Battlestar Galactica Is Trying to Ruin My Sex Life.

Hit the jump for a spoiler-filled rundown of last night’s episode, “Deadlock,” and a place to jump in with your own thoughts. Namely, I’m curious to hear your opinions on whether or not you’ll EVER BE ABLE HAVE SEX AGAIN FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE. Again, no spoilers at this point, but let’s just sum it up with how Starbuck described the couple in question: “It was like watching my parents make out.”

Onward.

Here’s my answer to that question about every being able to have sex again after watching gross ol’ Ellen clamber on top of a whimpering ol’ Tigh and rip off his eyepatch: NO. A thousand times no.

Other than that, “Deadlock” felt like pretty middle-of-the-road episode. Following last week’s exhausting info-dump, “Everything You Always Wanted to Know About the Political, Moral, and Technological Intricacies of Cylon History (But Were Afraid to Ask),” “Deadlock” set about trying to move the overall story forward—an admirable intent in theory, if not execution. Alas, the way “Deadlock” chose to move things forward was by channeling the soap-operatic story cues of The O.C.

Those who know of my deep love for The O.C. (watch this! it’s great!) might be surprised to hear of my distaste for this tactic on Battlestar, but it felt incredibly out of place and shoddy, I think. Mostly because the one who was behind all of the soap-operatics was Ellen.

ARGH. ELLEN. More on her in a bit.

Things I liked about this episode:

How Gaius got his groove back. I was never a big fan of the Gaius Baltar Sex Cult™ that he had for a while there, but last night he got back together with them and actually did something interesting/useful: He used them to start scheming again. For entirely too long, Baltar’s been relegated to the sidelines; last night, in his battle for supremacy over the GBSC™ , he once again started lying his ass of once again to gain power. It’s good to have him back, and I hope he sticks around. (And if his lines to Adama about Galactica “slipping away from you” and becoming a “blended ship” are any indication, he will.)

Jesus, was that really all I liked last night? Maybe I disliked this episode more than I thought, ’cause here’s all the stuff I could have done without:

Ellen. So on last week’s episode, we met a very different Ellen than the one we were used to. Now that we know Ellen’s the fifth Cylon—and more than that, one of the great masterminds of all things Cylon—she became a whole different character in a lot of ways. In other words, last week she proved to be something more than an annoying skank who did nothing more than run around causing trouble in the fleet. True, she was a little too self-help-y and preachy and cloying last week, but her character also felt smarter, stronger, and roughly a thousand times more interesting and important.

Last night more or less all of that disappeared. Turns out—well, Ellen said it best, I guess, when she immediately started boozin’ it up again and declared, “I’m still Ellen, you know!” (Cue the sound of a million palms smacking into foreheads.) And yep, Ellen she was—putting aside the future of the Cylon race, she instead started focusing on once again being all annoying and possessive and guilt-trippy as soon as she found out about Tigh’s relationship with Caprica Six. A revelation that just so happened to come shortly after….

The most boner-killing sex scene of all time. I know I addressed this above, but jesus christ. AND ALSO: Come on! So you’re telling me Tigh has Caprica Six waiting for him back in his quarters and he’s still going to bone ol’ crazy-eyed Ellen? No. Not going to happen. Ever. And then, as if the whole “You know what’ll really set the mood? If I look at your dried-out eye socket!” thing wasn’t enough, then Ellen has to ruin the pillow talk by flipping her shit once she finds out Tigh’s been doin’ it with Six. “You just can’t stop poisoning me!” the shrew whines to Tigh as he zips up. It once again proves the time-honored maxim, “Ain’t nothin’ better than having creepy sex with your gross ex-wife, especially if as soon as you’re done she gives you a huge guilt trip.”

What the return of old Ellen did to Tigh. Tigh has been so fucking badass of late—pretty much from the moment he poisoned Ellen onward, he’s been fantastic to watch. But as soon as Cylon Ellen’s back in the picture? He goes back to being her whipping boy, with that pained, panicked look in his eyes and nothing interesting to do unless it’s in direct reaction to his ex-wife.

Adama just walking around and looking worried. The only person who did anything less in this episode than Adama was Starbuck, who I think just had a drink in the bar. Adama, meanwhile, just meandered around and watched as people slathered Cylon Silly Putty all over his ship. Granted, I had a beer or two in me when this was happening, but weren’t there like 25 different scenes that consisted of nothing but Adama looking at an I-beam, furrowing his brow, walking a few more feet, looking at another I-beam, and furrowing his brow again?

The way Caprica Six clutched her stomach every time Tigh made eyes at Ellen. And then her baby apparently DIES because Tigh still loves Ellen or something? I swear to god, if they fucking say that the only way a Cylon baby can survive is because of a mystical love connection between the parents, I’m gonna… I’m gonna…. oh, fine. I can’t do anything. I will, at most, act all pissy about it in a blog post. But come on. That is some goofy bullshit. In fact, as far as goofy bullshit in sci-fi goes, is roughly equal to dying of a broken heart.

Wash selling DirectTV. God, wish they’d stop showing this commercial. True, it’s not quite as depressing as those commercials that had Inara selling maxi pads or whatever, but goddamn. About they only thing they could air during Battlestar‘s breaks that would be more of a buzzkill would be this.

Things I am, at this point, more or less ambivalent about, but would like to see explored more. So when the Cylons decided to leave the fleet? That was interesting, and I’m curious to see if they’re going to explain why—mostly because at this point, I’m not sure I understand what makes any of these characters, be they Cylon or human, different from one another.

At the start of Battlestar, there was a clear delineation between human and Cylon—they were two different races, each of which hated the other. But if the last few episodes have proven anything, it’s that the humans and Cylons aren’t nearly as far apart as they once thought they were—indeed, they’re more or less exactly the same, right? They’re variations on a theme, or different incarnations of the same race. Battlestar‘s writers have worked so goddamn hard to blur the lines between Cylon and human that, at this point, it’s hard to see why anyone aside from eeeevil Cavil would feel a strong need to redraw them. Tori says something about it being for “the survival of the original thirteenth tribe in its purest form” (RACIST), even as Tigh points out that in terms of races surviving and whatnot, “pure human doesn’t work, pure Cylon doesn’t work.” Can someone explain to me why, after episodes upon episodes showing the Cylons teaming up with the humans so that both races can better survive, they’re still pretending that they aren’t all codependent on each other?

Also, since we haven’t seen it for a while and there was that whole half-assed “Cally slept with Hot Dog!” thing, I’m going to assume that Chief just gave up the custody of his little boiled cabbage-reeking toddler to Hot Dog, and Hot Dog’s taking care of it now while Chief slathers Silly Putty around the inside of Galactica. Either that, or they just did the sensible thing and airlocked it, just like its mother. WHAT?