I have a dirty little secret. When I first saw this episode, I loved it. It might very well be my second favorite episode of season one, the greatness that is “33” being my first favorite. I love that it’s not the standard
Battlestar Galactica fare. It’s not serious or really important to the overall plot, or anything; it’s
comedic and
happy, even, and no one dies to immediately remind you things are ~*serious*~! (“Act of Contrition”, I’m looking at you.)
But that’s not the secret. The secret is that I hated Ellen Tigh. Hated isn’t even a strong enough word to describe how much I despised Ellen Tigh. I can’t even fully explain why, except she seemed so idiotic and she made Saul do stupid things, and there was the alcoholism. I hated her even more after the martial law debacle and worse still, I hated Saul himself because he was so cowed by her.
So how did I go from absolutely hating her to absolutely loving her? It started with New Caprica. My hate of Ellen dissolved, little by little, in four episodes (three and the beginning of the first act of the fourth one, if you want to get technical). Starting with “Occupation”, where we find out she’s frakking Cavil to get her husband out of detention, and culminating in her death, I grew to, well, not really love her yet, but I certainly liked her a hell of a lot more.
The New Caprica arc was the first time I knew she truly loved Saul, just as much (if not more than) as he loved her. “Why did he stay married to her?” Lee asks in this episode. “It’s obvious he loves her deeply,” Laura tells him, and Bill corrects, “
Blindly.” I agreed with that assessment when I first saw the episode, but since then, I’ve come to realize Bill was wrong. Saul isn’t blind to her faults and flaws any more than she is blind to his; he loves her anyway, and she loves him.
In “Exodus, Part Two”, when Ellen tells Saul what she did and then asks for the drink, I started crying. No, seriously! Actual tears and everything, over a character I didn’t even really like. As a matter of fact, I cried more over Ellen’s death than I did Laura’s, and Laura has always been my favorite character. And damn it, I still cry every single time I watch “Exodus, Part Two”.
Anyway, as I mentioned above, I still wasn’t completely in love with Ellen yet. No, my complete and total love for Ellen Tigh wouldn’t come until she was revealed to be the Final Cylon. A part of it was that I did like Ellen now, and another part of it was that I love the Cylons. But one of the major reasons why I loved Ellen as the Final Cylon? She and Saul were the epic love story of Galactica.
I
loved that. Apparently, I am a sucker for dysfunctional couples that really, really loved each other and are actually soul mates. I think another reason why I love Ellen so much is that, particularly after “A Disquiet Follows My Soul”, Laura fell from grace with me. I just couldn’t love her as much as I used to, and I needed someone else to look forward to seeing. Ellen got to be that character and I’m insanely glad she did, because she is
awesome.
And so, that is the story of how I fell in complete and utter love with Ellen Tigh.
( Now onto the actual episode review. )