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So last night's Battlestar Galactica? About as cool as Battlestar gets, which is saying a fair amount. After the jump, a spoiler-filled rundown of recent developments, plus a place to jump in and offer your own take on the episode.

Also, holy shit! That dude was just trying to take a leak, Starbuck! Did you really have to do that to him?

Picking up right where last week's cliffhanger, "The Oath," left off, "Blood on the Scales" continued following Gaeta and Zarek's ill-advised attempt to take over the fleet and kill Roslin and Adama, the most adorable geriatric lovers in sci-fi history. Needless to say, everyone in the fleet who wasn't a total tool was fighting back against Gaeta and Zarek's forces. The result? An intense, high-stakes episode that had a good balance of small, cool moments and big, repercussion-y plot developments.

Things I liked about this episode:

THE AFOREMENTIONED MOMENT WHEN ONE OF THE MUTINEERS WAS USING A URINAL UNTIL STARBUCK SMASHED HIS FACE INTO THE WALL. Yep. That about sums it up. I want to marry her.

ALSO WHEN STARBUCK WAS DUAL-WIELDING AND LEE DID HIS GRENADE TRICK. GOTCHA, SUCKERS! Last week Adama and Tigh went all Master Chief; this week, it was Starbuck's turn. Now, you'd think that seeing someone shoot two guns at the same time would get old at some point, right? Wrong: As far as I can tell, this never has and never will be anything short of amazing. Also, Lee's throwing of a grenade with the pin still in it to make all the mutineers look like the hysterical pussies they were? Awesome. Lee's been doing the bureaucrat thing for long enough that seeing him back in fighting form—even if it's guerrilla-style in the hallways of Galactica, and not in a Viper cockpit—is great, if only to be reminded that he can do more than look pained and pensive.

FINDING OUT HOT DOG'S LAST NAME IS "COSTANZA."

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EVERY SINGLE INTERACTION BETWEEN ADAMA AND GAETA. Every line Adama said when under Gaeta's control just nailed Adama's disdain, disappointment, and barely contained rage. I particularly liked it when he snickered a bit when he said "Commander Gaeta," but leave it to Edward James Olmos to be handed tired lines like "Shove it up yer ass!" and "This is a joke!" and still make them sound like the coolest things you've ever heard. Also, that look of suppressed panic on Gaeta's face every time he looked at Adama? That look of "IamsofrakkedthiswasahugemistakeIamsofrakkedthiswasahugemistake"? Priceless. I have little sympathy for Zarek—that dude's always been an opportunistic prick—but I gotta admit that after being incredibly tiresome for the past while, Gaeta was really great in this two-parter. Ditching his balladeer/martyr shtick, he once again felt—albeit briefly—like a legit, fleshed-out character who was worth taking seriously.

THE AD FOR THE CYLON DETECTOR IPHONE APP. Okay, so this wasn't technically part of the show or whatever, but it did come up at the bottom of the screen during the episode (the Sci Fi Channel is always so subtle in their marketing efforts), so I'm including it. And normally I'd be all like, "What? $1.99 for some goofy iPhone app? Eff off, Sci Fi!" But then I bought it anyway—beer might have had something to do with this decision—and now I know that OLIVE, THE MERCURY'S OFFICE PUG, IS A CYLON, AS I HAVE ALWAYS SUSPECTED.

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In summation, this is probably the best $1.99 I have ever spent.

REST IN PEACE, QUORUM! Whoa—fucked up, right? Granted, the Quorum has always been a pain in the ass for... well, pretty much everyone, and more often than not, they just sit around their big table having their little pretend tea parties and acting like a bunch of ineffective twits. Still, Zarek having them all get shot? That's going to mess up the fleet but good, and I suspect it'll have a major, major effect on where the show goes for its remaining episodes. (And on a smaller scale, I liked what this did in terms of characterization for both Gaeta and Zarek. "This is murder," Gaeta said after seeing what Zarek had done, and Zarek, matter-of-factly replied, "No, this is a coup." From there on out, the heretofore hinted-at differences between the two were drawn in far better and more interesting detail. Hey, speaking of those two douchenozzles....)

EAT IT, GAETA AND ZAREK! Go ahead—fuck with Adama, guys. See what happens. Gaeta and Zarek's assassinations came on quick, and this plotline seems to have been wrapped up even quicker, but ultimately, I like how no-nonsense and immediate it was: Two seconds after resuming command, Adama was back to taking care of business, and with things going this poorly in the fleet, he wasn't going to pussyfoot around what (probably) needed to be done. And I really liked the scene immediately preceding the assassination—the one between Baltar and Gaeta—and that look of resignation that Zarek and Gaeta shared before getting executed. "Well, shit," they seemed to be saying to each other. "At least we tried." Zarek merely looked disappointed by their failure, but Gaeta's acceptance of the outcome—one gets the sense he maybe always knew how foolhardy the insurrection was, but that he still believed in it wholeheartedly, and thus had no choice—made his death a somewhat noble one.

ROMO LAMPKIN PROVING THE OLD MAXIM, "THE PEN IS MIGHTIER THAN THE SWORD... ESPECIALLY WHEN I SHOVE IT INTO YOUR JUGULAR." Romo Lampkin has always felt like a gimmick character—somebody who was initially meant to make a one-time appearance, but then everybody liked him so much that they kept bringing him and his stupid imaginary cat back. But I hereby take back whatever grumblings I've had about Romo. Television writers, take note—you can use as many gimmick characters as you want, as long as you have them kill somebody with a pen at some point. (I still say that having Kimmy Gibbler take out Uncle Joey this way would have totally redeemed Full House's occasionally insightful but ultimately underwhelming final season.)

Things I kinda didn't like so much:

CHIEF GOING ALL BISHOP FROM ALIENS AND GRUNTING AS HE CRAWLED THROUGH 800 MILES OF TUNNELS FOR AN ENTIRE EPISODE. Granted, there was a point to it—but seeing Chief squeeze through Jefferies tubes over and over and over? Could've done without that. Also could've done without the goofy, overly CG-ified look at the FTL drive. But! WHAT WAS THAT WEIRD STUFF ON THE WALL? A leak? Battle damage? Or was it, as Marjorie Skinner hypothesized, an alien fungus that's going to take over the ship?

ANDERS. So the episode hastily ends with Baltar and Zarek getting a final meal of hot lead, but they never tell us what happened to Anders? I call bullshit. The last we see of Anders, he was bleeding out while Starbuck was dragging him through the hallways, trying to get him to Doc Cottle. Luckily, Starbuck guilt-tripped Romo Lampkin into helping out. (Hopefully Romo at least had the presence of mind to cram his pen into Anders' bullet hole, in which case, problem solved!) When Anders first showed up on Battlestar, I thought he was a pretty bland, weak character—but as the show's progressed, he's really grown on me, and dammit, making us wait until next week to see if he lives or dies is kinda shitty.

THE LEAST BELIEVABLE MOMENT IN BATTLESTAR EVER. So that whole "Oh, no, they're killing Adama!" scene that then rapidly became an "Oh, thank Gods! It was just Baltar having a bad dream!" scene? Seriously? We're doing bait-and-switches as goofy as that now? But then it got even worse, because then Six curled up next to Baltar and tried to make him forget his nightmare—by, you know, doing it with him, because that's what Six does. But then Baltar pushes her aside and says no? C'mon, Battlestar. No one will ever say no to Six after she says "But... I want to make you feel better." No one. Ever. Preposterous.