Battlestar Galactica Reviews: Taking a Break From All Your Worries (Episode 3.12)

Reviews:
Episode Name: Taking a Break From All Your Worries
Episode Number: 312
Written by: Michael Taylor
Directed by: Edward James Olmos
Original Air Date: 1/28/07 on SciFi Channel
Review Posted: 2/2/07

Teaser:

The Baltar/Inner Six duet was a great opening even as it covered a Kara and Anders sighting in her bunk. The torture has begun with sleep deprivation. It took less than a minute for the episode to draw its first parallel to the techniques being used in those secret CIA prisons. What's Gaeta up to? Wonder if he's hoping to reconcile or maybe he's still mad about the execution orders that Baltar signed. We've lost count of how many times we (and Baltar himself) have been teased about his possibly being a Cylon. Yet the writers managed to pull it off again.

Oh well, it appears that Baltar isn't really a Cylon.again. But until he's dead and stays dead, or all twelve Cylon models are revealed, we really won't know for sure. Now that they've teased Baltar resurrection about all that's left is teasing that he's one of the Final Five. Also of note is that Baltar is again relieved when he thinks he's a Cylon because it would mean that he hasn't betrayed anyone. Guess in Baltar's book, murder is okay as long as he's not killing members of his own race. And three Sixes at once. we don't get that treat nearly enough.

Act 1:
The bar makes its first appearance. Tyrol is supposedly surprised to find it's on his hangar deck. What has he been doing since he got back to Galactica? Obviously, he hasn't been keeping tabs on the goings-on on the hangar deck. We also know that part of the hangar deck has been partitioned off for civilians and that there is a second hangar deck, but this stretches the story credibility a bit. Well, more than a bit. It would make more sense if someone who serves elsewhere on the ship like Gaeta or Cottle wouldn't know about the bar, but Tyrol? Of course, Tyrol is the only other main character that is married to a non-Cylon, so Lee has to be able to talk to him about marriage at the bar.

Meanwhile, up in Adama's quarters, the powers that be decide that sleep deprivation is just going to drive Baltar mad and he'll continue to try to harm himself. Since they need information, he needs to be kept alive and sane, which Adama basically orders Cottle to do. Gaeta was along for the discussion and Roslin questions what he was doing there. That throwaway might actually be the seed of suspicion upon Gaeta, although Adama quickly accepts Gaeta's explanation.

Thankfully, the SciFi promo that followed the last episode is shaping up to be misleading since it took midway into Act 1 to finally crank up the soap opera with some Lee and Dee interaction. The Dee-detractors are going to go after her character (and likely the actress) for this scene, but neither actor had much to work with. The scene was short, but we still would have preferred it be half as long as it was. We know they have problems, so just throw out the bar and then the dinner and then sleep. Voila. We're in and out of the scene in twenty seconds or less rather than feeling uncomfortable as the scene had more than it's share of awkward pauses and snarky dialogue.

The sequence got intentionally chaotic, but Mary McDonnell and James Callis both played it nicely. On the heels of the Lee/Dee scene, this sequence is again a reminder that Callis, McDonnell, Olmos and Hogan consistently perform on another level that the rest of the cast rarely reach. Roslin again shows her cold and dispassionate side and since she really did airlock Leoben, it was conceivable that the character would do the same to Baltar. Although, we never believed that the writers would do it just as Baltar didn't look to really believe that she would do it. One last thing, Roslin finally mentions seeing Baltar with "that blonde woman." Who knew that the writers would manage to keep Roslin from making that direct accusation to Baltar for an entire season?

Continue to Act 2 & Act 3

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