *other*. They look and act just like us…