Battlestar Galactica: “Deadlock”
21 February 2009
by Kari Geltemeyer
“How many dead chicks are out there?”
—Hot Dog
Really? We couldn’t have packed most of the events of this episode into 15 minutes and then moved on to something else? We needed to watch growly Adama stroke the walls of his ship 35,000 times in order to understand what’s at stake if he loses her? We needed to see 35,000 chummy scenes of him bonding with Tigh in order to understand that they are in deep, utterly platonic man love? Which we’ve known for, oh, four or five years now? And ditto the 35,000 times the Final Five (plus Six!) voted on whether to stay or jump ship? Yuck. I don’t mind the talkies, but this one suffered from a serious lack of urgency: a weird stop on forward movement in half the storylines combined with lightspeed narrative unspooling in the other half. So we’ll make this short & sweet & epically crabby, and then you can holler at me in the comments, because the less time I spend thinking about it—and my fear that Tricia Helfer is going to stab herself in the eye with her own cheekbone soon—the better.
First up: LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE. Right? That’s the point? Because I was scared I might have missed it. Ellen loves Saul who loves Ellen for all eternity but loves Bill and the Galatica more, and also Caprica Six, at least since he got her pregnant, only not enough to save the baby we’ve been talking about for almost a year now, and who is eliminated from the storyline just in time to bring back Samuel T. Anders. So what was the point of this miracle conception in the first place? To prove that love is all? That love is pain? That love withheld, or not felt deeply enough, kills? Or that BFF love kills babies, specifically? Maybe I would’ve felt all of this more keenly had we seen any kind of development or real connection between Tigh and Caprica Six, who from what I can recall went straight from angry brig sex straight to babies and living together and being in LOVE. And now the whole thing feels like a writer’s device, designed to…what? Who knows. Does Six move out now, so Ellen can move back in? Do they all live together in his cozy little XO quarters, or does Tigh move in with Adama and the Prez? Tricia Helfer certainly knocked those miscarriage scenes out of the park, as did Michael Hogan and the partially-evil-again Kate Vernon, and they’ll probably pick this up again next week and make it brilliant, but I was curiously unmoved by the whole thing.
Plus, I hate to say it, but do you remember how on “Remington Steele” nobody would ever actually call Pierce Brosnan “Remington,” because it was such a stupid fucking name? That’s sort of the way I feel about “Caprica.” I mean, I get that it’s an awesome otherworldly name for a planet and a brand new SciFi series and all, but as a given name for a person whom we’re not actually supposed to laugh at, it’s a little preposterous, and especially when Mary McDonnell tries to say it with a straight face. Although I love that “Caprica” of all people—one of the primary annihilators of the human race—is the one who has to remind Laura Roslin how to be human, re: babies and maternal love. But then Laura’s never been all that up with people anyway, or even the tiniest bit maternal, even before she was injected with all that hybrid blood and kidnapped that hybrid baby.
Anyway, damn, I love Laura Roslin, and especially that pissed off look she shot at Adama when he pulled the flask from his pocket and handed it to Ellen. But how did she have nothing to say when Baltar came looking for guns? I’m curious to know exactly how much was left on the cutting room floor here, because it sure seems like some pretty big moments got clipped in favor of a lot of repetition and strange character backtracking—what with Ellen morphing back so completely into Season 1 Ellen, and Baltar taking up his goofy, hormonally inspired preaching mantle again, and Tyrol suddenly pretending the last couple of weeks didn’t happen. We’ve seen that his last connections to humanity have been stripped away, but then why set him up as Galactica’s big savior over the last three episodes? Why bring him back into the fleet’s fold? Why bother making him Chief again? Because I don’t think I dreamed that shit up, and now it makes no sense at all.
But hey! I like the circular logic of Tyrol heading straight back to Boomer, when it was his own human wife who killed her before he learned he was a Cylon, too. Although it seems weird that we’re going to focus so much on Boomer now, after we’ve practically forgotten her over the past two years. And I do love how the Cylons are turning out to be just as emotionally stupid, if not more so, than the humans. But I suppose it’s their manufactured humanness that made them so stupid in the first place.
Speaking of which, did Adama really just arm Gaius Baltar and his band of religious sex hippies? With little discussion and zero argument? And again, I understand that he’s now drunk from whatever the space version is of “sunup to sundown,” but how many times do we need to be reminded of it? And how many times in three minutes can the guy refill his own glass? We get it: the old man is LOSING HIS MARBLES. And overlooking the fact that his own girlfriend was once made part Cylon in order to save her life. And that nobody was raising much of a stink back then, when the President of All Mankind was “blended.” Right? That’s what we’re all freaking out about now? We get that, too, so let’s please move on.
Oops, last question: where do the Cylons get all those clothes?
Tags: battlestar galactica, bsg, scifi channel
posted by Kari Geltemeyer in → Reviews
February 21st, 2009 at 9:03 pm
This was a very sloppily written (and directed) episode. Which is odd since episode writer Jane Espenson has penned much better material, not only on BSG, but on Buffy and other shows. It's as if, possibly, there were too people involved in piecing this episode together rather than one single, clear narrative voice telling the story. Too bad.
February 21st, 2009 at 9:20 pm
PS – My Time Warner Cable show guide lists this as the plot description of last night’s episode:
“NEW. Deadlock: The survivors of the massive attack by the Cylons desperately search for the fabled 13th…”
The TWC show guide tends to cut off the last word or two in the description box so I’m not sure what “13th” meant. Tribe? Colony? Planet? No idea.
Regardless, the story in this episode came nowhere close to this description.
February 21st, 2009 at 9:27 pm
I noticed that last night, too; it sounded like a generic plug for the series, not this specific episode, and for a minute I was afraid we'd be seeing the miniseries or something. Nice job, TWC.
February 21st, 2009 at 10:40 pm
So glad that your blog echoed my sentiments exactly. Both my wife and I were 30 minutes into the show, looked at each other and she said, "I'm kind of bored" and I agreed.
Awful episode, the flow was horrible and the writing was cheesy as all hell. The Ellen-Saul-Caprica crap about love and all that was just ridiculous.
First we find out Callie's baby isn't a Cylon conveniently, and now this baby dies for no reason. I remember some writer (Moore, Jane, who knows) saying this baby would be addressed in future episodes…so that was it?
The whole Baltar storyline was completely out of place. It felt like they realized Baltar hadn't done much lately, so let's give him something to do. And out of nowhere his Six starts talking to him again after weeks and weeks of nothing.
I'm so disappointed in this episode, because with so few left, you really want them all to be so very worth it.
February 21st, 2009 at 10:50 pm
Exactly — wasting sixty precious minutes when there's so little time left. It makes me sad. And I'm getting tired of all the little "whoops, just kidding!" endings that are wrapping up some of these story points. Are we going to find out next week that Laura's cancer is just a nasty case of bird flu?
February 21st, 2009 at 10:23 pm
That was exactly my thought, Doug. And once in a while the tone lurches so much from week to week, in terms of story and character motivation, that it feels like the writers of one episode have no idea what's happened in the hour immediately preceding it. I remember thinking the same thing from "The Hub" going into "Revelations" and from "Resurrection Ship Part II" into "Epiphanies." I assume it's an unavoidable byproduct of the amount of work required to achieve what they do from week to week, and especially now as they wrap it all up. Sometimes makes for bumpy viewing, though.
And there were times last night when I actually thought we'd transitioned into another scene, and then realized it was just the camera switching to a different angle — odd, too, since I believe Robert Young directed "Unfinished Business," which was one of my favorites. Or maybe it was how they edited it together. But there just wasn't much that worked for me last night.
February 23rd, 2009 at 7:50 pm
I'm adapting what I posted somewhere else earlier – I don't have time at the moment (at work) to find new ways of saying the same thing, and I really wanted to talk about this episode here:
This certainly wasn't my favorite episode ever, but at this point in the series I'm along for the ride, wherever that goes. i can definitely see where some of the criticisms are coming from, so I'm writing with maximum respect to others who had a different take, but I thought that there were a lot of subtle, important things in this episode, and that most of it worked pretty well from where I was sitting.
First off, I was 100% wrong about Ellen last week, when I predicted that she would be all cool Zen mother lady about the Saul-Caprica6 baby. Couldn't have been more wrong about how that would go.
I really liked watching Gaius having to adapt to the changes in his harem while he was away, and liked him trying to figure out what his own motivations were when he returned (merely regaining control or actually having a message worth speaking?). His actions made sense in light of his recent epiphany about what a little worm he usually is, as well as, um, the reality of what a little worm he usually is! Everything about that rang true – his self-delusions, his manipulative tendencies, as well as his generally vague altruistic ambitions. But I have been finding Prophet Baltar interesting as the season has progressed (which lots of folks obviously haven't), so this just adds to that. I like that Baltar is better than most other characters at adapting to the changing world, and here we see him again adapting – this time to the semi-empowerment of the women of his harem. As far out there as Baltar is, he understands a basic truth that many others have yet to comprehend – that to survive, you must adapt, you must change your approach when things around you change. And he's nothing if not a survivor.
I felt terrible for Caprica 6 basically the whole time – its interesting how C6 has come sort of full circle, from orchestrating the genocide against humanity, to coming to terms with her own mortality, to creating new life that nobody thought possible, and having that life ripped away. What a tragic journey her character has gone through.
.
I also liked the quiet scenes of Adama personally overseeing the "upgrades" to Galactica. They didn't seem overdone to me, I got a whole "butterfly and cocoon" vibe – that all these literal and figurative changes are quietly fermenting within the fleet, and that there is a transformation slowly taking place, and that something new is going to emerge. Watching Ellen and Tigh falling back into old patterns of dysfunction (which lead to disaster) was like a metaphor for how the old patterns and habits and animosities have gotten everyone into trouble over and over again. Same for the desire of the cylons to get the heck out of dodge – falling back into old patterns. I thought it worked, for the most part – I think that is is important to examine the old patterns that haven't worked before embarking on something new, and that's what I felt this episode was all about – a final revisiting of all the past dysfunction that led them to that point, and them all having to learn a lesson about the damage that it causes – it gave a lot of folks a chance to learn that lesson on a very personal level. I still have hope for some ray of light, although its getting less and less likely.
Plus, there was humor! And little throwaways like Kara saying "its like watching my parents make out" – which might or might not have any deeper meaning. All in all, I didn't have a problem with this episode, it just made me really curious about what's coming next.
February 23rd, 2009 at 8:52 pm
Shara, thanks for your thoughtful notes. I can’t dispute any of it – and again, you’ve illuminated some points that I overlooked in my own snarky reactions – but I remain unconvinced by this one. I didn’t object to the stories being told, per se, only in how they unfolded, with too much repetition and too much hitting hard on the nose, especially for a show that I generally trust to be more artful in its revelations (“Crossroads” notwithstanding).
And I’m still hung up on what I feel are some blatant reversals of what’s been developed over the past couple of weeks. The Tyrol stuff was particularly bothersome, and neither Jane Espenson’s comments nor Aaron Douglas’s have changed my mind about that. I get what they’re saying re: the motivation of the character, but I don’t think the episode itself effectively communicated those intentions, or explained the break between Tyrol’s actions here and in “No Exit.” And maybe it’s a simple consequence of something crucial hitting the editing room floor—ditto Adama giving Baltar the guns—but ultimately it’s still a failure of the story as presented in these 43 (or whatever) minutes. And I’m in complete agreement about needing to see and experience the pain of what Adama’s having to adjust his mind to, but revealing it in the same way over and over just felt lazy to me, because we weren’t learning anything new, and it wasn’t moving anything forward. It just turned his whole arc here into one long holding pattern. (Why we wouldn’t see him discussing this with Laura, of all people, is beyond me. I know that we're supposed to assume that a lot of stuff is happening that we just don't see, but sometimes I feel like they leave some really critical pieces on the sidelines.)
And I do love that Ellen and Saul still have that same old dysfunctional human baggage to deal with, but to have her behave so completely like old, human Ellen – discounting everything she recalled last week about empathy and forgiveness and love – to have her blame Saul and Six for believing she was dead when they had no other reason to think otherwise? For falling in love when they had no way of knowing how they were connected? That made no sense to me – and again, it’s mostly because of the disconnect between this and “No Exit.”
I’ll also plead guilty to hating the whole Baltar prophet storyline, so I’m of no use there at all. Likewise, the character of Six has gotten so fragmented for me over the past couple of seasons that I forget who we’re watching when, and I just never bought into this pregnancy. If that makes me a lazy or apathetic viewer on some of these storylines, I’ll accept it. I can’t feel this show any stronger than I already do, or I would probably explode. ☺
So yes, I see this one as mostly a lost opportunity, but I’ll take what we learned from it and move on. And looking at the whole ep. as a way of drawing some sort of line between the past and the future – having them all hit their heads against their own useless prejudices before they can move on – at least gives me a little more hope about where they’re going this Friday.
February 23rd, 2009 at 9:06 pm
I definitely get what you're saying – some clear insight into what folks are going through would have been illuminating, and the character reverts were a bit frustrating considering that – without that proper illumination – they can easily be viewed as plot-centric positioning than authentic character-centric moves – and in an episode that was supposed to be all about character-centric stuff. I'll also say straight up that I was disappointed with how easily Ellen fell back into her old role, particularly after that actress smashed her role out of the park last week. I'll definitely allow that a lot of my defenses of the episode only really work if future episodes provide the appropriate follow-through – I'm an optimist, and assume that it will, but I've certainly been disappointed by X-Files-itis in the past, where a show couldn't properly wrap up an ongoing story/mythology into a cohesive unit.
February 23rd, 2009 at 9:38 pm
Ditto — I have enough confidence in RDM and his team to believe it'll be the ending we've been waiting for. He seems to have a pretty good sense of how to keep the fans happy, while staying true to the story he wants to tell. There are always misses somewhere in the season, and thinking back, this is usually the point where it comes.
February 24th, 2009 at 1:33 am
Stumbling towards the finish line. Hopefully this sleepy episode was a setup for something better.
So cylons can't breed. Follows my thoughts on an evolutionary/karmic adaptation/middle ground. They need the humans to survive. Maybe the cylons jump off to find Ellen's secret lab only to find it destroyed. Meanwhile, more ships are falling apart and need the magic cylon goop. The last scene in the series shows us the base ship jumping back to the fleet, hat in hand. Poetic.
I like the Baltar storyline. This is what scifi does. It borrows liberally from other genres and often lets the viewer insert their own perspective. I see Baltar as a new Pope and enforcer for Galactica. As the Romans adopted Christianity out of necessity so does the ruling class(Adamas and Roslin) of Galactica.
February 24th, 2009 at 3:27 pm
I'm confident that it will be a satisfying ending for the viewers, but I still don't think many of these characters will get a happy ending. I just don't see a lot of peace coming out of this for anybody.
February 24th, 2009 at 5:30 pm
Honestly I'd be glad with just getting a solid answer about Starbuck, and who/what she really is. That's all I'm asking for at this point. . . She's always been my favorite, she's the character that I'm most invested in, she's the one whose journey seems the most incomplete.
February 25th, 2009 at 3:34 pm
I was disappointed that Terrol now cheif and maybe finding himself again and having a purpose to what he wanted to serve, maybe the blend of humans and cylons aboard the galactica or whatever it is, quickly voted , Hell yeah lets blow this joint and abandon the fleet… thought he might not vote so quickly for that, or at least have it explained a bit…. this episode was uncessary and with only 4 frakkin to go, the Pegasus or a space unicorn on Zanex better reappear or something better happen after that tragedy of an episode
February 25th, 2009 at 5:42 pm
I just rewatched those Pegasus eps this week — now that was some awesome TV. Season 3 was definitely my favorite.