BSG: A Disquiet Follows my Soul
Jan. 24th, 2009 09:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccatoriaWell, this is gonna be a weird one to write up. I basically watch BSG for the mythology and robotic and philosophical stuff and this was largely about the civilian fleet and their political struggles and character I don't care much about (Adama, Zarek, Gaeta). This isn't a criticism, because it's a valid part of the show and it's a good thing that the show isn't forgetting about it.
I actually think it's also a very compelling story. The sort of complex civilian versus military storytelling that we often got in season one and then kind of lost when RDM didn't have the time to flesh out the civilian fleet and they often turned out as strawmen for the episode of the week. (I'm looking at you Demand Peace. I'm looking at you Dana Delaney. I'm looking at you Sagittaron fundamentalists.)
The basic issue here is a very good one. The Fleet don't trust the cylons. But these cylons genuinely are the only group of cylons they have even the tiniest bit of common ground with - after all, they fought with them, destroyed their own resurrection hub with no hope of their species surviving over the course of generations, and are just as frakked as the rest of them if Cavil shows up. But. They're cylons. They recanted late in the game; they're dangerous; the people are angry. Why should they care?
And this volatile, important situation is being manipulated all over the place by Zarek, who I still can't really get a handle on except to say that while I'm sure he genuinely believes the cylons are dangerous, I also believe that this is a power play to him; a way to punch the Man in the nose and put in place his own vision of What Should Be. That's the only consistant thing Zarek's ever done - ignored the practical issues of the cylon threat to turn them and the destruction of the Colonies into an idealistic issue about reshaping Colonial society.
And on the other hand, this volatile, important situation is being exacerbated through nigh-on criminal negligence at the hands of Adama and especially Laura Roslin.
I mean, Adama handles things poorly. It's totally in character for him to make things worse by just refusing to even contemplate relieving Tigh of duty because now that he's sorted out his issues with his BFF everyone else should fall in line. Of course he's going to send in marines to arrest a president/acting president he doesn't like. Of course he's going to realise the problem with Laura and then deal with it by trying to pawn off everyone else until he can deal with her in the way he thinks is best, which is actually known as, in phase one, gently hoping a few appeals to her sense of duty will fix the situation and, in phase two, enabling her.
But Laura. Oh dear.
Don't worry, flist, I still want to smack Adama in the mouth and I still love Laura. But really, the woman is having a total breakdown. Yes, partly this is due to the medical euphoria she's experiencing, but she's made a very conscious decision to ride that wave and completely ignore everything that's happening around her.
She's not running around the ship and kissing admirals and shunning her treatments because she's suddenly discovered some great freedom and love of life in her final days. This isn't some justifiable "right to live a little" because it's someone else's turn to carry the ball.
Remember Dee? And how, once she knew she was going to die, she became superhappy and started having this perfect day and helping people and being flirty and delightful?
Laura just has longer before the inevitable death occurs.
Laura is having a perfect day because she's going to die. And she's doing it at the expense of the Fleet and her people because it's self-destructive and Laura Roslin wants to destroy herself, and her image. Bill Adama gets drunk and actually starts reading emo poetry.
Laura Roslin starts jogging around the Battlestar in a terminally ill condition metaphorically yelling, "LET THEM EAT CAKE!" because she's acting out. Because she's having a breakdown and has cunningly disguised it as some kind of liberation so Adama will be mostly blind to it and blind to the rest because it inovles that sex he's wanted forever and because he's acting out too by becoming an alcoholic. I assume he was constantly brushing his teeth to get rid of the alcohol on his breath.
For people who are A/R 'shippers, and in an attempt to be respectful of canon, I'm not trying to say that the things she's doing aren't things she secretly wants to do. I'm not saying she doesn't want to sleep with Adama (although I really would rather not have seen it).
But doing so now, in this manner, at this time? She's not doing it for healthy reasons. She's doing it because she's so broken and so destructive she's actually trying to do the one thing that was antithetical to her before: put herself first. And not only that, because everyone must do that sometimes, but put herself first at the expense of her people.
I'm not really angry with her. Even though she's doing a terrible job right now and even though the reason I love her so much is that she doesn't behave this way when so many people would. I guess because after four years of not behaving that way, I figure she's earned this character arc because I'm convinced it won't last. It's a side of Laura we haven't seen, that maybe we need to. Like how before Baltar's interrogation, we'd never seen her just lose it and give in to rage. We've never seen her totally faithless and self-destructive.
And yes, I confess that as an anti-A/R shipper, I do take some solace in the fact that my most honest reading of this situation is that she's using sex-with-Bill as a form of self-destructive suicidal insanity.
*must not make Bill macro: I like mah wives like I like mah dautrs: SUICIDAL YAYZ!*
Finally, at least she had the presence of mind to offer to resign the Presidency. But much like Lee had to be president because Adama hates Zarek, so to much Laura remain president while clearly unfit for office because Adama hates Zarek.
I missed Kara, but I did love her scene with Gaeta. I mean, he was picking a crazy fight and she was all kinds of offensive, but I thought both of them played it really brilliantly until Gaeta had to say, "reckoning," because I find that word very cheesy. Like, if the Transformers sequel wasn't called "The Rise of the Fallen," it probably would have been called, "The Fall of the Reckoning," or something.
But anyway, the point, the scene. Kara's problem has always been that when someone baits her, and she knows it, she sees it as an excuse to let fly and not disappoint them because she was baited. It's still her problem, and it's still awesome to watch. I think just because both of those characters were so angry and hurt.
There was a lot of good world-building in this episode, actually. I found it gave me far more of a feel for the state of the Fleet than the last one which was all high drama and people punching each other in corridors. But...yeah. Kara and Gaeta in the mess hall was a macrocosm of all the hurt in the world and I really liked that moment.
I just wish we had more of Kara's crazy space destiny and the Opera House and stuff. But I'm not worried. I know we'll get back to the crazy story of the Religious Women after we're done with the boring story of the Militant Men (I'm being harsh; as I said, I actually found this episode quite interesting, it just didn't tear into my heart like it would have if it were focused on other themes).
I missed Tory and Sam. I imagine they're on the basestar since it seems Tyrol has also been at least partly staying there/spending time there. Selfishly I wish we'd seen more of them integrating into the cylon fleet, and those discussions where Tyrol convinced them that Adama was a man of his word, etc. I guess I understand why it was cut. It's probably better for the show overall to occasionally pull back from a cylon-o-centric focus, but it's not better for me. ;)
The idea of the cylon being full citizens and getting a seat on the quorum is AWESOME. I mean, don't get me wrong, I totally understand why the ENTIRE FLEET would go crazy about that, but just, from my perspective, it's awesome and I hope it happens.
They've really swapped Tyrol and Tigh haven't they? They started S4 with Tigh as the widow with huge guilt and nothing really, except his insanity and his guilt to keep him going, while Tyrol had a wife and child and acceptance and respect in his work. Now Tyrol's lost Cally, his job, and also Nick, while Tigh has Caprica and Flipper and an important job despite his cylonicity.
I actually have severe problems with retconning Nicky's paternity. Just from a character point of view, Cally was SO disturbingly in love with the Chief, that I find it hard to buy she had an affair with Hot Dog after they were together for so short a time. Weirdly I'd prefer she was blind drunk and barely remembered it even though that has its own set of dodgy ramifications.
Secondly, it now makes her attempts to airlock Nicky and herself make SO MUCH LESS SENSE and that was...previously such an impressive and painful piece of BSG. Post-partum and psychotic Cally trying to deal with the fact her son was half what she hated, that she loved him so completely while hating half of what he was, that she could never actually get rid of that either because he's her son, just, all of it... That's why she numbly walked down to the airlock. That's why she took Nicky. It never struck me as her thinking that two years of marriage to a cylon and loving a cylon were worth ending her life over. It was the crazy complication Nicky represented, and now, I don't know what to think. It seems so...sick? I don't want to judge when she was clearly mentally ill and panicking, but I really don't understand why her instinct wasn't to tell someone.
I guess it just completely undermines the construction of that scene and takes Cally from horrific but sympathetic to WTF?
I'm also just plain sad that Nicky's not a hybrid. I liked the multiple hybrids. Hera is still important because she's still the first. I wouldn't have been upset if Nicky didn't have a big destiny like her, and there are also a bajillion ways to handwave his being different because he's half final five cylon not a Hera-style hybrid.
Also, couldn't we have somehow changed it so that Cally honestly believed that Nicky was the Chief's kid? Like she slept with Hot Dog that one time, but Nicky looks so much like Galen that she never really gave that much thought and always figured he must be her husband's son, or something? That would at least keep her characterisation in Ties that Bind intact, and it's not like they needed Cottle to already know about Nicky. He came in with a medical condition, they could have run tests on Tyrol to see if he could like, potentially be able to donate a kidney when he's older or something and found out that way.
This just makes Cally a deceptive cheater in a series where there are already two other marriages with women who are, apparently, serial cheaters (Kara and Ellen, though I'm still not convinced Sam's comment at Lee wasn't some form of trash-talking/damage control).
It's not a storyline I'm necessarily averse to, because I think in the case of the Tighs it works well, but three times guys? It starts to look skeezy. And I start to wonder what RDM's obsession with romanticising relationships where the guy is mad faithful in love while the girl sleeps around is all about.
Basically I'm just disappointed. I liked that the boundries were blurring and getting confused and there were multiple hybrids and such and now there are fewere and that makes me sad.
Silver linings include:
1) If they don't drop the storyline faster than something that has to do with Caprica Six, and we just never see Nicky or Hot Dog again, NICKY HAS TWO DADDIES! Okay, they're not the two daddies I would choose (that would be Chief and Sam) but I WILL TAKE WHAT I CAN GET.
2) BSG's continued destruction of the nuclear family as a healthy default for domestic stability and happiness continues to entertain me. And I say this as someone who comes from a very happy nuclear family - I'm not trying to break it down personally, I just like that in BSG all the happiest families are extended, adopted messy things and even the one nuclear family we do have - the Agathons - have a daughter with too many other surrogate mothers to count, and are themselves a threat to the traditional nuclear family of the Galacticaverse by virtue of being half-robot.
But I'm still feeling sulky.
To talk about the robotic baby that apparently still IS a robotic baby: FLIPPER! HOW I MISSED YOU! I AM MILDLY DISAPPOINTED YOU ARE APPARENTLY A BOY BUT WHATEVER.
ISHAY. I'M LOOKING AT YOU. YOU BETTER NOT HURT THAT ADORABLE BALL OF INCESTUOUS ROBOTIC FETUS OR I WILL CUT SOMETHING. PROBABLY YOU.
No, really. I'm hoping that ominous shot was just a set up for PERIL which in turn may mean some actual screen time for Caprica Six beyond like, two minutes every four or five episodes. But Show, listen, I will stay with you through much, but if you kill Flipper, I will cry. I will cry and it will be YOUR FAULT and they will not be the good kind of tears either.
As to the Caprica/Tigh scene, I'd probably have more of an issue with the whole fact that Tigh is, apparently, suddenly on board with Flipper and being all hand-holdy and not-chokey with Caprica because I don't want that relationship to just magically work. But I'm willing to go with it for the following reasons:
1) While I hope she stays dead, I really think Ellen will probably be back and at that point, HILARIOUS HIJINCKS may ensue. So like, I can handle things being unrealistically good right now if it's a build up to LATER.
2) Caprica Six did not get dumped. This would be painful for me.
3) I kind of can sort of maybe see it if I squint, in that, while I think Saul thinks Ellen is forever dead, the fact that she was a cylon is probably, in some ways, a weight off his mind. Since in addition to killing her, he was also wrestling with his betrayal of her in terms of species. I think there's some peace to be found there in terms of his ability to begin to accept - at least a little - that he is a cylon. So I can kind of believe he's in a better place right now.
4) It brought the Cottle.
5) I am ashamed to admit, that entire scene was kind of adorable. I just want to smush them all together and make kissing noises, so I'm grateful that reasons 1 - 3 have given me an excuse to just go with it for this episode and not worry about the Wider Statements It Is Making.
But srsly, Ishay. Join Gaeta's revolution if you must but I WAS NOT KIDDING ABOUT THE KNIFE, BITCH.
Finally, Gaeta. You do know how to pick your presidential boyfriends, sweetheart. I really...I don't know what's gonna happen when the exact thing that happened with Baltar happens again but this time Gaeta can't console himself in the knowledge that he was secretly on the right side all along. I'm probably a bad person for not caring more.
I feel bad for having nothing to say about Lee but basically all he did this episode was wander around.
I actually think it's also a very compelling story. The sort of complex civilian versus military storytelling that we often got in season one and then kind of lost when RDM didn't have the time to flesh out the civilian fleet and they often turned out as strawmen for the episode of the week. (I'm looking at you Demand Peace. I'm looking at you Dana Delaney. I'm looking at you Sagittaron fundamentalists.)
The basic issue here is a very good one. The Fleet don't trust the cylons. But these cylons genuinely are the only group of cylons they have even the tiniest bit of common ground with - after all, they fought with them, destroyed their own resurrection hub with no hope of their species surviving over the course of generations, and are just as frakked as the rest of them if Cavil shows up. But. They're cylons. They recanted late in the game; they're dangerous; the people are angry. Why should they care?
And this volatile, important situation is being manipulated all over the place by Zarek, who I still can't really get a handle on except to say that while I'm sure he genuinely believes the cylons are dangerous, I also believe that this is a power play to him; a way to punch the Man in the nose and put in place his own vision of What Should Be. That's the only consistant thing Zarek's ever done - ignored the practical issues of the cylon threat to turn them and the destruction of the Colonies into an idealistic issue about reshaping Colonial society.
And on the other hand, this volatile, important situation is being exacerbated through nigh-on criminal negligence at the hands of Adama and especially Laura Roslin.
I mean, Adama handles things poorly. It's totally in character for him to make things worse by just refusing to even contemplate relieving Tigh of duty because now that he's sorted out his issues with his BFF everyone else should fall in line. Of course he's going to send in marines to arrest a president/acting president he doesn't like. Of course he's going to realise the problem with Laura and then deal with it by trying to pawn off everyone else until he can deal with her in the way he thinks is best, which is actually known as, in phase one, gently hoping a few appeals to her sense of duty will fix the situation and, in phase two, enabling her.
But Laura. Oh dear.
Don't worry, flist, I still want to smack Adama in the mouth and I still love Laura. But really, the woman is having a total breakdown. Yes, partly this is due to the medical euphoria she's experiencing, but she's made a very conscious decision to ride that wave and completely ignore everything that's happening around her.
She's not running around the ship and kissing admirals and shunning her treatments because she's suddenly discovered some great freedom and love of life in her final days. This isn't some justifiable "right to live a little" because it's someone else's turn to carry the ball.
Remember Dee? And how, once she knew she was going to die, she became superhappy and started having this perfect day and helping people and being flirty and delightful?
Laura just has longer before the inevitable death occurs.
Laura is having a perfect day because she's going to die. And she's doing it at the expense of the Fleet and her people because it's self-destructive and Laura Roslin wants to destroy herself, and her image. Bill Adama gets drunk and actually starts reading emo poetry.
Laura Roslin starts jogging around the Battlestar in a terminally ill condition metaphorically yelling, "LET THEM EAT CAKE!" because she's acting out. Because she's having a breakdown and has cunningly disguised it as some kind of liberation so Adama will be mostly blind to it and blind to the rest because it inovles that sex he's wanted forever and because he's acting out too by becoming an alcoholic. I assume he was constantly brushing his teeth to get rid of the alcohol on his breath.
For people who are A/R 'shippers, and in an attempt to be respectful of canon, I'm not trying to say that the things she's doing aren't things she secretly wants to do. I'm not saying she doesn't want to sleep with Adama (although I really would rather not have seen it).
But doing so now, in this manner, at this time? She's not doing it for healthy reasons. She's doing it because she's so broken and so destructive she's actually trying to do the one thing that was antithetical to her before: put herself first. And not only that, because everyone must do that sometimes, but put herself first at the expense of her people.
I'm not really angry with her. Even though she's doing a terrible job right now and even though the reason I love her so much is that she doesn't behave this way when so many people would. I guess because after four years of not behaving that way, I figure she's earned this character arc because I'm convinced it won't last. It's a side of Laura we haven't seen, that maybe we need to. Like how before Baltar's interrogation, we'd never seen her just lose it and give in to rage. We've never seen her totally faithless and self-destructive.
And yes, I confess that as an anti-A/R shipper, I do take some solace in the fact that my most honest reading of this situation is that she's using sex-with-Bill as a form of self-destructive suicidal insanity.
*must not make Bill macro: I like mah wives like I like mah dautrs: SUICIDAL YAYZ!*
Finally, at least she had the presence of mind to offer to resign the Presidency. But much like Lee had to be president because Adama hates Zarek, so to much Laura remain president while clearly unfit for office because Adama hates Zarek.
I missed Kara, but I did love her scene with Gaeta. I mean, he was picking a crazy fight and she was all kinds of offensive, but I thought both of them played it really brilliantly until Gaeta had to say, "reckoning," because I find that word very cheesy. Like, if the Transformers sequel wasn't called "The Rise of the Fallen," it probably would have been called, "The Fall of the Reckoning," or something.
But anyway, the point, the scene. Kara's problem has always been that when someone baits her, and she knows it, she sees it as an excuse to let fly and not disappoint them because she was baited. It's still her problem, and it's still awesome to watch. I think just because both of those characters were so angry and hurt.
There was a lot of good world-building in this episode, actually. I found it gave me far more of a feel for the state of the Fleet than the last one which was all high drama and people punching each other in corridors. But...yeah. Kara and Gaeta in the mess hall was a macrocosm of all the hurt in the world and I really liked that moment.
I just wish we had more of Kara's crazy space destiny and the Opera House and stuff. But I'm not worried. I know we'll get back to the crazy story of the Religious Women after we're done with the boring story of the Militant Men (I'm being harsh; as I said, I actually found this episode quite interesting, it just didn't tear into my heart like it would have if it were focused on other themes).
I missed Tory and Sam. I imagine they're on the basestar since it seems Tyrol has also been at least partly staying there/spending time there. Selfishly I wish we'd seen more of them integrating into the cylon fleet, and those discussions where Tyrol convinced them that Adama was a man of his word, etc. I guess I understand why it was cut. It's probably better for the show overall to occasionally pull back from a cylon-o-centric focus, but it's not better for me. ;)
The idea of the cylon being full citizens and getting a seat on the quorum is AWESOME. I mean, don't get me wrong, I totally understand why the ENTIRE FLEET would go crazy about that, but just, from my perspective, it's awesome and I hope it happens.
They've really swapped Tyrol and Tigh haven't they? They started S4 with Tigh as the widow with huge guilt and nothing really, except his insanity and his guilt to keep him going, while Tyrol had a wife and child and acceptance and respect in his work. Now Tyrol's lost Cally, his job, and also Nick, while Tigh has Caprica and Flipper and an important job despite his cylonicity.
I actually have severe problems with retconning Nicky's paternity. Just from a character point of view, Cally was SO disturbingly in love with the Chief, that I find it hard to buy she had an affair with Hot Dog after they were together for so short a time. Weirdly I'd prefer she was blind drunk and barely remembered it even though that has its own set of dodgy ramifications.
Secondly, it now makes her attempts to airlock Nicky and herself make SO MUCH LESS SENSE and that was...previously such an impressive and painful piece of BSG. Post-partum and psychotic Cally trying to deal with the fact her son was half what she hated, that she loved him so completely while hating half of what he was, that she could never actually get rid of that either because he's her son, just, all of it... That's why she numbly walked down to the airlock. That's why she took Nicky. It never struck me as her thinking that two years of marriage to a cylon and loving a cylon were worth ending her life over. It was the crazy complication Nicky represented, and now, I don't know what to think. It seems so...sick? I don't want to judge when she was clearly mentally ill and panicking, but I really don't understand why her instinct wasn't to tell someone.
I guess it just completely undermines the construction of that scene and takes Cally from horrific but sympathetic to WTF?
I'm also just plain sad that Nicky's not a hybrid. I liked the multiple hybrids. Hera is still important because she's still the first. I wouldn't have been upset if Nicky didn't have a big destiny like her, and there are also a bajillion ways to handwave his being different because he's half final five cylon not a Hera-style hybrid.
Also, couldn't we have somehow changed it so that Cally honestly believed that Nicky was the Chief's kid? Like she slept with Hot Dog that one time, but Nicky looks so much like Galen that she never really gave that much thought and always figured he must be her husband's son, or something? That would at least keep her characterisation in Ties that Bind intact, and it's not like they needed Cottle to already know about Nicky. He came in with a medical condition, they could have run tests on Tyrol to see if he could like, potentially be able to donate a kidney when he's older or something and found out that way.
This just makes Cally a deceptive cheater in a series where there are already two other marriages with women who are, apparently, serial cheaters (Kara and Ellen, though I'm still not convinced Sam's comment at Lee wasn't some form of trash-talking/damage control).
It's not a storyline I'm necessarily averse to, because I think in the case of the Tighs it works well, but three times guys? It starts to look skeezy. And I start to wonder what RDM's obsession with romanticising relationships where the guy is mad faithful in love while the girl sleeps around is all about.
Basically I'm just disappointed. I liked that the boundries were blurring and getting confused and there were multiple hybrids and such and now there are fewere and that makes me sad.
Silver linings include:
1) If they don't drop the storyline faster than something that has to do with Caprica Six, and we just never see Nicky or Hot Dog again, NICKY HAS TWO DADDIES! Okay, they're not the two daddies I would choose (that would be Chief and Sam) but I WILL TAKE WHAT I CAN GET.
2) BSG's continued destruction of the nuclear family as a healthy default for domestic stability and happiness continues to entertain me. And I say this as someone who comes from a very happy nuclear family - I'm not trying to break it down personally, I just like that in BSG all the happiest families are extended, adopted messy things and even the one nuclear family we do have - the Agathons - have a daughter with too many other surrogate mothers to count, and are themselves a threat to the traditional nuclear family of the Galacticaverse by virtue of being half-robot.
But I'm still feeling sulky.
To talk about the robotic baby that apparently still IS a robotic baby: FLIPPER! HOW I MISSED YOU! I AM MILDLY DISAPPOINTED YOU ARE APPARENTLY A BOY BUT WHATEVER.
ISHAY. I'M LOOKING AT YOU. YOU BETTER NOT HURT THAT ADORABLE BALL OF INCESTUOUS ROBOTIC FETUS OR I WILL CUT SOMETHING. PROBABLY YOU.
No, really. I'm hoping that ominous shot was just a set up for PERIL which in turn may mean some actual screen time for Caprica Six beyond like, two minutes every four or five episodes. But Show, listen, I will stay with you through much, but if you kill Flipper, I will cry. I will cry and it will be YOUR FAULT and they will not be the good kind of tears either.
As to the Caprica/Tigh scene, I'd probably have more of an issue with the whole fact that Tigh is, apparently, suddenly on board with Flipper and being all hand-holdy and not-chokey with Caprica because I don't want that relationship to just magically work. But I'm willing to go with it for the following reasons:
1) While I hope she stays dead, I really think Ellen will probably be back and at that point, HILARIOUS HIJINCKS may ensue. So like, I can handle things being unrealistically good right now if it's a build up to LATER.
2) Caprica Six did not get dumped. This would be painful for me.
3) I kind of can sort of maybe see it if I squint, in that, while I think Saul thinks Ellen is forever dead, the fact that she was a cylon is probably, in some ways, a weight off his mind. Since in addition to killing her, he was also wrestling with his betrayal of her in terms of species. I think there's some peace to be found there in terms of his ability to begin to accept - at least a little - that he is a cylon. So I can kind of believe he's in a better place right now.
4) It brought the Cottle.
5) I am ashamed to admit, that entire scene was kind of adorable. I just want to smush them all together and make kissing noises, so I'm grateful that reasons 1 - 3 have given me an excuse to just go with it for this episode and not worry about the Wider Statements It Is Making.
But srsly, Ishay. Join Gaeta's revolution if you must but I WAS NOT KIDDING ABOUT THE KNIFE, BITCH.
Finally, Gaeta. You do know how to pick your presidential boyfriends, sweetheart. I really...I don't know what's gonna happen when the exact thing that happened with Baltar happens again but this time Gaeta can't console himself in the knowledge that he was secretly on the right side all along. I'm probably a bad person for not caring more.
I feel bad for having nothing to say about Lee but basically all he did this episode was wander around.
