Afterwards, Lee and Zarek are both freaking out about that little misstep, but Adama tells them to shut up. And honestly, why not just say "The fifth Cylon was the late wife of Saul Tigh, who died on New Caprica just like so many of our loved ones"? Sometimes these dudes are too secretive for their own good, I guess, or there's a compelling reason to keep her identity a secret. Maybe on the off chance that she'll come back, and we'd have no way of knowing what her agenda was. Even before she was dead and a Cylon, her agenda made you nervous.

Zarek superciliously informs Lee and Bill that a permanent alliance between this government and (any) Cylons is out of the question, "I hope you both know that," and Lee reminds him that it's not his call. I would also remind him that he is a douchebag who has done more on more occasions to endanger the Fleet than anybody but the Cylons, and the only reason he's not sucking vacuum is because Laura still likes him. And I guess there's a sort of lovable old-person naïveté to his narrative, like, the Black Panther rhetoric and how completely oblivious he is to his own self-importance, the selfishness of his idealism, are spot-on adorable, and I hear "Suicide Is Painless" whenever he starts talking his self-aggrandizing bullshit, et cetera. But he also gets people killed, and has no problem killing people with his own hands, and he took over the black market, and often seems to be fomenting revolution for no reason other than the fact that he sees the opportunity to do so, and hopefully end up on top. Or because he can't think of anything better to do.

Zarek snots at them some more about a variety of subjects, and finally makes one salient point: the delicious non-coincidence of how Laura disappeared from the public eye the second her prophecies and religious mandate were proven false. Which is a very good point, although it doesn't mean what he thinks it means. She's so far beyond political embarrassment, which is something Tom won't ever understand, because like most martyrs he manages to make even selflessness incredibly selfish.

But of course he would see it like that -- a retreat from fame, rather than the paralysis of shame -- because he can't conceive of what we mean when we talk about the body of each tribe's leader. It's still about power, possession rather than stewardship, and there's always going to be something ugly behind even the brightest rhetoric when it comes down to that. My favorite moment of this whole episode is the end, when Bill calls him on it, because of the many ways in which activism for its own sake is an unending cycle of worthlessness that feels too good to stop. He threatens Bill directly ("If you try to shove an alliance with the Cylons down our throats, there'll be consequences, Admiral. I promise you") and Bill thanks him for the signed and embossed invitation to fuck him up.