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.

Top Ten Reasons Why Lee Adama is a Jerk*

In no particular order:

1. He has no sense of humor
2. In spite of being a hunk, he has no sex appeal. None of his relationships with women are particularly compelling on the soft porn front. Whenever he and Dualla kiss they always end up rubbing foreheads. His only sex scene with Starbuck is short and not particularly convincing. It certainly doesn't stand up well when compared with her sex scenes with Anders. Or Zak. Or Baltar. Or Leoben.
3. His anger is one-dimensional, and shouting is his only mode of expressing it. His absolutely first meaningful scene in the Miniseries has him yelling at his father. Obviously Lee hasn't caught on to the fact that the scariest anger is often based on intonation, not volume.
4. His second most-frequent emotional expression is that of being deeply, quietly moved. This is manifested by his eyes shining with unshed tears, and sometimes he presses his lips together.
5. He is a maudlin drunk.
6. He is pompous. When he says to Dualla in "Exodus Part 2" "I am proud to serve with you and proud to call you my wife," I had a hard time keeping my gag reflex under control. Barf.
7. He is self-righteous, and is always explaining to people (lecturing, actually) why he is right and they are wrong. He does it at the end of Bastille Day and a WHOLE BUNCH the minute he decides to play lawyer and defend Baltar.
8. He has a huge ego.
9. Notwithstanding reason number 8, he has all these ridiculous insecurities and is in constant need or reassurance. In "The Hand of God" he keeps whining about how everybody thinks Starbuck would do a better job, and instead of slapping him in the face and telling him to pull himself together, everyone caters to him. In "Sometimes a Great Notion" Dualla spends the entire time she is with him (her last moments alive, actually) telling him how smart he is, how he did such a good job handling the Quorum, and on and on until you just want to kill yourself (which, of course, is exactly what Dualla does).
10. Speaking of Dualla, Lee cheats on his wife, and then we are supposed to feel compassion for him because he is obviously suffering tremendous guilt over it.

*I can think of more appropriate terms than "jerk," but none of them seem appropriate in polite society, so I am hesitant to use them in the title of a post. Were it not for my desire to avoid offending sensitive souls, I would probably choose to call Lee a prick.

Bastille Day

This is not my favorite episode by a long shot, since its primary purpose seems to be to show how Lee Adama is a really deep person and not just a viper jock, while also providing us the opportunity to see what a hunk he is by having him appear, for no apparent reason, without his uniform jacket. I did wonder, btw, whether it was written into Jamie Bamber's contract that he has to show his chest at least 2-3 times during the course of a season.

This episode also introduces Tom Zarek who will be a thorn in everyone's side until season 4.5, when .... well, I don't want to give it away. I do think including a prison ship in the fleet was a terrific idea, the survivors are now a more diverse group and coping with them will make life complicated. In addition, it also makes clear that the Colonies were not an egalitarian utopia. There are haves and have nots, sometimes defined by cultural differences, and these distinctions carry social and economic consequences.

Lee spends all his time in this episode demonstrating to Zarek how he is a truly intellectual person and how much he values social justice blah blah blah blah. The crowning moment is when Lee goes I read your book in college, and Zarek goes but it's banned and Lee goes like, yes I read it anyway. Yeah right. And John McCain read Frantz Fanon's  The Wretched of the Earth. Oh, and Lee even saves Zarek's life, and is thanked by him. Of course, Zarek's gratitude lasts about 10 minutes.

So Lee shows all sorts of psychological insight while at the same time getting to deck a few really powerful looking guys. AND he manages to lose his jacket. One scene he is wearing it and the next scene we have a front row view of his biceps.

We also get to learn something about Tom Zarek, whose arrival on the scene is extraordinarily dramatic. He obviously views himself as a "prisoner of conscience," and yet speaks in the kind of vague generalizations that led me to suspect from the start that he is a demagogue at heart. He certainly evokes widely divergent reactions. He blew up a government building - is he the Oklahoma City bomber or a member of the Weather Underground? Is he the Unabomber? He produced writings from prison - is he Nelson Mandela or Adolph Hitler? He talks about freedom - is he Barack Obama or George W. Bush?

He talks a good talk, but my decision is based on the attempted rape of Callie. When Callie defends herself from rape and gets shot by a prisoner, Zarek stands around spouting slogans about the oppression suffered by her would-be rapist, implicitly absolving him for an act of violence against women. Callie is a typical (if such a thing is possible) Galactica woman. She doesn't go down without a fight, notwithstanding the fact that she doesn't look old enough to babysit my kids. (I will be dedicating a future post to the portrayal of women in Galactica).

Some other thoughts....

Whose side are you on? I just wanted to point this one out - Adama pére asks the question and Adama fils seems, by his actions to give his answer. This will bite them in the ass by the end of Season 1.

They would have destroyed themselves anyway. Six and Doral have a short conversation about the destruction of the Colonies. Doral speaks of the Cylons as being the children of humanity. This is an important theme that will be referenced many times in the course of the series, and is thematically related to Adama's question from the mini-series - is the human race worthy of survival?

My favorite scenes

Based on the above, it should be obvious that none of them includes Lee Adama.

I love Starbuck's briefing of the pilots, with Boxey by her side. It is funny and showy, with just the right touch of insolence. It's a shame that somewhere in Season 2.0 (probably after "The Farm") Starbuck, understandably, begins to lose her sense of fun.

I also got a lot of pleasure out of Baltar's meeting with Adama. He is obsequious and talks too much. The more he talks the more suspicious Adama (who says almost nothing) looks. Six is in great form scaring the shit out of Baltar until Baltar requests the nuke. In fact, Baltar is at his most convincing when he is thinking aloud about how he would use the plutonium to build a cylon detector, which probably explains why Adama gave it to him.

And finally, for once Tigh gets the last word in a conversation with Starbuck. This is a nifty response to Starbuck's snotty remarks about Tigh's alcoholism in the ready room, and also (looking back) her smart-ass remarks at the end of the mini series.

Water

"Water" introduces a new crisis before the fleet has recovered from the crisis in "33." The episode starts with Roslin's extremely formal, uncomfortable visit to Galactica. As soon as the water tanks explode, the formality disappears and once again Adama and Roslin, who barely know each other, must work together to cope with another threat to humanity. This episode is a reminder that the fleet is a small remnant of the human population traveling with limited supplies through a vast universe that is largely empty. (In discussing season 4.5, the New York Times made the apt analogy of a wagon train travelling through uncharted wilderness).

I think the core of this episode is the meeting between the leaders of the fleet to review the situation. These scenes are as much about the divide between civilian government and military authority, as they are about the water shortage.

The expression of these separate agendas is subtle but critical, and will explode by the end of Season 1.

For example, after Gaeta does his presentation, Roslin presses him for an opinion on the cause of the explosion. When Adama finally gives permision, Gaeta avoids saying it was caused by an explosion and instead offers the theory that the cause is structural damage from the war. It's obvious that Gaeta is lying, and everyone in the military knows it was caused by sabotage. In fact, Roslin probably suspects that herself when she responds "Interesting."

Another example is the comments made by Tigh, which display unconcealed contempt for the civilian population. When Tigh says to Roslin, "Now you want me to guess," Adama, who is looking at some papers, says, without raising his eyes, "Colonel." This small act establishes Adama's total authority over his officers, and is also a small concession to the president.

Finally, Gaius Baltar's relationship to the other characters begins to develop. His conversations with Six continue, and their discussions about god and religion have sexual overtones (actually, overtones is not a sufficiently strong word). Baltar's simultaneous conversations with Six and Adama are very funny, mainly because Baltar is having a nervous breakdown trying to manage what he says, Six is provocative, and Adama is not saying much, but looking distinctly dissatisfied. As usual Baltar is a very bad liar, which doesn't prevent him from doing it all the time. That he is always caught doesn't prevent him from lying again. (In other words, he meets the definition of insanity by constantly doing the same thing but expecting different results.)

As outcome of the meeting is that Baltar and Gaeta begin working together, which thrills Gaeta (who runs after Baltar like a little puppy), and bores Baltar. This is the start of a very complicated relationship that changes drastically over the course of the series and has a profound impact on Gaeta (see my entry on Felix Gaeta for a lengthier discussion).  

The parallel Sharon stories also start to unfold. On Galactica Boomer's actions, for the first time, are a threat to the fleet, and Boomer's sense of self starts to deteriorate. On Caprica, Helo and Athena's relationship begins to heat up. Both these plot lines become more important in determining events as the two Sharons' personalities start to diverge.

Some final thoughts:

I never bought Tyrol and Boomer as a couple. I just never felt that there was any chemistry between them. I also don't believe that Tyrol would cover up for her. On the other hand, I always thought that Helo / Athena and Tyrol / Callie were great matches.

I didn't understand either why Boomer placed the last detonator in the raptor next to her seat. I finally concluded that if they found water that she was supposed to blow the raptor up before they could report back to Galactica. And, in fact, she has to turn it off before she is capable of telling Crashdown that she has found water.

I have already said how much I like the card game between Starbuck and Baltar, but I'll repeat myself here. As far as I am concerned the game is played as if it is another form of foreplay. There is also a nice little touch in the background - as Baltar says he doesn't have any money, Gaeta, anxious to please, reaches towards his pocket to get some out for him. 

Gaius Baltar

Even though Baltar plays a significant role in the Miniseries, I postponed discussing him until "33." Part of the problem is that I just wanted to move past the miniseries and I think "33" is a reasonable place to start a discussion on Baltar, since he more or less comes into his own in this episode. I also kept getting stuck writing about him because I was caught up on the sleeze / coward factor, and so I was running out of things to say.

Although a large part of Baltar's character is defined by deceit and rampant egotism, focus on this makes him pretty one-dimensional. Baltar is actually a pretty complicated guy, and his belief system changes radically over the course of the series.

So let's focus on the nasty bits first, because that is where the fun lies.

In the Miniseries Baltar immediately comes across as untrustworthy when he flirts with the news anchor interviewing him. (To quote from My Fair Lady, "Oozing charm from ev'ry pore, he oiled his way across the floor.") Baltar is a womanizer (I realize some male readers of this blog might not consider that a bad thing). A large part of his womanizing is characterized by "do anything, say anything." (I suppose, actually, that is a defining feature of womanizing.) This explains, of course, why he inadvertently participates in the death of billions by giving away the defense mainframe codes to some babe so that she would sleep with him.

He is, however, capable of great charm, which is not always obvious in the series, but certainly explains his success with women. His flirtation with Starbuck over a card game ("Water") is fun to watch, and he is one of the few people who actually beats her at cards. There is a strong air of sexual frisson throughout, and she is very provocative when she blows cigar smoke in his face. Of course Starbuck is a strong personality and can pretty much give as good as she gets from Baltar, which I assume increases their mutual attraction.

As we all know, Baltar's personality is dominated by self-interest. (At the end of the Miniseries he says, "I am not on anyone's side.") He is cowardly and he lies constantly, although he is caught often enough to make me wonder why he continues to do it. I wonder if he is modeled on Zachary Taylor from "Lost in Space," but I haven't seen the original Battlestar Galactica, so I have no idea how closely he resembles the original Baltar. Two or three times each season, though, he shows great compassion or says something that demonstrates genuine concern for others. (For example, his conversation with Boomer during "Kobol's Last Gleaming, Part 1.") It is something of a surprise when this happens, but it saves Baltar from being a complete caricature.

In the Miniseries, as Baltar escapes Caprica, the Six that only he sees makes her first appearance. (BTW, for the purposes of this blog I will simply refer to her as "Six," since all the other Sixes have names. This Six is called "Sarah" by Baltar, but only once ("Home, Part 2"), and I didn't even catch that until something like the 400th viewing of the episode in question.

Six is very beautiful, very sexy, walks like a model, and usually wears amazing dresses. With her white-blond hair she is radiant in contrast to Galactica's grubby surroundings. This is beautifully shown in "33" when she is setting next to Baltar on Colonial One, looking at the couple opposite. Baltar is rumpled, sweaty and a total mess. She is serene, beautiful, and relaxed, as if this was an ordinary flight.

The Baltar-Six interactions also create a lot of comic relief as Baltar often carries on two simultaneous conversations and then has to try to integrate seemingly odd behavior and statements into the "real" conversation. (As Roslin says in "33," "He's a strange one.")

The billion-dollar question, of course, is who, or what, is this manifestation? Baltar himself doesn't know, although he sometimes seems to believe that she is "an expression of my subconscious mind working itself out in a waking state." (Miniseries) Season 3 also implies a psychological origin, since there are references to Baltar taking meds ("Collaborators" and "Torn"). The settings for Baltar's conversations with Six also veer back and forth between Baltar's physical location and other, more pleasant, virtual locations that exist, presumably, in Baltar's imagination.

Galactica, in general, is wildly inconsistent about Six. It doesn't make sense for her to be an illusion cooked up by Baltar's psyche because she knows a lot more about Cylon strategy than Baltar can possibly know. She is clearly tied to actual events, and often seems to control the outcome (Miniseries and "33" to name but a few examples), but later in the series it is clear that the "real" Cylons aren't aware of her either. She also has moments when she is unseen but physically present. For example, in "Epiphanies" she pulls up Baltar's tie, and in "Escape Velocity" she literally props him up.

A large part of the tension in "33" hinges on whether there is a Cylon agent in the fleet who is responsible for the repeated attacks. Six alerts Baltar to this possibility. Baltar's life also hangs in the balance since a witness to this involvement in the Cylon attack is on the same ship as the Cylon agent. Whether this threat to Baltar is removed is dependent on his response to Six's questions about his relationship with god (sort of like having a Jehovah's Witness on your doorstep). When Baltar finally states that he accepts the Cylon god, Roslin decides to shoot down the ship, eliminating the Cylon agent, and also killing the only person who could tie Baltar to the Cylon attack.

This sequence of events raises some pretty tough questions. First, there is a strong sense that everyone is playing out roles that have been predetermined ("all this has happened before and all this will happen again"). Does this mean that Roslin's agonizing over her decision is pointless because she is meant to order Galactica to shoot down a civilian ship? If Baltar had not made his admission, would Roslin have made a different decision?

This scene plays itself out again in "Six Degrees of Separation" - Baltar repents and 2 seconds later the incriminating evidence is shown to be false and his accuser disappears.

Foxhole prayers are notoriously unreliable, is the Cylon god really so naive as to take them seriously? They are a recurring theme in Galactica, and they do seem to lead Baltar to a stronger commitment to the Cylon belief-system, but assertions of faith made under duress seem pretty untrustworthy to me.

Baltar also keeps making lucky guesses, which again, seem tied to his relationship with Six's god. He fingers Doral as a Cylon in the miniseries based only on speculation about how Doral is perceived by the rest of the crew. He is correct, although he doesn't find out until later. This happens again in "The Hand of God" when he randomly chooses a site on a surveillance photo as the correct target for blowing up the Cylon's trilium refinery. Both events raise questions about free will. What guides Baltar to make random choices that turn out to be critical to the survival of the fleet, given his ambivalence about his place in the human-Cylon war?

Despite the fact that Baltar is on a non-stop emotional rollercoaster, his world-outlook at the beginning of the saga is based on the scientific method. There is no place for constructs such as faith, or belief in an intangible higher power. As the series progresses, Baltar's intellectual foundation crumbles and is rebuilt with a fundamentally anti-intellectual outlook based on conversion to the Cylon god. It's hard to pinpoint a defining moment where he crosses the line. I think finding Hera on New Caprica is a significant point, as well as his experience in the Temple of Jupiter. By season 4.0 he has actually managed to convert some humans, and is worshipped by them as god's mouthpiece. His sermons are mixed with beautiful imagery ("Faith") and completely self-serving statements ("God loves us as we are because we are perfect."). This understanding of god's will also absolves him of any responsibility for the nuclear holocaust on the twelve colonies ("Hub").

As of this writing, the second episode of Season 4.5, Baltar is disillusioned and angry at his god. In "The Disquiet that Follows My Soul" he is preaching while drunk, and sits back drinking and smoking, while ignoring a fistfight. To my mind, Baltar's behavior is reverting back to his old persona from before he became a religious prophet.

James Callis is just a terrific actor. Baltar is such a mess of contradictions, but Callis manages to make him coherent. In spite of the many facets of Baltar's personality, Callis creates a sense of consistency about his character. In each manifestation Baltar is completely recognizable as Baltar (I'm not sure if that makes sense).

My prediction about Baltar's fate, btw, is that he is going to die before the end of season 4.5. It's kind of weird to think about that becaue he is a lot like Rasputin - people keep trying to kill him, and he always manages to survive. 

Seven Years of Autism and the Death of Felix Gaeta

End of January - beginning of February is an unhappy anniversary for our family, as it is the date(s) that both our sons were diagnosed with autism. One of my sons was diagnosed sometime in the last week of January 2002, and the other was diagnosed the first week in February 2002. Once the first one was diagnosed we knew the second one would get the same diagnosis since they are identical twins. They were two years, 3 months old at the time. I remember the first words out of my mouth when we were informed of the first diagnosis were "Will they outgrow it?" Duh.

I don't know why this year is different, but it feels particularly devastating. I am not someone who is prone to crying but I have been on the verge of tears all month. Some of it is the cumulative stress of fighting with various government bureaucracies for rights my kids are entitled to, but were not forthcoming (including a 4-year legal battle with one school district that has left us with a huge debt burden that we probably will never pay off). And some of it is the panic of knowing what was required for them to make progress, and not being able to get it for them. (I am referring to Applied Behavior Analysis - ABA. For more information on ABA go to The Association for Science in Autism Treatment or Autism New Jersey

For the last two years my sons have had everything we feel they need to make progress towards some form of independence. You would think I would be happy, but I seem to be in a glass half-full mood these days. No matter how I look at it, we have a difficult and exhausting life. Our sons are very tall for their age, and very active. They have almost no spoken language, although it's obvious they understand more than they can say (passive language). We have worked diligently to improve their safety skills, so some of our fears are somewhat abated (they haven't disappeared from us in quite some time, nor have they run into the middle of traffic). They are capable of great destruction (not from maliciousness) so someone must be with them at all times, and they have few play skills (we are the only people I know who have to teach their kids how to watch tv).  They head bang (although it is coming under control) and can have wicked tantrums.

My sons' teachers are dedicated, resourceful, and relentless optimists.  They work very hard and everything my sons have learned I attribute to them. When one of my sons said "Hi Mommy," for the first time, several of them burst into tears. I am not the burst into tears type, but I was deeply touched. In the back of my mind, though, I thought, "It's about fucking time."

Having done this for seven years you would think that we would be used to this or at least a little less inclined to fall apart. Our sons have made more progress in the last two years than they did in the prior 5 years. Nevertheless, over time, we have lowered our expectations, and it is painful to accept that they will never live independently and we will have to work very hard to make sure that they have enough skills to live in a group home and have some kind of occupation during the day. When someone asked me what they are studying in school, I said, "getting dressed."

Please don't get me wrong, I love my children. While this post probably sounds like "ME ME ME!" they are the ones who are shortchanged. Their experience of life is confined by autism, and their future is extremely limited. They will never be capable of meaningful conversation, they will never read and write, and they will never live independently. They are the ones who are missing out from a full appreciation of life and its possibilities.

There is a lot of acceptance involved in all this, and sometimes it is easier to deal with than other times. I can do everything I can to help my children succeed, but I don't get to choose when that happens or how fast it happens. All I know is that I want it all and I want it right now, and knowing that's not going to happen is a bitter pill to swallow.

So what does this have to do with Felix Gaeta? Well, I just saw episode 4 in season 4.5 this evening and I went into it 100% certain that Felix would get offed, and of course he did, and the events leading up to it were almost painful to watch. The whole sequence of events fills me with profound sadness. And in fact I was in tears watching the scene with Baltar and the execution at the end. It was just so well-written and well-played, it felt completely faithful to the characters.

In fact, I have been anxious and even depressed since the beginning of this season because I knew BAD THINGS were going to happen to Felix. As anyone who has read my post on Felix, I feel very attached to this character. When he lost his leg after being shot by Anders, I was especially disturbed, to a large degree because he was now disabled, and disability (whether physical or developmental) just sucks in every way possible. 

And I KNOW it is just a television show and Felix is NOT a real person.

It's obvious to me that I am projecting onto Felix my own anxieties about my children. In psychoanalytic terms, this is called transference. Basically it is just easier to worry about a fictional character than it is to worry about your own children. One is imaginary and his pain is not real (although it is portrayed with great verisimilitude). Our pain is very real, and it just ebbs and flows over time. 

The scene between Baltar and Felix was utterly heartbreaking. I was hoping that by 4.5 Felix would find some happiness, and again, I was treating that as a metaphor (illogical and unreliable) for our life. Instead Felix is in constant pain from his leg, and in psychological pain because of his distrust of the cylons. In the webisodes, he is taunted by the Eight for clinging to "Hope," and left with a great burden of guilt, even though his actions were well-intended and he was lied to about the outcome. By the time he gets off the raptor his hope is gone.

Well, I know something about guilt, too, parents can never do enough for their kids (at least it feels that way) and that is doubly so for parents of children with autism. I love my children but I do feel a lot of resentment at how their disability has changed our life for the worst.

At his execution Felix looks almost serene, and when he says "It stopped" I assumed he was referring to the pain in his leg and probably psychological pain as well. So it gave me some hope that he would find peace in death. 

The metaphor of death as the end of psychological pain resonates very strongly in our house. My husband and I take turns getting REALLY depressed, and it is usually accompanied by one of us saying, "I wish I was dead." That doesn't mean that we want to commit suicide, or that we want to BE dead. It means we just wish we didn't feel that way, that we could shut off our feelings. Unfortunately, WE are not machines and there is no off/on switch.

R.E.M. has a great song, "Everybody Hurts." These are my favorite lines:

When the day is long and the night, the night is yours alone,

When you're sure you've had enough of this life, well hang on.

Don't let yourself go, everybody cries and everybody hurts sometimes.

Face of the Enemy - up to Webisode 8

Let's just say it's been a ghastly holiday season involving auto insurance, knee specialists, elderly parents who have forgotten the day of the week, and two feet of snow. You get the idea.

This has kind of prevented me from posting on a webisode-by-webisode basis, which I now think is actually a good thing. I could spend endless amounts of time speculating between webisodes, but the length of each 'sode is so short, it's not as much fun as it started out to be.

Now that there are just two Webisodes left and a lot of the guessing is gone over who killed whom and just who is this eight that Felix seems to know, I feel like I should just stand back and take a look at WHAT IT ALL MEANS, or, in the context of 4.5, where this is heading.

In the smaller picture, this is about the legacy of New Caprica. Season 4.0 ended with a very tentative truce between Cylons and humans, and now the Webisodes remind us that New Caprica was a brutal regime that resulted in the deaths of about 10% of the human population. Barely a year later, after further attacks and more losses, the big question is how possible will it be for the humans to build a new civilization on what's left of earth with the Cylons?

Gaeta's relationship with the 8 from New Caprica is predicated on his belief that she was helping save human lives. His first scene with the 8 he is hesitant about giving her the list and looks worried as she walks off. In every subsequent scene 8's behavior seems to justify his trust, until he and 8 develop a romantic relationship.

The irony is that 8 was lying to him and using him, and yet, on the raptor, she is acting to keep him alive - so apparently she feels some attachment to him.

Gaeta, not surprisingly, is appalled, furious, and devastated. It's also another instance of Gaeta placing trust in someone who betrays him, propelling him further on a downward path of disillusionment.

Watching this Webisode I was just so saddened by Gaeta's realization of how he has been used. I am sure, also, that this has consequences for season 4.5. Not just for Gaeta (will he now be disinclined to trust people, especially the cylon variety? probably), but also because if Gaeta, extraordinarily smart & objective, loses faith in the possibility of an alliance with the Cylons, then what hope is there for the rest of the population in coming to terms with the human/cylon collective past?

It really also comes back to the question of the miniseries, is humanity worth saving?

On a lighter note, it is nice to see Gaeta is bi-sexual. I am always in favor of people making informed decisions. I was kind of surprised when I looked up the guy who plays Hoshi (Brad Dryborough) on IMDB and learned he has done comedy. Hoshi is kind of an unknown right now, and I am not sure if he will get beyond supportive and stalwart. But he certainly doesn't seem to have much of a sense of humor.