Battlestar Galactica - "The Road Less Traveled"

The Chief has a shaved head. No one seemed to go out of their way to notice that tiny development this week - understandable, since everyone knows it's rude to mention a bad haircut. Nor, it seems, is there anyone left who cares enough about Galen Tyrol - dutiful soldier, hero of the resistance, spaceship Jimmy Hoffa, everyman - to let him know that, with his new look, he looks eactly like Officer Gomer Pyle, Vincent D'Onofrio's self-immolating idiot savant from the first, better half of "Full Metal Jacket." This poor guy - widowed, demoted, robbed of his humanity, and as if all that weren't bad enough he's got a little Cylon/Human hybrid crying for a mommy who's currently floating frozen searching for a heavenly body to orbit until forever.

This episode was a downer in a number of ways. Not because bad things happened. There was just something in the air - a sense of growing detachment, an unfun (yet thrilling) feeling that the good times were long behind. We should remember that the first time we ever saw the Chief, he was a kind of portly looking knuckledragger covered in oilstains - even before we knew anything about the show, we could tell that he was the anti-glam prole to the pilots' soaring majestic bourgeois. (In later episodes, we'd find out that the Chief knew it, too.) But whatever gods exist had shone a special light on the Chief - he was making unofficial, decidedly discouraged love to Boomer, the hottest pilot in the Universe.

To say that the Chief has had everything taken from him underscores the issue. Everyone in BSG had everything taken from them. Twice, if you count New Caprica. It's just that the Chief has had everything taken from him even more often, in more insidious ways than simple genocide. His girlfriend was a Cylon. He is a Cylon. The last time he saw his wife, she was beating him over the head trying to murder him. Everyone betrays him. Without even meaning to, his very existence has managed to betray itself. This is a man who needs a hug. This is a man who joins a cult.

That is, pretty much, what seems to be starting to happen. Baltar's movement, which seems to be largely about redemption and niceness and theosophical marshmellow goodies (much like Christianity), may have just won over another convert. If BSG and "Lost" are to judge, the hot new plotline for 2008 is attempted suicide followed by subservience to a man known to be evil. Remember when Michael started working for Ben, damning himself twice over in lieu of just living with one damnation? Could that be what's going to happen to the (former) Chief – choosing, like Tory, to embrace his Cylonity, even at the cost of what's left of his human soul?

Much more than any episode before, "The Road Less Traveled" seemed to be directly about an existential crisis, about choosing what to believe; this being "BSG," there were two different existential crises. Back on the Demetrius, Starbuck was going even more batshit crazy than the Tyrol. It's funny - I read alot of TV recaps of the show, and it seems like everybody can't stand Starbuck this season. I think it's because so much of what's great and interesting about her character comes from her essentially rebellious nature - she's the kind of person who's better at her job than anyone else, but you would never want her in charge of anything - so much of what makes a good leader is being able to deal with bureaucracy and other myriad boredoms, and so much of what makes Starbuck great (and what makes people like her eventually unemployable) is that they are functionally unable to worry about anything except for the job that's put in front of them. "I fly, therefore I shoot toasters" could be her motto.

That's why - much as I hate to sound like a plotline apologist - there is something strikingly real about just how far into madness Starbuck seems to have wandered in this search for Earth. It was much easier, back on Galactica, when no one believed her story and everyone thought she was a Cylon. That's a place Kara Thrace (coincidentally, the name of my iPod) likes to be in. When no one believes in you, you just take extreme actions to force them to believe in you. The problem is that she was too convincing - she got her own command, and carte blanche from Godfather Adama to follow her instincts. Sure, nobody really believes her, but now, they were all under her command. She wasn't the scrappy loner, flying halfway back across the universe to pick up an arrow from Caprica City.

She was the frack-up commander, the Ahab, the Tigh, and she knew it. Why else would she retreat into her cabin, fingerpainting on the walls? Here's a girl who used to beat a man at cards, drink him under the table, then frack him silly and leave him in the morning. When an anti-authority figure becomes the authority figure, bad things are soon to follow. We may start to ponder just why it is Admiral Adama puts such relentless trust in addictive-personality loose cannons like Tigh and Starbuck, while overlooking the quiet authority and lawful Jarhead grace of tight cannons like Helo and Apollo. Except that kids who follow the rules never get to see the world after midnight, and certainly don't get picked by some kind of God to lead human-and-android-kind to a glorious new future on a glorious new/old planet.

Prediction: The ten 2008 episodes (we're halfway through them, now) will climax with the final discovery of earth, and the revelation of at least one of the newly discovered skin jobs.