BSG: Sacrifice

(In which Billy gets shot down by Dee, and then gets shot down in a more literal sense.)

"With respect, sir, I am the best shot in or out of the cockpit."
-Starbuck, "Bastille Day"

"I think it was friendly fire. I think I hit him."
-Starbuck, "Sacrifice"

"We've all been trained in capture simulations."
-Dee, "Bastille Day"

Is it unfair to compare this episode to "Bastille Day?" I don't think so. Apollo, Dee and Billy all get captured by elements of a violent mob, while the "I-never-wanted-to-go-into-politics" President yammers on about not negotiating with terrorism. (And we haven't even seen all the repercussions of the last time Lee negotiated with a terrorist...) Also, the leader of the mob gets special billing, and despite their protestations to the contrary, it really is all about them.

Our episode opens with Dana Delaney's character, Sesha Abinell, writing a manifesto while remembering how her hubby died in a Cylon attack. On the wall is a picture of Sharon, her face obscured by shadow. Because if there's one thing that Season 2.5 likes to do, it's reference Apocalypse Now.

Meanwhile, Dee shoots Billy down. Then she goes over to Cloud Nine and talks to Lee about it, saying she doesn't really know where their relationship is going. I'd assumed it was going nowhere, seeing as she'd gone back to Billy at the end of "Epiphanies" and Lee had gone off to frak that single-mom hooker in the episode no-one wants to talk about. But apparently there is a thing. Now I said the Lee/Dee thing didn't bother me as much as it bothers the other fans, and that's true. It's been set up since at least "Resistance" that Dee's carrying a torch. And I guess Lee has a thing for her because she's Mission Control?

So they flirt in the hallway, then they both go up against Tigh, then they flirt in the gym, then Dee asks him if he's serious, then there's a great deleted scene from "Resurrection Ship" where they talk about things going to hell, and then there's a less-great deleted scene in "Black Market" where Dee admits that she doesn't really care to be alive either. Yeah, it's not a great romantic story, but it's not Attack of the Clones either. (Although, when Dee leaves him in "Crossroads" and talks about how the system doesn't work, I did have an uncomfortable flashback to AotC. As Plinkett would say, "supports fascism.") Nobody even brings up the whole officer-enlisted thing, and when it becomes clear that the relationship is serious, Adama bumps Dee up to Lieutenant to get around that issue. There aren't any real obstacles to their relationship, other than the various other things Lee cares about (Starbuck, due process of law).

Because that's how relationships work (or don't) on Battlestar; rarely are they undermined by external forces. It's not that Lee goes out of his way to screw up Starbuck/Anders; they just do that to themselves. Cally was set to kill herself before Tory showed up. Athena and Helo do end up happily married, but only after they both spend 50 days in a nuclear wasteland, then she nearly gets raped and he ends up starring in "The Woman King." Saul loves Ellen even though she's a terrible influence. My point is that there are no matches made in heaven here. Lee and Dee have at least a physical attraction to each other, and it's probably deeper than that, but their conflicting personalities and values ultimately get in the way. Dee's the complete opposite of Starbuck, and Lee is somewhere in the middle. Ultimately, nobody's going to walk away happy.

So hooker-mom left you because she didn't want to be your dead-pregnant-ex surrogate, and then you frakked things up with Starbuck because you didn't want to be her Anders surrogate, and now here you are with Dee. That kind of sucks for her. And then Billy shows up at the bar and complains that Dee "let [him] propose to [her]" when she knew she was going to meet Apollo at the bar anyway. And then Lee hauls Ellen Frakking Tigh off into the bathroom! I wonder what, precisely, Dee was thinking right then.

Then Sesha and her cronies take over the bar and take hostages. Now, I get Lee's decision to save Ellen over Dee: the XO's wife is a more valuable hostage than Petty Officer Dualla. It just would have been nice for him to have made that point to Ellen, because within minutes, she goes swanning out to tell them that she's the XO's wife. And then she tells them that they've made the biggest mistake of their lives.

Lee does the Aliens trick (he sets off a false alarm) so that they can send someone in. That someone is Kara Thrace, who was also getting some R&R over there, proving once again that she cleans up good. She gets inside the bar, but cover is blown. A firefight ensues, and Kara, the best shot in or out of the cockpit, shoots Lee. So, Starbuck, you frakked Zak; you killed Zak; you almost frakked Apollo; you almost killed Apollo. Are we sensing a pattern here?

Dee (understandably) panicks and asks Billy to get something to stop the bleeding. I don't have to think too hard to guess what Billy was thinking right then. But when one of the thugs threatens him, Billy points out that if the Admiral's son dies, no-one here gets out alive. How is it, Dee, that a civilian is cooler under fire than someone who was trained for this sort of thing? It's a complete 180 from "Bastille Day." (Okay, okay, Dee cares a lot more about Apollo than Billy does. Still, I don't really think that this episode does her any favors, which is sad because I do like Dee. Hell, throughout the entirety of "Unfinished Business," I was thinking no, Lee, no, Kara is nothing but trouble. Which is not to say that I didn't enjoy "Unfinished Business," but that's a story for another day.)

Abinell wants the copy of Sharon who's down in Galactica's brig, and with time running out before Lee bleeds to death, Adama appears to cave. A suspiciously-not-pregnant body is wheeled into the bar. Sesha puts two bullets in Boomer's head (bullets that seem to to virtually no damage) before realizing that it's Boomer, not Sharon.

On re-watching this episode, I noticed that the re-cap did not, for once, include a shot of Cally pulling a Jack Ruby on Boomer. This might be the only time in the history of the show where a really important plot element from a previous episode doesn't crop up in the re-cap. (Don't quote me on that; I previously said that "The Farm" was the only episode where the A-story takes place on Cylon-occupied Caprica, completely forgetting about "Downloaded.")

So then Sesha tells her goon to "kill the girlfriend." (She knows that Dee and Apollo are "together.") Billy gets a gun from one goon and manages to kill another one, before he too goes down. The marines come in (and also storm the Astral Queen for good measure, since some of the shots are re-used from "Bastille Day") and shoot the rest of Sesha's mob to hell. Sesha's corpse ends up draped over Boomer's. Poetry.

Then Dee, who's spent the last ten minutes kneeling over Apollo, scrambles over to Billy's body. Again, this is not her finest hour. But then, both men she cares about got shot within minutes of each other; this is just a bad time for her all around.

Roslin and Adama argue about whether or not Adama's plan was worth it, since Billy's dead and Apollo's in sickbay with a bullet in his chest (and as fate would have it, it's going to be more than a year before he gets in a Viper again). Dee sits by Lee's bed, holding his hand and telling him that she's not going to leave. Starbuck looks on, unnoticed in the background. Between this and the way "Resurrection Ship" ended, we have a love triangle on our hands.

And then the episode ends with a few shots of Sharon, while ominous music plays. Except that she is one of the good guys at this point, and both "bad" things she does from this point on (not out Cavil as a Cylon, and shoot Natalie) stem from her maternal instincts (grief and protection, respectively). So go figure.

This isn't exactly one of the stellar episodes, and though the ending is a lot cleverer than the one in "Bastille Day" (oh, did no-one mention that your term is up in 7 months? Silly me), it overall suffers comparatively.

One last thing I wanted to touch on: Adama has a conversation with Sharon about whether or not she would identify the (six) remaining Cylon models. She says "no" for no real reason (because the real reason is that if she could, and did, the show would be over). It's pretty obvious that the writers need to come up with a good reason why this is... and it's not surprising that the concept of the Final Five is introduced at around the same time that "Athena" gets accepted by the rest of the crew.