Jammersreviews

Note: This review contains significant spoilers.

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Battlestar Galactica: "Deadlock"

Ellen returns to Galactica, upon which the Final Five must make a 
pivotal decision about whether to remain with the fleet.

Air date: 2/20/2009 (USA)
Written by Jane Espenson
Directed by Robert Young

Rating out of 4: **

Review by Jamahl Epsicokhan
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Now here's a dysfunctional episode about dysfunctional people. 
After "No Exit" -- an episode that contained more information than 
one thought possible in a single hour *and* somehow maintained utter 
clarity and great characterization -- "Deadlock" contains very little 
new information and somehow comes across as a ponderous, unfocused 
mess. There are solid, good moments and ideas to be found 
in "Deadlock," but they are adrift amid a sea of half-baked 
motivation and frankly ham-fisted drama.

What's a surprise -- or, come to think of it, maybe it shouldn't be --
 is that the story's problems all stem from the volatile nature of 
Ellen Tigh, who strolls off Boomer's Raptor onto Galactica at the 
beginning of the episode and reveals to everyone that not only is she 
alive and well, but that she's basically still Plain and Simple 
Ellen. (Plus a ton of new information.)

"I'm still Ellen, you know," she says. She asks for a drink -- or a 
flask, if someone has one. Apparently, you can take the memories out 
of the alcoholic, but you can't take the alcoholic out of the 
memories. She and Tigh make passionate love while he envisions 
Caprica Six, which is sort of the reverse of the situation with Six 
in the brig previously. It's like a three-way, Cylon Projection 
Style. When Tigh fesses up about thinking about Ellen while being 
with Six, Ellen's response: "I was your mental porn? That's just sad."

At some point, a conscious storytelling choice was made that although 
New Ellen has retrieved all her memories from her original life as 
one of the Final Five, the bulk of her personality still remains from 
Old Ellen, the Colonial Wife Whom Saul Poisoned. As such, she is 
quite capable of all the Old Ellen behavior: being petty, vindictive, 
bitchy, and insanely jealous. One of the tenets of the episode 
appears to be that we cannot change who we fundamentally are, even if 
we did suddenly remember that we invented resurrection and built an 
entire race of AI beings. Although New Ellen has great insight into 
the entire human-Cylon situation, that doesn't erase the very flawed 
Old Ellen who "frakked half the Colonial fleet" and is basically 
still pissed off because Saul is married to his job.

This would be a valid thesis if not for the fact that, well, 
virtually everything about "No Exit" played against this notion. 
Ellen's rediscovered memories made her a different person -- one who 
was able to calmly argue and philosophize with Cavil for 18 months. 
But now here, most of that wisdom seems to vanish. It's a non-
credible backtrack for the character, one that doesn't make a whole 
lot of sense and is less interesting, not more. Instead of doing her 
best to help the fleet, Ellen plays some rather cruel mind games.

But not always. There are scenes where she seems like New Ellen, 
where she marvels over seeing all of the Final Five, once again 
finally reunited, and ponders the possibilities for the future. But 
that vanishes when she learns that Caprica Six is pregnant with 
Saul's baby -- a piece of information Saul carefully, stupidly 
omitted. The jealousy of Old Ellen comes storming back; she and Saul 
never could have a child, despite years of trying, you see. This is 
good for some tension and some cruel laughs; Ellen can be ruthlessly 
nasty with devastatingly cutting remarks while playing innocent, like 
she does when she visits Caprica Six in her quarters ("I come here 
trying to be good..."). But this can also be perplexing, as she turns 
on a dime and suddenly seems genuine. The bottom line is that all 
this seems petty and counterproductive when you consider the stakes. 
Maybe that's the point: If the fate of the human and Cylon races rest 
with people who behave as shortsightedly as Ellen, everyone's in 
trouble.

The problem is that too much of the drama feels schizophrenic, 
forced, or like it came out of left field. The main crisis here is 
that the Cylons want to leave the fleet and go it alone, and take 
Caprica Six and her future-of-the-Cylon-race child with them. But 
they won't do it unless the Final Five go along. So: Stay or go, 
Final Five? It comes down to a majority vote, because that's how such 
decisions are always made by Cylons. Anders voted last week when he 
said "Stay with the fleet!" before falling into a coma. Tigh of 
course wants to stay, because his loyalty to the fleet is second to 
none. Tory wants to leave, also not a surprise. Tyrol votes to leave. 
That makes Ellen the deciding vote, which she will leave up in the 
air while she plays out her little drama.

But back up a minute. Tyrol wants to go? I think that's worth a 
little examination (although the story doesn't agree). Yeah, Tyrol 
has had a rough go of things lately and has become disillusioned 
about life aboard the Galactica. But what does life on a Cylon 
basestar get him? A fresh start, I suppose -- but Adama gave him a 
fresh start by giving him his job back. He has a chance to make a 
difference at a turning point in the fleet's history, when it's clear 
Adama is committed to the alliance. So why does he vote to leave 
behind everything he has ever known? I'm not necessarily saying he 
*wouldn't* cast his vote for leaving; what I'm saying is that story 
doesn't for a moment examine it. It's arbitrary.

For that matter, just how many of the *Cylons* want to leave? Another 
theme this show examines is the societal melding of the humans and 
the Cylons who are now living on Galactica. There are Cylons working 
to install the organic gel that will fix the metal beams in the ship. 
And as we see in the final shot of the episode, the Cylons have even 
started using Galactica's memorial wall for their own fallen 
comrades. That's a very intriguing moment, and the most genuinely 
poignant point of the story.

Also interesting is the symbolic notion that installing the gel to 
fix the ship is itself a melding of humanity and Cylon; Galactica is 
no longer who she used to be, but a hybrid of something new. And 
there's another great drunken scene between Adama and Tigh where 
Adama laments the death of Galactica as we knew her. While all this 
alcohol cannot bode well in the long run, watching these two old guys 
continue to drink together through all this mess is somehow 
reassuring, and I'd like to introduce a mathematical postulate: Adama 
+ Tigh + Alcohol = Great TV.

By the way, the whole storyline involving the organic gel -- it still 
makes me very uneasy. Surely Tyrol would've researched this mystery 
substance and declared it safe. Surely it's not going to grow into 
the metal and become something that could destroy the ship from 
within. But maybe not so surely. I don't know if Adama's obsessive 
alarmed gazes are just bemoaning the end of Galactica as she once 
was, or if he's concerned that this could end up being catastrophic. 
There are so many separate ominous shots of Adama watching the work 
being done (six, to be exact) that by the end of the show I wanted to 
declare these shots as the basis for the episode's official drinking 
game.

But I've strayed from my original point, which is: Given all that has 
happened that is tethering the humans and the Cylons, *why do the 
Cylons want to leave the fleet*?

Also not explained, nor attempted in even the most oblique way, is 
how Boomer was able to find the fleet in the first place. If she can 
find the fleet, why can't Cavil? (Or maybe he can, or always knew 
where it was, in which case he's playing waiting games.) Shouldn't 
Adama be asking a few questions along these lines?

Instead, it's straight to the brig for Boomer, which strikes me as 
plausible, I guess, but not particularly forward-thinking or 
intriguing as a dramatic choice. If we can forgive Athena for being a 
Cylon, and Caprica Six for helping nuke the Colonies (though I'm not 
sure anyone knows that except Baltar and Roslin), why do we come down 
so hard on Boomer for shooting the Old Man under preprogrammed 
directives she had no control over? Perhaps there are simply too many 
Eights roaming the ship, and Adama needs to know where they all are.

Also not explained: What the hell is a pregnant Caprica Six doing 
walking around the Dogsville section of the ship, which is overrun 
with gangs and people who hate the Cylons? That's just stupid. At 
this point, Caprica Six, given that her unborn baby is the future of 
the Cylon race, should probably be locked away in her quarters 
whenever possible. There are a lot of people, I'm sure, who do not 
want this child born. So why would you make yourself a target of 
violence and put the entire future at risk?

Speaking of Dogsville, it's one of the other tiers of this week's 
story. Baltar returns to his flock, who have started to look to Paula 
as their new leader. She used to be a member of the flock, and when 
Baltar left for the baseship, she took over. Now they become rivals 
in a quiet ideological struggle for leadership of the flock. Head Six 
returns to help inspire Baltar with words in this struggle. But a 
funny thing happens on the way to the pissing contest: The whole 
thing becomes a pointless lackluster exercise.

When Baltar was preaching against the establishment and in favor of 
the One True God, I understood where that notion came from. But that 
has all been wiped away and the priorities have been reset to the 
basics of finding food and hording it. Amid these events, Baltar's 
naivete is kind of mind-boggling. He tries to make a difference when 
he should damn well know better; Paula warns that guys with guns will 
steal the food, but Baltar doesn't listen. Then the guys with guns 
come and steal the food. I'm not sure what to make of this; I found 
it all sort of muddled.

What does ultimately work is Baltar's appeal to Adama, where he cites 
the fact that Galactica is becoming Cylonized, and the civilians, 
already pushed to their limits, won't accept it and are about to rise 
up in a revolution, which is about the last thing Adama needs. Baltar 
needs guns to provide security against the gangs of the lower decks. 
So Adama gives him the guns, probably against his better judgment. 
The problem with this whole storyline, like the episode in general, 
is that it feels concocted and perfunctory rather than urgent and 
logical.

The Ellen plot comes to a head on what might as well be called 
Ellen's Dramatic Theater Stage. She invites the Final Five (minus 
Anders; still in a coma) and Caprica Six into one room where they 
discuss the merits of leaving the fleet. When Ellen announces her 
vote to leave, Tigh rejects it outright, and Ellen accuses him of 
loving Adama and the ship and the uniform more than her, more than 
Six, more than his unborn baby. It must be noted that Tigh is awesome 
even in the middle of this petulant drama display; Michael Hogan is 
great at growling dialog and punctuating it with variants of the 
word "frak" in ways that make you want to cheer for him in the face 
of absurdity.

The psychological effects of this drama are enough to land Six in 
sickbay and put the baby's life in jeopardy. The whole notion of all 
of this is predicated on the belief that True Love is what's 
apparently needed to sustain a Cylon fetus. One scene I thought 
worked pretty well was when Saul struggles with the silly need to put 
love into words when he *feels* far more for Six and the child than 
those words could ever express. And I liked how Ellen transitioned 
from the role of selfish troublemaker to loyal supportive wife in the 
blink of an eye. Complicated and dysfunctional, this is.

But *the baby dies*, which I found to be blatantly manipulative, and 
more motivated by the writers' apparent need to make Hera the sole 
face of the future than by what actually jells here in terms of 
story. Apparently, the psychosomatic effects of a Cylon's mental 
doubt that her lover actually loves her can result in the baby's 
death. Wow. Sorry, but that's a bit much for me. Besides, if a Cylon 
baby allegedly cannot be conceived without this notion of ironclad 
True Love, how was the baby conceived in the first place? Six and 
Tigh conceived the child during some sort of strange Cylon therapy 
session. I doubt they were in love at the time, as would've been 
required by the Cylon Conception Rules suggested here.

I dunno. This episode is kind of a manipulative cheat and is dictated 
too much by Old Ellen, who somehow displaced the far more intriguing 
New Ellen. Last week, New Ellen was the matriarch and Cavil was the 
petulant child. This week New Ellen is gone and instead we have Old 
Ellen who behaves like a petulant child. There are probably ironies 
to be found there, but as drama this just doesn't work.

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Copyright 2009, Jamahl Epsicokhan. All rights reserved.
Unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this article is 
prohibited.

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Jamahl Epsicokhan - jammer@...