Battlestar Galactica: Someone to Watch Over Me Discussion Thread

Well, we had three weeks in a row of good stuff. And then last week. My short recap is below the fold.

In tonight's episode, we deal with Starbuck's special destiny and just about everyone wants to make Boomer pay. After this, three episodes to go. When do I get my Lucy back?

Spoiler Policy: Anything from the miniseries and the show up to and including tonight's episode is fair game; no need to warn or in some way obscure text for anything that comes from that material. However, anything you may have heard about future episodes should be kept to yourself. Thanks.

Deadlock Recap:

This is not a good episode. In short, it is a soap opera. I know people say that about the show all the time, but usually it's a soap opera with science fiction trimmings. This episode could have been taken directly from a script for any of a dozen soaps. The TV Guide version:

Ellen returns after her apparent death in Season 3 to find that her husband has moved on. Now, with his new lover expecting a child, Ellen forces him to chose between his new family and his old life. But after discovering that there is a third true love in his life, his best friend the Admiral, she conspires to kill his unborn child. DRAMA.

The teaser catches us up on all three plots. Galactica is wounded, but repair teams are slathering Cylon goop all up inside to make her better. Caprica is pregnant and once upon a time was a real fighter. Also, the Cylons in the fleet face discrimination in Dogsville. And Ellen is back and eager to see the Final Five.

As far as Galactica's lube, the plot goes nowhere. The Admiral is still all broken up about it, both guzzling more drinks than Tigh and popping more pills than Roslin. What a loser and that's all I'm going to say about it.

The other plots get most of the attention and, of course, Ellen's return is integral to both of them. So let's start there. Last week we saw Ellen and Boomer escape from Cavil. Now they've arrived at the fleet (how'd they find it again?) and landed in the hangar bay. The Raptor's door lifts up and --

"How many dead chicks are out there?" Hotdog quietly asks. Tell me about it. So Ellen's back and neither the Admiral nor the President are happy about it. Tyrol IDs Boomer at a glance and the Admiral sends "that Eight" off to the brig. Tigh immediately begins to suck face with his ex-dead wife and every viewer simultaneously says, "Oh, hell, it's going to be that episode." Cut to Opening Credits.

It is fairly predictable and quite disappointing. The poised, elegant, superior Ellen which confronted Cavil just last week is gone. Instead, we've got a jealous shrew with none of the wisdom of her age. Her goal is simple, frak her husband and when she's done with that break his new girlfriend. It's ugly. It's base. And it's absolutely calculated.

"You just can't stop poisoning me," Ellen accuses Tigh. But, she figures out faster than anyone else that "love" was keeping Tigh and Caprica's unborn baby alive. All she has to do is get Tigh to love her instead -- say, by selflessly stepping aside, perhaps? -- and the baby goes bye-bye.

Along the way she sides with Tori, a Six, and an Eight who want the Cylons to abandon the fleet. They want to have a majority vote because it is "the Cylon way." Tori, Tyrol, and Ellen vote to get the heck out of dodge. Tigh and unconscious Anders want to stay with the fleet. Ellen gets bent out of shape when she realizes that Tigh's true love isn't Caprica and it isn't her imperilled pregnancy that's keeping him (she thinks this for a while because he forgot to tell her that little inconvenient fact before Tori spilled the beans). He wants to stay because of his Epic Bromance with the Admiral, who would have been the namesake for Tigh and Caprica's son. How this surprised Ellen after she bitched about it all the way through Season 2 is left unexplored.

After it's all done: the baby is dead, Caprica is laid up in the medical bay, and Tigh goes to the Admiral to confess that he was going to name the baby "Liam". They have a good cry and my mother called bullshit on this scene and the whole concept just because she doesn't buy into all this Guy Love crap. So your mileage may vary.

Oh. Right, Baltar also got a storyline, but it was boring and mostly pointless, but hey Baltar has a bastard. He takes shit from some character we've only seen once before who wants to run his little cult now, so we know how that's going to turn out. Baltar wins. Oh, and the Admiral lets him arm his cult. The only important part of the whole thing is that Head Six, the Angel, is back and advising him again.

Finally, at the very end we see that Anders' little brain monitor gets all jumpy, so presumably he will be back in the next episode.

Did I miss anything?

posted by Gabriel Malor at 08:40 PM

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