And happy Tuesday to you all! I’m still recovering from my weekend of night shift, but I’m in good spirits for the most part. Today’s entry might be a bit short because I need to focus on my script and because I don’t want to give too much away about Day 30’s post, but let’s jump on in. The caffeine I drank earlier might be wearing off soon, anyway.

Seeing as Kara is my favorite character, it seems fitting that my favorite episode from the final season would involve her and her destiny. A ton of other shit happens, too, but I’ll get to that in a second.

In “Someone to Watch Over Me,” Starbuck originally trades barbs with a nameless (and eventually non-existent) piano player, who is trying to compose his magnum opus. A day or so later, she returns, somewhat tempered (this is Kara Thrace, after all), and they begin to work on his piece together. Earlier in the episode, Hera Agathon, the human-Cylon hybrid born to Helo and Athena, gave Kara a drawing of seemingly random dots that Starbuck recognizes as notes, which she gives to the pianist, and the resulting music catches Tigh’s attention: it’s the same freaking song that “activated” him, Tyrol, Tory, and Anders at the end of the third season. While Starbuck in no way knows this, her role in the destiny of humanity is cemented in this episode, which is poignant, considering her feeling of a lack of purpose throughout much of this episode. She is haunted by her own corpse on the destroyed Earth and can’t help but wonder what she actually is. Is she truly the harbinger of the end of her people? Or just a ghost?

As far as the rest of this episode is concerned, destiny really does play a major part in it. Boomer’s betrayal of Tyrol (to escape execution, which honestly is as good a reason as any) in this episode leads to her death at the end of the series, which was incredibly fitting for the both of them. Tyrol just seems to have betrayal follow him around, resulting in Tory’s murder after it’s revealed that she also betrayed him by shooting Cally out of an airlock (and really, his son with Cally isn’t even biologically his), and having Athena ultimately execute Boomer was just so poetic.

Even though Season Four is by far the weakest outing, “Someone to Watch Over Me” just gives me “could have been” vibes, especially if we assume that Starbuck’s dad was actually the “Daniel” model, which could explain why Starbuck was still somehow alive or projecting or … something. Actually, I will get into that later on in this challenge, so I should just stop here.

Plus, I need more coffee.

Runners Up: “No Exit,” “Daybreak Part 1”

Art Credit: Wikipedia