The Triangle
Mar. 28th, 2005 09:29 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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13thcolonyAnother first-time poster here (though I have posted comments).
This triangle (quadrangle, if you include Six) is utterly fascinating. I thought I'd figured out where it would be going after "Colonial Day" -- we have Kara off dancing with Baltar right after Lee gets that "Hey, you're a girl, and a pretty one, too!" look in his eyes, so of course that's when Kara and Baltar get into a relationship, leaving Lee to seethe and be jealous.
But then they went in a totally different direction, and what I love about it is that every scene takes on an entirely different meaning depending on each character's knowledge and point of view. So, here's my attempt to break it all down and analyze it.
I'm including the deleted scenes in the analysis because I think they give everything more context and layers.
Kara -- Poor Kara starts the episode with one of the most embarrassing things that can happen. We don't know why she went off with Baltar. It's possible that she doesn't really know and that we'll never know. It could be simply that (as she told Baltar later) she was drunk and horny, and he seemed like a good candidate for scratching her itches without any risk of emotional involvement. After all, she knows enough about him by now that she wouldn't feel herself in any danger of falling in love with him, and he's not exactly Mr. Commitment. In fact, sleeping with him would be one good way to get him out of her hair permanently. He's all about the conquest, and once he'd had her, he probably wouldn't be interested anymore. Throw in one "honey, what are we doing this weekend?" later on for good measure, and she'd never have to deal with him ever again.
It's also probable that it was an act of self-sabotage, further proof to herself that she's a screw-up. She doesn't seem to have much respect for Baltar, so by sleeping with him she's proving to herself that she's not worthy of respect. I don't think it's much of a stretch to imagine that it also had something to do with Lee, considering where her thoughts were. It could be as simple as the feeling of being in his arms while dancing was what made her horny enough to go off with Baltar. It could be that she was consciously or subconsciously sabotaging her relationship with Lee. Seeing Lee look at her as a woman could have triggered some fear in her, and the surest way to drive Lee away would be to prove to him and herself that she's a screw-up.
At any rate, she does sleep with Baltar, with disastrous results. You have to wonder if Lee is a staple of her personal fantasies or if this was the first time she's been conscious of thinking about him in that light. I don't know if we can consider this proof that she's in love with Lee, just that on some levels, she doesn't just see him as a friend/former future brother-in-law/colleague. She probably doesn't even know how she feels about him, and she's going to need time to process her feelings and figure out not only what she feels but what to do about it. But she's not going to get that time because what does she face the first thing the next morning? A cheerfully oblivious Lee, at his most Lee-like. He's in full-on bratty brother mode, very much like he was when he was cajoling her into getting on her feet again after her injury, teasing her into doing something that's good for her, even if it might be unpleasant. I don't know if it would be safe to say that he was being the essence of the man she fell in love with, but he was definitely being the familiar friend she's having to look at in a new light. She can barely bring herself to look at him, and touching him is totally out of the question. To make matters worse, he proves how well he knows her when he jumps right to the very accurate conclusion of what she was doing the night before. I can imagine how uncomfortable that might make her if she fears that he can really read her well enough to figure out even more about what happened.
Even though she flees from him, she can't avoid him entirely, because when she goes to the rec room, she finds what has to be her worst nightmare: Lee and Baltar in the same room, with Baltar drunkenly dropping so many hints that Lee's bound to figure out what happened. She flees again, but she can't escape Lee entirely, because he finally confronts her. There, her words are those of a spouse or lover caught cheating -- "It didn't mean anything" "It was just that once" -- but she doesn't sound too convincing even if she really means it. It was just once, it is over, it meant nothing. The unspoken part is the reason why it meant nothing, and she certainly wouldn't want to go there. She doesn't look him in the eye, and she keeps turning her back to him. It may be that the punch was her way of trying to drive him away.
While it's clear that the primary and immediate motivation of her jump to Caprica was what she saw as Commander Adama's betrayal, she was already planning a semi-suicidal mission behind Lee's back, so it's a good bet that part of her motivation in either crazy mission was to run away from Lee. She probably wasn't trying to outright get herself killed, but perhaps was trying to distract herself and give herself time to figure things out in a place that he isn't and where he can't pop in on her again. Going forward, I can't see how this wouldn't permanently alter the tone of their friendship. There's going to be an awareness of him on her part that will shade things.
Lee -- It would appear that this episode comes immediately after "Colonial Day," given that Kara wraps her evening gown around herself when she runs away from Baltar, so you have to wonder where Lee's thoughts are, given his utterly gobsmacked reaction to seeing Kara in a dress the night before. I guess both he and his dad returned from the party with the urge to hit something, since it seems like they're spending the night sparring (it's hard to tell, given how limited his wardrobe is, but it looks like he's still wearing the same clothes he was boxing in the next morning, like he hasn't been to bed at all). I might hazard a guess that his overly cheerful perkiness the next morning is his attempt to move everything firmly back into the "normal" realm, as the crown prince of repression just doesn't want to deal with whatever feelings came up at the party.
Lee suffers the most from the jogging scene being cut from the broadcast episode, for the way it was aired, it seems like he's merely jealous because Kara slept with someone else. But in that scene, he doesn't seem bothered by the idea that she got laid. He acts like this is a scene they've been through before, repeatedly, and they're each supposed to say their usual lines. She starts to worry him when she doesn't follow the script and banter back. She's testy and trying to avoid him. She won't look him in the eye, she refuses to take his hand and she won't talk to him about what's going on. He seems far more upset by the fact that she seems to be shutting him out than he is by the thought that she slept with someone else. We see more of this in the card game. At first his reaction to Baltar's drunken mutterings is the "whatever" that everyone else seems to give Baltar's fits of crazy. Then Kara shows up and the tensions escalate to the point that it becomes obvious who she was with the night before. Though we know that she's rejecting Baltar when she declines the invitation to join the game, her refusal comes immediately after Lee invites her, and there's almost a tone of "we're okay, aren't we?" to his voice. You can see how he'd read her refusal as a rejection of him, as a way of telling him they're not okay. If he rewound and analyzed the whole scene later after he realized what was going on (and you know Lee the overthinker did), he could have interpreted everything that was said as aimed at him in a negative way. Baltar's grumbling about how he always wins and Lee can't compete against him could be read as gloating and possibly even proof that Kara had talked about Lee to Baltar (because otherwise, how would Baltar even know to think of Lee as a rival?). Baltar's invitation to Kara to sit next to Lee could be read not as an attempt to humiliate her (which it was) but rather as an attempt to humiliate Lee by giving her the opportunity to choose between them in public.
Since Kara won't talk to him as a friend, he reverts to commanding officer mode and tries to confront her that way to get answers. The fact that he's in full uniform when he confronts her might be a sign that some time has passed. He didn't just rush from the card table the moment he figured things out. He must have had time to think about it, probably stew a bit, then dream up a rationalization for confronting her in a more official capacity. Unfortunately, everything she says that could have been reassuring to him about how little her tryst with Baltar meant could also be interpreted as proof that she was being slutty, since Lee doesn't know the whole story. What's left unsaid was that it was a one-time thing because she really wanted to be with someone else. Everything she says just hurts him more, so he lashes out and hurts her back, which hurts her more than he intends because he doesn't know how she feels about him. Her body language continues to send the message that she doesn't want to be around him, with her back to him and her refusing to meet his eyes. While I think there is some element of sexual jealousy at work (possibly even subconsciously because he's not yet letting himself think of Kara in that way), I think his reaction is far more about fear of losing her as a friend. He feels her shutting him out, and he panics (of course, driving her farther away in the process).
I wonder if it also has something to do with Baltar himself -- perhaps a pilot unity thing because Helo was left behind for Baltar's sake. Not that Lee knew Helo enough to have such strong feelings about it, but he was very sympathetic to Sharon's reaction to trading Helo for Baltar, so it could be seen as a kind of betrayal for any pilot to get that close to Baltar and a possible cause of low morale or disunity among the pilots. Kara being with the vice president almost as soon as he became vice president could also have pushed Lee's Ellen Tigh buttons (or whatever pre-existing button he has that Ellen also pushes -- no, not that one. Get your mind out of the gutter.). He did emphasize the part about her sleeping with the vice president, and she did casually call Baltar by his first name, only to be corrected, in the rec room, so he may fear that she's gone in for Ellen-style social climbing and sleeping around. We saw how he feels about Ellen, and the last thing he'd want is his best friend to do the same thing. He might also see that as her being self-destructive, getting herself into a situation where she's bound to be hurt or get herself in trouble (possibly like the situation with that mysterious major he mentioned before she hit him), and he's trying to save her from herself, but going about it in entirely the wrong way.
Going forward, he's going to have a lot to deal with. He won't know what went on with Kara and the president or with Kara and his father, so his natural assumption is that she's running from him or worse, abandoning him -- and he'd be partially right. He's bound to be a little gun-shy because he went from things going pretty well between them in "Colonial Day" and maybe the first hints of something else starting between them to total meltdown. He strikes me as the kind of guy who'd move slowly in a courting situation -- as in, he'd actually bother with the courting part. He doesn't seem like a "you're hot, let's shag" kind of guy. He'd be more likely to gradually make the transition from friendship to romance, if he tried to make the transition at all, given that he is her commanding officer, which puts her off limits, and I think he also values their friendship enough to be terrified of losing it if something goes wrong, and he obviously knows enough about her relationship patterns to recognize "going wrong" as a likely outcome. When/if she returns, he's going to feel betrayed. Whatever feelings she has for him, they may have to start all over again as friends.
While I certainly believe that a conflict that could be solved by a conversation is contrived, it has to be a conversation the characters would have, and I think they're still not at a place where they can clear the air. If I were in Kara's shoes, I can't imagine telling him the truth about what happened. That's the kind of thing you take to your grave, unless you do end up together and someday get to the point where you can laugh about it. It's not the sort of thing you can bring yourself to say in order to resolve the situation, not when you don't know how he feels or how he'll take it.
Baltar -- I think Kara was irresistible to Baltar primarily because she seemed unattainable. Instead of throwing herself at him or fawning all over him, like we've seen from his other conquests, she made fun of him and blew smoke in his face. I do think he also likes her spirit and sense of humor. She's a fun girl. He might even think that she's a lot like him in that she's irreverent, works by her own code, is cocky to the point of arrogance and says what she thinks. I don't think that she is really all that much like him, but he is the ultimate narcissist, so he's bound to see himself reflected in her. But that aside, her primary alluring quality was the fact that she was a challenge (possibly with the addition of Six making it a challenge -- he had to prove to Six that he could get her). If it had been any other one-night stand, he might have then totally forgotten about her. He might even have been a little disappointed that she gave in so quickly. She wasn't nearly the challenge he seems to have anticipated, and he didn't have to work nearly hard enough to get her in bed.
But instead, she gives him the ultimate insult by calling out someone else's name when she's with him. I think the identity of the person she named may have made matters even worse. Some random pilot or crew member, no sweat, but Lee in his own way is nearly as high up as he is. He has the president's trust and her ear, but he also has a lot of military power. He's a bona fide hero, someone who stands in stark contrast to Baltar's own awareness of his cowardice. This is someone who could give Baltar a lot of real competition, which automatically makes Kara that much more alluring. Where we left off, he seemed to be more depressed than anything. He's still wallowing in the failure, but I could see him rallying to compete with Lee, which could be interesting because I don't think Lee sees himself as real competition. Lee acts like he's already lost, if he's even in the fight to begin with.
I doubt that Baltar truly loves Kara or has any real feelings for her other than wounded pride and a desire to make her scream his name someday if it's the last thing he does. But in order to psych himself up for the competition, he has to persuade himself that this is the love of his life, the one that got away. The more he dwells on the situation, the more he's going to convince himself that he won't be complete without her. Kara may soon have herself a real stalker, and Lee may be in some danger. I'm sure Lee could more than handle himself in any physical confrontation with Baltar, but Baltar's too much of a coward and a weasel to confront Lee directly or physically, unless he's very drunk (and unless Lee's even drunker, shortest fight ever). What Baltar does is backstab. He's going to try to diminish Lee in Kara's eyes. He can't compete on the hero pilot level, so he's going to try to cut Lee down in other ways, possibly trying to damage his relationship with the president, get him in trouble, ruin his reputation, maybe even frame him for a crime. Heck, that old Cylon detector may get "recalibrated," with some interesting results.
Where things get even more interesting is where Six stands on all this. If she's helping Baltar, then that could make Lee quite the target for the Cylons. If she sees Kara as a very real rival, then that puts her in danger.
This triangle (quadrangle, if you include Six) is utterly fascinating. I thought I'd figured out where it would be going after "Colonial Day" -- we have Kara off dancing with Baltar right after Lee gets that "Hey, you're a girl, and a pretty one, too!" look in his eyes, so of course that's when Kara and Baltar get into a relationship, leaving Lee to seethe and be jealous.
But then they went in a totally different direction, and what I love about it is that every scene takes on an entirely different meaning depending on each character's knowledge and point of view. So, here's my attempt to break it all down and analyze it.
I'm including the deleted scenes in the analysis because I think they give everything more context and layers.
Kara -- Poor Kara starts the episode with one of the most embarrassing things that can happen. We don't know why she went off with Baltar. It's possible that she doesn't really know and that we'll never know. It could be simply that (as she told Baltar later) she was drunk and horny, and he seemed like a good candidate for scratching her itches without any risk of emotional involvement. After all, she knows enough about him by now that she wouldn't feel herself in any danger of falling in love with him, and he's not exactly Mr. Commitment. In fact, sleeping with him would be one good way to get him out of her hair permanently. He's all about the conquest, and once he'd had her, he probably wouldn't be interested anymore. Throw in one "honey, what are we doing this weekend?" later on for good measure, and she'd never have to deal with him ever again.
It's also probable that it was an act of self-sabotage, further proof to herself that she's a screw-up. She doesn't seem to have much respect for Baltar, so by sleeping with him she's proving to herself that she's not worthy of respect. I don't think it's much of a stretch to imagine that it also had something to do with Lee, considering where her thoughts were. It could be as simple as the feeling of being in his arms while dancing was what made her horny enough to go off with Baltar. It could be that she was consciously or subconsciously sabotaging her relationship with Lee. Seeing Lee look at her as a woman could have triggered some fear in her, and the surest way to drive Lee away would be to prove to him and herself that she's a screw-up.
At any rate, she does sleep with Baltar, with disastrous results. You have to wonder if Lee is a staple of her personal fantasies or if this was the first time she's been conscious of thinking about him in that light. I don't know if we can consider this proof that she's in love with Lee, just that on some levels, she doesn't just see him as a friend/former future brother-in-law/colleague. She probably doesn't even know how she feels about him, and she's going to need time to process her feelings and figure out not only what she feels but what to do about it. But she's not going to get that time because what does she face the first thing the next morning? A cheerfully oblivious Lee, at his most Lee-like. He's in full-on bratty brother mode, very much like he was when he was cajoling her into getting on her feet again after her injury, teasing her into doing something that's good for her, even if it might be unpleasant. I don't know if it would be safe to say that he was being the essence of the man she fell in love with, but he was definitely being the familiar friend she's having to look at in a new light. She can barely bring herself to look at him, and touching him is totally out of the question. To make matters worse, he proves how well he knows her when he jumps right to the very accurate conclusion of what she was doing the night before. I can imagine how uncomfortable that might make her if she fears that he can really read her well enough to figure out even more about what happened.
Even though she flees from him, she can't avoid him entirely, because when she goes to the rec room, she finds what has to be her worst nightmare: Lee and Baltar in the same room, with Baltar drunkenly dropping so many hints that Lee's bound to figure out what happened. She flees again, but she can't escape Lee entirely, because he finally confronts her. There, her words are those of a spouse or lover caught cheating -- "It didn't mean anything" "It was just that once" -- but she doesn't sound too convincing even if she really means it. It was just once, it is over, it meant nothing. The unspoken part is the reason why it meant nothing, and she certainly wouldn't want to go there. She doesn't look him in the eye, and she keeps turning her back to him. It may be that the punch was her way of trying to drive him away.
While it's clear that the primary and immediate motivation of her jump to Caprica was what she saw as Commander Adama's betrayal, she was already planning a semi-suicidal mission behind Lee's back, so it's a good bet that part of her motivation in either crazy mission was to run away from Lee. She probably wasn't trying to outright get herself killed, but perhaps was trying to distract herself and give herself time to figure things out in a place that he isn't and where he can't pop in on her again. Going forward, I can't see how this wouldn't permanently alter the tone of their friendship. There's going to be an awareness of him on her part that will shade things.
Lee -- It would appear that this episode comes immediately after "Colonial Day," given that Kara wraps her evening gown around herself when she runs away from Baltar, so you have to wonder where Lee's thoughts are, given his utterly gobsmacked reaction to seeing Kara in a dress the night before. I guess both he and his dad returned from the party with the urge to hit something, since it seems like they're spending the night sparring (it's hard to tell, given how limited his wardrobe is, but it looks like he's still wearing the same clothes he was boxing in the next morning, like he hasn't been to bed at all). I might hazard a guess that his overly cheerful perkiness the next morning is his attempt to move everything firmly back into the "normal" realm, as the crown prince of repression just doesn't want to deal with whatever feelings came up at the party.
Lee suffers the most from the jogging scene being cut from the broadcast episode, for the way it was aired, it seems like he's merely jealous because Kara slept with someone else. But in that scene, he doesn't seem bothered by the idea that she got laid. He acts like this is a scene they've been through before, repeatedly, and they're each supposed to say their usual lines. She starts to worry him when she doesn't follow the script and banter back. She's testy and trying to avoid him. She won't look him in the eye, she refuses to take his hand and she won't talk to him about what's going on. He seems far more upset by the fact that she seems to be shutting him out than he is by the thought that she slept with someone else. We see more of this in the card game. At first his reaction to Baltar's drunken mutterings is the "whatever" that everyone else seems to give Baltar's fits of crazy. Then Kara shows up and the tensions escalate to the point that it becomes obvious who she was with the night before. Though we know that she's rejecting Baltar when she declines the invitation to join the game, her refusal comes immediately after Lee invites her, and there's almost a tone of "we're okay, aren't we?" to his voice. You can see how he'd read her refusal as a rejection of him, as a way of telling him they're not okay. If he rewound and analyzed the whole scene later after he realized what was going on (and you know Lee the overthinker did), he could have interpreted everything that was said as aimed at him in a negative way. Baltar's grumbling about how he always wins and Lee can't compete against him could be read as gloating and possibly even proof that Kara had talked about Lee to Baltar (because otherwise, how would Baltar even know to think of Lee as a rival?). Baltar's invitation to Kara to sit next to Lee could be read not as an attempt to humiliate her (which it was) but rather as an attempt to humiliate Lee by giving her the opportunity to choose between them in public.
Since Kara won't talk to him as a friend, he reverts to commanding officer mode and tries to confront her that way to get answers. The fact that he's in full uniform when he confronts her might be a sign that some time has passed. He didn't just rush from the card table the moment he figured things out. He must have had time to think about it, probably stew a bit, then dream up a rationalization for confronting her in a more official capacity. Unfortunately, everything she says that could have been reassuring to him about how little her tryst with Baltar meant could also be interpreted as proof that she was being slutty, since Lee doesn't know the whole story. What's left unsaid was that it was a one-time thing because she really wanted to be with someone else. Everything she says just hurts him more, so he lashes out and hurts her back, which hurts her more than he intends because he doesn't know how she feels about him. Her body language continues to send the message that she doesn't want to be around him, with her back to him and her refusing to meet his eyes. While I think there is some element of sexual jealousy at work (possibly even subconsciously because he's not yet letting himself think of Kara in that way), I think his reaction is far more about fear of losing her as a friend. He feels her shutting him out, and he panics (of course, driving her farther away in the process).
I wonder if it also has something to do with Baltar himself -- perhaps a pilot unity thing because Helo was left behind for Baltar's sake. Not that Lee knew Helo enough to have such strong feelings about it, but he was very sympathetic to Sharon's reaction to trading Helo for Baltar, so it could be seen as a kind of betrayal for any pilot to get that close to Baltar and a possible cause of low morale or disunity among the pilots. Kara being with the vice president almost as soon as he became vice president could also have pushed Lee's Ellen Tigh buttons (or whatever pre-existing button he has that Ellen also pushes -- no, not that one. Get your mind out of the gutter.). He did emphasize the part about her sleeping with the vice president, and she did casually call Baltar by his first name, only to be corrected, in the rec room, so he may fear that she's gone in for Ellen-style social climbing and sleeping around. We saw how he feels about Ellen, and the last thing he'd want is his best friend to do the same thing. He might also see that as her being self-destructive, getting herself into a situation where she's bound to be hurt or get herself in trouble (possibly like the situation with that mysterious major he mentioned before she hit him), and he's trying to save her from herself, but going about it in entirely the wrong way.
Going forward, he's going to have a lot to deal with. He won't know what went on with Kara and the president or with Kara and his father, so his natural assumption is that she's running from him or worse, abandoning him -- and he'd be partially right. He's bound to be a little gun-shy because he went from things going pretty well between them in "Colonial Day" and maybe the first hints of something else starting between them to total meltdown. He strikes me as the kind of guy who'd move slowly in a courting situation -- as in, he'd actually bother with the courting part. He doesn't seem like a "you're hot, let's shag" kind of guy. He'd be more likely to gradually make the transition from friendship to romance, if he tried to make the transition at all, given that he is her commanding officer, which puts her off limits, and I think he also values their friendship enough to be terrified of losing it if something goes wrong, and he obviously knows enough about her relationship patterns to recognize "going wrong" as a likely outcome. When/if she returns, he's going to feel betrayed. Whatever feelings she has for him, they may have to start all over again as friends.
While I certainly believe that a conflict that could be solved by a conversation is contrived, it has to be a conversation the characters would have, and I think they're still not at a place where they can clear the air. If I were in Kara's shoes, I can't imagine telling him the truth about what happened. That's the kind of thing you take to your grave, unless you do end up together and someday get to the point where you can laugh about it. It's not the sort of thing you can bring yourself to say in order to resolve the situation, not when you don't know how he feels or how he'll take it.
Baltar -- I think Kara was irresistible to Baltar primarily because she seemed unattainable. Instead of throwing herself at him or fawning all over him, like we've seen from his other conquests, she made fun of him and blew smoke in his face. I do think he also likes her spirit and sense of humor. She's a fun girl. He might even think that she's a lot like him in that she's irreverent, works by her own code, is cocky to the point of arrogance and says what she thinks. I don't think that she is really all that much like him, but he is the ultimate narcissist, so he's bound to see himself reflected in her. But that aside, her primary alluring quality was the fact that she was a challenge (possibly with the addition of Six making it a challenge -- he had to prove to Six that he could get her). If it had been any other one-night stand, he might have then totally forgotten about her. He might even have been a little disappointed that she gave in so quickly. She wasn't nearly the challenge he seems to have anticipated, and he didn't have to work nearly hard enough to get her in bed.
But instead, she gives him the ultimate insult by calling out someone else's name when she's with him. I think the identity of the person she named may have made matters even worse. Some random pilot or crew member, no sweat, but Lee in his own way is nearly as high up as he is. He has the president's trust and her ear, but he also has a lot of military power. He's a bona fide hero, someone who stands in stark contrast to Baltar's own awareness of his cowardice. This is someone who could give Baltar a lot of real competition, which automatically makes Kara that much more alluring. Where we left off, he seemed to be more depressed than anything. He's still wallowing in the failure, but I could see him rallying to compete with Lee, which could be interesting because I don't think Lee sees himself as real competition. Lee acts like he's already lost, if he's even in the fight to begin with.
I doubt that Baltar truly loves Kara or has any real feelings for her other than wounded pride and a desire to make her scream his name someday if it's the last thing he does. But in order to psych himself up for the competition, he has to persuade himself that this is the love of his life, the one that got away. The more he dwells on the situation, the more he's going to convince himself that he won't be complete without her. Kara may soon have herself a real stalker, and Lee may be in some danger. I'm sure Lee could more than handle himself in any physical confrontation with Baltar, but Baltar's too much of a coward and a weasel to confront Lee directly or physically, unless he's very drunk (and unless Lee's even drunker, shortest fight ever). What Baltar does is backstab. He's going to try to diminish Lee in Kara's eyes. He can't compete on the hero pilot level, so he's going to try to cut Lee down in other ways, possibly trying to damage his relationship with the president, get him in trouble, ruin his reputation, maybe even frame him for a crime. Heck, that old Cylon detector may get "recalibrated," with some interesting results.
Where things get even more interesting is where Six stands on all this. If she's helping Baltar, then that could make Lee quite the target for the Cylons. If she sees Kara as a very real rival, then that puts her in danger.
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no subject
Date: 2005-03-29 05:29 am (UTC)I never thought about that before. That would be interesting. I'm not sure that the writers would go that direction but I think it could be a possibility.
I also don't think Baltar loves Kara like Six seems to genuinely think. I think it really is about the conquest. However, I do think that Baltar could convince himself that he does love Kara because I think Baltar is very good at deluding himself.
And Kara certainly bruised his ego with her slip up. It is interesting though that they deleted the scene where Baltar essentially apologized because it actually makes you think that he has put it behind him but since they deleted it we can assume that he hasn't which opens up some interesting possibilities, you know if he ever gets off Kobol.
no subject
Date: 2005-03-29 05:41 pm (UTC)But through the rest of the episode, he clearly hasn't put it behind him. His situation on Kobol raises all kinds of possibilities. Either he'll feel driven to at least pretend to be heroic so he can one-up Lee, or his natural cowardice will show through in front of a bunch of witnesses so it will become well-known on Galactica what a jerk he is, giving Lee even more reason to be disgusted with Kara. I can hardly wait for the fun.
no subject
Date: 2005-03-29 05:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-03-29 02:48 pm (UTC)An interesting note on this is what the actors say. Katee Sackhoff is adamant that Starbuck is in love with Lee and has even stated that she'd like to see her do something about her love in season two, while Jamie Bamber has been more subdued and said that their relationship is complicated and that any physical attraction would be dominated by guilt about Zak. And that's what it seems like in the series, too; Starbuck is more enamored and vulnerable, while Lee doesn't seem to know exactly what the extent of his feelings are. And he'd be a lot more cautious about the relationship anyway.
I mean, would you sleep with your dead brother's fiance? As fo Baltar... well I never undertood him. Anyway, very insighful analysis!
no subject
Date: 2005-03-29 05:50 pm (UTC)If she ever does act on her feelings for Lee, it's possible that his first suspicion would be that she was using him as a Zak substitute, that she saw him as the next best thing to being with Zak. Though he seems fairly confident of himself and his own abilities, he seems to have very little faith in how others regard him. If he has trouble imagining that his own father would go to any effort to find him if he were lost, he's going to have trouble imagining that Kara, who chose Zak in the past, could possibly want him for himself.
It all certainly makes for a relationship that defies the usual television relationship patterns, regardless of whether or not they ever end up together. The journey itself should be quite entertaining (I'm too soft-hearted to watch real people suffer on reality TV, but I love watching fictional people suffer).
no subject
Date: 2005-03-29 02:48 pm (UTC)Kara may soon have herself a real stalker, and Lee may be in some danger.
I hadn't really thought that far ahead yet but that's just one more thing for them (and us!) to worry about.
no subject
Date: 2005-03-29 03:25 pm (UTC)~It's also probable that it was an act of self-sabotage, further proof to herself that she's a screw-up. She doesn't seem to have much respect for Baltar, so by sleeping with him she's proving to herself that she's not worthy of respect... It could be that she was consciously or subconsciously sabotaging her relationship with Lee. Seeing Lee look at her as a woman could have triggered some fear in her, and the surest way to drive Lee away would be to prove to him and herself that she's a screw-up.~
Completely! Sleeping with Baltar was run-and-hide reaction. She is distancing herself from Lee as much as possible because she doesn't believe that she is worthy of him as a person.
~Lee suffers the most from the jogging scene being cut from the broadcast episode, for the way it was aired, it seems like he's merely jealous because Kara slept with someone else. But in that scene, he doesn't seem bothered by the idea that she got laid. He acts like this is a scene they've been through before, repeatedly, and they're each supposed to say their usual lines. She starts to worry him when she doesn't follow the script and banter back. She's testy and trying to avoid him. She won't look him in the eye, she refuses to take his hand and she won't talk to him about what's going on. He seems far more upset by the fact that she seems to be shutting him out than he is by the thought that she slept with someone else.~
I couldn't agree more with this statement. It is a script that he's following. Its probably a routine they've gone through a million times before and Lee feels incapable of changing that script despite whateer burgeoning feelings he may have. If Kara had reacted in the norm and offered banter back he would've thought no more of it. As it is he looks genuinely upset by her brush off ( I swear I just want to eat him up for his 'not really' comment). Its a combination of Kara's behaviour (I think KS's acting in this scene is excellent. She does a great job in the corridor scene) and the subsequent stark realisation of what has actually happened between Kara and Baltar that provokes such his verbal attack on Kara. Its an emotional reaction pure and simple. On the whole Lee handles the situation badly, but the guy is human, he's flawed and, I think, emotionally vulnerable.
I look forward to seeing how this dynamic plays out next season.
Good post BTW, mind if I quote you on another list?
Laura :)
no subject
Date: 2005-03-29 05:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-03-29 05:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-03-29 07:03 pm (UTC)I'm not sure I see her attention turning. It's all still too new, and while she may distract herself, she needs to work through it before really moving on.
What could be interesting, as well, is how this affects his relationship with Roslin. If Lee finds out what she did and the position she put Kara in, he surely won't be happy. Then again, he's also likely to be pissed off at his dad if he finds out the truth about that. Meanwhile, if things do work out like Roslin said they would, Kara's religious beliefs would then draw her closer to being a real believer in Roslin. The president could have a new military advisor before all this is done, and that could also affect Lee and Kara's relationship.
no subject
Date: 2005-03-29 10:47 pm (UTC)