Writers: David Weddle and Bradley Thompson
Director: Michael Nankin
Grade: A
I thought this was a fantastic episode, in a very bleak sort of way.
When Dee was the first thing we saw in the previouslies, I thought it was a bit odd. And when they kept focusing on her when we haven’t gotten to spend that much time with her in ages, I thought that maybe they were finally going to start paying some attention to her again. Silly me.
The scene afterwards with the two Adamas mourning Dee was very well done. I believed Bill’s grief because he and Dee have always had a connection. I still remember her kissing his hand when he was shot at the end of Season 1, and the Season 2 scene in which she set Adama straight about what was really fucking him up, which he echoed here over her body: “I let everybody down.”
I mention believing Bill here specifically because in the later face-off between he and Tigh, I simply did not. The scenery chewing was so loud I was almost laughing. I saw overwrought acting, not a character in the worst pain he's ever felt in his life. The Hall of Woe shortly before the showdown was also overdone. Most of this episode was great, but that particular few minutes was drowning in melodrama, and not in a good way.
I also didn’t quite understand why Kara and Lee (and even Bill) had such a hard time getting why Dee would kill herself. I get why they never saw it coming, but they didn’t seem to have a clue why she did it at all. Were they just in the denial stage? Maybe I’m just guilty of trying to project—I understood, so why wouldn’t they understand? Then again, it also not like any of them had much time to reflect before their respective conversations, and even if they did, they probably can’t afford to try to understand Dee’s mental state. If they succeed, they just might follow in her footsteps.
I loved the different attempts at suicide that we saw throughout the episode (as much as one can love such a thing), and the way it was tied to Bill’s story about the fox. Personally, I connected the story with Adama and Cain. Cain was the fox that turned to fight and got ripped to shreds, whereas Adama was the fox that ran across the river and kept on running. And now so many people want to be the fox that lets the current carry them out to sea. Dee didn’t want to fight or run, she wanted to take control of her own end. Adama almost went to same way as Dee, but he reached the moment of realization before it was too late, thanks to Tigh. Though his realization seemed to be more that he couldn’t let people down again than that he really wanted to live, and of course, he fed them the same old BS that he gave them after attack on the colonies in the miniseries, only this time with even less conviction and less evidence (methinks people are going to catch on pretty quick to this new wild goose chase).
The rest of the characters are more in line with the fox story than Adama and Dee were, simply wanting to give up and drift along until they die, but I have a feeling many of them will find their legs pumping at the end, treading water, realizing they still want to live. Roslin refusing her meds, D’Anna choosing to stay on Earth. Tigh is somewhat ambiguous, but given the thematic story frame they were using, I have a hard time seeing his wading into the sea anything other than at least considering the option of suicide. (I have to say that as much as I loved that story frame, I didn’t like Tigh actually saying the bit about going out to sea to D’Anna. My mind had already gone there without needing to be told. I guess it makes sense for Tigh to verbalize what he was thinking to D'Anna, but still, it would've worked better without the anvil.)
I take it that realizing Ellen is the Fifth gave Tigh hope again, but I’m not sure why. It upped the OMG, WTF-ness factor of her murder in that she frakked one Cylon (Cavill) to save another Cylon (Tigh), who was strongly encouraged to kill her by yet another Cylon (Anders). But for me, it didn’t really alter the tragedy of her death at all, and I’m not sure why it would for Tigh, either. They were still the same people going through the same motions. Perhaps he now has hope that he can see her gain, but it seems like a false hope to me. Yes, Cylons could resurrect at the time when she died, but we’ve seen no evidence that there are any other copies of the Final Five. And yes, we have the example of Starbuck being resurrected tattoos and all, and the fact that the Final Five were somehow resurrected from their Earthly bodies, but that technology or spirituality or whatever-it-may-be seems tied to Earth, which they were nowhere near when Ellen died. Perhaps the answer is that there can only be one living Final Fiver copy at a time?
And speaking of Starbuck, I was really glad to see her stop and ask Lee what was wrong on Colonial One, rather than just plow ahead with her need to tell him what she found. It was unclear when she first entered whether she knew what had happened to Dee and was just being her old self, or whether she didn’t know and would notice something was wrong. That ambiguity was a good choice writing/directing-wise. It brought to mind her old behavior in order to reinforce how this “new” version of Starbuck is subtly different than the one we knew up until “Maelstrom.”
I’m trying to be pretty much “wait and see” when it comes to her storyline, but I can’t help but toss around a few vague theories. We know that none of the Cylons (that we know of) seem to have any idea what’s going on with her, despite the fact that Simon took one of her ovaries (?) way back when. I’d think Doc Cottle would have noticed a missing ovary, though, so it’s questionable, but Simon certainly did something. We know that she referred to the “smell” and “feel” of earth to Bill at the beginning of the season, and also (from a deleted scene, I think, so maybe not canon?) that she remembers some of the mommy/Leoben visions she had prior to getting sucked into the storm. We know, as someone at TWoP pointed out, that reborn Kara came back with the marriage tattoos. Did reborn Kara also come with dogtags and a ring, given that she found those on the corpse? My mind is quite fuzzy on that detail. If there’s some kind of resurrection hub on or near Earth, there’s got to be someone around to run it, given the brand new Viper and the signal it (and only it) picked up.
I don’t see how whatever Simon did or removed in “The Farm” has anything to do with Starbuck being back, unless Simon just happened to leave it lying around somewhere and some mysterious other being(s) got his/her/their hands on it and re-made her, and her shiny little Viper, too. None of the Cylons seems to have the slightest clue what’s going on with her—in fact, they don’t even seem to care, aside from Leoben—so a connection between “The Farm” and Kara’s rebirth feels like a red herring to me.
I was thinking about the prophecy about Kara bringing humanity to its end, and then I connected that to this “cycle” that seems to keep happening again and again. We don’t know the specifics of which civilization came first and how they’re all connected, but it seems like there is some kind of repeating cycle that is brought about by humanity’s fear of death—we keep trying to cheat it over and over again. Which means humanity can never really die off, become extinct. Maybe that’s what Kara’s prophecy is all about? Something she’s done or will do will lead to breaking the cycle, so that humans (and Cylons) can eventually go extinct? Sort of like a really big, cosmic version of blowing the Resurrection Hub. I could live with that. It doesn’t mean she’s going to be directly responsible for the deaths of thousands, but more that she’d have a hand in restoring the permanence of death. I don’t think it’s that bleak, it’s more like restoring natural order/breaking a destructive cycle. And it’s not like humanity couldn’t make a go of it for a few thousand more years if they could actually find some peace and stop blowing things to hell. Or even longer, even forever, as long as forever is. It would certainly be an “end,” but not a holocaust, and not a stain on Kara’s soul.
And because it must be said, watching Leoben walk away from Kara in fear… my heart broke for her. He’s batshit crazy and unintentionally abusive, sure, but in his weird way, he’s always been deeply devoted to her. For him to leave her like that means some very serious shit is going down with Starbuck. Of course, I don’t think Lee will abandon her, so there’s that. I see a lot of talk on message boards about how Lee doesn’t accept Starbuck, how he’s repeatedly rejected her, and I’ve never seen it that way. He’s always been just as devoted to her as Leoben and Sam have, but in a more healthy, human, self-preserving way. There are friends that you love deeply, but at times, you cannot bear them. They hurt you or frighten you, or you can’t watch them hurt themselves anymore, or they’re just too crazy for you to handle at a time in your life when you’re dealing with your own craziness. So you turn away from them for a time, but you always come back. That’s how I see Kara and Lee. He may reject or run away, but it’s temporary. He will always come back just when she needs him most, he will always love her. It’s not Sam’s type of devotion, but it’s not worthless, either.
And also because it must be said, the scene with Kara in silhouette against the dusk making her own funeral pyre was possibly the most beautiful sequence ever shot on this show.
Oh, and here’s a random theory that’s probably been voiced before: I wonder if Pythia was an early, possibly slightly more sane version of a Hybrid. Pythia and the Hybrids are where all the prophecies the show has explored came from, right? Maybe I’m forgetting something.
And now for the things that didn’t make sense…
I’d like to see it addressed whether Baltar knew Ellen was a Cylon or not. Maybe he didn’t actually finish the test on her in “Tigh Me Up, Tigh Me Down” and just told them she was clean to shut everyone up? Because I’ve just seen no evidence of “Baltar knew the truth all along," especially given he and D’Anna’s great quest to find the identities of the Final Five.
I’d also like to know why Kara’s Viper (or the various pieces of it, anyway) came down so close to where the Final Five lived and died on Earth. And I don't see how they’d be finding guitar necks on the beach or how the ruins still had the remnants of paint on them after 2000 years of exposure to the elements.
If Anders is Bob Dylan, I… just… there are no words.
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