The Swan Song of Cally Tyrol

4.03 "The Ties that Bind"

This may be one of the few times that I don't agree with TWoP's Jacob about an episode.

I thought this episode had two main problems:

1) There is a difference between creative directing and "creative" directing. When your brain has to spend so much time trying to filter out weird camera angles, weird focus choices, weird lighting, weird blurry "sick cam" vision, weird scene blocking, and weird flashbacks of stuff we definitely already know, it can be really hard to focus on the story. And that's a sign that the directing has officially gotten in the way. By the third or fourth scene I was trying so hard to ignore all the flourish that I almost forgot there was a plot to be following.

2) Along the same lines, there is such a thing as too much angst. This episode was huge with the angst (I also call politics angst, because on this show, it is), and very, very low with the action. And I definitely felt the imbalance. The Chief/Tory/Cally stuff was good, the Starbuck turned Col. Kurtz thing was cool, the Lee's first day at the Quorum stuff was fine, but putting it all together in one episode was just too heavy.

And then there were some minor problems:

3) Tory seems to have changed personalities for every episode of this season. The "resolved to aide the President" Tory of the first episode seemed totally separate from the "spirituality crisis/cries during sex" Tory of last week who, in turn, was separate from the "murderous Cylon" of this week. Despite her awesome execution of Cally, I'm having a hard time buying Tory as a legitimate person.

4) This is just a nitpicky issue on my part, but why did Adama send every frakking pilot with Starbuck on the Demetrius? Helo, Athena, Sam and Seelix? Who's left guarding the rest of the fleet? Racetrack and Hot Dog? All by themselves? The execution of her mission isn't making much sense to me. It seems like they could have sent Starbuck, Gaeta for navigational stuff, and maybe Sam or Helo for emotional support.

5) I never need to see Grace Park kiss Dean Stockwell ever again. That was downright nasty.

Other than all of that, Cally did go out with a pretty impressive bang (and cute hair), Tory is a scary fierce bitch, Starbuck/Anders angry sex is hot despite its awkwardness, and Cylon civil war is awesome. Also, thank the gods for putting Helo back in regulation tanks.