Exactly… I kept waiting for a HeadCasper
I knew I saw that bit somewhere before. Thanx GR.
On a different note…
The scene where Baltar barges in on the gods of Kobol service, proceeds to trash the joint preaching about false gods and the one true god was reminiscent of a parable from the bible. Jesus enters a temple where the people were conducting business. Jesus proceeds to trash the joint and drive them out making it a house of prayer for the one true god.
I am right with you there, girlfriend… sigh:D
I got the feeling that while previously on the show they kept making it ambiguous whether or not she’s just in his head, now they’re trying to make it obvious that she isn’t in his head. It was a bold move, but it felt a little forced.
After watching this episode, I’m getting worried that things are gonna rush along way too fast while they try to wrap everything up by the series finale.
I rewound and watched this scene a couple times this morning, and I think my initial reaction that Head Six is physically lifting Baltar off the ground is wrong. In all the shots of Baltar moving toward the Marine, we never see Baltar’s feet. In fact, during one shot of Baltar sans Six, you can see Baltar bend his knees as if he’s walking and can sort of tell that he’s shuffling his feet. There’s only one ambiguous moment, when Six appears to be picking him up after the second time he goes down, where he might be standing on the balls of his feet, an unnatural position for somebody who’s standing up under his own power. But, that’s what makes the whole sequence odd-looking; a person under their own power would never make those movements, but it’s not that a person physically couldn’t do them.
The more I think about it, the more I think RDM is playing with us as well as the balcubines on the difficulty of declaring phenomena miraculous and how apt humans are to inventing explanations to fill in the blanks when we don’t have enough information. I totally bought into it the first time I saw it, in part because I could also see it from Baltar’s perspective, with Six dragging him around, but from an objective viewpoint, Baltar is just acting really, really weird, not necessarily miraculous.
On a related note, I can’t wait for RDM’s podcast to hear him comment on how they shot this scene. If Callis did it without wires, he’s absolutely brilliant.
I am totally with you on Baltar’s new Church of Narcissism, though I was amazed that, again, the first time around, I nearly bought into it because Baltar was selling it so convincingly. He fully believes in his own divinity now. What was so creepy watching it again was that Baltar pretty much cribbed Tori’s perfection speech from the beginning of the episode, but while Tori made it all sound cold and awful, Baltar made it sound beautiful and inevitable. The guy has some serious charisma; she may not be dealing with it right by trying to outlaw freedom of assembly, but Roslin’s right to be afraid of what a man like Baltar can do with religious devotion.
Having just said how brilliant Baltar’s speech was, if you want it to remain brilliant in your mind, don’t read on. If not…
Anybody else ever see Bridget Jones’s Diary with Mr. Darcy himself (in both P&P and Bridget Jones), Colin Firth? Remember how Darcy tells Bridget he likes her, “just the way you are”? Remember how Bridget’s friend, a gay former pop star played by none other than James Callis, turns Darcy’s words into a toast at her birthday party, “we love you, just the way you are”? I can no longer watch the last ten seconds of the episode without giggling at the unintentional cross-over. 
Yeah, that was odd. It fit what Baltar was saying in his speech, but just having that one tiny scene felt out-of-place, like either they’d had a Grand Poo Barge scene in the director’s cut that they’d had to excise for time or they were trying really hard to find some way for Katee Sackoff and Michael Trucco to be in this episode so they could get credit and residuals. 
Is it bad that I sort of want Adama to die at the end of the season, to go down with his ship or have some sort of heroic end? Not that I don’t like him–I love the character, and he’s one of the few sane people left on the show–but you’re right, it’s so hard to watch him fall into obsolescence. I think the only thing that would be sadder than Adama dying would be Adama living on without a purpose or his “family” aboard Galactica, and if Roslin dies, Tigh is a freaked-out Cylon, and if this new Kara is really as weird as she seems to be, I just can’t see Adama being satisfied with a quiet retirement on Earth.
I’ve always loved the book scenes between Adama and Roslin, but they just keep getting better and better. I completely buy that Adama is the kind of person who wouldn’t want to finish his favorite book so it would never have to end for him; Adama is not very good at endings–not that anyone is, but he’s especially scared of losing the people he has left. But then when he closed the book and started reciting it from memory–my heart just broke. I’m amazed by how all the storylines this week tied into the idea of struggling to accept pain as a necessary part of life. Tigh and Six use pain to displace guilt almost like flagellants, Baltar and Tori mix and confuse pain and pleasure and find perfection in pain, and Adama is struggling to stave off the sort of emptiness that is engulfing the Chief by loving somebody even though it’s going to hurt so much to lose her.
After sleeping on it and rewatching, I love this episode. With the exception of the flash to the Grand Poo Barge, all the things that struck me as weird or excessive the first time around now fit into the overall thematic arc of the story. The cuts between Ellen and Six just seemed off-putting at first, but now, watching when those cuts are made in relation to the dialogue, they’re just brilliant. Now, as to whether enjoying an episode all about pain makes me a masochist, I guess I’m not so sure about that.
Yes, these scenes always make me a little teary and wishful that I could simply love and adore them both because they are so touchingly perfect for each other. But I can’t. Roslin senses that what she is doing is not right and her religious fervor and drive to save humanity are allowing her to overlook that. Adama, I think, disagrees fairly strongly with her governance tactics at this point, but he loves her too much to let it interfere with their personal time together in terms of fighting (they do keep arguing it out though, thankfully).
In terms of Roslin’s salvation complex- here’s the thing: salvation is never so simple as one unbending and inflexible path. You will not succeed at saving people if the only way that you can think to do it is to force one particular course of action. People’s free will is always going to frak that up. In my opinion, it should alway frak that up. I hope that Roslin has some experience that reminds her of that before she dies; otherwise I do not think she can fulfill the role of the prophecy’s dying leader.
If anyone knows religious devotion, it’s Roslyn, she had half the fleet worshiping her while Priest Elosha was alive… that blind devotion seemed to die out around the time Roslyn lost the election and has just turned into an underlying sense that she’s the dying leader from prophesy.
I don’t think he’ll stay in obsolescence very long, once the cylon civil war bleeds over and starts effecting the human fleet, they’re gonna need the good admiral.
When I was watching him read to Roslyn and close his book, it looked like she had fallen asleep and he had stopped reading the book and had started talking about Roslyn. It’s up for interpretation though since no one knows this story, he could have been reciting it from memory, but I like to think he’s talking about his evolved relationship with Roslyn.
Absolutely. Even with this scene, I wouldn’t have loved it nearly as much if Adama hadn’t had his moment of, “Have you been listening to anything I said?” and Roslin’s earlier complaint that all problems inevitably are her and Adama’s responsibility to fix. They both know the moral route she’s going down isn’t a good one, but Roslin is stuck thinking it’s the only one that doesn’t lead to annihilation. I really hope she has to take a risk and put her faith in somebody else before it’s all over.
For the life of my I could never figure out what it is about Colin Firth that makes the ladies (my wife included) so weak in the knees.
So last night, after BSG, I get online and post a few posts to the Frak party, and then I come back to the TV to find my wife is watching “Bridget Jones Diary”, and she tells me this little tibit I didn’t know: None other than James (Baltar) Callis is IN “Bridget Jone’s Diary”. (I’ve not seen the movie–'cept for parts of it, so I’ve not seen Callis in it.) But my wife says he’s so remarkably different than the Baltar character that it’s very striking —(which is a credit to Callis’s acting.)
Anyway, now that there’s “BSG<-----> Colin Firth” conmection made, I am now totally at ease with my wife’s infatuation with Mr. Firth.
yes, but the Mr Darcy to whom I refer is from Pride and Prejudice http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112130/
Run, ladies, don’t walk. I say “ladies” because in my experience, men don’t always appreciate Jane Austen. No offense is intended to the Y-chromosome
After rewatching the episode, I remembered what I was thinking when I first saw the episode last night but forgot to post about.
Gaius’ religion of perfection is… perfect for Baltar. If anyone on BSG has shown how to love yourself (and for the most part, no one else) it’s Baltar. He has definately been running the path of narcissistically loving himself, basically from the miniseries on forward.
Now that he and Tory believe this… be afraid!
My wife explained to me yesterday that one of the “in jokes” in Bridget Jones’s Diary is that Colin Firth’s character’s last name is Darcy, as a reference to the Pride & Prejudice character Mr. Darcy, played by Colin Firth.
A while ago, I sat and watched most of the Pride and Prejudice miniseries with my wife, …and, well, yeah I’d say it’s more for the female tastes. After a couple hours of watching, I kept thinking. “Ooookay, so when I’m gonna, see a fight, a battle, an explosion or a horse and buggy chase at least?..just talk, talk, talk…”
Bridget Jones is actually a “reimagined” Pride & Prejudice, and it was a cool bit of stunt casting to get CF to play this Mr Darcy as well. In the novel of the Bridget sequel, there’s a bit where Bridg goes to Italy to interview Colin Firth. Good stuff–far better than the movie
I am one of the rare ladies who really does not enjoy Jane Austen. That said, Colin Firth is so charming, I totally get the adoration for him.
Reading and jumping in here a day late and a dollar short ! Damn work intruded on BSG viewing…not fair.
I got the impression that the reason Chief acted so weird with Tory and Tigh at Callandra’s (love that we got that tidbit) funeral was not any type of Cylon sense of touch/info transfer or anything…I think Chief was just shocked that they were going to walk out without offering condolences…he’s desperately trying to hold on to his humanity and he sees himself in them, and they were really acting inhumanly callous before he grabbed them and stopped them.
Rewatching Racetrack’s crash…they played a big trick on us with that one, no waaaay were there even the remains of a cockpit after that ! But thank God she was fine…The initial OH NO !! moment was worth feeling a bit jerked around later, in mho.
I’m still holding onto the Head Six is IN the head theory…I think Baltar’s posture and physical actions in the beating scene can be explained in the same way that she’s had him beating himself up in the bathroom of Colonial One way back when…in this case I think he had given up physically and mentally and she had taken control for a few seconds, but in an internal way, not standing behind him invisibly way.
Poor Roslin…man she is sliding fast…she’s so subdued, her speech pattern is even subtly different…great acting!
Missed watching with you all…might have to take a sick day next Friday !!!
I’m a rare male that appreciates Austen. I read Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice as part of a personal project. I was out of school and wanted to read all the classics without the burden of getting a grade. Y’know pure enjoyment. What I really dug was the multi-facted female characters. They were so complex, it really helped me understand the opposite gender. At least the 19th century female, the 20th century female is much more complex. I’m not even gonna mention the 21st century female.
Surprisingly the male hasn’t changed since the Stone Age. That’s being consistent, my brothers!! Keep up the good work.
talos, you are the perfect man
Bah, that shot down my Angels in the Outfield joke before I even made it…