I have to agree. I could never be with a man that beat me up. Even if the guy had an excuse (in this case some sort of cylon-induced mental illness), I could never get that fear out of me. Every time he lifted his arm, I’d flinch. And there’d be no relaxing necessary to … err… make a baby. I might be able to forgive the guy and move on, but I’d never want to be alone in a room with him. And in this case it was a mental breakdown, it may well happen again. And I certainly would never let him be anywhere near my child.
I think a lot can happen in a year. Chief clearly wasn’t in his right mind when he hit Cally. He didn’t intend to hit her, he didn’t even really see her. He wasn’t even awake, I’d say. He didn’t choose to hit her, and that’s a big difference. For all we know, she is afraid of him a bit. She loves him, and has for a long time, and knows he is a good man and would never hurt her intentionally, but I wouldn’t be surprised if every now and again she has a nightmare about what happened.
I think there’s a definite disparity between men’s and women’s opinions about Cally. A higher percentage of men like her than women do. I’d say a lot of this has to do with her relationship with the Chief. Men for the most part really like her 'cause g’damn- who wouldn’t want to be married to her? She’s adorable! And women don’t like her as much 'cause g’damn- who wouldn’t want to be married to the Chief? He’s adorable! Err… manly. Very manly. The Chief is a more central character and quite frankly, he’s awesome. He’s only very rarely been wrong or in the wrong about anything; it’s nearly impossible to dislike him (imho). Cally we haven’t seen as much of. She hasn’t proven herself the same way. Those who have an issue about that relationship are more likely to dislike Cally than the Chief and in my opinion, women are more likely to have a problem with that relationship, be it with the Chief hitting her or their general rapport. I’d be surprised if a lot of Cally-hating women don’t think she isn’t good enough for the Chief, whereas I think more men consider Chief lucky for being married to her. I’m ambivalent about Cally, but I like them together as a couple, more because it seems to be a good relationship for the Chief than because of anything about her.
Speaking as a woman…errr no?
Just want add my two cents about the moviecs “Le Fem Nikita” and the “The Professional” .Le Fem Nikita was an awesome movie, much better than the Bridget Fonda Remake: Point of No Return. (Not that Fonda isn’t a great actress–just wasn’t as good a flim as the original.
The Professional? Wow, love that movie–ranks up among my favoriate top 10 movies. Action, drama, suspense and heart all weaved in nicely together. Gary Oldman is an awesome bad guy cop in it too. Love when he calls the police station for backup: “Get everybody!. EVERYBODY!”
Ditto. I respectfully disagree, Katebo. My take on things is that he’s probably still half in love with Boomer and married Cally out of some weird guilt thing after beating her, plus the fact that she always loved him. I wouldn’t want to be married to him.
I dislike Cally because I think she’s whiny and grating. She’s a one-note character…adorable on the outside-but wait! she’s ohmygod, totally spunky! She’ll curse you out! Or Jack Ruby your girlfriend!
I know its not the actress’ fault; some characters just don’t get all the development the core ones do, but I’m a little tired of Cally.
All my opinions of course! I’m interested in what others have to say.
You know, everyone is asking if Cally is a bad person for staying married to a guy who pounded her face, but we all still love the guy who did the pounding?
Think it’s more than that. I really think Cally is the girl guys go to as a “Second choice”. I hate to say that, but I’ve seen it happen. Guy gets his heart broken by the woman he loves - here’s some cute girl who has always had a thing for him - he needs to get over her (How many times did Chief say he needed to get over Boomer? And, I’m sorry, I didn’t quite buy his telling Apollo he was over Boomer - just doesn’t fit) and there she is. Hell she even doesn’t blame him when he beats the snot out of her (Cylon nightmare or not - not cool move at all). I don’t hate Cally…actually feel badly for her.
Especially now that he is one of the Final Five…how is he going to look at the Boomer/Cally dynamic now? Can’t really be too mad at Boomer for being a Cylon…
I agree with this as well - she’s spunky (“Frak you mother frakker” hee hee hee) - but you can only do that so much before it’s grating.
I also suspect once the total population of the human race is beginning to dwindle below 40K, holding out for your ideal soul mate would appear to have diminishing returns.
This just brought up an odd thought (…tangent time…). In our society our population is effectively infinite regarding the number of people we can possibly meet and more importantly regarding the pool of potential spouses. However, for much of humanity’s past, and in a few remaining traditional societies today, the total number of people (and therefore the potential spouse pool) has been perceived to be finite. If the total local population is only a few 1000 there may only be on the scale of 10’s or so number of age appropriate potential spouses. Imagine being restricted to your highschool population for associates for the rest of your life. I assume in those situations everybody typically has shared experiences (and even kin) that probably moderates some of the stresses associated with married life (i.e., similar experiences and mores reduce disagreements & both being, say, second-cousins results in shared kin in close proximity that may reduce abuse of one or the other). Effectively, the BSG universe wetn from an infinite population to a very finite one. It would be interesting to speculate on how that affects people’s relationships and such…then again maybe it isn’t…
Yeah, I too have seen this happen. But it’s not a guy-only thing.
wow. what a great observation. you thinking they’re maybe going back to something like a tribal way of mating?
In case you’re interested…
http://video.scifi.com/player/?id=231554#videoid=231554
but you’re probably not…LOL 
Regarding Blue Harvest, I understand they are making a second Star Wars Family Guy episode based on Empire. It’s going to be called “Something, Something, Something Darkside”. I for one, can’t wait. I must watch Blue Harvest again, I bought the DVD set with the tshirt and 3d glasses.
A little bit of casting for “Something, Something, Something Darkside,” spoiler boxed for those who may consider it a spoiler.
[Spoiler]The giant chicken will be playing Boba Fett[/spoiler]
I’m not sure I’d say that, but what I guess I am saying is that in small populations mechanisms must evolve that allow the same people to effectively deal with one another. However, none of those mechanisms are in place in the BSG-verse. Very few people have any living biological relatives (other than the Adamas), and obviously we have people representing very diverse back grounds. If anything life in the Galactica is potentially shielded from these problems compared to the rest of the fleet, because at least they have the shared culture of the military to fall back on. Out in the fleet you have a hodgepodge of people lacking any many of the old networks (familial, religious, work place, devotion to obscure scifi blogs, etc.) that dictated how people interacted back on the colonies. I guess we have seen some evidence of factions and gangs start up but it hasn’t been explored very deeply. It would be interesting to see if the biological need to find life partners causes the old barriers to be broken down or reinforced…
People in the fleet saw as early as the tail to the mini-series that the species was disappearing. One of the seemingly throw away lines from Commander Adama related to hoping things do not reach the point of having compulsory procreation attempts. While social order is not what it seemingly was in the BSG universe, the drive to mate continues.
Someone might correct me on the Lazarus Long quote that the object of life is to be fruitful and multiply. That is the base drive. We just see it in a prettier fashion in BSG at the moment.
I don’t know if Dee is necessarily a social-climber, but after watching the extended edition of “Unfinished Business” on the Season 3 DVD’s, I definitely have less sympathy for her. How can you feel sorry for her when in the same sentence she tells Lee she knows he’ll never truly love anyone but Kara, but she’ll marry him anyway. She knew what she was getting into. She walked in with eyes wide open.
That’s exactly how I feel about her, too.
Ditto. I respectfully disagree, Katebo. [/QUOTE]
Fair enough, but then why do you think there is such a disparity? Just look at the poll in the BSG forum- as of right now, 23 men have responded and 12 women have responded. 21 men like her, 2 don’t. 5 women like her, 7 don’t. That isn’t a small difference. Is it just that men overlook her more annoying aspects because of her physical beauty and women don’t? And, by the way, I’m a woman as well, so I don’t feel like I’m reaching too far with my thoughts on a woman’s perspective of the character, though I acknowledge I may be incorrect. (By the way, I voted “like her”, and I don’t- I just don’t dislike her. To me, that makes it 4 for, 7 against, 1 meh.)
I think it’s 'cause we accept that the Chief wasn’t in control of his actions. Cally’s clearly chose to be with him after that had happened. But more than that, it’s, as I commented earlier, because we know him better, so we understand him better, and are more likely to give him leeway with otherwise troubling issues.
As for Dee, I don’t think she’s a social climber at all. The situation with Billy was unfortunate at best, but it mostly wasn’t her fault. We saw most of that relationship through Billy’s eyes- he was much more serious about her than she was about him. Even at the very beginning- he was tongue-tied, she was nonplussed. Granted, she thought he was cute and things progressed, but after they’d known each other for a few months or so (I may be wrong on that?), he proposes, out of nowhere. We the audience love Billy 'cause, well, he’s awesome, so we’re devastated when he is. But look at the situation from Dee’s perspective- you’ve got a thing kinda going with this guy for a few months, not terribly serious (I doubt they had much down time), you kinda also like this other guy, but nothing’s really happening there, when the first guy proposes after a few crazy months, at the start of which you’d had a major, life-changing event occur. I’d think most people would back off a bit from the first guy, especially if things started working out with the second one. Also, if I may say, Dee started going out with Lee when he was CAG. It’s not as if she starting hitting on him once he got the Pegasus.
As for her marriage, yes, she went in with her eyes open. She loves Lee, enough to look past the fact that there’s a part of him she’ll never really have. We’ve said Dee stands by her man- it’s more than that. Loyalty is one of her strongest, most entrenched traits. Her dedication to the fleet stems from this. Loyalty has always been important to Lee as well. Familial loyalty, loyalty to his ideals and to the law, loyalty to the fleet. I think she understandably believed that if she married Lee he’d be loyal to her. Part of him may never get over Starbuck, but he wouldn’t marry her, make that commitment, if he didn’t mean it and wasn’t going to keep it. She settled for being second choice, believing Lee would keep his word and not stray. Unfortunately, she gave him too much credit.
Dee stays with Lee because she’s made a commitment and that’s important to her. It’s not in her character to leave. She is hoping Lee will figure himself out and come back. Kind of like Kara (but not, you know, hypocritical), she’s made a vow to the Gods, and she won’t be the one to break it. And, honestly, she should know by now that Kara runs hot and cold and that things between her and Lee will inevitably break down. She takes Lee’s disloyalty to her. When she perceives Lee as having abandoned and being disloyal to the fleet, that’s the last straw. She no longer knows who he is, he is no longer the man she married. At least, that’s how I see it.
Sorry this got so ridiculously essay-ishly long.
I have to say I never liked Cally. She was always annoying. Chief marrying her had nothing to do with my dislike of her. I like the Chief, he seems like a nice guy, but I’d never want to be involved with him. He’s unstable. I think Cally shot Boomer solely out of jealously, she knew the Chief would never move on (to her) with Boomer still around so she killed her. I don’t think it really had anything to do with Boomer being a cylon. I’m sure that’s how she justified it to herself. The fact that Cally married Chief just adds to my lack of respect for her.
As for Dee, I too see the social climbing thing. Early on in the series I thought she was after Adama. I kept thinking she was flirting with him and it creeped me out. Then she realized he wouldn’t go for it and the next available male was Lee. As for Billy asking her to marry him too soon, well, there’s nothing like a catastrophe to speed up commitment. Heck, that was part of Dee’s reason for marrying Lee (there might not be time to wait for him to get over Kara). As far as I remember, Lee and Dee didn’t really date (just frak) until Kara returned with Sam. I wouldn’t call Dee loyal, just selfish. If you really love someone and see that they don’t love you and they love someone else, you wouldn’t marry them. You know this would (in the end) make the person you love miserable. She knew he wasn’t marrying her for the right reason and figured it would
Ack! Lots of catching up to do!
As for Cally: As with several characters, I liked her until LDYB/Season 3. She bit the ear off a rapist–that’s my kind of spunk! The “motherfrakker” scene was also great; she was both vulnerable and tough there, and she wasn’t afraid to challenge the Chief. However, I, too, found it too unsettling that she married the Chief after he beat her up, and I haven’t been very impressed with her character since they got married. Even if Baltar made valid points in his “My Triumphs, My Mistakes” pamphlet, she cites as a valid source and advocates for the opinions of the man who signed her execution order?!? Find a different manifesto, Cally! I hear the Vice President wrote a popular one…
I buy that. Isn’t from “Bastille Day” to “LDYB I” approximately seven months, since Lee promises Zarek that there will be a presidential election in seven months when Adar’s term would have been up? That doesn’t make me forgive Dee for switching to Lee so quickly, but it does make the proposal rejection make sense.
Gosh, I’m almost ashamed of my assumption after hearing this idea and the GWCers’ ideas. I just figured Anders was so drunk that he didn’t realize the coin had the same pattern engraved on both sides…:o
Thank you, Phil, for the lovely tangent. The BSG world seems to so clearly reflect our world that it’s always interesting to think about the real differences between their world and ours and how those differences would affect life in ways that aren’t instantly foreseeable. I’m still shivering at the high-school-as-your-potential-marriage-pool thought.
What is this about new webisodes? Any word on what they’re about, or when we’ll see them?
Also, Katee Sackoff’s comments on all the sex scene stock footage they have for Starbuck–hilarious!
Oops, one more…
I don’t know that I’d call Dee a social climber. I think the reason she did fall for Lee is more creepy than that, but I think had she wanted to climb the social ladder, she wouldn’t have tried so hard to hide her relationship with Lee for so long. Especially in the extended version of “Unfinished Business,” Dee is trying to keep their relationship under wraps. I’m not sure why she wants it that way (would it be an officer/nco issue, like Chief and Boomer was?), but she doesn’t exactly shout her love to the skies, like you’d expect from someone trying to gain social standing through a romantic relationship.
Dee is in love with the idea of being married to an Adama, but not because the Adamas have a high social status. I think it really is closer to an Elektra complex, so pardon the following Freudian analysis ;). Dee had a bad relationship with her own father; her last conversation with him before the destruction of the Colonies was a fight over joining the military (“Final Cut”), and as Chuck said in the “Maelstrom” podcast, ending your relationship with your parent on an ugly note like that would really hurt a person. Dee finds a father-figure in her new military world, Commander Adama, and because of the devastation of the destruction of the Colonies, she clings to Adama as father-figure and all the ideas he represents even more.
She loves Lee because she sees certain traits of his father in him–plus, she subconsciously understands going after the Commander would just be too creepy–and she’s incredibly disappointed in Lee when Lee isn’t his father’s son in all ways, even if those divergent traits aren’t necessarily bad. That’s why Dee leaves Lee when he defends Baltar. She can live with him having feelings for somebody else (whom she knows Lee will never have a stable relationship with because, let’s face it, Kara doesn’t do stable relationships), but she can’t live with Lee not living up to her vision of what he should be: a younger version of Bill Adama. The marriage was bound to fall apart eventually because Lee and his father are such different people, and sooner or later, Dee was going to have to acknowledge that.
It’s a lot less conspiracy minded than your explanation. Speaking from my own perspective, she does essentially represent the “average” woman in the show. Therefore, with a character having this kind of purpose we tend to try to see ourselves in that character. Men are not looking for that type of connection with her, it’s a completely different “relationship” than it is for women. I would venture a guess & say that all of the women who voted “hate” for her did so because this is nto a person any of them would associate with themselves or any of their friends. They probably would try to avoid her for the reasons they ahve already stated. No one wants to be perceived as whining, grating & annoying. They also don’t want to be seen as the fool who doesn’t understand her husbands job when she herself does it.
As for her look, it is the stereotypical plain Jane, tom-boy, nerd look that Hollywood reserves for a female character. Pony-tail, severely straight bangs & this goofy puppy dog earnestness. Frankly, I find it insulting.