Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight and was full of violence.

God saw how corrupt the earth had become, for all the people on earth had corrupted their ways.

So God said to Noah, “I am going to put an end to all people, for the earth is filled with violence because of them. I am surely going to destroy both them and the earth.”
Genesis 6:11-13

Frak. Frak, frak, frak!

Now, that was something.

But before we get into the discussion, let’s get this out of the way first: I’m not surprised by the polarizing nature of this finale, but I am a bit shocked by the number of people with tin ears and tunnel vision who object to the presence of God and angels. I’m not sure what show those people have been watching for four seasons, but it wasn’t Battlestar Galactica.

Let me clarify that:

Nerds? Shut the fuck up.

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I’d like to tell you I’ve come up with some smart thoughts on this one, but I won’t have time to process it fully for a couple of days at least — so instead, I’ve decided to wrap up all of “Daybreak” in one post next weekend. All I can say now is: I can’t think of anything I’d like more than to spend the next year learning more about who these people were “before the fall.” Because I still can’t bear the thought of letting them go after only two more hours.

Of course, feel free to leave a comment if there’s something you’d like to discuss now. I’m always up for talking.

“Sometimes I wonder what home is. Is it an actual place? Or is it some kind of longing for something, some kind of connection?”
—Laura Roslin

“One of us here is living proof that there is life after death.”
—Gaius Baltar

“This ship has never let us down. So we’re gonna send her off in style.”
—Bill Adama

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Adama: “Did you love her, Chief?”
Tyrol: “I thought I did.”
Adama: “Well, when you think you love somebody, you love them. That’s what love is. Thoughts…”
—from “The Farm”

“Sometimes lost is where you need to be. Just because you don’t know your direction doesn’t mean you don’t have one.”
—Slick

So! We’re back on solid ground this week, and I’m feeling both relieved and guilty for having doubted in the first place. What’s so easy to forget—with the impatience and anticipation of watching it all spool out in such fits and starts over so many years—is how well the makers of this thing are able to raise a storm right up out of the quiet every damn time. And in doing so make you doubt your own doubts, or at least question what you would have sworn five minutes ago was true. And then remember that you should never, ever trust the quiet. And to be very careful what you wish for.

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“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.
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“I think we have to accept who we are.”
—Admiral William Adama

“You are not a mistake. If you could just accept yourself as what you are.”
—Ellen Tigh

“I need to be something.”
—Kara Thrace

“Saul, stay with the fleet. It’s all starting to happen, it’s the miracle, right here, it’s a gift from the angels. Stay with the fleet!”
—Samuel T. Anders

I’ve watched this episode three times now: once as it aired, while I practically fermented in a stew of hatred; once with Ronald D. Moore as my personal guide, where for the first time I hated him, too; and once at a rate of approximately one scene per hour, during which I typed out nearly every line of dialogue spoken by Anders, Cavil, and Ellen, and it was that third time that I actually fell in love. And in addition to finding that I no longer absorb information as quickly as I once did, here’s what I think I learned. Forgive the mess of my own brain dump, and feel free to correct any of it in the comments. And may the force be with you all.
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“The truth is told by whoever’s left standing.”
—Tom Zarek

“I know who you are, Felix. I know who you are.”
—Gaius Baltar

At last a day of reckoning has come, and tyranny brings even more blood than we might have imagined, and not in the ways we might have guessed: the Quorum executed at Zarek’s command, that noble lunkhead Anders shot and possibly dying, renegade lawyer Romo Lampkin taking revenge with his omnipresent pen, and rather nastily at that. (Am I wrong or did he actually gut that marine wide open? I hate to go back and watch it again.) In the end all is resolved and yet nothing is at peace, as we see the cracks have taken hold, that the ship itself is beginning to split apart even as its people are coming back together, however tentatively. Every second of this show carries a weight these days, every lurch forward leading us toward something inevitable, and inevitably more tragic.
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“I could do this all day. Who’s next?”
—Kara “Starbuck” Thrace

“Felix Gaeta. Who would’ve thought?”
—President Laura Roslin

“When this is over, there’s gonna be a reckoning. And live or die, it’s how you act today that’s gonna matter.”
—Admiral William Adama

Semper frakkin’ fi, indeed. What an amazing hour of television. So many chickens come home to roost in the form of a good old-fashioned hell raising, packed from fore to aft with petty comeuppances and epic betrayals, as well as a couple of gloriously dirty gunfights. “The Oath” was also a welcome reminder that nothing that’s happened so far—no decision too great and no grievance too small—has occurred in a vacuum. Everybody’s fair game for a smackdown, and into the breach we go.
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When the soul has suffered all it can.
—“There is a Languor of the Life,” Emily Dickinson

Holy tylium ship, Batman! The wheels on the bus keep popping off one by one, don’t they? And where last week’s episode was filled with ever more painful revelations and monumental open-ended questions, this week we pause for a breath, zooming in on the personal fallout and pressing at the wounds in search of a little relief. And still the hits keep coming, like the surprises, and the pain is no less great.

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So. What were you expecting? Some peace? Sunshine and lollipops? Rainbows? Of course not. What we got is what we go for in the first place: to have Ronald D. Moore and his small, brilliant band of fiends pluck out our collective eyeballs and hand them to us like so many hard-boiled eggs (oops! Season 3 spoiler alert!). And then to snatch back those eggs and dice them up into little tiny pieces right before our one remaining eye(s). (I apologize; that analogy didn’t work at all.)

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