BSG: Everyone Is So Angry

There's a lot of angst in the world, for some reason. No one really ever seems able to get rid of their angst. I assume that if we found a way to eliminate angst, then there wouldn't be either any entertainment or need for entertainment. In this respect, angst in a good thing.


Even in the future, there's a lot of angst. Cheif (who is no longer Cheif, but now Petty Officer Tyrol), Tigh, Adama, Roslin, Baltar - these are all very angsty people.


Take the Cheif for example. He's swamped with greif over his wife's suicide, thinking that it was his position as a Cylon that drove her to such (when really, it was not a suicide, but murder). So angsty is he that, in a dramatic turn from the beginning funeral, where he spoke up one side and down the other on how Callie was the light of his eye, the spring in his step, the dead skin cells in his hair, et cetera, he goes on a drunken tirade, and claims that Callie was a form of settling, that he was really supposed to be with Boomer and that Callie represented a life chosen from a limited stock, a life forced upon him. As a result of his defaming Callie, the Admiral demotes him.

Tyrol has always been one of my favorite characters, simply because his emotions were pretty well guarded. Besides one second season episode, detailing his fear that he, too, is a Cylon (which, wink wink, was true), he was very clouded - his relationship with Callie even more so. I'm not sure what to make of his ramblings - whether or not we're supposed to believe that Callie was settling, and as replusive as he described - but it was a speech I had been waiting for.

Tigh, still trying to find his way without anyone knowing he's lost, attaches himself to the Number Six. He wants to know how to cope with guilt, with everything from Ellen, the wife he murdered, to his own position as a Cylon. Guilt seems to be to Battlestar was fate is to LOST - the overarching theme. The show's supposed to be, underneath, about humanity dealing with guilt. Guilt equals angst, and so on. Six, instead, launches into a speech on her love for Baltar. Tigh hallucinates and sees his Ellen giving the same speech, making Tigh and Baltar interchangable, at least to the women they love.

Oh, and then Tigh asks Six to hit him as hard as she can.

Baltar, angst because his cult was being raided by the ominous sounding Sons of Ares, fights the man. He storms a local church service, acting like Jesus driving out the merchants, and points out something that many people gloss over: Zeus was, in fact, a serial rapist. But he's doing much of this initial stuff against his will. He's actually forced by his hallucinations to march upon armed guards, who beat him senseless. This experience, however, fuels his own Sermon on the Mount type speech. Baltar believing in himself? That's scary.

And I listed Roslin as angsty, but that may very well be simply because she is dying. Can't help that. And this episode she felt like she had to point out at every turn that she really was dying. Though this time it is carrying much more weight than last - look, this is a wig. Look, this is my funeral. Look, this is my love. Will Adama and Roslin ever get over their respect angsts to come out and say that? Maybe in the season finale.

IN OTHER NEWS, Tori thinks herself perfect and sans guilt, Tigh and Six start a fight club, Tigh and Six may have started a relationship, and there were three seconds of Starbuck because the producers could not think of any way to fit her in outside of montage.

Will the crew of Galatica ever get over their angst, make amends with their dads, and finally get the girl who's currently dating the cool kid in school? Only My Chemical Romance knows. But, again, I'm assuming everything will be just peachy at the end.