"Ties that bind" haters wanted

Television, Movies Games and Books BSG-2003
#21

Absolutely. I mean, we’re all intelligent enough to understand that it’s symbol for the stress period she’s going through, but the way they used it was just over the top.

My point exactly. What kind of mother kills her own child. I mean, when you hear about family tragedies, like somebody shot his entire family and then himself, it’s the father most of the times, but a mother killing her own child is very unnatural.

emotionally maybe with a little more of her going crazy in the episodes before would have done it.

Ja! That’s what I meant by going too fast. They can’t just kill off a major character so off-handedly, like it’s not a big thing. You take your time, you set it up slowly, over a couple of episodes and then do it in a way that’s not as obvious as it was in this episode. I guess everybody could see that she was going to die in the end.

and am the only one who thought it was strange that in the end Adama was telling the chief.

Adama has most always been there when somebody died, Kat for example.

the cylon stuff was cool

totally cool!

as for the Starbuck on her quest thing it was kind of boring

yeah, what exactly are they looking for? don’t they just need to go back to the nebula?

and anders has got to stop sleeping with this woman, he’s just better than that.

Anders is above being pussy-whipped. I agree.

#22

Anders is above being pussy-whipped. I agree.

That I don’t know. I never got his personality much throughout the series - just that he was a sports star and a resistance fighter. I hope with him being a newbie cylon, we’d get to see his character more fleshed out, like Tory’s is. From what I know about him now, I do agree with Starbuck a bit that he’s the ‘safe’ choice. Coz he’s such a DULL character! But the whole sex scene was yet another depressing/dark thing in this episode. (but dark and depressing in a good way. I never felt too much for Cally, but I totally felt her this episode. That’s good, no?) There’s something so sad about it, and perhaps from that we’d get to see more of Anders finally coming out from his leoben like obsession with Starbuck.

Oh, I definitely mixed up Racetrack and Seelix. Whoops. But the same idea goes. Why are all the best and brightest pilots on the poo ship? That’s just really, really bad planning. It’s not like the Galactica knew the cylons were too busy fighting each other to go after them.

BTW, I know this is a moot point given Helo and Sharon’s on the poo ship, but is anyone as surprised as I was that the final four, namely the Chief, given his close-ish relationship with Sharon (close enough for him to risk his life to help Helo help her not get raped), never consulted Sharon and/or Helo for advice/talk about being a cylon, and/or being in a ‘mixed’ marriage?

#23

I think Cally needed to be “out of Character” when people are strongly emotionally , they don’t act the same as when they have a normal day.

#24

I didn’t hate the episode, but I agree that we didn’t have time to get grounded in Cally’s storyline. I just posted this on another thread, but I would have preferred to see her go out strong and brave.

Does anyone else seem bothered by Lee being used by Zarek? I’m thrilled to see Zarek back, but I thought Lee would be smarter.

#25

It’s rare, but mothers killing their children does happen. It usually makes for ghastly news.

I would also argue that Cally is a secondary character, not a major one. Her role is supporting to members of the main cast whose characters are the main focus of the story.

#26

Natural or not, there have been a number of women in the news in the last few years that have killed or have tried to kill their children. I recall one woman that killed both her children by driving her car into a pond or lake - later she claimed that they were kidnapped or some such. In the end, the police found out the truth and arrested her. - Just googled to recall this - woman’s name was Susan Smith, incident happened in South Carolina.

#27

I think we didn’t get enough actual screentime or dialogue from the show discussing the relationship between the Chief and Cally. That’s why people might have opinions from both ends of the spectrum when it comes to the two of them (ie we saw the development between Helo/Athena, Starbuck/Anders, Starbuck/Lee, hell, even Starbuck/Baltar!): first we see the Chief beating her up, the next scene we see her pregnant and married on New Caprica. It’s kind of jolting to watch.

But they tried to explain it a little bit in the dialogue between Cally and Doc Cottle.

“What do you say about a girl who practically proposes after the guy dislocates her jaw?”
“As awful as it sounds, sometimes I wish he did hit me…”

Unfortunately they couldn’t (or didn’t - we don’t really know) put that into the scripts pre-Season 4. The only clue we have of their marriage having some trouble was the one line from the Chief in S3 where he told Lee “We were fighting so loud we should’ve sold tickets”

From that perspective, I’m more of the opinion that she was a ticking bomb waiting to go off. She was tired, the baby was fussy, her husband wanted to spend more time at work than at home, she was high on the meds, and she was getting paranoid about her marriage with the Chief. Then she gets slammed with the realization that her husband was a Cylon. It wasn’t too hard to imagine her going off the deep end, pick up the wrench and hit him with it.

#28

I don’t know, it has seemed like the revealed final four have tried to keep their status in the family, keeping the knowledge of one another a secret for only the members of the final four… Torre half revealing to Baltar that she might be a cylon and confirming to Cally (before spacing her) that she was a cylon kinda knocks this theory, but thus far, it seems to hold true.

It would make sense that if any of them decided to reveal themselves, that Helo/Athena would make good choices to reveal themselves to, but at this point, they seem to want to keep it on the down low, but if D’anna does get unboxed soon, she might make trouble for the last 4 revealed, a la Leoben whispering to Roslyn that Adama was a cylon way back in S1.

#29

From the moment this ep. started, I was convinced that she was going to go all Medea and kill Nicky to spite Tyrol. And had they actually gone through with it, I would have turned off the TV, edited my DVR settings and never watched again. There are lots of things that happen in this world that are terrible and tragic, but I don’t consider them to be entertainment.

I also didn’t buy for one second Tory’s speech - because we had seen her lay the smackdown in the opening credits flash forward - and I was just waiting for her to “snap”.

It’ll be interesting to see how things develop over the next couple of weeks.

And here’s my question - when Cavil blew up all the ships, does that mean that all of the Sixes, Eights and Leobens are dead? Except for Caprica Six, Boomer and Athena? That would be an interesting turn, and a twist on when Athena said she wouldn’t care if she was the last one.

#30

While I don’t HATE this episode, I find myself being bothered by more and more things as time goes on. I have to say that I’m not a big fan of the Qo12 storyline that’s going on - it’s making me dislike the president more and more, and I also find myself screaming at the TV - oh for christsake, who gives a shit about all of this! Get back to the final 4/Starbuck/the cylons! The Qo12 just seem so insignificant and I just don’t care.

One would think people would be excited to be on the Demitrius, after all it might be the first ship to reach Earth, and would be a break from the bucket. Starbuck is being a little weird, but, who, that’s unusual…Gaeta’s attitude just seems so out of character - he’s been a whiny brat and he’s not been that the entire show - his out of character explosion in Flight of the Phoenix made the entire CIC stop.

I think what has been getting to me is the relentlessness of it all - and there’s no bright side. There’s always been a bright side somewhere, no matter how small. Everything is dark, bad, and unhappy - last episode there was hope, and now, it’s all been flushed down the toilet. The Cylon storyline concerns me - as Cavil says, they have definitely opened a can of worms - if it’s not credible it’s just going to ruin everything.

Final 4 - wish they had a long range plan - this can’t go on forever and Tigh should be thinking in terms of this.

#31

Oh yeah, they’re on a “exploring our new-found emotions” trip instead of gathering hard data. I mean, three out of the four are military officers, after all, they should be able to exercise some restraint in their conduct. Why hasn’t Tigh interrogated the Six in the brig yet???

#32

I didn’t get much of what happened on the QO12 meeting. So, Zarek’s normally reduced to gavel-pounding everytime they have a session? No wonder he’s bitter…

One would think people would be excited to be on the Demitrius, after all it might be the first ship to reach Earth, and would be a break from the bucket. Starbuck is being a little weird, but, who, that’s unusual…Gaeta’s attitude just seems so out of character - he’s been a whiny brat and he’s not been that the entire show - his out of character explosion in Flight of the Phoenix made the entire CIC stop.

I doubt everyone knew the purpose of joining the Demetrius. Anders told Kara “Some of us actually volunteered for this mission!” It made me think some of them were appointed (Gaeta, maybe? They needed a navigator), and the rest who volunteered weren’t given full disclosure. I think the only one who knows the official mission would be Helo. Anders knows because he’s Kara’s husband. The others don’t, hence all the whining.

And, has anyone seen the latest David Eick vid blog at the Skiffy website? Check it out - it gave out more spoiler spec than I think they realized…

[spoiler]They had a shot of this Helo/Athena scene being filmed -
Helo: it’s following your orders -
Athena: It’s called dragging your feet! Starbuck’s pushing our go-back deadline to the last minute because she’s afraid of facing Adama! What’s she going to say to him when she tells him her vision was just a pipe dream?[/spoiler]

#33

I usually close my eyes during the opening credits so I won’t see too much, but sometimes I get suckered into a promo trailer and then wish I hadn’t. Scifi gives way too much away in these IMHO.

That’s my question too. I doubt it’s happening all over Cylondom, but an 8 said the fleet was split down the middle. But the battle we see at the end might just be localized to those particular basestars.

#34

Nope. The smart money says the new Starbuck will meet up with Leoben before this saga ends. And that will be a pivotal part of the story. Question is whether that will be when Starbuck learns she died or whether she already knows it.

#35

A couple of points from the previous discussions:

I thought the Cally/Chief dynamic was actually set up quite well. We had an entire episode last season focused on how their relationship was quite rocky. It also made sense to me that she would consider killing Nicky for a bit, because he himself in a Hylon and Cally hates everything remotely related to Cylons. I also thought the episode seemed to do a good job of depicting the paranoia and the bending of reality of someone stressed out, dealing with postpartum depression, and overmedicating themselves to deal with their problems (not that I have any experience with that).

As far as the Qof12 meetings went, I didn’t see Zarek so much as manipulating Lee but I saw them as collaborating based on their shared ideals. We already know that Lee read Zarek’s banned book way back in college and had seen some merit in it. What Lee didn’t agree with was Zarek’s methods. However, they both seem to share a strong support for democracy, and now that Zarek operates within the system (as opposed to blowing up Colonial government buildings) there is a possibility that they may collaborate. Ironically, Zarek’s current problem is that he is too closely attached to the government by serving as the vice-president and that makes it difficult to oppose the president’s policies. Instead he had to go outside the government (I mean this in the parliamentarian sense of outside of the ruling party) to Lee to see if he instead would voice opposition to Roslin’s judicial policies.

Lastly, I got the sense that the 6s, 8s and Leobens that rebelled were going to be “really dead” because the resurrection ship didn’t make the last jump with them and therefore they weren’t going to download…

#36

She was probably thinking, "Oh my gods, I lost my man to a Cylon AGAIN??"

#37

I didn’t hate this episode but it was painful to watch. There was just an inevitability to its outcome. The development of Tory’s character was a surprise but not really incongruous, as her character was not really very developed so they could pretty much do anything they wanted with her and we’d be all “wellllll, o.k. I guess that works.”

I “got” how the director chose to film this episode through odd lenses and using sound distortion on the chief’s voice. Cally was clearly depressed. I’ve been there and you do feel very disconnected from other people and almost like you are experiencing life in some other reality (note Starbuck’s description of what she feels like right now too…hmmmmmm). The close-ups of Cally’s face and the lens and voice distortions were actually good ways to get us inside Cally’s head. The only scene she was in which was semi-“normal” was the one with Cottle and I think that was a moment of shared honesty between herself and Cottle. It also set-up a reason for everyone to believe it was suicide. It was a sad ending for Cally. Even though I didn’t feel drawn to the character, I did feel badly for her because of the way her last days/hours were lived.

Like I said, it was a painful episode to watch.

#38

In reply to everyone noting that Cally’s attempt to kill her baby was unnatural and out of character, remember that she just learned that her husband was a cylon.

Guess what that makes the baby?

That, plus some heavy meds and lack of sleep…it doesn’t seem too far fetched to me

#39

I thought the episode was good, it’s given us all a lot to think about for the week.

I still don’t like the whole Tory sleeping with Baltar bit, but I think that her development in this episode was really fantastic… I’ll admit I wouldn’t want to be on the Galactica, nor would I want to be friends with my favorite characters - and Tory is becoming quite intriguing on that front.

I agree with those who argue that the drugs/etc plus Cally being kind of crazy all along make it more believable - though I would actually have preferred that we had the Cally/Tyrol flashbacks spread over the previous episodes somehow - it felt a little off to have that so focused.

#40

Oddly enough, at least in the U.S., that’s not really accurate when it comes to infanticide. From the DoJ website:

"Parents who kill

Between 1976 and 1997 parents and stepparents murdered nearly
11,000 children. Mothers and stepmothers committed about half
of these child murders. Sons and stepsons accounted for 52% of
those killed by mothers and 57% of those killed by fathers.
Mothers were responsible for a higher share of children killed
during infancy while fathers were more likely to have been
responsible for the murders of children age 8 or older."

Was Cally’s reaction frakked up and unnatural? Yes. Was it implausible under the bizarre circumstances and mentally-screwed-up state she was in? Sadly, no.

From what Cally said to Tori for her reasons for killing Nicky, I didn’t get so much of a Medea vibe (killing child to spite father) as more of a…maybe a Rosemary’s Baby feeling? Cally said she felt like they’d “used” her, and that’s an understandable reaction; she has to be wondering if, since the Chief really wasn’t passionately in love with her, she might not be another Cylon baby experiment, and the Cylons were going to “use” Nicky for whatever nefarious purposes made the Cylons start the farms. Now, we know that’s not what happened, but Chief’s horrible timing of telling Cally he wanted another kid probably helped her jump to that terrifying conclusion.