3.13 Taking A Break From All Your Worries

Bit of an odd episode this. I could kind of see what it was doing, exploring the character points that had been revealed over the previous episodes – the trouble was that by the end there had been very little in terms of progression. It was like an examination before the whole thing reverted back over to its previous state.

The main thrust of the plot concerned Gaius, now in captivity on Galactica. Tigh had the viewpoint that he should just be executed, whereas Laura and Adama were more inclined to try and get whatever information out of him they could. Gaius, himself, tried to commit suicide at the start of the episode and had a weird hallucination that he woke up in a download tank – but I was never fooled. I knew he wasn’t going to be revealed as a Cylon; I have become certain of that much now.

Probably I’ll turn out wrong later down the line!

But anyway, Gaius was eventually injected with some bizarre serum that Adama only saw fit to mention now, where the subject was placed in a situation of jeopardy and only his interrogators had the power to aid him. This was apparently going to make him speak the truth. (The end, intriguingly, hinted that there was a secret in him so deep even he wasn’t prepared to admit it. . .)

What he did admit was pretty much what we already knew concerning his part in the Cylon attack on Caprica and what he knew about the Cylon race in general. It was good in the sense that it allowed him to clarify for us exactly where his state of mind was at; but at the same time it didn’t really feel like I was learning anything new.

What was worse was the inertia of the episode since, by the end, Adama nor Laura were at all convinced by his story. The only forward movement was that they had decided to give him a trial (whatever that means) rather than outright kill him. It was not an ending to the episode that made me excited about the next episode, really. Hopefully I’ll be pleasantly surprised.

And the inertia of the episode carried through with Apollo and Starbuck. Both pretty much broke apart from Dualla and Anders respectively, and then met up. Starbuck hit Apollo with it: that he could leave Dualla and she would be there. But then he worried that he could not rely on her after the way she had treated him (understandable) and so ended up going back to Dualla and breaking down in front of her, begging she take him back.

Personally speaking, I’d rather be with Dualla than Starbuck any day!

Anyway, Dualla took Apollo back and Starbuck was back with Anders and the pair just shared some looks across the bar towards the end (the bar being where the episode got its title, from the Cheers theme song!). Again, back to square one with the sense that there was still plenty more of this love square to come.

So the episode ended in pretty much the same place where it had begun. That’s not really a great mark of anything, though I guess with this foreplay out of the way the season can march on and properly get into whatever it wants to sink its teeth into next.