Could it be that the whole Dee/Lee/Kara/Anders love quandraleteral has finally been played out?   I hope so because that whole plotline drug down what was, otherwise, an outstanding episode of Battlestar Galactica.

This whole plotline has felt a bit forced and like the writers all fell in love with it, thus running with it longer than maybe it should have gone.  I find myself tuning out mentally during the early Lee/Dualla scenes, esp. the ones where Lee whines that Dualla doesn’t trust him.  Yeah, hotshot, you’re not really giving her much reason to trust you, so why you’re shocked she doesn’t, I’m not so sure.

But then something happened in the fourth act.  It suddenly got a bit more interesting.  And here’s why.

Watching Lee stumble around the ship drunk as a skunk made me wonder–is Lee becoming Tigh?  Close your eyes and imagine a younger Saul Tigh, stumbling around the ship drunk and getting strange looks from the crew, stumbling home to a rocky marriage. Did the writers intend for us to jump onto this parallel or am I just thinking too much?

Also, I have to admit I was unsure of Dualla’s taking Lee back.  As in–was it the right decision?  I don’t think the simmering feelings of Lee and Kara will go away any time soon, nor am I necessarily sure that, in this case, the love these two have is going to stand the test of time and the distraction that is Starbuck.  I felt a bit like slapping her, saying–you are just bringing more pain and heartache upon yourself, Dee.  And maybe that’s the point and what the producers are going for here.  There is no easy solution and maybe these two crazy kids can make it all work out. 

I do wonder if the next step is to try and have a baby…to somehow try to resurrect the marriage and begin the next generation of the Colonies.

But you know, I will take the just general “ok-ness” of that plotline if the trade-off is we get the frakkin’ fantastic Baltar storyline we got here.  This plotline alone ranks right up with “Collaborators” for best story of the year.  

I’m going to start it right now–James Callis deserves an Emmy nod.  He won’t get one, but he deserves it.  This episode was a tour-de-force of acting for him and not only did he deliver, he knocked it out of the park.   Every single Baltar scene was utterly rivetting and I loved how the creators showed up Baltar from the outside and what was going on inside his mind.  Genius, genius, genius.   Baltar’s floating in the deep well, coming so close to going under was absolutely rivetting.  And then, the scenes in the end with Gaeta going to the former president…how great were those?  It did harken back to “Collaborators” and we can see why Gaeta would hate Baltar and want him dead.  Gaeta suffered for Baltar’s mis-deeds back when he was reunited with the fleet, almost losing his life.  It’s interesting to see that Gaeta was between a rock and a hard place, trying desparately to do the right thing and yet it’s not really paid off for him.

And things can only get worse as the crew tries to figure out what, if anything, Baltar whispered in his ear.  

That question and wondering who the final five Cylons are should be an interesting direction as we head into the last seven episodes of the season.

Another aspect of Galatica that interested me this week was how the new series is continuing to take elements of the original series and re-tell them, giving the stories the new Galatica spin.  We had that in the mini-series, last year with Pegasus and now here with the trial of Baltar.  But the new Galactica has gone far darker with this–from the scene in the teaser (the teaser, mind you!) of Baltar attempting to end his own life (I loved the ambiguity of the scene. Is he killing himself to find out if he’s a Cylon or to escape the punishment for his crimes?  And the perceptions of those around him and inside his head…I’m sure to Adama, it looked like an attempt at the coward’s way out and an admission of guilt) to being interrogated under heavy drugs.

All I know is that I’m annoyed that I have to wait two weeks for the next new episode.  I understand why SciFi is doing it, but I don’t have to like it….