Battlestar Galactica: Tigh Me Up, Tigh Me Down

[thepouncer.livejournal.com]

I haven’t commented much on the past two episodes; I enjoyed each one thoroughly, but didn’t find much there for me to dissect. Baltar accused of being a traitor, Starbuck interrogating a Cylon – they raised issues that I don’t feel can be fruitfully discussed at this point in the series. The Cylon religion, how it relates to their crusade to destroy humanity, and the role individual humans play in their theology are all so nebulous that I reserve judgment. We don’t know the truth about any of it, although I will venture to guess that Leoben Conoy told President Roslin that Adama was a Cylon to sow dissent.

The decision to use torture on Leoben is one that I understand and fully support. He said he’d planted a nuclear bomb aboard the fleet with a timer counting down. They didn’t have the luxury of niceties if they wanted all of their people to survive. And given how much the Colonials have lost, they were willing to do whatever it took to get the location of the bomb from him. The effectiveness of the torture is very questionable, though, as is both Starbuck and the President’s reactions to their time with Leoben.

Tigh Me Up, Tigh Me Down got back to areas where I feel able to comment, and it also proved that the show can be laugh-out loud funny while still advancing the story. The delicate balance of power between military and civilian leadership was once again illustrated, but more important in this episode were the consequences of intermingling personal relationships and obligations with professional duty. Suspicions and secrets are unveiled in the end, but not before people have used personal connections for work-related purposes, straining trust and feelings. And not before a hell of a dinner party.

The Cylon Paranoia

Events over the past several weeks have done a marvelous job of establishing the mood of suspicion and distrust in our ragtag fugitive fleet. Anyone might be a Cylon, sent to destroy humanity’s remnants. In this atmosphere, Roslin’s suspicions about Adama are immediately understood. His position as ranking military officer demands that she confirm his humanity, that she have proof that the Commander hasn’t been replaced by a Cylon. The damage he could inflict if he were a Cylon would be disastrous.

And here a slight digression, because from my perspective as viewer, holding information Roslin cannot know, I don’t think that Cylons can clone humans. This is opinion, obviously, but arguments (in the logic sense) about Six’s seduction of Baltar to access the defense mainframe being completely unnecessary if the Cylons could have just replaced a trusted employee with a machine clone make a lot of sense to me. Boomer’s supposed family records were destroyed, we learned last week, making it easy to insert a teenager into the military to move up the ranks as a sleeper agent. Adama, on the other hand, has been prominent for decades, well before the Cylons evolved into their human models. Backgrounds can be faked, yes, for people such as Aaron Doral, journalist at large, or Leoben Conoy, arms dealer, but to insert a high-ranking officer with a family into the Fleet? The logistics necessary for such a switch boggle me.

Not knowing any of this, knowing only that Cylons can appear human and the dying words of a tortured man, Roslin must take action to prove or disprove the allegation. First, her aide Billy asks a few innocuous questions of his lady-love Dualla while they canoodle in the observation lounge. The moments establishing the locale were so cute that I wanted to giggle and squish them together. People necking in the background, Vipers on fly-by, the later reveal of the door queue – the whole thing was perfect, especially since I believe in Billy and Dualla’s romance and want these crazy kids to have a future together. The questions Billy asked of Dee might set their relationship back (and it was only their first date!), but I also expect Dee wasn’t thinking about the lines between professional confidence and personal gossip. Once she realized Billy was pumping her for a reason, she let him know it wouldn’t happen again. Good for her.

Billy reports back to the President that Adama has been acting erratically, making odd wireless calls and keeping them off the log. This fuels Roslin’s resolve, and now that Baltar’s Cylon detector is complete, she goes off to try to find a definitive answer. Their conversation in the CIC leads her to believe that the Commander is distracted and unfocused, unlike the man she’s known thus far. She maneuvers him into being the first person tested by the new Cylon detector and the rest of the episode evolves into a French farce as competing agendas come into play.

Codependent Relationships

My father was an alcoholic. I mention this here so that you might understand that I have both intimate familiarity with the personal dynamics surrounding the drinker, and also little ability to be objective when analyzing those types of situations. My own experience informs my thoughts on the Colonel Saul Tigh’s interactions with his wife, and I can’t divorce the two.

Tigh’s rationed bottle of whisky was finally down to the dregs. Instead of drinking it, he poured out the last drops, finally making good his pledge to quit. He even takes decisive action when a Cylon Raider shows up during Adama’s absence. And then, who should appear (thanks to the investigative skills of Adama) but Tigh’s estranged wife Ellen, who magically escaped the Cylon holocaust. Ellen’s ignorance of Zak Adama’s death means that she and Saul have been distant for at least two years; they may even not have spoken in that interval. Tigh is delighted to see her, the woman he loves, returned to his arms, and they have a happy reunion where they agree to start over.

Right away, though, old patterns of behavior come into play, the kind of weaknesses that set Tigh down the path to the slurring drunkard we first saw. Ellen tries to keep Tigh with her when he’s called away to duty, using seduction as her tool. When that doesn’t work, she ups the stakes at their next moment alone, bringing out a bottle of ambrosia to toast their reunion. And Tigh gives in to his addiction, after tasting the anointed lips of his wife.

Ellen strikes me as a party girl, the type who wants to have a good time all the time and position herself with the man who can best promote her interests. Her story of last-minute rescue and lost memories is totally improbable, but as I noted above, I don’t think she’s a Cylon clone either. My personal theory is that she was indulging in an affair with a rich man, and managed to survive the attack (maybe they were in transit from some luxury vacation spot). She clutches on to her new man, thinking him superior to her old stick in the mud husband, who by some miracle managed to survive. She doesn’t need him any longer, she tells herself, anger and grief and rage and self-entitlement swirling together. Then her sugar daddy has enough of her – the world has ended and she wants to party all the time? They quarrel and he kicks her out and she becomes just another refugee drudge. Until she can get to her husband, who now starts to look pretty damn good if she can come up with a story for why she didn’t contact him immediately.

Adama explicitly states that Ellen brought out Tigh’s worst self-destructive impulses. She was promiscuous and unmannered and indiscrete, all liabilities for a man of Tigh’s responsibilities. And yet he loved her so fiercely that he couldn’t let her go, couldn’t even discard a defaced picture because it was all he had left. His hunger for her is so great that he follows her lures away from the rectitude that improved his conduct and stature as executive officer aboard the only remaining Battlestar.

Adama knows that this will happen, but he can’t bar a married couple from seeing one another. And he suspects that she is a Cylon, contributing to the farce of the blood tests. Further comedy was mined during a dinner party of doom where the participants were witness to and victim of Ellen’s many social shortcomings. She feels up Lee Adama while they eat, proving that at least she’s not blind (and the way she felt up his ass! How mortifying yet hilarious). She insults the President, whose smile gets ever more fixed as the wildness grows, and who taunts Ellen with ice-edged words. Mrs. Tigh also asks probing questions about classified topics, and makes a joke out of the Cylon paranoia.

I loved and adored the way Adama shut her down. “Well, such a nice evening and too bad you have to get going,” and the wayward couple are staggering toward Tigh’s quarters. The discussion afterward between Adama and the President and Lee was priceless, as was the way Roslin held out the remnant bottle of ambrosia before Ellen remembered its existence. They all know that this woman is a problem, not only for Tigh but for anyone who has to deal with her.

More of Ellen’s tricks are unveiled during the walk back to Tigh’s quarters. First, she tries to indulge in public necking, then once Baltar has displayed that he’s an equal opportunity lech, she attempts to separate Tigh from Adama by making accusations that Adama came onto her. She attacks to hide her own potential for infidelity, and to create more drama and ill will. She may even believe her words about Adama’s past actions are true, having extrapolated raging lust from common courtesy.

Ellen strikes me as a kind of down-market version of Six, the ne plus ultra of seductresses. Perhaps she’s there to demonstrate that one need not be a Cylon agent to cause trouble and disrupt lives?

In the end, nothing about the situation is really resolved. Baltar affirms Ellen as human, and she and Tigh go off to descend into further drinking and futility.

Baltar: What Drives the Man?

Baltar faces despair, responsible for testing the entire fleet to confirm their humanity, and takes refuge in escapism. As his words at the end of the episode prove, he’s decided that everyone passes, apparently too cowed by potential consequences of revealing Boomer as a Cylon, although I admit I cannot imagine what they might be.

Baltar retained his mind even during coitus interruptus, when Starbuck walked into his lab in the midst of sex with Six. That was yet another hilarious moment as he attempts to cover for his bizarre actions. I have to wonder if this is the end of their flirtation, or maybe that already happened when he beat her at cards. Six finds Starbuck very intriguing.

I’ve been thinking about Baltar’s motivations. Obviously, he’s out for himself, but in the past he was able to use his intellect to win renown. And with that came a host of benefits: a gorgeous house, fine clothes, and gorgeous women to sate his sexual appetites. In this new post-attack world, Baltar’s genius brings only responsibilities and a crushing work load. Mix those with his repressed guilt at being manipulated to allow the Cylon attack, and Six’s voice whispering God and redemption in his ears, and the man is lost in a maze of deceptions and lies.

He still retains enough presence of mind to attempt to play mediator when the French farce of Roslin/Adama/Ellen suspicion is revealed, though, in an immensely funny scene that drew in each character in the drama in an outward spiral of indignation until broken by the wounded Cylon Raider.

Caprica and Love

Helo and Sharon spend this episode running through a long, dark sewer tunnel, attempting to evade Cylon Centurions on the surface. Tunnels have long been metaphorically associated with spiritual rebirth, and Sharon’s decision to go rogue in the last episode is driving her towards a type of independence that I’m not sure aware Cylons have ever had before. Did she disobey because of her emotions for Helo? Or was it his depth of feeling for her, too affecting and intoxicating for her to relinquish his adoration? Sharon’s decision juxtaposes nicely with Tigh’s reunion with his troubled wife. Both decisions will cause problems, but for opposite sides.

Six-on-Caprica’s reaction to Sharon’s flight was very interesting – anger mixed with despair that she doesn’t know love. The Cylons have a fascination with love and emotion and degrees of intensity; they seem to equate it with being alive. And we all know how much they want to know what that’s like.