the Daniel copies. And then corrupted the genetic formula. I knew it
was John. Envious, sadistic.” Cavil totally changes the subject to how
he’s a total sadsack and blah blah: “If I’m so irredeemable, if I’m
such a mistake, if I’m so broken, then whose fault is that?” It’syour fault, you stupid motherfucker. EvenKara Frakking Thrace
has figured this out, and you’re like this computer genius robot thing?
“It’s my maker’s fault. And that’s not God, that’s you! This is on
you!” All I hear is wah, wah, wah. ( Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay to mould Me man? Did I solicit thee from darkness to promote me?)
If this show’s about the cycle of vengeance, if this show’s about who you become when the world ends, if this show’s aboutnow what, well, now what? How do you decide when to stop blaming what made you for who you are? And if you don’t like who you are, is it ever a better use of your time being angry at what made you, instead of just spending your crazy-ridiculous-short time on this planet fixing yourself up?
I ask an honest question here because I’m not sure, because I’m torn a lot of the time between this very everyone-would-say-normal need to put everything out on the table and make sure everybody knows the score, my own desire that the people I hate be miserable, concern that the people I hate could be out making other people do insane things for shitty reasons, and an enduring need to get work done.
And don’t we talk all day long about the reason the present assholes get away with it is because the ones immediately prior never answered for their crimes? And doesn’t Cavil have a point here? But is having a point, the point? I’m not being cute, I’m asking: where does justice end and vengeance begin? Is the former ever not the latter? Do I have to go back to The Winslow Boy to make this make sense? (“Easy to do justice. Hard to do right.”) I don’t understand this all of a sudden and it’s weird, because I’m Catholic, this is mother’s milk to us. This show keeps screwing with my head.
There actually is a show, by the way, with spoilers inside and a hot space chick with tattoos and an old man with a gravelly voice. C’mon:
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Love. Let’s get the easy stuff out of the way first. Quick takes: Yes, let’s arm Baltar’s crazy death cult! Yay! Also, welcome back, Baltar who talks to himself and licks invisible people and humps things only he can see. I missed you so! Jane Espenson always manages to walk this crazy line between this being, you know, Battlestar Galactica, and this being a French farce about killer robots who’ve all fucked each other and don’t know it yet. Speaking of Ellen Tigh, glad to see that bitch still crazy after all these years, and that basically she wants to take over the world. I’m really warming to her lately, and that skeeves the living hell out of me.
If I had bought for one second, or seen one single second of, Saul Tigh and Caprica Six having a love affair instead of just hallucinogenically hatefucking each other (plus C-6 is like his simpleminded kid, basically, getting her to fall in love with you requires giving her a lolly and telling her you’re a priest) in a prison cell, I maybe would have felt all of this ep a little more than I did. As it is, I get it intellectually, but the only thing that grabbed my in my rib cage was, of course, Tigh and Adama, changing places: Crazy pissed off drunk, tormented father. As always. Men and their friendships. I’m such an easy mark.
Love. Doesn’t everybody start out thinking it’s like a bowl of sugar, that there’s only so much and so many kinds, and that you have to parcel it out? Ellen’s talking about choices and about Caprica versus Bill versus Ellen versus Liam. I think of Ellen and Saul and Bill, and I think of Lee and Kara and Sam, I think of Lee and Kara and Dee, I think of Galen and Helo and Boomer and Sharon and Athena and Gaius and his crazy sexy death cult. It’s all one thing. We’re all wrapped up around one another, bleeding edges over, until you can’t turn around without seeing pieces of the Cylons everywhere.
It’s why Kara’s my favorite, always has been: She loves you thenshe loves you, and if she can’t name it right now (Lee, on New Caprica) that’s not even in the map-able vicinity of her problem. She has two speeds: This One’s With Me and Everybody Fuck Off Now. It gets messy with her because when you deliberately don’t break it down any more than thatand she does not have time right now you end up with fuzzy rules about who you’re fucking, especially after the end of the world. Ellen was being a horrible bitter slag the way people always are horrible bitter slags in these situations, of COURSE Saul loves Bill and the ship and the uniform (and her and Caprica and the baby) and all of it because his life is all of it. He doesn’t compartmentalize, Tigh doesn’t. He’s always been wide open, from the miniseries on out, wide open and raw to the world. Everybody gets in.
Now with Lee, Ellen might have had a shot with the argument about prioritizing affections in the proper order so as not to appear unseemly.
But it’s not a bowl of sugar, love. There isn’t only so much. TV likes to tell us you love people this way but not that way, that you decide someone or some course of action or some thing is right for you and it’s like everything else goes away. TV and movies talk about rightness and destiny and all that shit like all doubt gets erased the minute you make up your mind, like it’s always a big dramatic choice: Him or me, her or me, Galactica or me, that uniform or me, your job or me.
We bleed into the cracks in one another, all the fucking time, and we’re always making choices. Some of them are huge, giant breaks in the beams you can spot a mile away, easily welded back into place. Most of them are tiny, and by the time you think to put them under the light, they’re everywhere.
A.