The bright spot of this episode was the extraordinary performance of Tricia Helfer. The most revealing conveyance of thought comes with the subtlety of body lanquage. Body lanquage....the DNA of communication. The moment Six looked onto Saul's face and spoke (more to herself).... "That's not what you need!".... it revealed the true humanity....of a cylon. The tragic soul. The words were almost an afterthought. It was her eyes that betrayed the fact that to understand....truly understand, the suffering of another, you must have your own experience of suffering. Helfer's eyes was an emotional vortex, a portal to a soul crying to be loved. It was a masterful piece of work.

A colleague of mine wondered to me why Saul and the others don't go to Sharon for help. The reason the Galactica cylons don't seek out Sharon is because of her history of loyalty to the humans. If I were them I too, would be hesitant. As I have often pointed out, Sharon has assisted in helping the humans on multiple occasions, once even making possible the destruction of an entire cylon fleet. Now she did not betray Cavill as a cylon last season, but that was when she was considered a hostile prisoner. It's a completely different circumstance now. Whether fans of the show like Sharon or not, trust her or not, the reality is her status quo on the Galactica is that she is a loyal officer on the fleet (At least for now unless the writers change it later). It's a matter of perception to the Galactica cylons.

Having said that, Sharon may or may not be sympathetic to the G-cylons. Sympathetic in the sense of trying to help them or advise them while keeping her loyalty to the humans. They may eventually seek Sharon out, but Tigh and the others cannot afford to be wrong, so the risk is probably just too great.

It has been a melancholy week for me without the appearance of the heavenly Grace Park.

I think Tigh seeing Ellen is his accidental discovery of the Cylon's ability to "project" their surrounding.

so after a sort of looking-glass view of the Us' involvement in iraq, we're gonna now get take on the foundation of early christianity?

heh.

'baltar christ, suuuuuperstar...'

Did anyone else think the scene near the end where it flashes to the Demetrius somewhat odd? On first watch, I thought Baltar's lines about finally finding out who we really are were centered around Kara. Could have been directed towards Anders, but to me it just seemed like it was meant to indicate Anders was going to find out who Kara really is.

the sci fi hd signal on comcast is horrible. It pixelates on me like crazy. I may just have to go back to the sd signal on the DVR.

I think the show will be better off for these sidetracked/melodramatic episodes in a "Lost, season 3" sort of way. I have faith that it will finish big and that what we're learning now will help us at that time. ...I hope.

On a side note, I'm watching the show on SciFi HD on Comcast and the audio sucks. The dialog is so low that I have to crank it. I'm missing a lot of Baltar's pontificating. Sure, Adama has always been a low-talker, but this mix is crap. Anyone else having this problem?

Decent episode but now we have Fight Club Baltar and Kara Crichton on the show. What happened to the originality of it?

im a little confused... DOES ANYONE THINK THAT THE GIVE US A HUGE REVELATION IN THESE EPI??? For frak sake!!! (sorry, couldn't help miself :) ... head six can actually interact with the word... SHE FRAKIN PICK HIM UP OF THE FLOOR!!!, (i'm with the blue screen... no way he can't act like he was been pick up like they show).
I just saw the epi, and for me anyway, one of the bigest misteries of the series is the head six (is baltar crazy, did the cylons implant something in his mind, does he share a special connection with six, is he a cylon... etc). The fact that she can do somenthing like she did in these epi really let me totally lost, i really have no idea what the frak head six is or what does she whant... WICH I LOVE!!!.
About tight and the chief visions... we are forgeting that the cylons can do something that human can't wich is 'projecting' an environment of their choice on the real/physical world, so like that they proyect the presence of a dead wife in someone elses body, or sooting adama (like a proyection of tight fears), same goes to the chief.

I don't know if I'm the only one, but I've been pretty disappointed with this final season thus far. The first episode was pretty good, but it's gotten too dark and melodramatic for my tastes. I mean,.. BSG was a pretty dark show to begin with, but now it seems like everyone has major issues and it's not getting any better. I have no problem with the fact that four of the final five are on the ship, or even the casting of them, but I don't like the direction they are taking these four. Anders seems like the most sane one of the bunch, and that's probably just because he hasn't been featured much.

About the only thing I think is entertaining as such is the discord in the Cylon fleet. It's intriguing, but we haven't seen much more of that.

Last season received a lot of complaints that the series had turned too melodramatic, but I defended the show saying that the writers needed to flesh out the characters and that not all shows can be filled with adventure. But at this point I feel BSG has stepped way too far away from it's roots and is getting as slow as molasses.

"I actually found the Baltar storyline very interesting. Like any religious cult -- and I'm not sure sure we can call it a cult; I mean, Jesus might be called a cult leader today -- trying to silence it will only make it stronger and it's odd that Roslin doesn't get that."

Oh, I think she gets it, she's just between a rock and a hard place there. In her conversation with Adama, she mentioned that she doesn't want to make a martyr out of Baltar and gift him with even more notoriety, but at the same time she has seen what life under his control was like, and doesn't feel she can allow that either.

In the end, it comes down to (roughly) weighing whether or how to block him politically & religiously, knowing that she's running the risk of boosting him both ways if things go wrong.

It's not *quite* that she made the wrong call, but that there wasn't a right call to make.