A Day in the Life By Luke Hung

A bunch of previouslies that I’m not going into and we jump into a dream of Adama’s where he is in a nice forest retreat. Adama wakes in his room with a woman in the bunk with him. Don’t get too excited its not Roslin, in fact it isn’t anyone. Adama has now joined the rest of the cast with a fantasy projection of a loved one. In an interspersed scene Tyrol is carrying a bottle to his wife. They make some stereotypical parent small talk before Tyrol drops the bomb that he is canceling Cally’s day off. Two members of the deck crew called in sick and he needs Cally to help him fix an airlock. Cally bitches and moans, why her... why anyone (imagine an figure-skater crying prone on the ground crying). That’s just how I picture Cally no matter how wrong or right she is, she is just a super whiner and annoying. She works my nerves even more than Apollo and that’s saying a lot.
Back to Adama, Tigh enters the Admiral’s quarters with some paperwork; he glances towards Adama’s bed and comments about Adama’s wedding anniversary. Now why he looked at the bed is beyond me, on the rare occasion I think about someone’s weddings anniversary I never look at their bed. He magnanimously offers to take Adama’s duty shift, but Adama demurs. It’s just another day. Carolanne holographically suggests that maybe she should have married Tigh. Adama now is talking to his delusion and comments that they had some good times, but had more bad and Carolanne counters that he keeps bring her back this day every year anyways. I just hate self-flagellation, but all these characters do it. I suspect the writers do it to add depth, but don’t think that is a good plan always. In this case I think its stupid, Adama is plenty deep enough and your fantasy of what Adama is like is probably ten times better than anything anyone could write. A nondescript officer hands Adama some coffee and Adama too enthralled by his fantasy wife is unable to recall his name. Forget that, lets get to the good part of the episode.
Cally and Tyrol passively aggressively snipe at each other all the way to the airlock and a few minutes in it. Why can’t our lives be perfect, complains Cally - well probably because there is a genocidal war going on. I’m beginning to hate Tyrol now because of his proximity to Cally. Sellix who was assigned to assist these two has a front row seat to their annoying dialogue courtesy of a microphone that everyone knows about, but does that stop Cally’s bitchin… hell no. Mercifully the claxons sound and the airlock doors slide shut. Long story short, there is a leak and the ship automatically sealed the compartment. Tyrol doesn’t panic presuming that all they have to do is find the leak and seal it and the compartment will reopen. Great plan, but it just doesn’t work that way in television land. See you after the opening credits.
Back to Adama’s imaginary log cabin where he wanders around making some perfunctory efforts to remember some of his crewmen’s names as Holo-Carolanne bitches in the background. She also makes some mention of whether or not Roslin likes bad boys, huh? Who’s the bad boy? I get it if its overly angry boys, or stares hard boys, or even never bluffs boys, but bad boy, Je ne sais pas. Seven years of French baby… of course that was 15 years ago. Speaking of French, in the ‘real’ world, Roslin and Adama makes their pseudo sexual small talk this time with the transparent excuse of Baltar’s trial. Actually that’s fairly important but they just talked about assigning Apollo to the team organizing the trial. Yeah that’s not going to back fire.
You speak of evil and it arrives. Following a quick clip of the Tyrol’s patching leaks we see Apollo. He is giving a briefing on staying vigilant despite the fact that the Cylons haven’t shown their metallic faces for over 40 days, but all they have to remember is one. One day, one mistake and all their efforts over the past months will be for nothing. Hot Dog gets an amusing throw away line about a rash and Helo who was sitting in the next seat, moves a safe distance away. Around a corner Adama listens to Apollo’s little speech and smiles. Holo-Carolanne says something about loving Lee like a father not as a commanding officer, which is great advice, but if Adama could do that don’t you think he would have by now? After the briefing breaks up Adama tells Apollo about Roslin’s idea of him heading the legal defense team. Lee seems uninterested and states his current job takes up all of his time.
In the airlock we see Tyrol and Cally patching a few holes in the hull. They get a few moments of pleasure as they patches seems to hold then the tell tale wheezing begins again. Yup, as predicted that’s not going to work. Adama now knows what’s going on in the airlock and he and Tigh rush to the glass partition separating the rest of the ship from the Tyrols. Adama quietly says we got to get them out of there and meets with the brain trust. The damage from the battle of New Caprica broke all the back up systems and Tigh bitterly adds it would take six weeks in a space dock just to bang out the dents… Hee, Tigh gets the best lines. Lee breaks the situation down more succinctly; basically they got 30 minutes of air and no good ideas. His bad idea is based on the fact that if they try to blow any of the internal portals they may damage an already weakened section so the only option is to blow an outside door. Lee’s great plan is to use a Raptor and catch the Tyrols as the section’s air evacuates into space.
When the Chief hears the plan he is pessimistic but resolute. Frankly I’m with him… the plan sucks. They are going to leap into space without air and space suits and hope to hop thorough a door maybe five by three feet on a wildly pitching shuttle maybe twenty feet away. Cally uses there last few minutes of air to make plans for their child if they don’t make it. After a short discussion Cally sets on a civilian single mom that I have never heard about before and likely will not hear about again. The Chief and Cally share a moment and Adama begins the count down. They blast the door and the airlock, some trash and air rush out. Sharon pilots the Raptor. Immediately upon the hatch blowing the shuttle gets whacked by the door. She dodges some junk, and then responds to Apollo’s cries to pull up to neatly catch both Tyrol and Cally. I absolutely did not give this scene justice, it was awesome looking, though Apollo yelling directions seemed stupid to me, it didn’t seem like she had enough to respond to me, but it worked out great. I almost wet my pants.
Somehow following Cally and the Chief’s near death experience, Apollo and Adama have a moment in his cabin. Lee seems to have forgotten about his parent’s anniversary but given his parents’ relationship and both of their crappy parenting skills there is a whole bunch of stuff I would have repressed too. Adama notices all the negative emotions and ignorantly states that his ex-wife at least provided his sons a stable home. Ha, Carolanne probably was only a step or two up from Starbuck’s mom and Lee tells him about as much. This infuriates the Holographic Carolanne and she freaks, yelling, throwing stuff and claiming she went nuts because Adama abandoned them. She continues to spin the situation so she doesn’t look so bad, but I try not to listen to figments of other people’s imaginations. I have enough voices in my own head. Further bursting Adama’s bubble, Lee also states that Carolanne probably never really loved him. Wow, that was mean and pointless. I guess you could argue that it was Lee’s attempt to get his father to stop mourning his divorce and Carolanne’s death, but I think not.
In sickbay Seelix brings baby Tyrol to see his parents. The Chief is doing much better than Cally but both will be fine, damn it. Cally, who is being re-pressurized in a hyperbaric chamber, has a moment with her baby as he presses his little hand against the glass. Lee returns to his quarters to find that Adama has given him a box of his grandfather’s old law books with a note “when we all have the time.”
In another part of ship, Adama and Roslin have another moment where they relive the flirtatious moment they had on New Caprica. Roslin does her giggling thing, which I hate. They talk about what could and should have been but ultimately leave everything unclear. At least they aren’t really rushing this thing, giving me a chance to get used to it. Not that I ever will, I rather see Lee with Roslin and Starbuck with Adama before these two getting together, but I have no control over the show. Roslin leaves stating that she will be back in a few days and they can pointlessly flirt some more. A few seconds later Adama ends the episode by putting his wife’s picture back into a box for another year, but I hope its forever.

Overall the episode was a C+

Acting: B, Actually they all were pretty good. The acting was the best part of the episode. I think because no one had to do anything outrageous it was fairly easy for the actors to stay smoothly in character. On the other hand with nothing outrageous to do no impressive grades are given.

Plot: C+, Another character developing plot driven episode. Look I confess I’m an action whore, so when in doubt shoot something please, so I started out opposed to this episode and it gave me little reason to change my mind. However the difference between this episode and the prior one is slightly, slightly better writing and they almost killed the Chief and Cally. Final evaluation, it sucked less than The Woman King. At least it didn’t have plot holes you could fly a Battlestar through

Action/Episode Energy: C-, I am writing this sentence way too often, the episode was plot driven, so there wasn’t much action outside the scene with the airlock being blown. Not for nothing that catch by Athena in the Raptor… awesome. She could play on my softball team anytime. Also there really wasn’t any tension as I never for a moment thought anyone was really at risk.