First, some Starbuck pretty:
Second, some Jacob:
Lee stands in the Hall of Remembrance, unable to pin her to the wall. He looks down at her, up at Kat, nobody there to tell him who to be, or how to do this. He hears somebody enter the corridor and hides the picture: to be grieving, is this appropriate? Is this too much, or too little? There aren’t any rules, not with that much history behind it.
Third, some spoilers.
As always, with this show, from the miniseries onward, it’s never been the big expensive CGI that gets you. It’s never been the climactic battle scene. It’s Lee, out of uniform, being called Mr. Adama, and the way Laura shifts, just ever so slightly, facing him down. Shifts from loving him, loving him like she loved Billy and maybe the Admiral, like she loves all of humanity, shifts into that space where she’s above him, somehow, looking down and pitying his attempts to make her small. Because that’s how it is when you’re a fanatic. It doesn’t matter to you that somebody else sees through you. You believe it, and that’s enough, and it’s horrifying. I love crazy space Mom when she gets back on the junk.
It’s ugly, this trial, and it’s not because of all the reasons Zarek said it would be ugly. It’s not because Baltar, having lived his life in pursuit of the idea of himself as a messianc figure, is finally getting to see what that’s really like after all. It’s ugly because it exposes everything that everybody did on New Caprica, and every day since the attacks: Bill and Ellen, Hera’s blood, chamalla and visions and hatred and blame. And I think Lee’s getting off a little too easy, in that it’s not like he’s blameless, it’s not like he didn’t have his ways of coping, it’s not like his terrorism and rebellion was yesterday. I am skeeved to be even saying this, to be letting Gaius Baltar even a slightly little tiny bit off the hook here, but his trial isn’t even about him anymore, and maybe it never was. Because there were a lot of places everybody could have stopped it, and didn’t.
Quick takes: Sam and Seelix? There’s not enough NO in the world. When did Tory start losing it? TOTAL CYLON. And if you listen to Tigh’s crazy music backwards, do you hear what I hear? Also Tigh is starting to sound like the groundskeeper from Caddyshack. And they’d better not kill off Racetrack, she’s the only pilot I still like, because I am one of the six people on earth who do not find Hotdog attractive, Olmos’s kid or not.
A.