It's a school day but Willie's playing on his computer in the morning when Sam arrives at the Adama house, calling his "Khairei." He jerks the headphone out of Willie's ear; Joseph is asleep on the couch in his robe, having fully gone there. I don't think I've ever seen a show or movie where the dad goes into full-on couch depression like this, have you? Nancy Botwin, and Jessica Lange in Men Don't Leave, but never the dad. It's terrifying either way, trust me, but this seems more terrifying because it's so unusual. Joe tries to pull it together and take Willie to school, but he's in no shape and Willie doesn't need any of his mess anyway, because nobody but Joe thinks Sam is actually going to take him to school instead of into the movie Goodfellas.

Things right under your nose. I was so in Joe's space the first time I saw this episode that I honestly heard Willie the same way he did: "I'd prefer if Sam took me to school" meant just that at first, and not the opposite. So Joe's going to feel like a totally bad parent when Sam leaves, but then he's going to find out where Sam's taken his kid, and then try to fit them both into a stupid fishing fantasy to get back to when things were normal, and in all of these cases he's just climbing right in the casket with Shannon and Tamara, because that's what we do. And when he leaves Sam's going to try to remind Joe to be a man, to be a Tauron man and all that implies including fatherhood, and Joe is going to laugh and say that he's just a Caprican, like Sam said, which means that he is weak and not a man at all. And through all this, Joe's so ashamed he can't even get mad.

"...First, you be a father. And when you can manage that, maybe I'll introduce you to your son." But that's not the most important thing he says; the most important thing he says is the last thing he says: "Wake up, brother." It's a theme, but it's a song too. A poem by one of my favorites, and who in fifty years will be one of Willie's favorites too:

There is another sky,
Ever serene and fair,
And there is another sunshine,
Though it be darkness there;
Never mind faded forests, Austin,
Never mind silent fields --
Here is a little forest,
Whose leaf is ever green;
Here is a brighter garden,
Where not a frost has been;
In its unfading flowers
I hear the bright bee hum:
Prithee, my brother,
Into my garden come!

When we lose someone, the Tauron ritual reminds us, we go with them into the Underworld. The job -- which we have to do, in their honor -- becomes finding our way home again. That's what Orpheus & Eurydice is about. (Orpheus is about a lot of stuff, but that particular story is about this.) So on one level you have Sam beckoning to his brother, to come back to the "brighter garden." But you also have Tamara, whose violence is echoed in her brother here, sending messages from the Underworld. And in every case, the message is the same: "Wake up." Grief and fear are a dream from which you can eventually wake, if you stay strong.