Rating: **

Written by: Mark Verheiden

Directed By: James Head

Well what do you know? The Colonial Fleet has a thriving black market! Who knew? Certainly not President Roslin, who proves herself to be a bona fide politician by reflexively vowing to put a stop to the free and unfettered flow of goods and services, even if they are scarce. Even post-Apocalypse, it seems, socialism, like the cockroaches, still lives.

Welcome to post-Cylon Battlestar Galactica, where the exploration of the human condition is already becoming a lot smaller, with no vanishing point in sight.

This "black market" in food, medicines, and luxury items has to have been thriving ever since the Kobolian diaspora left the Twelve Colonies, of course. Why it would only become an issue now may be explained by the abatement (at least for the time being) of the omnipresent Cylon threat and perhaps Roslin's recovery from her recent bout with cancer, which has enabled her to focus her attention on other matters. Why it should become an issue at all defies any rational explanation, as the episode's plot proceeded to amply illustrate.

The story begins with the president discussing the black market "problem" with Admiral Adama, who dociley pledges the military's support in implementing her intended rationing program. Seems like Adama has become Roslin's lapdog ever since she promoted him. Maybe her brush with death hit him harder than he expected, and he's just grateful to still have her around, but I think I prefer the days when the two clashed from time to time.

Commander Jack Fisk, CO of the Pegasus, doesn't actively oppose Roslin's policy but does express skepticism at its chances for success. It isn't long before we see the reason for his skepticism, as it turns out that Fisk was not only armpit-deep in black marketeering but had strong-armed his cut of it from the fleet's equivalent of the Mafia, which is waiting for him in his quarters. One garroting later, Galactica's sister ship has lost its second CO in a matter of weeks.

Jammer raises a good point about the pointlessness and unwisdom of offing not only the only remaining supporting character from the Pegasus but for reasons that war against what we learned about him this season. Fisk, if you'll recall, seemed to be a basically well-meaning officer who was horrified by the violence, ruthlessness, and dictatorial nature of Admiral Cain's command. Now, just a couple of episodes later, he's the Colonial answer to Jack Abramoff? Not that that would necessarily have been inconceivable, but it would have required a steady character arc to make it plausible, and even if the writers had bothered to attempt that, two weeks wouldn't have been long enough to even begin the process. I guess that means Pegasus is dramatically, if not functionally, irrelevant. Will there be an ep focusing on the impact on its crew of the shock of losing Cain and Fisk so quickly? To say nothing of Baltar's role in freeing Gina (aka "Pegasus Six") to assassinate Cain? I sure hope so, but I'm having my doubts.

So Fisk is nearly decapitated with a cubit jammed in his mouth, the apparent MO of the aforementioned Kobolian Mafia. Just like that Roslin's "New Economic Policy" is transformed into a murder case, and Apollo is assigned the job of lead gumshoe.

Why assign Galactica's CAG to civilian police work? As a rational proposition, I couldn't tell you. As a dramatic vehicle, it is to highlight Apollo's all-around weariness with post-Apocalypse life.

Lee Adama really hasn't been the same since Admiral Cain demoted him and reassigned him to the Pegasus back in "Pegasus." So much attention was focused then on how his father was dealing with the adjustments imposed upon the Galacticans by the discovery of her sister ship that its impact on Lee kind of got lost in the shuffle - or at least it did to me. When, during the showdown with the Cylon fleet in "Resurrection Ship," Apollo has the blackbird stealth fighter shot out from under him and he floats in space, surreally watching the battle while waiting to smother, he expects to die and seems almost relieved at the prospect. When he is rescued at the last possible moment and subsequently revived, continued life becomes a burden, which is why he discloses to Starbuck that he wanted to die - and perhaps still does.

This may, again, tie back to the recurring general morale problem that settles in throughout the fleet whenever the excitement of fighting for survival dies down and people have a chance to focus on what their transformed reality has become. It hasn't made Apollo suicidal - not yet, anyway - but it certainly does explain the "black market problem," and eventually not just why Apollo was not the man to investigate it, but why the "problem" itself was irresolvable.

Apollo seeks out and finds comfort in the arms of a prostitute named Shevon. Why he dips his wick in her instead of Starbuck or Dualla, with both of whom he has existing relationships with fleshly avenues more or less available for the taking, is another unanswered question. Shevon is different in that she has a young daughter, the support of whom explains her resort to prostitution. We're shown flashbacks throughout the ep of a pre-Apocalypse romantic relationship Lee had with an unnamed woman that foundered on his unwillingness to settle down, get married, and start a family with her. I guess he was attracted to Shevon because her little girl somehow represented the kid he could have had with the unnamed lost love but didn't. Which meant that Shevon herself was, for Lee, the means to two selfish ends rather than one. Pity she didn't serve dramatic ends as more than a comely plot device.

While he may have been getting his rocks off, Apollo's heart just wasn't in much of anything, including his investigation. And even if it had been, what he finds only disillusions him further.

While poking around Fisk's quarters on the Pegasus, in walks Vice President Baltar, about whom it is a given that he would be involved in this black market stuff. To be specific, Fisk was supplying Gaius with his cherished el-stinko cigars and who knows what else. Apollo tries to muster the gumption to confront the veep (while Caprica Six prods Baltar into a pose of indignant self-righteousness), but he lets it slide and leaves instead. Next he discovers a treasure trove of succulent fruit and booze and other foodstuffs in Colonel Tigh's quarters, rather garish evidence that the black market is darn near ubiquitous. If Roslin truly wants to shut it down altogether, she'll have to throw half or more of the fleet's population in the brig.

And that would include Apollo himself, for he used that same black market to obtain a scarce medication that Shevon's daughter required for a health condition. That is, IMHO, a far more compelling reason for Lee's listless melancholy; how gung-ho an investigator would you be if you knew that you were a total hypocrite?

That compromise, of course, wasn't limited to the ethical realm. Since Apollo was a black marketeer himself, his investigation made himself and his "working girl" consort and her daughter targets for blackmail and retaliation, a la Commander Fisk. And, right on schedule, the Mafia don, Phelan, and his thugs jump Lee and kidnap his fantasy family. But when the Galactica CAG wakes up, he finds the proverbial surprise inside: Phelan's thug, who was also Fisk's killer, dead on the floor next to him.

The message from Phelan is clear: I've given you your suspect. Case solved. Now go away and stop rocking the boat.

Well, of course Apollo can't leave it at that, so he contacts the fleet's resident shady operator, Tom Zarek, to find out where Shevon and her daughter were taken. Zarek, knowing that he has the upper hand but recognizing the utility of putting the admiral's son in his debt, toys with Apollo briefly by playing coy innocence before hinting that they "might" be on a freighter called the Prometheus.

Captain Adama wastes no time paying Phelan a visit, where he discovers to his disgust that the mafioso is trafficking in more than just material goods. Let's just say this additional "market" has added an additional "commodity" in the form of Paye, Shevon's daughter.

Whatever Apollo had gone to the Prometheus to do, it was now a fait accompli that he was going to blow Phelan away - which was telegraphed from the very opening blurb of the hour. That's an almost Berman/Braga-like level of suspense. It rendered the pre-shooting muted polemical debate - Phelan defending the black market and Apollo basically conceding the point but drawing the line at catering to pedofilia - largely irrelevant. Particularly when Phelan, who never so much as blinked when Lee drew his sidearm, quietly taunted, "You won't pull that trigger; you're not me."

After the "BANG!," I will admit to being surprised that none of Phelan's lieutenants and/or underlings made any move against Apollo. And that was before he told them the black market would be left in place, within limits. I wasn't at all surprised that Shevon gave him the big brush-off, though. She wasn't really meeting his true, spiritual need, after all, and her telling him so to his face was a much-needed reality check that will be good for him in the long run. Besides, the crestfallen look on his face - like all its screws had been loosened half a turn all at once - was classic. Even better than Roslin's expression when Apollo told her the facts of economic life.

As a postscript, I must say that the president was off her game across the board this week. Not only in meddling in the fleet's economy, but in what is usually her strength, her ability to read people and her knack for shrewd political maneuvering. That strength failed her in her rash decision to ask for Baltar's resignation as vice president.

The ostensible reason was his involvement in the fleet's black market (hardly a scandal, since damn near everybody else was as well, something Roslin should have assumed from the start), but the true, perhaps subconscious, reason was her intuitive suspicion, disclosed last week, that he was somehow connected to the catastrophic collapse of Colonial defenses that facilitated the Cylon holocaust. But all that is is a suspicion, for which she has no proof. A few skanky cigars aren't enough on which to run a sitting veep out on a rail, either. Her position, in other words, was weak, far too weak to make such a power play stick. And sure enough, Baltar refused to quit, declaring that, "I never wanted to be vice president more than I do now."

This move was a comprehensive debacle for Roslin. She disclosed not just her suspicion but that she still harbored it after Baltar saved her life. She didn't have any leverage to force him out. And now he's both alienated and more entrenched than ever.

This was the deal with the devil she made to keep Tom Zarek out of the #2 slot. But that devil hadn't become Satan. Now there will be hell to pay.

And that transaction won't flow through any black market.

Next: The Galactica's pilots meet their version of Chiggy Von Richtofen.