Things I liked about this episode: Motherfrakking awesome human drama. The scene with Jammer getting executed caused almost immediate and strong anxiety, mostly from horrified sympathy and terrible disappointment with some of the members of the “jury”, who I really thought were better than that. They’re not. Perhaps no one is. Very sad, very true of humanity in general. It made these people seem real, and that it made me absolutely queasy means I still care. RDM & Co. deserve major kudos for that.
But the setup, at times, was simply beyond the bounds of suspension-of-disbelief. Cally not only didn’t recognize that it was Jammer who set her free, she frakking forgot it even happened? Bullshit.
And then there’s Gaeta. I frakking knew this was going to happen. There’s simply no excuse for Gaeta not having been hoisted on the shoulders of Adama and Tigh together and paraded about as one of the Fleet’s greatest heros the day he got back on the Galactica. Without his intel, humanity would still have Cylon boots on their necks, and the Galactica would be chunks of glowing wreckage slowly spiraling in and burning up in the atmosphere of New Caprica. It would have taken him enough time to say “dog bowl, drop off, ME!”, and he’d have a frakking medal-of-honor tattooed to his forehead. Instead, for some completely bizarre reason, he tells no one that he played as big a role as any person in the success of the rescue, takes heaps of shit from everyone, seems almost completely unaware of the significance of his actions, only blurts out tidbits relating to the nature of his involvement after two fleet officers accuse him of high treason in the midst of a crowd of soldiers who hate him enough to kill him, gets dragged to an airlock and is facing death, and after all of that says “I won’t beg.” Bull-frakking-shit. Kara’s little tantrum in the end, where it’s almost like he had to be tricked into revealing what a hero he is, only compounded the gross absurdity of it.
Man, I wanted to love this episode completely. I really did. That Zarek was pulling the strings was a very nice touch, a great little twist that in no way, IMO, absolved the “jury” of their attrocious behavior, but provided a very plausible explanation for it besides pure hate. Tigh is almost unhinged, and it’s fun watching Hogan stretch into that a little, sans the booze crutch. Whatever Kara’s demons are, old and newly-aquired, working those out could be interesting. Nice to see Papa and Junior Adama still aren’t best buddies all of the sudden, because old habits really do die hard. Roslin’s Nelson Mandela impersonation wasn’t so bad. It lacked imagination, but I couldn’t think of a better way to move the series forward without the story turning into exactly what Zarek was trying to prevent Roslin’s presidency from turning into.
But for frak’s sake, BSG writers, work on the setups. I wonder if the silliness from Tigh Me Up, Tigh Me Down got it into their heads that because they could pull of these implausiblities in their one semi-comic episode, it would work all the time. I hope not. Once they get to where they want to be, it’s brilliant. Things would be damn near flawless if they could find some better routes.
On an almost unrelated note, I have no idea what the point of Baltar’s captivity is up to now, but things have just gotten started with that, so I’m just going to wait and see.