Tigh Me Up, Tigh Me Down Episode Review
I promised whyoffry an episode review about a week and a half ago… RL got in the way for a while but here it is! Hope you enjoy!
Such a catchy and meaningful title! Prelude to a good episode!
This whole episode was such a big snark! When I first watched this episode I didn’t, at all, know it was directed by EJO (must have missed the credits) but it was obvious to me it wasn’t one of the regular directors because it was so different (good different!). I giggled so often throughout this episode. This episode also features most of my favorite themes from the season 1 soundtrack.
Now every series has its very special sex episode. For Voyager it was Elogium. Everyone was talking about sex, one way or another. For BSG - this is it.
Gotta start off with the Laura/Bill SQUEE. This was a wonderful A/R episode. The mistrust, the coyness, the flirting! Yeah, Laura’s mistrust was based on Leoben’s “Adama’s a Cylon” whisper in the ear, but she airlocked that machine! And yet... There it is.
This was an episode of funnies, and many of them are Laura’s. For most scenes she’s there as a comic relief of sorts. Kind of weird to say about the President of the Colonies, and such a main character, but for many of the scenes in this episode she’s exactly that. Not only that, she does have other roles, but for this episode she fills the role at least once.
Even though the first scene after the “PREVIOUSLY ON BSG” starts off with Laura, she’s not the main character of this scene. She may seem so, the camera does follow her from behind, it also shows what she’s seeing from above - CIC from various angles, but once she reaches point, or shall I say, person, she is here to see, the camera goes off leaving her behind, making her small in the background as it all of a sudden shows Adama from a lower angle, giving him the power and the lead of the scene. For this moment Laura Roslin is no longer important, so much so that the moment Gaeta is in the scene, the whole of Laura’s upper body disappears behind just his head. Only when Gaeta tells Adama that she is there, and Adama actually starts to look up, does the camera move, the say route Bill’s eyes make, to show her behind Gaeta’s huge head. When Gaeta moves away obviously Laura’s still standing above but she’s not in focus because, ladies and gentlemen, Bill’s not ready to look at her yet, he’s looking at this report he has in front of him, and she’ll only matter when he says she will.
Obviously that pisses Laura off because we get a close up on her face and she ain’t happy. It leads to the world’s wordiest wordless conversation in 6 close ups I’ve ever seen:
1. A close up of Laura from Bill’s angle, looking down at him.
2. A close up of Bill from Laura’s angle, looking up at her.
3. A close up of Laura from Bill’s angle, looking down at him and waving.
4. A close up of Bill from Laura’s angle, looking up at her and waving back.
5. A close up of Laura from Bill’s angle, looking down at him.
6. A close up of Bill from Laura’s angle, looking up at her, then collecting his stuff and turning away.
If that’s not a conversation that says “I’m the president, I don’t trust you, and get your pretty butt up here because I said so, right now!” I don’t know what is.
And now that Adama’s on the same level with Roslin, and he even ordered everyone out, we get the real conversation. Shot in over the shoulder typical conversation mode, this was one of the funniest conversations in this episode. The mistrust flirtation is so funny. Bill talks about Baltar’s tests, how he can only test one person at a time and verification takes hours. Laura asks who should go first and Bill suddenly doesn’t know what she’s talking about? “Oh the tests. Right.” It’s just like… well, men, really. Stop playing around! You have an agenda and she knows it. Silly mind games aren’t going to work. Later on you’ll learn that. But now we’re still in the middle of season 1, Bill doesn’t yet know many things about this woman (like that she has cancer, which is a biggie…). To the naked eye this conversation seems natural, not really planned. But it has been prepared and rehearsed many times. We don’t know Adama to say “uhm” like he doesn’t know what to say or how to phrase something. He doesn’t say much but when he does it has meaning and it is eloquent.
The tone of this conversation resembles an annoying 5 year old’s tone, especially when Bill says “well maybe you should go first!” She doesn’t even dignify this with an answer. She just smiles and looks up at him from above the rims of her glasses.
This is the Fleet’s two leaders going head to head.
He has no chance. (Obviously, because otherwise there wouldn’t be an episode. Also because she’s got the flirtatiousness set on puppy-eyes and giggly laughter. Oh and because she’s on the left, and as we’ve learned in the past, left = strong, right = less so, and this is a stand off between two very strong characters.)
Billy and Dee’s scene gave the whole episode its meaning - everyone around is making out, or is talking about making out, or should be making out (Laura and Bill…), except for one. But we’ll get there.
Gaius Baltar - this one of the episodes that have made Gaius one of my favorite characters. “Is suicide really a sin?” the look in the poor man’s eyes as he looks at all the damned blood samples that he has to check out. The classic music (Bear’s Battlestar Operatica) in the background, the numbers, and the close up on Gaius Baltar that is slowly dollied out to a long shot, showing more and more and more blood samples. So wonderfully done. Balta’rs dancing’s, the beautiful camera work showing just his and Head!Six’s knees, the way Baltar gently grabs the hem of her dress….
… And Starbuck interrupting in the middle.
It wouldn’t be The Sex Episode without Starbuck catching Gaius Baltar with his pants down.
I love that while he’s pulling his pants back on he’s asking what she’s there for and when she says “my blood test” he’s actually disappointed. It’s like he’s thinking “I’m Gaius Baltar, the only reason a woman would come see me is because she wants me!” The fact that Kara’s shaking her head at him makes it even better.
And now we meet the real reason this episode exists. The one and only person aboard Galactica who doesn’t have anyone to get it on with. Tigh has been dealing with his drinking problem since the miniseries. One of the things he’s been trying to drink away is his dead wife, who’s picture we’ve seen before, when he burned a hole in it. (Good thing he did because the woman in the picture is not Kate Vernon.) But it has been a while since the fleet started making its way to Earth, he’s the XO, maybe he should stop drinking, even if it’s tough on him. The beauty of the scene is the montage-like editing. The moment Tigh pulls that picture out of the drawer we get short few-second cuts on the picture, on his face, on his hand, on the paper ball in the garbage. If each of these shots was to be cut on its own without the others we would have no idea what the hell it is trying to say. All we’d get is a hand, or a paper ball, or a picture with a hole. Once all these shots are put together it becomes a montage and it displays Tigh’s decision to go on with his life and stop dwelling on the past.
Off we go to the hanger deck, and lo and behold here be the ground crew pulling Adama’s raptor in.
What do we know about the Humanoid Cylon females so far? They’re hot. All of them. And Six is just the hottest with them legs. What’s the first thing we notice when the camera goes all craning around the raptor as the door opens? Whatdaya know! Sexy legs in red heels? Could it be? Following the camera in we get a moving close up on The Legs but no face, no body, to accompany the legs. And here’s Adama. And he still doesn’t look like a Cylon.
Now I love this shot. After the camera went inside the raptor to see him, Bill now leads the camera out. He’s done being a flyboy, he puts everything back, stands and the camera retreats as he makes his way to the hatch. He pays absolutely no attention to the legs on his right, which might mean that they aren’t really there, something like Baltar’s Head!Six. Once Bill stops at the hatch to ask for permission to come onboard he’s framed by the hatch, the red lights around the door on his left and above him, and because we can’t see the red lights on the right because of the way the camera is positioned, we do get a hint of the sexy leg on the right.
Cylon or not a Cylon? THAT is the real question.
The nice thing about it is that the camera pulls out enough to see Tigh and from where he’s standing he can’t see the sexy leg. It is then that Adama introduces “your wife”. Once he helps her up, Bill Adama is no longer needed in the frame and the frame closes around Ellen. We are seeing this from Tigh’s point of view, and he only really doesn’t care about Bill at the moment so it’s a close up of Ellen’s face. She’s framed by the hatch - framed like she was in the picture, in front of him, in her shockingly pink getup.
Pink’s not red, ladies and gentlemen, and that might be our first indication that she gets the green later.
I’m skipping ahead to my favorite line of the episode:
“Dr. Gaius Baltar, Department of Cylon Detection, how may I direct your call?”
“You’re in a good mood.”
I love the zoom in on Gaius’s face when he realizes just who’s on the other side of the line.
RDM likes to use quick zoom-ins, it gives the required effect for whatever purpose he might want to serve. In this scene it’s the shock of the statement - Baltar’s realizing he’s speaking with the President; Laura’s shock when Baltar tells her Adama cancelled his blood test. Zooms aren’t usually used in film or TV making. They are not that popular as they are with point and shoot cameras. However they are often used in realistic film making. Ever wonder why RDM uses the shaky camera, over the shoulder camera instead of a steady-cam or cameras on dollies?
Imagine this - the boxing scene from unfinished business but it’s not as jumpy, not as shaky. Imagine it shot with a steady-cam (a cameraman wearing a camera-suit that is kept stable at all times by a hydraulic system, it’s used more often than shoulder cameras these days). We’d get a rounder and steadier boxing match. Kind of like the one we got in the Voyager episode where Seven of Nine fights against The Rock. RDM doesn’t want this to be like Voyager. He doesn’t want “just another space show” - he wants this to be real. Shoulder cams are used for realism - like news shows. RDM’s use of realistic TV making is one of the reasons we are so drawn into the BSG world - it’s reported like the news. Laura’s learning that Adama cancelled his blood test is right now, and it’s being reported the moment it happens. Her reaction is so real and so true, she jumps back in her chair that the camera takes another second to catch up with - it’s too quick an action for the camera to follow so it has a nano-second’s delay. It’s real. It’s happening right now. We’re seeing it real time. It’s not Voyager or JAG or Days of Our Lives or West Wing, where none of it is real, it’s just made up. No, this is real. This is happening. These peoples’ worlds have just been destroyed and they are traveling to somewhere that might not exist, and there might be enemy infiltrators in the fleet, and what more so - the commander of the fleet might be one.
Tigh and Roslin’s meeting on Colonial One was so well done. There is absolutely no need to say who these two are speaking about, the whole scene the name Adama doesn’t come up even once, but there’s no need for it. It starts off kind of strange - Tigh is standing up in front of the sitting Roslin, which is supposed to put Roslin in a disadvantage. But she quickly reminds him who she is, who he is, and he seats down. Billy is there, on Tigh’s side, and sitting down, but he’s there as a representative of her’s. She’s power and strength and Tigh better watch out. Mary McDonnell’s acting in this scene is superb - the way she covers up for herself after Tigh tells Laura that his wife’s name is Ellen was done so right, so to the point that he doesn’t notice that there was something wrong for a moment, but we know exactly what she’s thinking.
I love Gaius’s look of madness after Laura asks that he continue Ellen’s test. The poor man has a fleet’s worth of blood samples to do and they keep switching who’s sample he should work on at the moment. Poor man’s got enough on his plate as it is - a Cylon in the head, a whole fleet’s blood sample, and he’s stuck in the middle of the lover’s quarrel? Ugh!
The Dinner Scene - I love Bear McCreary’s theme in the background. I love Ellen’s non-stop chatter and Laura’s barely held back prissiness… The sarcasm, the contempt, ah gotta love that woman for the funnies! The camera is traveling between the occupants of the room. The best part of the scene comes, of course, after the Tighs leave, and Laura, Bill and Lee are left behind to clean up. Eddie’s got a wonderful understanding of the chemistry of the cast, especially the three of them together, because he’s using it for effect: when he explains how Ellen’s been a bad influence on Saul, how she used to bring the self-destructiveness in him, Lee looks up from the table (where the three of them are collecting dishes) and says “used to?” We get a close up on each of them for a brief second as they all pause what they’re doing, and then a quick pull back of the camera to a long shot, they hold steady for another brief moment, and as if with a shake of the head they go back to collecting plates. The only person who can achieve this kind of work is someone who understands the chemistry and knows the actors well enough to have them pull this off.
They must have shot this scene so many times. First of all because of the snark-fest. I am so sure that they all cracked up so many times while shooting this, if only because of Mary’s sarcasm in the scene. Secondly, because there are many shots that couldn’t have been done in one take. For example, the part where Lee gives Ellen her shoe back and she leans on him to put it on - there’s a close up on her grabbing his ass (yum). Just this shot tell me that there were at least 2 takes for the scene because the camera can’t move quite that fast between their faces and Babmer’s ass.
Since there is no way this is an actual closed room, and this is a soundstage, shooting this the way it appears is not possible because the cameras cannot appear in the frame (obviously). What they must have done is shot this one sided - Ellen and Saul’s side first, let’s say (since she appears on frame most the scene), and shot more than once to get enough good material for the editing process. Then they rearranged the scene - rearranged walls behind Lee, reset the scene, probably moved that table around a bit so that the camera has easy access, and then shot the scene again, probably more than once so the editor has enough materials to work with. We can assume it takes about an hour to rearrange walls and recreate the room; this scene must have taken half a day to shoot. Scenes like this one are very complicated, more so than scenes in CIC or just a two-people scene in a room. That’s one of the reasons I loved this scene so much.
Bill, Laura, Lee and Gaius in Baltar’s lab - the two scenes in the lab were like a comedy of errors and Eddie knew exactly how to make it appear so on screen as well as on script. Quick camera movements between speakers, and so not to make it boring, once one of them has a longer sentence than “my fault!” he has a close up on Lee turning his head from Baltar to Roslin so quickly that it gives the impression that he’s following a tennis ball - which his what this conversation is. Once Lee does speak he sounds like a little kid getting between his parents (heehee). This scene is like something out of Altman’s (gods rest his soul) films - all the main characters (of the episode) in one room, all talking at the same time. And Bear’s cartoonish music in the background only makes it better.
Yet it’s obvious who’s leading the scene, and it’s Bill, as usual. Once he starts moving around the lab table the camera follows him. When he says “Cylon!” everyone else shuts up - including the music. It picks up again a moment later when he’s explaining stuff again, only to stop again when Saul tells Bill Laura thinks he might be a Cylon. Eddie’s understanding of the chemistry of his cast prevails again when he puts himself and Michael Hogan face to face for the argument, and they both snap their heads sideways when Saul says Laura thinks Bill is a Cylon. Eddie’s own “I know” only adds to comedy of errors already in place.
This is, again, one of those scenes that must have been shot several times because of the amount of people and the size of the room. Note we don’t get to see a 360 degree view of the room, because, just like with the dinner scene, they can’t show something like that without editing it - it’s a soundstage. So they shot it several times on each side of the room, and probably several times more because they screwed it up - it is a funny scene even without Bear’s awesome soundtrack.
The snark continues after the interruption in CIC and a bit of Cylon Occupied Caprica which I’m not bothering with.
Baltar’s “my pleasure, my job” line cracked me up, mostly because of Eddie’s look when he said “my pleasure”. Laura’s fake smile is back! As if she cares if Ellen’s a Cylon or not, she doesn’t like her and that’s that! The “don’t frak with me” hug was there for our benefit, I think both Ellen and Bill know to stay away from each other, so it’s only us viewers that have to be warned. And a warning like this is just a way to tell us this woman is going to screw with us, with Saul, with Bill, with Laura, with Lee, with Baltar, and this is definitely not the last time we’ll see her. It’s also the best way to end the Sex Episode.
The re-establish shot on everyone after the Green verdict was given - Laura and Lee on one side, Baltar in the center, on his chair, Bill, Ellen and Saul on the other side gives a slightly unbalanced feel to the scene, just like this whole episode has been. We know Baltar’s imagining Head!Six when he’s sitting there so she is sort of part of the closing shot, but her presence, even if only in our minds (pun most definitely intended) puts the scene in even more of an unbalance.
What a great way to end the best episode of the series yet.
Comments are love
Such a catchy and meaningful title! Prelude to a good episode!
This whole episode was such a big snark! When I first watched this episode I didn’t, at all, know it was directed by EJO (must have missed the credits) but it was obvious to me it wasn’t one of the regular directors because it was so different (good different!). I giggled so often throughout this episode. This episode also features most of my favorite themes from the season 1 soundtrack.
Now every series has its very special sex episode. For Voyager it was Elogium. Everyone was talking about sex, one way or another. For BSG - this is it.
Gotta start off with the Laura/Bill SQUEE. This was a wonderful A/R episode. The mistrust, the coyness, the flirting! Yeah, Laura’s mistrust was based on Leoben’s “Adama’s a Cylon” whisper in the ear, but she airlocked that machine! And yet... There it is.
This was an episode of funnies, and many of them are Laura’s. For most scenes she’s there as a comic relief of sorts. Kind of weird to say about the President of the Colonies, and such a main character, but for many of the scenes in this episode she’s exactly that. Not only that, she does have other roles, but for this episode she fills the role at least once.
Even though the first scene after the “PREVIOUSLY ON BSG” starts off with Laura, she’s not the main character of this scene. She may seem so, the camera does follow her from behind, it also shows what she’s seeing from above - CIC from various angles, but once she reaches point, or shall I say, person, she is here to see, the camera goes off leaving her behind, making her small in the background as it all of a sudden shows Adama from a lower angle, giving him the power and the lead of the scene. For this moment Laura Roslin is no longer important, so much so that the moment Gaeta is in the scene, the whole of Laura’s upper body disappears behind just his head. Only when Gaeta tells Adama that she is there, and Adama actually starts to look up, does the camera move, the say route Bill’s eyes make, to show her behind Gaeta’s huge head. When Gaeta moves away obviously Laura’s still standing above but she’s not in focus because, ladies and gentlemen, Bill’s not ready to look at her yet, he’s looking at this report he has in front of him, and she’ll only matter when he says she will.
Obviously that pisses Laura off because we get a close up on her face and she ain’t happy. It leads to the world’s wordiest wordless conversation in 6 close ups I’ve ever seen:
1. A close up of Laura from Bill’s angle, looking down at him.
2. A close up of Bill from Laura’s angle, looking up at her.
3. A close up of Laura from Bill’s angle, looking down at him and waving.
4. A close up of Bill from Laura’s angle, looking up at her and waving back.
5. A close up of Laura from Bill’s angle, looking down at him.
6. A close up of Bill from Laura’s angle, looking up at her, then collecting his stuff and turning away.
If that’s not a conversation that says “I’m the president, I don’t trust you, and get your pretty butt up here because I said so, right now!” I don’t know what is.
And now that Adama’s on the same level with Roslin, and he even ordered everyone out, we get the real conversation. Shot in over the shoulder typical conversation mode, this was one of the funniest conversations in this episode. The mistrust flirtation is so funny. Bill talks about Baltar’s tests, how he can only test one person at a time and verification takes hours. Laura asks who should go first and Bill suddenly doesn’t know what she’s talking about? “Oh the tests. Right.” It’s just like… well, men, really. Stop playing around! You have an agenda and she knows it. Silly mind games aren’t going to work. Later on you’ll learn that. But now we’re still in the middle of season 1, Bill doesn’t yet know many things about this woman (like that she has cancer, which is a biggie…). To the naked eye this conversation seems natural, not really planned. But it has been prepared and rehearsed many times. We don’t know Adama to say “uhm” like he doesn’t know what to say or how to phrase something. He doesn’t say much but when he does it has meaning and it is eloquent.
The tone of this conversation resembles an annoying 5 year old’s tone, especially when Bill says “well maybe you should go first!” She doesn’t even dignify this with an answer. She just smiles and looks up at him from above the rims of her glasses.
This is the Fleet’s two leaders going head to head.
He has no chance. (Obviously, because otherwise there wouldn’t be an episode. Also because she’s got the flirtatiousness set on puppy-eyes and giggly laughter. Oh and because she’s on the left, and as we’ve learned in the past, left = strong, right = less so, and this is a stand off between two very strong characters.)
Billy and Dee’s scene gave the whole episode its meaning - everyone around is making out, or is talking about making out, or should be making out (Laura and Bill…), except for one. But we’ll get there.
Gaius Baltar - this one of the episodes that have made Gaius one of my favorite characters. “Is suicide really a sin?” the look in the poor man’s eyes as he looks at all the damned blood samples that he has to check out. The classic music (Bear’s Battlestar Operatica) in the background, the numbers, and the close up on Gaius Baltar that is slowly dollied out to a long shot, showing more and more and more blood samples. So wonderfully done. Balta’rs dancing’s, the beautiful camera work showing just his and Head!Six’s knees, the way Baltar gently grabs the hem of her dress….
… And Starbuck interrupting in the middle.
It wouldn’t be The Sex Episode without Starbuck catching Gaius Baltar with his pants down.
I love that while he’s pulling his pants back on he’s asking what she’s there for and when she says “my blood test” he’s actually disappointed. It’s like he’s thinking “I’m Gaius Baltar, the only reason a woman would come see me is because she wants me!” The fact that Kara’s shaking her head at him makes it even better.
And now we meet the real reason this episode exists. The one and only person aboard Galactica who doesn’t have anyone to get it on with. Tigh has been dealing with his drinking problem since the miniseries. One of the things he’s been trying to drink away is his dead wife, who’s picture we’ve seen before, when he burned a hole in it. (Good thing he did because the woman in the picture is not Kate Vernon.) But it has been a while since the fleet started making its way to Earth, he’s the XO, maybe he should stop drinking, even if it’s tough on him. The beauty of the scene is the montage-like editing. The moment Tigh pulls that picture out of the drawer we get short few-second cuts on the picture, on his face, on his hand, on the paper ball in the garbage. If each of these shots was to be cut on its own without the others we would have no idea what the hell it is trying to say. All we’d get is a hand, or a paper ball, or a picture with a hole. Once all these shots are put together it becomes a montage and it displays Tigh’s decision to go on with his life and stop dwelling on the past.
Off we go to the hanger deck, and lo and behold here be the ground crew pulling Adama’s raptor in.
What do we know about the Humanoid Cylon females so far? They’re hot. All of them. And Six is just the hottest with them legs. What’s the first thing we notice when the camera goes all craning around the raptor as the door opens? Whatdaya know! Sexy legs in red heels? Could it be? Following the camera in we get a moving close up on The Legs but no face, no body, to accompany the legs. And here’s Adama. And he still doesn’t look like a Cylon.
Now I love this shot. After the camera went inside the raptor to see him, Bill now leads the camera out. He’s done being a flyboy, he puts everything back, stands and the camera retreats as he makes his way to the hatch. He pays absolutely no attention to the legs on his right, which might mean that they aren’t really there, something like Baltar’s Head!Six. Once Bill stops at the hatch to ask for permission to come onboard he’s framed by the hatch, the red lights around the door on his left and above him, and because we can’t see the red lights on the right because of the way the camera is positioned, we do get a hint of the sexy leg on the right.
Cylon or not a Cylon? THAT is the real question.
The nice thing about it is that the camera pulls out enough to see Tigh and from where he’s standing he can’t see the sexy leg. It is then that Adama introduces “your wife”. Once he helps her up, Bill Adama is no longer needed in the frame and the frame closes around Ellen. We are seeing this from Tigh’s point of view, and he only really doesn’t care about Bill at the moment so it’s a close up of Ellen’s face. She’s framed by the hatch - framed like she was in the picture, in front of him, in her shockingly pink getup.
Pink’s not red, ladies and gentlemen, and that might be our first indication that she gets the green later.
I’m skipping ahead to my favorite line of the episode:
“Dr. Gaius Baltar, Department of Cylon Detection, how may I direct your call?”
“You’re in a good mood.”
I love the zoom in on Gaius’s face when he realizes just who’s on the other side of the line.
RDM likes to use quick zoom-ins, it gives the required effect for whatever purpose he might want to serve. In this scene it’s the shock of the statement - Baltar’s realizing he’s speaking with the President; Laura’s shock when Baltar tells her Adama cancelled his blood test. Zooms aren’t usually used in film or TV making. They are not that popular as they are with point and shoot cameras. However they are often used in realistic film making. Ever wonder why RDM uses the shaky camera, over the shoulder camera instead of a steady-cam or cameras on dollies?
Imagine this - the boxing scene from unfinished business but it’s not as jumpy, not as shaky. Imagine it shot with a steady-cam (a cameraman wearing a camera-suit that is kept stable at all times by a hydraulic system, it’s used more often than shoulder cameras these days). We’d get a rounder and steadier boxing match. Kind of like the one we got in the Voyager episode where Seven of Nine fights against The Rock. RDM doesn’t want this to be like Voyager. He doesn’t want “just another space show” - he wants this to be real. Shoulder cams are used for realism - like news shows. RDM’s use of realistic TV making is one of the reasons we are so drawn into the BSG world - it’s reported like the news. Laura’s learning that Adama cancelled his blood test is right now, and it’s being reported the moment it happens. Her reaction is so real and so true, she jumps back in her chair that the camera takes another second to catch up with - it’s too quick an action for the camera to follow so it has a nano-second’s delay. It’s real. It’s happening right now. We’re seeing it real time. It’s not Voyager or JAG or Days of Our Lives or West Wing, where none of it is real, it’s just made up. No, this is real. This is happening. These peoples’ worlds have just been destroyed and they are traveling to somewhere that might not exist, and there might be enemy infiltrators in the fleet, and what more so - the commander of the fleet might be one.
Tigh and Roslin’s meeting on Colonial One was so well done. There is absolutely no need to say who these two are speaking about, the whole scene the name Adama doesn’t come up even once, but there’s no need for it. It starts off kind of strange - Tigh is standing up in front of the sitting Roslin, which is supposed to put Roslin in a disadvantage. But she quickly reminds him who she is, who he is, and he seats down. Billy is there, on Tigh’s side, and sitting down, but he’s there as a representative of her’s. She’s power and strength and Tigh better watch out. Mary McDonnell’s acting in this scene is superb - the way she covers up for herself after Tigh tells Laura that his wife’s name is Ellen was done so right, so to the point that he doesn’t notice that there was something wrong for a moment, but we know exactly what she’s thinking.
I love Gaius’s look of madness after Laura asks that he continue Ellen’s test. The poor man has a fleet’s worth of blood samples to do and they keep switching who’s sample he should work on at the moment. Poor man’s got enough on his plate as it is - a Cylon in the head, a whole fleet’s blood sample, and he’s stuck in the middle of the lover’s quarrel? Ugh!
The Dinner Scene - I love Bear McCreary’s theme in the background. I love Ellen’s non-stop chatter and Laura’s barely held back prissiness… The sarcasm, the contempt, ah gotta love that woman for the funnies! The camera is traveling between the occupants of the room. The best part of the scene comes, of course, after the Tighs leave, and Laura, Bill and Lee are left behind to clean up. Eddie’s got a wonderful understanding of the chemistry of the cast, especially the three of them together, because he’s using it for effect: when he explains how Ellen’s been a bad influence on Saul, how she used to bring the self-destructiveness in him, Lee looks up from the table (where the three of them are collecting dishes) and says “used to?” We get a close up on each of them for a brief second as they all pause what they’re doing, and then a quick pull back of the camera to a long shot, they hold steady for another brief moment, and as if with a shake of the head they go back to collecting plates. The only person who can achieve this kind of work is someone who understands the chemistry and knows the actors well enough to have them pull this off.
They must have shot this scene so many times. First of all because of the snark-fest. I am so sure that they all cracked up so many times while shooting this, if only because of Mary’s sarcasm in the scene. Secondly, because there are many shots that couldn’t have been done in one take. For example, the part where Lee gives Ellen her shoe back and she leans on him to put it on - there’s a close up on her grabbing his ass (yum). Just this shot tell me that there were at least 2 takes for the scene because the camera can’t move quite that fast between their faces and Babmer’s ass.
Since there is no way this is an actual closed room, and this is a soundstage, shooting this the way it appears is not possible because the cameras cannot appear in the frame (obviously). What they must have done is shot this one sided - Ellen and Saul’s side first, let’s say (since she appears on frame most the scene), and shot more than once to get enough good material for the editing process. Then they rearranged the scene - rearranged walls behind Lee, reset the scene, probably moved that table around a bit so that the camera has easy access, and then shot the scene again, probably more than once so the editor has enough materials to work with. We can assume it takes about an hour to rearrange walls and recreate the room; this scene must have taken half a day to shoot. Scenes like this one are very complicated, more so than scenes in CIC or just a two-people scene in a room. That’s one of the reasons I loved this scene so much.
Bill, Laura, Lee and Gaius in Baltar’s lab - the two scenes in the lab were like a comedy of errors and Eddie knew exactly how to make it appear so on screen as well as on script. Quick camera movements between speakers, and so not to make it boring, once one of them has a longer sentence than “my fault!” he has a close up on Lee turning his head from Baltar to Roslin so quickly that it gives the impression that he’s following a tennis ball - which his what this conversation is. Once Lee does speak he sounds like a little kid getting between his parents (heehee). This scene is like something out of Altman’s (gods rest his soul) films - all the main characters (of the episode) in one room, all talking at the same time. And Bear’s cartoonish music in the background only makes it better.
Yet it’s obvious who’s leading the scene, and it’s Bill, as usual. Once he starts moving around the lab table the camera follows him. When he says “Cylon!” everyone else shuts up - including the music. It picks up again a moment later when he’s explaining stuff again, only to stop again when Saul tells Bill Laura thinks he might be a Cylon. Eddie’s understanding of the chemistry of his cast prevails again when he puts himself and Michael Hogan face to face for the argument, and they both snap their heads sideways when Saul says Laura thinks Bill is a Cylon. Eddie’s own “I know” only adds to comedy of errors already in place.
This is, again, one of those scenes that must have been shot several times because of the amount of people and the size of the room. Note we don’t get to see a 360 degree view of the room, because, just like with the dinner scene, they can’t show something like that without editing it - it’s a soundstage. So they shot it several times on each side of the room, and probably several times more because they screwed it up - it is a funny scene even without Bear’s awesome soundtrack.
The snark continues after the interruption in CIC and a bit of Cylon Occupied Caprica which I’m not bothering with.
Baltar’s “my pleasure, my job” line cracked me up, mostly because of Eddie’s look when he said “my pleasure”. Laura’s fake smile is back! As if she cares if Ellen’s a Cylon or not, she doesn’t like her and that’s that! The “don’t frak with me” hug was there for our benefit, I think both Ellen and Bill know to stay away from each other, so it’s only us viewers that have to be warned. And a warning like this is just a way to tell us this woman is going to screw with us, with Saul, with Bill, with Laura, with Lee, with Baltar, and this is definitely not the last time we’ll see her. It’s also the best way to end the Sex Episode.
The re-establish shot on everyone after the Green verdict was given - Laura and Lee on one side, Baltar in the center, on his chair, Bill, Ellen and Saul on the other side gives a slightly unbalanced feel to the scene, just like this whole episode has been. We know Baltar’s imagining Head!Six when he’s sitting there so she is sort of part of the closing shot, but her presence, even if only in our minds (pun most definitely intended) puts the scene in even more of an unbalance.
What a great way to end the best episode of the series yet.
Comments are love