Battlestar Galactica | S2 E13: Epiphanies & E14: Black Market | Full Reaction
Added 2025-08-14 14:00:13 +0000 UTCThese were two wildly different episodes and watching them back to back felt a bit like whiplash lol. Episode 13 really got to me. I was so sure we were about to lose Roslin. I've honestly been mentally preparing for weeks now. But now that she's been saved, I feel... conflicted.
Don't get me wrong, I'm grateful. Roslin has quickly become one of my personal favorites in Battlestar Galactica. Right up there with Adama and Starbuck. But her survival didn't feel like a miracle. It comes with many tangly strings attached. And now that she's remembered Baltar with Six, it's not just politics anymore. It's deeply personal. The look in her eyes the moment she discovered what she actually remembered felt like a sharp, gut-punch reminder of just how fragile trust really is in this world.
Then Episode 14 completely changed the tone. Lee's arc threw me at first. He is heavier, almost hollow. But knowing what he has recently been through, I get it. He's stepping into a more Adama-like leadership style, which surprised me. It's tinged with this quiet despair, like he's trying to convince himself it's worth fighting for. It feels like he has traded in his idealism for a well-pressed uniform and a permanent scowl.
The black market storyline could have been a fascinating moral gray area to explore. But I can't help but feel like this one was super rushed and clunky. Like someone hit fast forward and we got yeeted through the "why" and straight into the "what". Honestly, that made this one of my least favorite episodes in the series so far. But even in a 'miss', Battlestar still found a way to poke at the bigger questions: What are you willing to compromise to survive? How much of yourself can you lose before you're just going through the motions?
And hey, if nothing else, episodes like this make me even more excited to hit "play" next week! See you all then!
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LINK: https://youtu.be/kh8MQc9i7bk
I watched this on Amazon Prime
Comments
Well, I'm finally caught up with BSG... for now. Kali, as much as I enjoy some of the amazing things about this series, I also have many concerns. Episode 14 begins with Apollo holding a gun on a man named Phelan who we later discover runs the fleet black market. Phelan tells Apollo, "You're not gonna shoot. You're not like me." Flash back two days. As the episode unfolds, we learn that Lee has been seeing a prostitute named Shevon, partly out of a desire to help her and her little girl, Paya. Midway through the episode, we see one of Phelan's henchman hit Shevon. At that moment, I said aloud, "You just signed his death warrant." I had little doubt that Lee would pull the trigger when we caught up with the original scene. Which, of course, he did. Which brings me back once again to the reason that I haven't fallen in love with BSG: it's often so very dark. I don't watch a recreational show with the goal of having all of the ugliness of real life rubbed in my face. In a comment on episodes 8 and 9, I explained that the show features too many almost completely unlikable characters, especially Saul and Ellen Tigh, Gaius Baltar, and Number Six. And then, on top of this distasteful background, episode 14 brings us a black market that not only manages prostitutes and withholds essential medications, but **traffics in children**?!? Are you kidding me? That is far, far over the line! There are so many great characters, fascinating story arcs, and shocking twists in this series, but I'm so saddened by many of the choices the show runners made. I certainly plan to stick with it until the end, but episodes like this are highly discouraging, to say the least. ☹️
Phil Stubblefield
2025-08-18 04:38:47 +0000 UTCI’m with you on Black Market…easily my least favorite episode of one of my favorite series. I understand what they were going for, and it fits into the overall narrative of exploring the grey areas of humanity. Of course a black market would exist in this setting. However, I felt the execution was lacking. Like you, I thought the episode itself felt misplaced; felt like an episode from a different series. And something I never realized until watching it with you: in my opinion, they could have ended it two ways. Either they traffic children and Lee shuts the whole thing down, or they don’t shut it down but get rid of the trafficking plot point. Combining the two did not feel like a morally questionable “thinker” to me, but a weak resolution. Again, just my opinion.
Hefty517
2025-08-16 17:50:47 +0000 UTCOn Roslin in episode 13, I totally feel your struggles with coming to terms with her survival. It's like we've been bracing for impact with the wall for so long... and then the wall just disappears. Yet here we are still bracing, and not knowing if it's okay to let go. Episodes like this one, and her interactions with Admiral Cain, make me appreciate Roslin so much. Particularly in her ability to read people and situations so well. I laugh thinking back to how much I disliked her initially back in the mini-series haha Black Market, especially Lee's struggles, definitely landed better for me on a second watch now. A little. Still not an episode I care much for lol, but better now. Episodes like this one make me realize just how crazy episodes 10-12 were that we're still picking up the pieces from them haha
M1 Maz
2025-08-15 01:25:21 +0000 UTCThank you for shedding a lot more light on this for me! I'm realizing through this show that I actually have no idea what the black market is and the realities of what they're like. So it's been kinda interesting learning more about this! I see now why Lee didn't bust it up. Makes more sense that it's just like adding fuel to a fire, which I didn't really consider before!
Kali Wali
2025-08-15 00:37:49 +0000 UTCThe reason why Lee didn't bust up the black market is not just because he said so. Black markets exist under every type of government. Especially tyrannical, communist governments like China and when the Soviet Union still existed. Because the fleet is on the run and has limited supplies, they've had to adopt some socialist methods out of a lack of choice. As soon as Lee broke up that one black market ring, another (probably pre-existing) one would pop up in its place. If it's allowed to operate under supervision, they won't have to keep launching investigations and repeating this episode every six months. Commies and dictators try to crack down on black markets all the time and it just makes them worse.
Brad
2025-08-15 00:33:15 +0000 UTCI actually love how you put "the best you can do in a wicked world" because it's a great way to describe Lee's choice here. You're totally right, in a perfect world we'd shut it all down. But in Battlestar's reality, that would push things deeper into the shadows. So I get it. I think I was honestly just triggered by the kids in the cell and got angry at the show lol. And yesss! I actually did. That man plays the long game like nobody else. Interested to see where everything is headed from here!
Kali Wali
2025-08-15 00:28:46 +0000 UTCYour viewpoint is great if we lived in a perfect world, but we don't. If he completely shut down the black market, it would just start again in the shadows and they wouldn't know who is running it, and they probably would start harming kids again. At least Lee's way they can keep an eye on it and make sure kids are not harmed and they don't cross any lines. It's the best you can do in a wicked world. Did you notice at the end, Tom Zarek told Lee which ship the black market was on knowing that Lee would go after the bad guy and leaving an opening for Tom to take over the black market.
McShades
2025-08-15 00:10:33 +0000 UTC
