Before addressing all the insanity on the show last night, I want to point out what’s probably obvious—-the Adama/Roslin love affair is just another example of how television improves dramatically when writers relinquish certain crutches and fears, and instead tell stories that reflect the range of human experience. By finally getting over the rule that middle aged lovers should be shown in a non-passionate, desexualized manner, the writers accomplished the twin goals of writing some of the more intriguing characters on television and also moving forward this incredible mutiny plot that hinges so much on Roslin’s unwillingness to lead. Needless to say, congrats to them for also putting a woman into a role that you never see, outside of maybe “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”—-as the critical leader, without whom the community falls apart. She’s like Jack from “Lost” in that way.
Obviously, after a whopper of an episode like that one, there’s so much to discuss. I appreciated that the writers didn’t pretend that there was any suspense around the question of whether or not Roslin was really going to come back—-over and over it was said that she just needed some time to heal and think about what her new, non-religious life would be like. Which is why I want to focus my post (though I encourage you to talk about whatever aspects of the show you thought were intriguing) on the interesting anti-religious gear shift the show’s taken. I hope it sticks, because that would be brilliant and incredibly brave. It would suck if in fact it was just that everyone had a crisis of faith post-Earth that they recovered from.
But this episode pushed me more into thinking they’re sticking with this theme. It’s not just that Baltar went on a fascinating rant last week where he argued that god should be asking humanity’s forgiveness, though that’s an important issue. After all, when a person realizes that they have a better moral sense than the god they’ve been taught about, they’re either on the path to atheism or towards a fundamentalist worldview that views god’s capricious and cruel nature as all the more reason to fear him and try to curry his favor. The existence of Baltar’s fawning followers has always put his religious convictions into question, but now they’ve become all that more ridiculous. He told them all, to their faces, that he all but doesn’t believe in god, and what’s their response when he runs off to escape the mutiny? “We’ll pray for you.” In one ear and out the other.