"Unfinished Business"
Airdate: Friday, December 1st, 2006

I love this episode so much. I love the detail-rich focus on key characters and relationships. I love that it is placed exactly here in the season 3 sequence -- late enough to be intensely satisfying, early enough to still be meaningful. I love the way that it makes you feel elated and devastated at exactly the same time. Most of all, I love that Adama and Roslin get totally high and drunk and maybe possibly Do It in the hot New Caprican sand.

Finally, we get a few glimpses of the heady early days of New Caprica, back when the colonists were still hopeful and the weed flowed plentifully and President Baltar seemed marginally sober.  But we need some sort of metaphoresque backdrop for all of these flashbacks, so we get a present-day boxing match. All of our favorite Galacticans get together and blow off steam by beating the crap out of each other. Yay!

Bratty Starbuck is in the midst of all the action, making bratty remarks and wearing some weird cargo shorts and kind of awesomely referring to Sharon and Helo as "the fighting Agathons." She's also fresh off a booty call with poor Anders, who still wants to make their marriage work for some unfathomable reason.  And we pretty much know that this is all leading up to her and Lee getting in the ring together, but first, we're finally going to find out what happened between them on New Caprica, back before Lee got all fat. 

In the flashbacks, there's lots of celebrating, drinking and olde thyme folky dancing going on. (I know olde thyme folky dancing is sort of the thing to show in these situations, but wouldn't it have been awesome if they had shown the New Capricans busting a move to, I don't know,  Fergie telling us how she is so de-li-cious?)  Wimpy Anders and Dualla pack it in early, so drunk Kara and Lee wander off and get it on and scream their declarations of love into the echo-y night sky. I will say that I have not always been completely onboard with the Starpollo 'ship, only because I saw their dynamic going in a more sibling-like direction. But at some point, I caved, and this eppy just sealed the deal. So these flashback scenes are really beautiful and satisfying and just for a moment we see these two constantly tortured characters being genuinely happy. And this is one of those parts where I get happy and sad at the same time, because I know that one of them is going to do something to frak it up.

Turns out it's Starbuck. Good ol' intimacy-fearing Starbuck.  She wakes up next to Lee, freaks out, and marries Anders. Like, right away. Like, before Lee even gets dressed. It's painful and horrible and the looks on both Lee and Kara's faces convey about 500 different levels of emotion. I actually started punching one of my viewing companions and screeching, "This! Is! So! SAD!!" I guess this is why Lee got fat. I can't blame him since just watching all this torment makes me want to go inhale the entire contents of Trader Joe's freezer section. But you know, in a good way since I'm the excited viewer drinking in all of the incredibly-executed drama, whereas Lee is the guy who has just been dumped by the love of his life and has to go marry boring Dualla. 

Anyway.  Kara and Lee are not the only ones to get all carried away in the heat of the New  Caprican moment.  Roslin and Adama also hang out and their scenes together are some of the sweetest I've ever seen on this show. Adama telling Roslin that the color she's wearing suits her (whilst totally ogling her presidential rack) made me feel all warm inside. And then, when they get cuddly and trippy together? Just lovely.  I guess I should say I don't know if they actually Do It, but I'd like to think so. Please,please…more Roslin-Adama! I know I say it all the time, but these scenes just prove how awesome they are together and how much chemistry they have. That sort of tenderness is a much-needed, very human oasis amidst the dark, dark life-or-death drama that characterizes this show.

Oh, we also learn that Adama was quite reluctant to let Chief and Cally leave Galactica to have their baby on New Caprica, but then he eventually gave in. This is important because back in the present, Adama faces off against Chief in the ring, then loses on purpose, then makes a speech. Um, OK. The speech is pretty good (basically about how he shouldn't have let crew members go to New Caprica so easily, etc etc), but you can tell everyone is kind of inwardly rolling their eyes and thinking, "Yeah, OK -- the one episode where we were actually having fun and you have to get up there and blab on and on in your awesomely craggy, attention-commanding voice YET AGAIN? We get it, Admiral Killjoy! Now let us beat each other up so more!"

Adama and Roslin at least get some good moments in the present as well -- the best is Roslin giving him advice on how to totally kick Chief's ass. I really think the amazingness of Roslin knows no bounds at this point.

So finally, the moment we've been waiting for! Kara and Lee get in the ring and use boxing as a substitute for the sexing they would really like to get into. All right, so maybe it's a little more complicated than that. Their relationship is pretty frakked up, after all. But the whole thing is just great and interlaced with Starpollo montage and Dualla and Anders just look on sadly. I think Dualla and Anders should get together and have pretty babies. The whole thing ends with Kara and Lee locked in a weird sort of embrace, staggering around the ring. Kara chokes out what she should have said a long time ago: "I missed you." Lee says he missed her too. I cry and cry and cry, because this episode is one of my favorites of the season and because Starpollo can't deal with their feelings unless they're in a frakked up situation such as this and because I really want to know if Roslin and Adama Did It or not.

iTunes Links

Battlestar Galactica - Series
Battlestar Galactica - Season 3
"Unfinished Business"