Tailor-made for the Admiral's son, that little speech. I think I mainly hate Tom because he doesn't lie: he says true stuff with such warped intentions that it makes everything disgusting. He really is like a grosser Romo, isn't he? "Adama entertained it until now because of Roslin. But since she abdicated the throne..." Lee protests, but Tom points out he's done it at least a few times before. "Tell me, what excuse did he give this time when he refused to take your call?" A bridge too far, Lee thinks, too pat, and starts putting it together. He heads off to Galactica, snotting back over his shoulder, "To prove you wrong!" Zarek sits back and waits for the heads to roll; Felix informs the CIC that the imaginary fire has just fictionally taken out both the main and backup communications grids.

Maybe my favorite thing about this episode, besides the pulse-pounding intricacy of it and the way Felix has every corner covered, is the essentially lonely nature of the actual trauma of it. We get to see thirty characters in different parts of the mess, all over this huge ship, and watch them try to figure out their piece of it. And of course, at the same time, they're all convinced it's about them: Caprica won't shut up about her magic baby, and assumes the mutiny is about her; Gaius of course thinks it's because he's such a powerful cult leader that he cannot be suffered by the active parties to continue preaching the gospel; poor fucking Lee still thinks it's about the jump drives; Bill and Laura rightly assume, separately, that it's all about him. And every single rebellionista thinks they're owed something, that they're doing the right thing because it makes it hurt less.

In years past we've talked about how the whole Personal Is Political thing is not, to my ears, all that honest: that the Political is actually just the aggregate motion of a bunch of Personal wills and neuroses, and that pretending your everyday existence is politically meaningful is a great way to do nothing, until you're finally drowning. Well, this is what that looks like: this is politics in action. 39,643 madnesses blending together in different directions, creating the river of history right in front of you. Not pretty. I'm not troubled by the idea that people only ever act on self-interest, because that's obvious, but it's irksome and scary when they take it to the next level of taking choices away from everybody else.