FAREWELL TO THE QUEEN
''I like this service....I want you to know what I like.'' There's a real poignancy to what's beginning to feel like Laura Roslin's farewell tour. But does every exchange with her need to be about her mortality? Everything didn't revolve around her imminent death the last time she was dying. What's different? Is it that she's forged a bond with Adama, that she's got someone to share her final days with, so she's willing to face it head on? Regardless, that brunet wig is more than a little sexy, n'est-ce pas?
We haven't seen much of the old Laura, but we got a nice little flash of the steel we've come to know and love when she visited Baltar in the brig. Clear-eyed and serious as an airlock accident. As she put it, people on an irrevocable path to the grave ''just don't care that much about rules and laws and conventional morality.'' Which is getting her into all kinds of trouble with Colonial watchdog Lee Adama and the rest of the Quorum of Twelve.
(A little aside: Earlier this spring, BSG mastermind Ron Moore told Entertainment Weekly, ''Once we took [Lee Adama] out of the flight suit and had him in a legal and political setting, the character seemed to come alive for all of us.'' Well, I'm glad Lee is interesting to someone. Because at this point, he seems to exist to (a) get in Roslin's way while she bends the rules as she sees fit or (b) mysteriously appear to save the day, like a deus ex machina that spends a lot of time in the gym.)
I still relish the tenderness between Bill and Laura, especially his reading to her as she gets her cancer treatments. But as much as I like fiction within fiction — the idea that an alien culture has eons of literature that's brandie-new to us is intoxicating, the very stuff that sci-fi is all about — it's a tricky thing to pull off. Sometimes it's magical, as in the case of the Black Freighter story strand in Alan Moore's Watchmen. Other times, it just kinda sits there, like the novel Sawyer was reading on the beach a few seasons back on Lost. (It was called Bad Twin. Thanks, Doc Jensen.) What makes it so hard is that there's the temptation to force the meta-fiction to add new depth to what we, the audience, are watching. But that's nigh impossible to pull off, especially while having the meta-fiction be interesting in its own right. It helped to have an actor like Olmos reading the fictional fiction, Searider Falcon. It's so easy to get lulled by his voice; you didn't need to pay too much attention to the substance of what he was saying, beyond the vague realization that it underlined the idea of faith and a perilous voyage.
A fine episode that handled everything but Baltar's ascension to the clergy with aplomb. Things are moving, and that's what I want from a show like this: constant evolution.
So, what did you think? Did you miss Starbuck, or was it nice to have a rest from that particular brand of crazy? Will Tigh and Six live happily ever after? And should we prepare ourselves for the idea that maybe, just maybe, the Fifth Cylon has already died?
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