Wow. I just sat stunned through most of this episode. The intensity kept building and building and I couldn’t believe when it was over: it seemed to zip by. And then after all the awfulness, to end on that aww-sweet moment with Bill and Laura... that was almost like another punch in the gut, this tiny bit of happiness after all the bad stuff. And I guess it’s like a punch in the gut because we know it can truly be only a tiny bit of happiness for Bill and Laura.

Because she seems resigned to her death now. She’s not trying to put it off anymore: she’s stopped her meds and stopped her treatment. But she’s only maybe the most obvious outward manifestation of what everyone is feeling: “Maybe tomorrow isn’t coming.” Suicides are up, someone says... which suggests, too, that suicides have been a factor all along, as I suspected must have been the case but simply hasn’t been an issue in the stories we’ve been told about these people; someone has been making note of suicides all along, but now they’re up.

And I wonder... are we gonna see a mass-suicide situation with Gaius and his followers? A Jonestown kinda thing? Because he’s been sounding scary for a while now, but at least he was preaching comfort to people who needed comfort, and it seemed to work, to a small degree. But now those people are angry and scared, and Gaius, who had been talking about a God of love, is now talking about a God who has screwed up so badly that he should be asking for their forgiveness.

Or maybe Gaius’s people will end up on the side of Zarek’s rebellion. I hesitate to actually call what Zarek is doing “rebellion,” though: this is supposed to be a democracy, not a military dictatorship, however benign it may be, so it seems well within Zarek’s rights to refuse to do Adama’s bidding. And surely it must come as a shock to the ordinary people of the fleet, even the members of the quorum, to be hearing about a permanent alliance with the Cylons, hearing of plans to install Cylon technology on fleet ships, hearing of Cylons as citizens... These people, the Cylons, destroyed human civilization, and now they want to be our friends? It must be beyond stunning to hear such a thing.

Oh, babies! Nicky, Callie and Galen’s baby, isn’t Callie and Galen’s baby! Hot Dog is his father? Whoa. So Nicky is not a hybrid... And Saul and the Six’s baby is not a hybrid, either. I mean, we knew that it couldn’t be a hybrid, if skinjob Saul is actually the baby’s father, and we have no reason to doubt that he is. Then again, we had no reason to doubt that Galen was Nicky’s father, either.

*head exploding*

I have a really bad feeling about all this. I’m starting to wonder now if the show could end in disaster: the fleet divided, humanity dying, all hope lost. It’s all falling apart, and it’s downright depressing.

(next: “The Oath”)

(Watch full episodes and get recaps at Sci Fi’s official site for the show.)