What was the biggest surprise of the episode? The thirteenth tribe? Kara's charred body? The identity of the last Cylon? For me, it was the scene the in the morgue. Lee stands over Dualla's body searching for a reason. He asks Adama, seemingly setting up Olmos for another gradiose speech. Instead he spits out "I don't frakking know." This episode wasn't about major revelations or mind-blowing twists (although it has both). It was about the people.
But I'm getting ahead. Last night's episode picked right up right with last summer's gut punch of an ending: Earth, it seems, is not the safe haven everyone thought it was. Instead, Baltar's testing confirms that the planet has been radioactive for a veeeery long time. Everything that they've gone through and fought for: its all been meaningless. The implications of that certainly weigh on the episode, but I don't want to neglect the somewhat shocking revelation that the thirteenth tribe was Cylon, not human. What? There were all kinds of twists here, but nothing made my head hurt quite like that one. How are these Cylons related to other seven? How can the Cylons have been invented and manufactured? I've long thought that the show has been building towards some kind of reveal that the humans are actually Cylons themselves and perhaps that's the case, but this new info doesn't really bolster that case.
That being said, the most effective part of this episode for me was watching the toll the news of Earth took on the fleet. Roslin's face when she got back to Galactica and saw the mass of gathered people seemed to say it all. Meanwhile, with Roslin checked out it was up to Lee to take charge and try to give some hope to people who had lost all of theirs. This led to the shocking scene with him and Dualla, one which took me completely by surprise. With the throbbing hopelessness of their situation staring her in the face, Dualla spends her last few moments savoring her perfect evening with Apollo and then pulls out a gun and shoots herself.
This led us into the scene I talked about earlier. Watching as Roslin and Apollo fell apart, it was for a moment reassuring to see Bill Adama, pretty much the most emotionally solid character of the last four seasons, step into the frame. Which made it that much bleaker to see that he had given up too. I've got to give all kinds of credit to Olmos, who nailed the scene with Apollo and the equally powerful one with Tigh later on.
Meanwhile, Kara and Leoben explored Earth and found that the distress signal that led them to Earth came from a downed Viper containing...the body of Kara Thrace! What??? We now know officially that she's not a Cylon (that always seemed a little too easy) so how is she still alive? That's a little too much of a mindbender for me to deal with and it seems like Leoben felt the same way (yet another person who can't handle what he finds on Earth).
Then there was Tyrol, Tory, Anders and Tigh who all began to remember parts of their lives on Earth 2000 years ago. So they're all over 2000 years old. And it appeared that Earth, while populated with Cylons, was not populated with just the 12 models we know and love. I imagine this notion will be the one that the remainder of the episodes pivots on.
But of course, there was the big finale. It seems like Ellen was one of the few characters who I completely failed to consider as being the last Cylon, but it definitely wasn't the kind of great gut punch twist that the show is known for delivering. For this reason, I was initially disappointed. But think about it and it seems like one of the few choices that actually makes sense. It raises the stakes of what went on in New Caprica even more and it adds yet another dimension to the Saul-Ellen relationship. The most important thing to keep in mind is that this isn't the end of the series, which means that while the choice of Ellen may not have been the most immediately satisfying, I have enough faith in the writers to trust that it will pay off in the long term.
A-
P.S. Pretty much the definitive post-show analysis is here, featuring interviews with Ron Moore, the episodes' writers, and its director.
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