DPP: Echoes and Reflections

[callmeonetrack.livejournal.com]

So a while back, maybe when I was making my Pilot Moments picspam, I noticed that Kara and Lee's scenes together in 4.0 and 4.5 fittingly (because I still believed they were supposed to come full circle in the end) had a bit of a cyclical nature with what had come before. For me, there seemed to be echoes and reflections of previous interactions in many of their scenes (which I think is totally coincidental on the part of the writers and may have been down to personal interpretation).

For starters, the season opens with one of them coming back from the dead and a climactic prolongued touching on the hangar deck and then a brig scene--all elements, if a bit jumbled, of the miniseries. This time it's Kara returning when Lee thought she was dead, and they hug and cling to each other like we all thought they were holding themselves back from doing with that loooong handshake in the mini. And then in the brig, they banter about it being like old times (in a way) and Lee tells Kara that she will find a way to talk to/convince his dad, not that dissimilarly from the way Kara encourages him to talk to his dad in the mini.

Then in Revelations, Kara goes to Lee in his dad's office and tries to cajole him out of his stubborn bad mood, telling him that they'll walk those halls together on Earth and trying to share comforting wisdom (from...er...Leoben) and it struck me that that scene was in some ways a reflection of the scene in Home, where Lee is trying to cajole Kara out of her bad mood and telling her that he's her friend and he loves her and she can talk to him.

Finally in Islanded, Lee offers unconditional love to Kara, telling her that he knows who she is, and despite the impossible things that have happened he loves her and that's all that matters. This is such an echo to me and fulfillment of Kara's wistfulness when she speaks to Lee on Kobol in the dark about Helo knowing Sharon is something unfathomable to them, a foreign being, but loving her anyway. Sigh.

So I was wondering what patterns you might have seen in their relationship arc? Did these later scenes remind you of those earlier ones too? Are there other scenes that you think are connected in a way or are parallels?
 

 

 

Comments

[rachelindeed.livejournal.com]

What a beautiful analysis; I hadn't thought of it that way before, but I think those are some fascinating parallels you've observed. I'll enjoy thinking of the scenes in this way as I rewatch them.

I did sometimes notice parallels between scenes(probably purely subjective) as I was watching the show. I thought there were some interesting echoes between Kara's mother and Lee's father, actually. The moment in Maelstrom when Kara is about to accept her mystical mission and she asks her mother how she can be sure that Kara can do it, her mother says "Because you're my daughter." It seemed such a striking mirror to the Hand of God scene when Bill says he knows Lee will succeed on this mission "because you're my son." Each of our pilots, in their own way, have struggled to escape from their parents' legacies, and yet in moments of crisis they have accepted them and recognized that part of themselves will always be defined by their parents (though they really began to move forward in season 4).

Another parallel between Bill and Socrata was the infamous "you are a cancer" speech he gives to Kara after she comes back from New Caprica. When he used that line, I literally gasped. I thought it must have been deliberate. And it hurt my heart to see the way she responded to that kind of treatment - she actually took it to heart and pulled herself together and apparently neither resented it nor asked for an apology. It was interesting to see Lee's polar opposite reaction to the same kind of treatment - in Crossroads I, when Bill starts accusing him of stabbing Tigh in the back and being a liar and a coward, etc., Lee basically serves notice that he has no intention of sitting back and taking that kind of crap from his father or his commanding officer, and he walks out. I think all these scenes are interesting reflections of each other, and show again the complementarity and diversity of the Adama and Thrace family dynamics.

I also think that the scene in "Someone to Watch Over Me" where Helo offers Kara all her old stuff, and she takes her father's music but nothing else, plays like a sad echo of their beautiful scene on Caprica when she reflects on her old apartment and how meaningless it is to her.

And finally, I love the themes of daylight that run through Maelstrom. I love the opening, with blue skies taking the place of the constant night of space, and the contrast as they get lost in the grey, chaotic storm. I love how the lighting in the under-the-wing scene between Kara and Lee gives such a feeling of sunset. I think it's a beautiful contrast to the symbols and themes of Aurora throughout the episode - the promise that dawn will return.

Anyhow, those are just some seeming resonances I've noticed as I watched. I loved your analysis of the season 1 and 4 echoes. Thank you!

[callmeonetrack.livejournal.com]

I wondered too if the "You're a cancer" line was deliberate repetition in Torn or ... just the writers forgetting they'd used it before.

Likewise the "See you on the other side". Kara says it to Lee in Maelstrom, Sam-brid says it to Kara in Daybreak.

One more blood-thirsty example is Kara killing Simon by stabbing him in the neck in The Farm and killing Leoben the same way in Occupation.

In Maelstrom, Kara is continuously being bathed in light actually. In the hallway when she talks to Adama and Roslin the light is out and briefly comes on. In the screening room when they are watching her guncam footage, Kara stands up in the light of the projector and it halos around her head. They do this same kind of halo/light around Kara in Daybreak 1 I think when she goes in to unplug Sam.

There is of course the "stuck on the table" business of Scar echoing the flashbacks, but since I firmly believe they didn't plan that all along (or there would have probably been some kind of "this seems familiar" quote in Scar) I'm just dismissing that as a coincidence. ;)