Act of Contrition

Before I get into details, I want to say that I like every part of this episode except the underlying story about Starbuck's relationship with Zak. It's told in a series of short flashbacks, which I think fails to provide a full picture of their relationship or help us understand why Starbuck does what she does. For me the problem was getting a sense of who Zak is. The flashbacks tell what happened and they tell us what Starbuck says and does, but they don't really say anything about this man she so desperately loves.

This is a fairly significant problem from the standpoint of plot. However, what I really love about this episode is that it consists of a series of brilliant scenes set on Galactica that capture the nature of the latest crisis in the context of relationships on board the ship. 

"Act of Contrition" starts out with a glimpse of Starbuck on a viper that is out of control, and then periodically returns to this same scene. This scene is the episode's end, and while I am not sure that I understood that the first time I saw "Act of Contrition," I think it nevertheless serves as a way of creating suspense. In other words, how do we get from the current story (which is set almost entirely on Galactica) to Starbuck ejecting from a viper?

OK - so here are my favorite moments in this episode:

The scene where Flattop is celebrating his 1,000th landing. It gives us a glimpse of the pilots' lives (when they are not dealing with crises) and rituals.The Chief's question, "Why didn't anyone tell me this is Flattop's 1,000th landing? Now we look like fools" is so prosaic - it is exactly the kind of thing you would expect to hear in almost any circumstance (birthday party, major system implementation, grocery shopping) when someone isn't in the loop. The metal wagon, of course, turns out to be fatal because the drone locks in on the metal assuming it is a ship.

Speaking of which.... I also like the way that the perspective switches to the drone's viewpoint as the cart wheels round and round. This also means that we get to see the look of stunned horror on Flattop's face just before the drone hits, transforming the moment from a celebration to a tragedy.

The poker game. OK, I know it's not poker, but they are playing a card game & gambling, so calling it poker is good enough. I love the way the camera circles around, closing in on the individual players, and moving between their faces and their hands laying down cards and throwing money into the pot. It starts with a closeup of Starbuck's eyes looking around the table, and skips around the table at the other players sizing each other up and trying to figure out who is bluffing. It is also a pretext for discussing other things. It focuses on Crashdown head-on when he asks Gaeta about the Cylon detector, then on Gaeta when he responds, and on Boomer looking back and forth between the two. We get a look at Baltar smoking his cigar and making a crack about a bad smell. Given that everyone is just sitting around, it is very dynamic. Boomer kissing the cubits after she wins is  a nice touch.

Roslin and Cottle.  Cottle calling Roslin "young lady" is a stretch. But her response to his question about why she didn't get breast exams is pretty interesting, she says "Yes I DO mind" and then as an afterthought makes the most overused excuse, "I was busy." In the meantime, while Cottle is lecturing Roslin, he lights up a cigarette, and  Cottle's chain smoking pretty quickly becomes a recurring joke.

Starbuck training the nuggets. When she is lecturing them in the ready room about how she is God, etc., etc. it felt kind of heavy handed. But there are two small actions that I think keep it on keel and give a great sense of how Starbuck is trying to instill a sense of discipline in her recruits: first, she takes off Chuckles' cap, and second, as she walks back to the podium she turns around and points to someone off-screen and says "Sit up." In my opinion those two moments make the scene work and convey perfectly her relationship to her nuggets.

Lee's conversation with Commander Adama. This scene gives a sense of how fraught the father/son relationship is given that Lee's father is also his superior officer. At the beginning of the scene Adama says to Lee, "Sit down, Captain." And it seems to stay on track as a professional conversation. It ends, however, with Lee saying "You'll have to ask her yourself, Dad." switching very suddenly from military formality to familial intimacy.

Starbuck's conversation with Commander Adama. Katee Sackhoff and Edward Olmos are wonderful in this scene. The more distraught Starbuck becomes, the colder Adama becomes. His lips are pressed together and he is stony-faced, and he says absolutely nothing although it is obvious he is furious. (He does the same thing with Baltar in "Bastille Day.") When he finally speaks, he only says two things, both without much inflection. But his second statement, "Now leave while you can" is all the more powerful because the tone of voice is completely at odds with the content.

This is actually one of my all-time favorite scenes with Katee Sackhoff. Starbuck is trying to do so many things - she wants to avoid telling Adama the truth, she wants him to know she did it because she loved Zack hoping that Adama will understand, and she is trying desperately to hold on to Adama's respect and affection. She whimpers and is incoherent, but at some point she just tells Adama the truth in plain language. When Adama says, "reinstate the pilots" she rushes to say "Yes, yes I will" in a way that shows how much she wants to please him and hold on to their special relationship which was held together by their common love for Zak. The dialogue is very short but includes a lot of conflicting emotions.

This is the first episode of a two-parter. The first part is used to tear Starbuck down in Adama's eyes so that he can spend the second part proving that he still loves her anyway by leading a desperate search. A crude, but nevertheless accurate summation of these episodes.