Because here’s how fucking blessed Sharon Agathon is. She spent a season on doomed and rotting Caprica, chasing a boy through the forest, trying to make him fall in love. She found out how rarely you stay clean when love comes up. Got pregnant. Got a gun held to her head approximately eleven times before she ever got back to the scariest place in the universe. Was threatened with an eleventh-hour abortion by the first and most powerful of all humans; was operated on to keep that queen alive. Her child was born, and died in the cradle: all the hopes of two great races, dead. With fingers no larger than a thought.
They locked her up for a year, chained and screaming. And at the point of her greatest humanity, when she and Boomer truly switched places — she became a Cylon in human skin rather than Boomer’s human in Cylon skin — her most broken sister told her a terrible secret. “The enemy has your miraculous child, who was stolen. And they are killing it.” She committed complicated suicide, risked her life, watched her sister die, and brought the child back. That was months ago. She was blessed? She was fucked. Again, and again. And we’re not done yet. The clock is running.
I read some spoilers this time. I shouldn’t do that. You shouldn’t, either, so don’t read on if you don’t want to be spoiled.
SQUEE ADAMA ROSLIN HUSKER FLIGHT SUIT HOT SQUEE.
Sorry, were you expecting sense? Sense flew out the window with “I can’t live without her.” Sense flew out the window with “Galactica, this is Husker.” Sense flew out the window with … FLIGHT SUIT. If anyone needs me, I’ll be over here, finger pressed firmly on the TiVo’s “pause button.” I’m just … I’m a little incoherent. Gimme a minute.
(As a side note, what is WITH all the middle-aged hot on TV lately? First John Adams’ wig!sex and now the promise of presidential/admiralty mack? Grown-ups in love. I’ve died and gone to narrative heaven.)
Quick moments of ew: Lampkin’s cat-in-a-bag, worst party favor ever. Tigh knocked up a Cylon. Why, if we must see poor Tricia Helfer rubbing her sexy ChipSix self all over greasy little Gaius “I Want A Pony, No, I AM A Pony” Baltar, can’t we see her getting it on with Tigh? See aforementioned point about middle-aged hot, middle-aged on Tigh’s end, anyway.
Quick moments of yay: Tigh and Adama being suchboys. “Okay, we just beat the shit out of each other, let’s … sit here a minute and think about how straight we are.” I love men, I love this about them, what good friends they can be. Lampkin and everything about him, including that he knows Lee’s particular kink is being put upon, such that he had to be forced into talking himself into the presidency at gunpoint. Lampkin’s fat kitty, whose fact I just wanted to rub with my two hands until she purred. The New Caprica Hero Dog! I find the idea of animals on Galactica interesting, because I’m a dork: Is there like a PetCo Ship that supplies kibble? Maybe it comes from the same place as Hera’s Magic Daycare.
(Repeat to yourself: It’s just a show, I should really just relax.)
Adama asked, long ago, why humans deserve to survive. And Sharon, Boomer, Model Number Eight, all these people with just one face, looked back at him and said, “Maybe you don’t.” So what’s human, then? Cottle, reaching out to hold Natalie’s hand. Lee, making the Colonies a promise. Starbuck’s smile: “Nothing but the rain.” Lampkin and the barrel of a gun. Racetrack on her spacewalk. I’ve always loved the humans on this show the best, but it’s the Cylons, of late, who provide the answers to the question:
Sharon, in irons, behind bars, again, submitting again. Choosing, again. Love, all love, is a choice. Love is actions, behavior, love is doing one thing when your entire body screams to do another. Love is accepting the punishment the Admiral decides is fit, and putting on the shackles again, and stepping into the cell. The song in the back of her throat and the taste of blood in her mouth, her arms around her daughter, that little head tight around her neck. Natalie reaches up, reaches out, and finds a hand to hold at the end. Tigh, unsure, takes on the burdens of command. What deserves to survive?
What doesn’t?
A.
ps. HUSKER. SQUEE.