Biggest shock for me of the night?

[trinityvixen]

Et tu Racetrack? She always seemed so cool. Stupid Gaeta has to ruin everyone. Plus, he sent his boyfriend to the brig. They are totally on a time out.

This is the first episode of the second half to provoke my interest and enthuse me to the point of debating for hours. A longer post is clearly in the offing, but, yeah, way to go, show. Way to not forget everything and start actually doing shit with the precious little time we have left!

(Spoilers may lurk in comments!)

Comments

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Yes, Lee was President while Roslin was in Cylon hands because through some legal hand-waving, it was made clear to the political arm of government that Adama would never work with Zarek. Thus precipitating Zarek's resentment and Lee's being the odd-man-out on the Quorum because he basically waltzed into being interim President for no reason other than it was THE ONLY WAY to get the military to pay attention to the government.

The thing is that this show makes an argument that a military-supported dictatorship is the only government capable of keeping a people alive under times of war. Our sympathies should lie with Zarek's thinking--that democracy is important even at the cost of a few lives. However, because the show constantly casts Zarek as the villain, the "right" choice becomes a sacrifice of liberty for the sake of our safety. Which is a bizarre sort of logic for a show that was created during a government that exercised that logic to disastrous ends.

[wellgull.livejournal.com]

Our sympathies should lie with Zarek, except that he is intentionally cast as a heavy -- we can never trust that he sincerely believes in democracy rather than in his own power, and even the other mutineers (Gaeta, fercrissakes) are troubled by the way he immediately adopts violence and brutality against non-cylons.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Our sympathies should lie with Zarek, except that he is intentionally cast as a heavy -- we can never trust that he sincerely believes in democracy rather than in his own power, and even the other mutineers (Gaeta, fercrissakes) are troubled by the way he immediately adopts violence and brutality against non-cylons.

Which is why I say the show supports the dictatorial policies because the best they can muster to make the argument for democracy is Tom frakkin' Zarek? If he's the best, imagine how lousy the rest are!