This show makes my heart hurt. Galactica picks up weird ship dradis signals and, assuming it's a Cylon vessel, immediately freaks out. After a bunch of military mumbo about proving that everybody is who they say they are, we realize that we've just run into the Battlestar Pegasus, which, thanks to fifteen fishy circumstances, has managed to (a) survive the original Cylon attack and lose only about 30% of its crew; (b) jump to triangulated location "wherever" without ending up half-Shadowcatted into an asteroid; (c) pick up various crewmen and supplies from other survivor ships and places without anybody giving any details; and (d) track a previously-unmentioned Cylon fleet to where it's been following Galactica. The good news is that their Chief looks to be cool and smart like ours, their XO is maybe worse, and their pilots make ours look clever and fun and classy. The bad news is, their ship is commanded by Admiral Nelena Cain, whom we'll talk about momentarily, and is full of terrible, awful people. People that make last week's recap look less like a proposal for the equivalent of the Geneva Convention and more like the manifesto of the People Against Scraping Your Fork Against Your Plate Because It Makes That Hideous Sound And I Have A Slight Headache. Apollo, Tigh and Helo meet their opposite numbers -- finding them creepy -- while Laura immediately wigs hardcore due to the extreme intensity and general wackness of Admiral Cain. The thing is that, militarily, "Admiral" is WAY better than "Commander," which means that half of our two authority figures have just been usurped, and Adama is no longer Big Boss of the Fleet. Cain takes her place with a certain elegance, stealing Adama's kids Apollo and Starbuck for the Pegasus. She mentions how the Cylon jump that has apparently been following our Fleet contains one particular weird-looking ship, of which they seem very protective. Theories are advanced, but nobody says the obvious -- that it's clearly the Ernestine switch operator ship for transmitting dead Cylon souls back to the Cylonplex. Cain continues to impinge on all kinds of things, justifying all of it by recapping the entire last two seasons' worth of Galactica's terrible ideas and fuckups, with a distinctly un-Strega-like lack of humor, but a whole lot of being correct about every single part of it. However, anyone would take Adama's somewhat messed-up track record over Cain's half-told tale, as horrors accrete: the Pegasus XO tells Tigh a not-so-shaggy-dog story about how she shot a crewman in the head for disobeying a risky order, only to fake-laugh about how it was a joke. Gaius and Six are introduced to the Pegasus's own captive Cylon, a Six model named Gina, whose hair is browner and who -- making Galactica's treatment of Boomer, and frankly Leoben, positively Four Seasons-esque -- has been tortured and gang-raped by the entire Pegasus crew of asshole pirate Kurtzes into severe shock and catatonia. Six and Gaius are disgusted and sad. I'm mostly pissed. And sad. The Pegasus pilots and techs gross out even Cally with their tales of sexual toaster humiliation and abuse, and one of them lets it slip that their Grand Dragon of Interrogation is currently trying the same routine on Boomer, in alleged pursuit of info on that mysterious Cylon ship. Helo and Chief combine forces, running to Boomer's cell in time to stop anything much beyond the usual humiliation Boomer's now used to. They accidentally kill the Interrogator himself, which is fun to watch. Less fun by 100% to watch is Boomer coming wicked close to getting violated. Just because this is the best show on television doesn't mean it's not also sometimes the worst show on television. Or at least the hardest. Apollo goes out with the execrable Pegasus CAG for Cylon recon, after sending some secret photographic equipment along with Starbuck, who's flying the Blackbird Laura all stealthy-like to learn about the HMS Ernestine. Cain sends Helo and Chief to a Kangaroo Court Martial so Gitmo we don't even see it, for killing the Interrogator, and pronounces them traitors and worm food after a good three seconds of deliberation. Adama then flips out like some kind of ninja, sending Vipers by the fistful to beat Cain down and get his people back, as Hardcore Cain orders her own set of Vipers in response. Whoa. To be continued in January. Argh!