The Oath

Tensions come to a head as Gaeta instigates a full-scale mutiny. And you can understand it. And yet, watching the episode, something felt very wrong about the whole thing. Not just that the marines and guys who were taking care of things seemed all too eager to be excessively violent. The whole show was set up to clearly make Zerek a mustache-twirling villain, and have Gaeta go down in flames. I'm not sure that's fair to the character's arc. Why did nobody come for Tyrol after they locked up Anders and Athena? I don't like that they seem to be making Zerek so evil again. It's like they want to justify that Roslin was right way back in season one for not trusting a convict. But he just wants democracy. Yes, he can be a little extreme, but they're making him out to be the LBJ in this assassination conspiracy (I'm not saying LBJ actually was responsible for the Kennedy assassination; it's just a metaphor). What does this do for all the reconciliation on New Caprica? Or the fact that he let Roslin be President despite the fact he really legally held the office? All that goes out the window! Now he's just bent on killing Adama? 

Adama's actions are stupid. His judgment is clouded by his sleeping with the President, and an alliance is not going to work. It hasn't worked yet. Tyrol has made it plain the Cylons want on the Quorum. Is Adama really going to allow that? Gaeta is correct, this is not the Adama we first knew. Unfortunately, the show has started taking sides, and you can feel that all the energy is directed against Gaeta. 

The worst part of it is basically that the episode paints all the humans as inhuman, and the Cylons as great people. Athena just wants to protect her baby. Tigh has Adama's back. Anders doesn't know who he is anymore. Tyrol saves the day. Even the fact that Starbuck is just accepted as Starbuck and everyone is ignoring that she's some ghost of Starbuck, she's been called the Harbinger of Death, and that we don't know why she's there. It's HER fault they got to Earth! Why does she get no blame? We even see Adama buddying up to Tigh like nothing happened between them. What happened to the Adama that felt betrayed that his friend was a Cylon? He got over that in a week? The problem with all this "the Cylons are good" crap is that it cannot be the case after viewing the webisodes. The whole scenario plays out far more differently if you just think Gaeta's doing this out of his own feelings. In "Face of the Enemy" we learned that the Cylons are still bad, and will still kill the humans. They are dangerous, so Gaeta is justified. Not that there are no personal motivations, of course there are. But in a way he really is doing this for his uniform, unlike Adama. And I don't know why a mutiny on philosophical grounds (refusing to follow orders that the Quorum deemed illegal) should suddenly escalate into shootings and kidnappings and coups. I also worry about Adama saying there would be no amnesty now, which also seems out of character. Where's all the forgiveness preached by Lee in "Crossroads"?

I also have to ask about the logic of Kara saying "Semper frackin' fi". I still bristle when I hear Latin and Earth expressions on this show that feel out of place.

Essentially it seems to me that not one character is thinking clearly, so I don't know how to feel about all this. It also seems like so many other threads are being ignored in favor of this. Why are the Cylon base ships just sitting around? Don't they want some input in all this? Or are they playing Gaeta so that he will dismantle the fleet from the inside?