Black Market

I watch quite a bit of sci-fi so I know how to use my imagination to account for a certain, usually, great amount of holes and shortcomings, but I just don't have enough for this one. This one was just frakking stupid.

Watching the show for the first time and I just had to leave a review given how unexpectedly terrible this episode was. Had to fast forward to get through it.

After a trio of hectic episodes. BSG crash lands with Black Market.

It looks like another production team suddenly took over the show.

President Roslin is concerned about the growing black market and how people have to trade to get urgent medical supplies.

The black market is rampant on the Pegasus and Apollo is sent to investigate after Commande Fisk is murdered.

Apollo has flashbacks of some woman he lost in Caprica and he gets comfort by regularly seeing a prostitute.

In his investigations Apollo just barges in and treats Baltar as a suspect even though he is the Vice President.

Eventually he confronts a man called Phelan who seems to be calling the shots.

I have no doubt that a black market would be operating in this type of situation. This episode had plot elements that came out of nowhere such as Apollo's girlfriend in Caprica and him seeing a prostitute for so long.

With Apollo nearly getting garrotted. Did Phelan and his mob think that Adama would just let this lie. I was surprised Adama did not send troops with Apollo to clean up the black marketeers.

A very flawed and silly episode. It looks like the producers were contemplating a spin off show called Apollo Investigates!

This feels like it was written by a highschooler who drastically overestimates how "cool" their dialogue sounds and how "mysterious" their plot is.

This episode is as generic and empty as TV gets, which would normally land it at a 5/10 if it didn't get in the way of an otherwise excellent show. Because of this episode, an interesting character is now gone, Apollo suddenly has weird out of character plot strands attached to him, and generally characters talk like they are parodies of themselves.

It's honestly a stain on the show.

This was a pretty interesting episode--we don't often get to see much of the survivors' life outside the most powerful military and political spheres. Still, it left a lot of unanswered questions for me. Who was the woman Lee was remembering? What happened to Paya after the end of the episode? What was Zarek doing on Prometheus at the end of the episode? He appeared to be just there, not doing anything at all. Why show that? Actually I don't want to ask people to post spoilers. If someone who's seen the whole series could just tell me whether or not these questions will be answered in future episodes, I would appreciate it. Thanks!