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Before he can think too much about it, Apollo gets a call from Shavon. When he gets to her room on Cloud 9, her face is beaten up. Lee tells them to get their stuff, pack up, and leave with him to Galactica, where he can keep Shavon and Paya safe, but he is interrupted when a man comes barging into the door. Lee is about to take him out, but the piano wire choke artist who took down Fisk gets Apollo by the next. Apollo was reaching for a shard of glass that had broken in his original scuffle, and I thought it would be sweet if he stabbed him in the neck or something (can you tell I miss my 24 violence?). Instead, random black guy comes in, tells Lee that he should forget about the investigation, and then lets him go.

I think we can agree that the President's plan to kill the black market in the fleet was a little bit of a failure. She doesn't have much support among the populace, who would rather pay high prices for some goods than not have them at all, or even in her administration. Dr. Baltar was a clear opponent of her plan, and he was on his way to see Fisk before he was killed. Roslin called a meeting with him to clear the air. Gaius may have left her, but Six is not going to go away that easily, and you have to admit, she really is there whenever he needs her. No matter how weak and helpless he may feel, Six is still there to give him support.

We all know from last week that Gaius was having reservations about being President. He could have let Roslin die, assumed power, and guided the fleet to a truce with the Cylons like his beloved Gina wanted. All of that was before he learned what Roslin thought of him, and he handed over a nuclear warhead to her cause to show his displeasure. In this meeting, Roslin basically says that Gaius is not ready to leave, and offers him a chance to resign. Backed by Six, who is telling Baltar that the President is afraid of him, he says that he never liked politics and never really wanted to be Vice President until that very moment. It was kind of a stupid line to use, and his actions will speak louder than words, but it won't be politics as usual aboard the Colonial fleet from this point on.

After his encounter from the piano wire, Lee passed out. When he woke up, Shavon and Paya were gone, and the guy who killed Fisk had been shot twice and left in the room. Apollo is trying to figure out what to do when Tom Zarek walks in. You remember Zarek. He was a terrorist who started an uprising on a prison ship, became a member of the government, and has been trying to usurp Roslin's power since forever. Thanks to his former dealings on the shadier side of the law, Zarek knows a lot about the way things work behind the scenes. His little date with the choke artist didn't seem to affect his voice, so Apollo begins to ask Zarek some questions about the black market, and what he knew about Fisk.

It turns out that Fisk had done business with Zarek, and even wanted Zarek to take over some of the shipments. Zarek turned him down, and Fisk started cutting Zarek and the ship he represents out of deals. Zarek took this as a clue not to ask too many questions, and he tells Lee that by leaving the body of Fisk's killer in the room, with the murder weapon still attached to his wrist, they were giving him a way out of the investigation with no questions asked.

This might have been fine for some people, but not for Apollo. It's not that he really wanted the investigation to go on, but he needed to find Shavon and Paya. I am not sure why he cares so much, but after pressing Zarek for some more information, he learns that the heart of the black market is the ship Prometheus, and an ex-mercenary named Phelan runs it. As you might have guessed, random black guy is Phelan, and it's funny that they called him an ex-mercenary, because the actor Bill Duke, actually has played a mercenary several times in movies, perhaps most famously in Predator. I thought the writers of the show were smart; the leader of the black market doesn't actually have to be black.

All kidding aside, that doesn't really bother me as much as the heavy-handed way they make the black market look as sinister as possible. Just imagine the horrors Lee had to face as he boarded Prometheus. Oh no! People are buying cigarettes and liquor without paying taxes to the government! Of course no black market would be complete if there weren't drugs, so there was plenty of those around. And in case you didn't think it was scary enough, these people are selling children. Think of the children! And yes, one of those children was Paya, who might not have liked Lee when he was banging her mom, but now that she might be sold, she has a change of heart.

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Posted by J-Unit on February 1, 2006 10:47 AM