For old times’ sake. Her not being there hurts like a rug burn.
From Jacob’s recap of The Woman King:
Here’s a reason: Helo tosses and turns, in bed, unable to sleep, full of strange sensations. The main one is that his skin is being hollowed out from the inside by a mysterious party — let’s just call him Michael Angeli — for the purposes of putting on his gigantic awesome body like a skin suit, and walking around inside a world not unlike the world of Battlestar we’ve come to know. This Helo Suit looks like Helo, wants to hug you like Helo, is silently grim and put upon like Helo, and takes off its clothes a good deal more than Helo normally does, which is nice of the Helo Suit; but the most interesting thing about the Helo Suit is its curious power of turning everybody around it into a total asshole, acting entirely out of character and speaking in stilted language, in order to bring the Helo Suit closer and closer to sainthood. That’s a weird power for a skin suit to have, don’t you think? I guess it all depends on who’s wearing it. I guess that’s what we’ve gotta figure out. Now, I don’t know anything about Michael Angeli, if by “know” you mean “base my perceptions and opinions on verifiable fact and personal experience.” But if you think for one hot second that you can’t learn a lot about a person from the stories they tell, you need to go back to People School.
I want to take up a collection to get Angeli laid, so that he can stop writing crap like that ep and parts of this one.
The good: BADGER! I love the actor, I love the sunglasses and the kleptomania, I love the way he gamed Lee because Lee’s all about the rules and the rebellion, I love the accent. I hate this tendency to invent funky new guest-starry characters instead of playing with the good ones we have, like the stupid racist asshole doc in The Woman King, but if you’re going to do it, this is a fun way to do so.
Starbuck’s file, harkening all the way back to the miniseries when she slugged Tigh and I fell in love for the very first time.
More screentime for Tory. She’s totally a Cylon, but she’s an awesome Cylon.
Sam. SAM. He loved Starbuck the best. He knew all about her and he loved her not in spite of her faults but in some fucked up way BECAUSE of them, and I love him for it, drunk and yelling on top of a Viper. He and Starbuck coped in ways I can understand.
Baltar being even squirrellier than usual. After a few months in a cell with the light changes and guards fucking with him and “please disturb” kind of Gina-treatment going on, he’s licking the walls.
Caprica, and the show remembering that she dumped him, not the other way round. I’m surprised it wasn’t made more explicit that she is, in fact, the only one on the ship that could exonerate Baltar and she hasn’t given that up to anybody yet.
I am soooo looking forward to the big chewy mess that is going to be the Trial of the Century.
Now, on to the bad: The return of Lee’s Daddy issues. I get that he isn’t over it, but can we at least have SOME character development from, again, the miniseries? It’s like these eps exist in a weird world all their own, wherein Lee’s a lot dumber than he normally is, and Adama’s Bad Daddy and Roslin’s like a teacher hitting him with the naughty stick and the whole thing just pisses me off. I would have loved to see the two of them nurse each other through this, instead of chewing on scenery.
The tendency to throw characters in a room together and stop all possible action so that they can Talk About What’s Really Going On. Yeah, Cally, I’m looking at your shrill sermon about the whole “we’re destroying ourselves, the Cylons won’t have to destroy us, etc etc,” like, WOW I DIDN’T GET IT UNTIL NOW THANK YOU SHOW FOR EXPLAINING IT TO MY DUMB ASS.
The long speeches that again basically boil down to “women are making us soft and weak and should just fold the fucking laundry and quit screwing with our minds.” There is nothing romantic about suffering. You do not get a medal for having the most special pain in the world, LEE, and Romo Lampkin (ugh, name), same deal, surviving a relationship that sucks is not something anybody on board fucking Battlestar Galactica is gonna give you a cookie for.
Helo was like Starbuck’s best friend next to Boomer. Couldn’t we have had just slightly, very slightly, less time with Baltar’s Shiny New Lawyer (sexy and fun though he was) and some time with Helo?
Bring on the courtroom drama.
A.
Not seeing Katie Lee Sackoff’s name on the opening credits shook my world more than just a little.
I really hope they don’t shove Sam into the background just cause Kara’s gone. He’s just starting to get to be something more than a pretty face.
Bill got on my nerves in this episode and I’m not sure why.
The obsession with Baltar’s pen is more than a little bit creepy.
I’m not really sure why this episode was written.
I think I was the only one who enjoyed this episode. My wife thought it was just weird.
I can see why Lee’s continuing issues have gotten on everyone’s nerves – Jamie moves between being a superior actor to being a not-so-good actor often, and since Lee’s issues with the men in his life are not well articulated by the writers, it gets tedious. But when you have an inferiority complex with both your father and grandfather, especially with someone who’s your direct superior and whom likes to use you as his hatchet man or an extension of himself to solve problems, the problem doesn’t magically go away after you stand up for yourself once. Lee keeps getting dragged into things he doesn’t care about, hasn’t the equipment for, to be the Old Man’s micromanager. If I was Lee, I would have quit the space service years ago or changed my name or both. He may be an Adama, but his place is not at his father’s side . . and I can’t figure out why Dualla hasn’t figured this out and tried to explain it to her husband.
Speaking of inadequacies – Cally, Cally, Cally . . oh sweet Cally. You need to bury the hatchet sister. You may never like Sharon, but you have got to quit hating her. But like a festering sore, you just can’t leave that itching thing alone, and if the opportunity for you to hate Athena, or The Cylon, pops up, you’ve just got to scratch it until you bleed, don’t you?
Is there a place to view BSG online — I’ve missed the last four episodes!
tired, you can get it off iTunes.
A.
Y’know the other person I would have really liked to see reacting to Starbuck’s…not being there (shit, I can’t even say it–how fracked up is that? I looked for her in the credits, too, Flory, but knew they were too smart to give away anything that easily)? Sigh. Back to my original point. Roslin–they had some pretty important moments together, she and Starbuck. Original Leoben and the torture bit, Starbuck betraying Adama to go back for the arrow. Sheesh, couldn’t be have had *one* little scene with her? They didn’t even give us her offering condolences to the Adamas.
And I’m with you, A. Romo Lampkin? I ask you. That just reeks of Michael Angeli digging out his old D&D character lists for that one. “18 charisma, 18 intelligence, yeah, that’s perfect!”
Couldn’t *we*, not *be*–lord knows how I got that typo. Sigh.
And another thing–I didn’t have as much trouble with the Daddy issues being back, simply because losing Starbuck had to be so like losing Zak. The problem I have with it is that Apollo seems to be letting himself get played because of it. Yes, he’s fracked up, but he isn’t stupid.
I have to say, though, WTF was with the “you’re grounded, no you’re not, oh, never mind” stuff? What on earth made Dad think he was suddenly okay? That part just didn’t make any sense to me.
Angeli doesn’t just need to get laid, he needs a big dose of Ritalin, too.
I’m taking bets on when Cally is offed. Bets also offered on Pen Isn’t Coming Back.
“I have to say, though, WTF was with the “you’re grounded, no you’re not, oh, never mind” stuff? What on earth made Dad think he was suddenly okay? That part just didn’t make any sense to me.”
Word. He grounds Lee because Lee isn’t coping well with Kara’s death, yet he’s possibly the one person even more fracked up that Lee.
(Are you guys ever gonna enable HTML on this here site?)
The population count in the credits went down by one between last week and this, and it tore our hearts out.
“The population count in the credits went down by one between last week and this, and it tore our hearts out.”
Which is interesting, because at least two people died between last week’s credits and this week’s: Starbuck, and Baltar’s first lawyer. I wouldn’t read anything into it, though–it’s probably just a glitch.
Lawyers don’t count. Especially when they’re redshirts.
OK it has takenme days to finally havethe timeto watch this episode. Stupid busy lifestyle. Slammed a lot of beer from start to finish so forgive me.
New lawyer rocks. He rocks hard. BSG is all about the conflicts of our own little lives. This guy is going to play us like a drum, good, bad, evil, he will spin it the way he wants it. Gotta dig it.
Lee is a tool for other people to play. Get over it. pawn
Old man Adama, going to continue to do what he does best. I wish I was commanded by such philisophical wisdom, might make things better. Tigh is better.
Cylon Blondie, 6, Hottie. I would, mark my words. This character is just getting started, the whole Balter seduction route was so easy it wasnt that interesting. Her conflicts, now that is good.
Laura. I would, mark my words. Best character of the whole shabang. I loved it when a few episodes back she accepted that an underling had a better perspective and view then her as president.
This is good drama, why doesnt the big 3 figure this out?