Jacob was so fantastic this week that you get two quotes, and spoilers for the ep, under the cut.
I am so violently opposed to this concept of “everybody screws up now and then,” it’s not even funny. What a nasty, masturbatory, self-aggrandizing, lazy, stupid sentiment. I’d rather not have the conversation at all, if that’s the only option, because at that point you’re defending the indefensible: I like the show enough to lie and say this wasn’t that bad. Who does that help? How does that induce transformation? How can you rise, when you give yourself the option of taking a nap? You fuck up, you learn, you try harder, you get better, you get stronger. You don’t lay down and go to sleep and close your eyes and shut down the conversation: you evolve.
Harsh and unforgiving and man, it must be tough in his house and his head, but also: YES.
I’m calling it: Chip Six and Chip Gaius are the same entity, and that entity is an angel of God. Caprica and Gaius (and Kara, and Three; and Cavil and William Adama; and Roslin and Felix Gaeta) are just the tools, pivots, chits it’s moving around, in order to break down the Fleet and the Cylons and bring back together what’s been torn apart. The angel was born in nuclear fire, in the first Exodus, in the billion burned and orphaned children of Gaius Baltar, in the rebellion and confusion and monstrous destruction the Cylons brought, and the day the Chips stop talking is the day that horror is undone. That’s the day we rest, and that’s the day all pawns become queens, and that’s the day we win. That’s Three, looking at the Final Five and seeing Kara’s gods and goddesses; that’s Sharon, skipping back and forth across the line, becoming a new woman every single time they put her in these horrible situations. Angel or demon, figment or whatever: this is how the world changes, every single day. This is how things become better. Everything that rises, every single thing, converges in heaven. You change the world by changing yourself, and you change yourself by stepping across the lines, as the angel begs you to do. That line of salt is human and Cylon history and tears, and nothing changes until we step across and hold each other. We erase that line with love and mercy and faith, until it never existed: that salt is the tears of a million children, caught in an hallucination that we’re different from each other. The lie that you’re alone. Become more Cylon or become more human, all the angel needs from you is this: to become more. To rise.
It’s a theme he hits on in his discussions of Farscape as well, and really most stories are about becoming who you are, and most writers are writing about that moment in their characters’ lives, when they figure out what ground it is they stand on. What makes you. What broke you. Why it’s the same thing.
Quick question: Who on this show is in the middle of a messy divorce? Because between last week’s ep and this, I’m beginning to think it’s all about how women is bitches what don’t understand the inner lives of men, and it’s pissing me off.
Cally almost dying doesn’t make me like her. Cally and the Chief almost dying doesn’t make me give a flying fuck about their marriage and their kid. I don’t know why I don’t care, and I feel vaguely bad about it, but I don’t. There are enough sitcoms out there about how hard marriage is, and how wives don’t let husbands do their jobs without whining about how they’re not home enough. And it’s not that there’s never truth to that argument, it’s that it’s the fight we all know about, and I’m bored with it, it’s like making jokes about how men can’t put the toilet seat down. I’m over it. Whatever. This show used to be about how gigantic muscled sports stars got pinned down in firefights with toasters and had to rely on girls to get them out of trouble. And robots. Teach me about that again.
Speaking of men and their stuff, an Adama episode! I loved the acknowledgment that while he and Lee have worked out some of their Bad Daddy issues, but that they’re not done, and I loved Lee poking holes in the story Adama was telling himself about how he left his family for their own good, because it’s not like that’s ever not crap. Any time Adama is shirtless is a good day in my world, and I liked the continuity of his showing up when the Chief was in trouble because he felt somehow responsible for the Chief’s domesticity, because the Chief and Cally are his fucked-up, misguided symbols of everything that went wrong on New Caprica.
Other things I loved: Roslin. Roslin. Roslin’s hair. The ten seconds of old, cocky, short-haired, sarcastic Starbuck that we got. The Presidential/Admiralty almost-mack. The veiled references to almost-certain-macking that occurred after the groundbreaking ceremony. Athena being called on to do work and doing it really fracking well. The bit with the law books at the end. Lee actually being nice to Dualla. The possibility of future leadership macking. Yay!
A.
I liked the episode. It was a nice change of pace from gods and demons and existential sturm und drang. It was a story of how, even at the maybe endtimes, you still need to worry about who’s gonna change the kids diapers if mom’s not around. Life goes on. And there was a nice parallel between the Cally/Chief and Adama/CarolAnne stories without being beat over the head with it. One couple fracked it up, and fracked up their kid in the process. The other couple has a chance to get it right.
But I agree with you about Cally. She is a whiny little shit. She doesn’t deserve the Chief.
They do sometimes forget it’s supposed to be a science fiction show, don’t they? Apollo said that his current job was “24/7” and no one remembered that these people probably aren’t using an earth-based system of time?
Next week’s ep is written by Jane Espenson, so I’m hoping for better.
One thing Trek got right…once and a while, at least…was that 24/7 wasn’t their “all the time” cycle shorthand. DS9 was not on a 24/7 schedule.
One of the things we take for granted and don’t even think twice about is that weeks and months are based on Earth/Moon movements. Weeks correspond (roughly) to the phases of the moon. Months are totally tied to lunar cycles. Our calendar, our time reckoning system, is tied to this particular mote of dust, and that the chances of Caprica having identical cycles is infintesimally small.
My wife didn’t at all like this episode, and she’s annoyed that this is the second one in a row that sucked in IHHO.
Me – most of it all has been said so I won’t bother repeating it. However, I think the characterization of Bill’s ex-wife was fascinating. I’ve been married to someone like that . . someone who is right sometimes, gets under your skin, and when she can’t get you to dance to her tune when she wants – the subject is irrevalent – they turn into a towering rage of unreasonable demands, each one hammering at you until either you snap back at them or the demander snaps at you. Sometimes, that’s life in an abusive relationship . .
I keep chuckling at how the Cally’s child is named Nikki, which is the actress’s name.
Aw, you know what I’m going to say before I’m gonna say it:
Dualla gets a pass? For Billy? By the gods, *why*?
Ah, I must have missed that detail. It makes a hell of a lot more sense now.
Forgive me, Reba, but Lee wasn’t going to be the *only* lawyer. Roslin said she wanted him as a balance to the legal wonks who would parse every word and every action. And it makes perfect sense–she has a good history with Lee, and he’s got a lot of cred with the folks in the fleet, especially given his history with Tom Zarek. I think she saw Lee’s role as the guy who would keep the legal wonks honest and translate their conclusions for the fleet.
More smart Roslin, imho.
Also, I thought the whole thing with Bill’s ex was good for one thing–he *has* kind of gotten this whole god-like image, and it was kind of nice to see he’d screwed up, and Lee’s ongoing anger with him wasn’t just teen angst stretched way too long.
Did not one lawyer survive the destruction? I mean, that would be pretty cool, but statistically highly unlikely, especially since there was a contingent of politician types (not just Roslin) visiting Galactica right before the nukes hit. And even if there hadn’t been, there MUST have been a couple of others, most of whom would have had no contact with the current raft of politicians. So why Lee, other than “we need Lee to be interesting”? He has no formal training and nothing other than name recognition – and if you think putting an Adama in there is NOT going to start riots all on it’s own, you’re fracked.
I was completely unmoved by this ep. Adama’s relationship with his wife went south, apparently because she got sick of following him all over the universe then waiting around for him to get back from missions. It’s not uncommon for military people to end up divorced for this reason, so why make her an alcoholic shrew? Ooooh, so we can see how painful Lee’s childhood was. Cry me a river. EVERYONE had a painful childhood on some level; come to terms with it, get mad if you need to and move the frack on. Or at least be interesting about it like Kara.
As for Cally and Chief…I really wish I could care. I actually liked Cally when she was a feisty little mechanic-geek. Seemed like she was one of the few who could yell at Chief and be heard. Now that she’s his wife, though, he can’t hear her. Again, not uncommon, but also not interesting. The fact that he didn’t think about the duty roster in terms of members of the same family going into an unused and patched up section of the ship tells me that he’s not a very good supervisor. And to do it because he wanted it to “be like it used to be”???? Dude, if you wanted that, you might try treating your wife like a person – you know, like you used to. Just a thought.
I hated the lawbooks passing on thing. It just sat there, I thought. I got no pulse from it.
My first reaction? They’ve got a ship jammed to the fracking gills with refugees and Adama is using up precious cargo space to store a bunch of completely useless books. What a leader.
As for Roslin, she walks into a room in this show, and the sun comes out. Even when she’s screaming, bat-shit crazy yelling at Baltar. If I were in the fleet, I’d do abso-frakin’-lutely anything for that woman.
Pretty much, yeah.
word, re Roslin, BuggyQ.
And I like that they are stretching out the Roslin/Adama tension. I’m glad they cut that ‘extra scene’- though that look on Dualla’s face whilst considering the admiral and the prez– priceless.
Whatever anybody says about Cally, I will always love her for biting the ear off that prisoner rapist guy. If Dualla gets a pass on future behavior because of Billy (as I think she should), Cally should because of that.
That said, I see her relationship with Galen as inherently confused. I don’t think she gets how she ended up with him. There’s no question in my mind that she loves him, but she doesn’t understand why he married her. Ditto for him. *That’s* why their marriage is shaky. Was she rebound girl from Sharon, was she the anti-Cylon because of her dorkiness, was she best friend = safe? Who the frack knows. But now they have this baby that they both love more than life, so even if they never figure out how the got together, they’ll figure out how to stay that way.
As for Roslin, she walks into a room in this show, and the sun comes out. Even when she’s screaming, bat-shit crazy yelling at Baltar. If I were in the fleet, I’d do abso-frakin’-lutely anything for that woman.
Bear w/me, relevant BSG point ahead.
There are 19 things wrong- baseline- with The L Word. 19 reasons that any self respecting television viewer, let alone feminist, should not be watching it. It is innately, deeply, flawed more often than not.
When it was Sunday night timeslot neighbors with Deadwood, there wasn’t a problem cleaning the brain palate and stepping into the next show. Most weeks since BSG moved to sunday, there isn’t a problem. No expectations are confounded.
The last two weeks, my brain has had to struggle with the transition. Because the last two weeks, BSG has been bit too wobbly for comfort. It’s still BSG, still on a different planet, light years away (heh) in terms of quality.
But there is some seriously shitty wobbling happening. When a deeply flawed show is more emotionally and narratively coherent than an almost perfect show, I say we have a more than annoying shitty wobble. We shouldn’t be wanking about what clock they use – we shouldn’t even be noticing that because we’re swept along and that stuff doesn’t get in the way of our suspension of disbelief.
Re the messy divorce- after the last two shows, I’m wondering if it’s not Moore and Eick that are having the problems. It’s that kind of wobble. Maybe I’m just paranoid.
This episode was head and shoulders better than last week’s, that much has to be said.
I’m going to come out and say it. I wanted Cally to die. Don’t frack with me people- don’t put her in a coffin shaped box and say neener neener – see, she’s just pining for the fjords.
I think what Espenson said in some interview is true- this story is told via relationships. Weird things happen to characters thrust into relationship with other characters. Things get cancelled out. I don’t like what gets cancelled out of starbuck when she’s with Lee and I think it’s a flaw in the show, not an aspect of the fictional relationship. with Chief and Cally, I don’t get that so much. I think their problems work fictionally, just not for themselves, but as “fucked-up, misguided symbols.” I love Chief, I WANT to be engaged in his torment. But it’s not about Chief, so I don’t give a shit. I don’t even give a shit that it’s Adama’s symbolic struggle they are playing out in this ep. Sue me, I don’t like being beat over the head. CAn’t two people almost dying in a freezing vaccuum just be about two people almost dying in a freezing vaccuum sometimes?
I like the basic gist of adama having to compartmentalize regret and sorrow about his fracked up personal life. that’s some rich stuff and Olmos sells it perfectly well without any dialogue even. why smother that with pedantic tripe: “I’ll see you next year?” I think there is a spot over on my right temple you missed with your shovel mister.
The compartmentalizing of the roslin stuff worked much better. Bright spot of the episode. Granted, it was less abstract to begin with, but aces! Looking forward to that.
Lee still bores me. Always will I suspect. I love his jaw- that’s where the action is. I just watch his jaw when he’s onscreen- tells me all I need to know.
I hated the lawbooks passing on thing. It just sat there, I thought. I got no pulse from it.
Loved that even in space, you can’t do shit without the giant baby bag. Even my dog said, “Aren’t you forgetting something?” when Chief just walked out of the room with the kid.
“Apollo said that his current job was “24/7″ and… ”
that was the Babel fish, failing to suspend your disbelief.