A good use for Airlocks

SPOILERS for last night's Battlestar Galactica upcoming.


Last night's BSG, "The Ties That Bind," was a typically compelling and thought-provoking hour of television. However, despite being extraordinarily well written, well directed and well acted, I just wanted it to be over as I was watching it.

Lee knows the dirty side of politics, and now he's caught fully in the middle of it, with Zarek clouded in murky motives. I like how the writers aren't afraid to sully even touchstone characters like Roslin, and you can see how the plight of the fleet, her "cover" for Adama on Starbuck's garbage scow mission, and most impactfully, her cancer treatments, are taking a severe toll. The scene with Bill reading her a pulpy mystery at her bedside was heartbreaking, and (Emmy Worthy!) Mary McDonnell conveyed so much without saying a word. The scenes of political discord and presidential suffering did indeed cause viewer discomfort, but that's not the main reason my finger hovered precipitously on the fast forward button.

Neither was the reason everyone's favorite character to hate (and not in a campy, fun way like Baltar or Cavil), the whiny and uber-annoying Cally. Look, Nicki Clyne is cute as a button and was almost convincing as a cylon hater when she Jack Ruby'ed Boomer way back when. But when she's called on to do the dramatic heavy lifting, she's just not up to it. Either that, or Cally is one of the most nails on a chalkboard* characters ever written. I believe I even wrote a post on my old blog called "Die Cally, Die!" Know what? Got my wish. Despite the actress's shortcomings, I truly believed Cally was losing it and going off the deep end. Forced to stay in the fleet and on the job? Taking uppers and downers? Not prepared for the horrors of parenthood? Questioning her marriage, which started off with a jaw-breaking beatdown? Suspecting her hubby was getting horizontal with Tory? And then, to top it all off, finding out that Galen was a frakkin' skin job? The sense of confusion, hopelessness and despair was aided greatly by the direction, which conveyed a palpable atmosphere of tension and madness. I really thought Cally was going to flush herself and her mewling infant out the airlock. In the end, Tory saved the baby (programming to protect the hybrid?) and sent Cally spiraling into the dead cold of space, where no one can hear you whine. But if tonight's audio is any indication of what we can expect from Chief's kid, then I'm filled with sadness that Tory didn't enact a mother and child reunion (TM Paul Simon).

Because that, my friends, is the thing that almost made me turn off my favorite program and the Best. Show. On. Television. I realize the producers were trying to put us firmly in Cally's world of hurt with the baby constantly squealing and crying. But godsdamn, was that horrific. If that noise isn't enough to drive anyone to a life of lonely masturbation, I don't know what is. I was hoping for ANYTHING to shut that the fuck up. Matricide. Cylon murder. Nuke to the Galactica's airlock. Playing a game of "kick the baby." Hopefully, watching a killer robot whack his mom will scare that little bundle of "joy" mute.

Despite the nonstop cacophony, there were other things to enjoy. Cavil and his group going Fort Sumter on the Sixes, with the resurrection ship bugged out. Kara dragging Gaeta, Hot Dog, Helo and Anders into her own personal hell on the garbage ship, and needing a good frakking. (I understand the dramatic and "television" purpose of having some of the other central characters on the ship with Starbuck, but in the "reality" of the fleet, it strikes me as strange to have so many known Galactica personnel out in the hinterlands waiting for Kara's mystical GPS kick in).

So once again, a fantastic episode of BSG, but one of the most painful I've sat through. Please, Lords of Kobol, no more eardrum piercing babies.




*That's the standard cliche for painful sounds. However, I have my own bizarre trigger sound: when people take a piece of paper, and fold it with their fingers running along the crease. The sound of flesh rubbing against the paper to firm up the fold makes me physically squirm and twitch and my eyes roll back in my head. Sadly, this happens in an office environment all the time, and when people do this standing at my desk, I want to jam a letter opener into their skulls. Well, there's that sound, and the sound of kids. There's never an airlock around when you need one.