(Here's Tom Wolfe, who has provided prophetic episode titles for us before, from Look Homeward, Angel, the title of which alone could be the subtitle of this show ... but which is even more fucked up when you think about the fact that its title comes from a poem by Milton, whose Paradise Lost provides a narrative map to this episode, this show, most stories and shows in the last hundred years or so, postmodernism/poststructuralism, Gnosticism, Ellen's life, Kara's and Cavil's relationships with their respective mothers, and who influenced Sartre more than he would ever admit), and which Sam is, in parts italicized by yours truly, quoting, but whose every word was a mystery and a door:

"A stone, a leaf, an unfound door; of a stone, a leaf, a door. And of all the forgotten faces. Naked and alone we came into exile. In her dark womb we did not know our mother's face; from the prison of her flesh we come into the unspeakable and incommunicable prison of this earth. Which of us has known his brother? Which of us has looked into his father's heart? Which of us has not remained forever prison-pent? Which of us is not forever a stranger and alone? O waste of loss, in the hot mazes, lost, among bright stars on this most weary unbright cinder, lost! Remembering speechlessly we seek the great forgotten language, the lost lane-end into heaven, a stone, a leaf, an unfound door. Where? When? O lost, and by the wind grieved, ghost, come back again..."

I mean, that's this show. I love Wolfe, but that particular passage is not only Jacob catnip but also this show. That's Cavil talking, and Kara talking, and the Hybrid, and Three at the moment of her crisis, and Gaius at his, but also Sam, right now, talking literally, saying these words. I'm not making it up, folks; it seemed obvious to me that I never was. And all this shit is implicit. Real but implicit, and for once I don't feel guilty about spending so much time on it, because for once I actually get to know for a fact that it's not entirely masturbatory. What interests me about this story is not the factual shit but what everyone's going to do about it. The intertwining relationship between Ellen and John, MILF/SILF/MILF, and Boomer getting queened; Kara and Sam playing Pyramid defense against the clock one last time; Laura and Lee, Chief and Bill. Those are the building blocks of this last act; this information is just what we need to go there. And I hope that I can meet the challenge and remind us of the eight to ten pages of chronology this recap started with, when it's time to toss that data into the moving parts of this show, because this engine is spinning up and it'll take a hand if you're not careful.