BSG Recap: A Disquiet Follows My Soul

If last week's episode was all about giving up, then this is about starting over.  Which makes sense, as this episode was really all about setting up the endgame of the entire series. 

Also: more unfit fathers than an entire Joss Whedon series!

There are two main questions on the table:  1)  is it possible for the humans and rebel Cylons to actually form an alliance and find peace, love and happiness?   2) Roslin and Adama, can those crazy kids make it work?

Previously, on Battlestar Galactica, babies! 

• Cally & Tyrol have a baby, but then Torry airlocks Cally.
•  Tigh gets Caprica Six preggers because he kept projecting Ellen's face onto Caprica's body.
• Oh, and Earth?  Sucks.  You might have heard something about that. This causes Roslin to give up and Adama to speechify about moving forward, and, oh yeah, ask the Cylons if they wanna tag along.

After an opening montage of Adama's morning routine, we head over to sickbay, where Doc Cottle is showing Caprica and Tigh dodgy-looking images of their baby.  Caprica pontificates about how this first full-Cylon baby is the future of the Cylon race, while the attending nurse just thinks "yay?"  Tigh says, hilariously, "I need a drink."   Still, they seem happy.

Felix Gaeta, in Sickbay for more treatment on his knee-nub, isn't happy.  He pouts over the fact that an unprecedented miracle Cylon baby is far more important than he is.  And not just the miracle full-Cylon baby, but also Tyrol & Cally's half-Cylon baby, whom Tyrol has just rushed into Sickbay because he is peeing blood.  Good gods, who hasn't!  There is so much stress on this show, I'm not surprised that they don't go into Sickbay when they're peeing plain old urine.  "Doc Cottle, what's this yellow stuff?  Why isn't it red, like normal?"

On Colonial One, Adama, flanked by Lee and Vice-President Tom Zarek, is giving one of his famously terse and uninformative press conferences.  Why anybody bothers to come to these is beyond me, because the man has never actually answered a press-posed question in his entire life.  It's always "military secret this" and "hypothetical" that.

The press gets nothing until Lee takes over and and answers a question about the Final Cylon by giving away the fact that 1) they know who it is 2) that person is dead and 3) female.  But that's the last time the subject comes up in this episode.

Which brings up a weird question. If Lee and Bill (at least) know that the Final Cylon is Ellen Tigh, does Caprica know that?  And if so, how does she feel about being impregnated by a man who is eternally in love with her savior.  What about the baby after Ellen shows back up for reals?

After the press conference, Tom Zarek reminds us that he is a blowhard, and a bit of a dick.  But when points out to Adama that Roslin is MIA, and that perhaps the civilian populace might not be down with an alliance with the very killer robots that wiped out 99.96% of them, he kinda makes sense.  But not to Adama, and they threaten each other right back into the opening credits.

39,644 survivors in search of a home.

Home.

We're back in Adama's office, with Adama, Tyrol, Tigh, Lee, Helo and an openly-hostile Gaeta. Tyrol, speaking for the Cylons(!), says that they are not only on the bus for the alliance, but they'll toss in their super-amazing faster-than-light technology to boot.  And, the Colonials can have all of this now, for the low, low price of full Cylon citizenship in the Fleet!

Adama says that he'll consider it, making Gaeta even less happy.

Back in Sickbay, Cottle tells Tyrol that his baby might lose a kidney, so Tyrol immediately offers to give blood, which leads to the revelation that Tyrol isn't the half-Cylon baby daddy after all.   Whoops!  Clearly, Tyrol has an important part to play in the endgame, and so we can't be distracted with wondering why he ain't watching his kid.

So, let's dispense with this by saying that Hot Dog is the father, and Tyrol first kicks Hot Dog's ass, then drags him to Sickbay to essentially abandom him with the son he just found out he had.  This, right here, is why so many people on the internets stood up and cheered when Cally got airlocked.

Meanwhile, Roslin is off of her meds, and loving it!!  As Adama tries to run the political ramifications of the whole Cylon-Human alliance by her, and she just couldn't give less of a frak.

Perhaps Mr. Gaeta should get off of his meds, because he comes up to an all-alone Kara in the mess, and antagonizes and threatens her.  Turns out it was mostly a tactic to get her to leave the room, so that he could drum up support for whatever nefarious plot he is cooking up.

Speaking of nefarious, in the Quorum meeting, Zarek convinces the Quorum to vote to allow the individual Fleet captions to choose whether or not they want the Cylon jump drive upgrades.  An amazingly ineffective Lee tries to play the "hang together or hang separately" card, but he clearly has neither the authority nor the debating skills of Roslin, and the motion is carried 11-1.

And once again, you really can't fault the Quorum.  What have the Cylons done for them lately? 

Back on Galactica, Roslin is running around the deck.   Run, Laura, Run!  And, naturally, Bill is called upon to stop her.  For the sake of all humanity, he needs to convince her to get her shit together, and start leading the Fleet again.

Except, the exact opposite happens.  Her point:  no matter what happens, she's dying, and she needs to stop worrying about what happens tomorrow, and worry about what's going on right now. She says to Bill:  "Maybe, I've earned the right to live a little before I die.  Haven't I? What do you think?" And then she starts singing the old Grass Roots song "Sha-la-la-la-la-la, live for today," and Creed Bratton now has something to lord over Dwight Schrute.

OK, she doesn't really start singing, but her siren song fully wins over Admiral William "Husker" Adama, so he agrees.  Then, she delivers the kicker: "Well, guess what? So have you." Then she kisses him, and runs off.

Baltar's pissed.  At God, who he thinks is a sucky father.  So, in front of his flock and over the wireless, he rails at a God in which he really didn't believe in all that much. Baltar is smart enough to divert his people's anger from himself.  

Meanwhile, Zarek is not only stirring up the Quorum, he's also convinced the ship that supplies Tylium fuel to the entire Fleet ship to mutiny and jump away.  So Adama has him arrested, and essentially bluffs him into giving up the location of the Tylium ship.

At one point, Adama actually says:  "Some days, I really hate this job," which was felt closer to "I sure picked a bad week to stop sniffing glue," than to the emotional impact that they were going to.

I mean, this?  Nothing.  Remember that time when the Cylons were trying to kill them every half-hour?    That's a bad day.  And it lasted a week.

All of this is to really set up the the important scene: Felix Gaeta visiting Tom Zarek in the brig, and Gaeta -- who just needs an authority figure to love him -- and Zarek shaking hands on starting a revolution that will overthrow Roslin and Adama, once and for all. 

Not really caring about all of this?  Roslin and Adama, who are living for today in post-coital bliss.

You can find more of Jim Connelly's ramblings at Medialoper