The Son Also Rises

... of the greatest series of all time, we note that Team Ronald never duplicated the awesome sauce of BSG. Even 'For All Mankind', one of the messiest narratives ever to be green-lighted, never even came close. Mark Sheppard, with one of the most recognizable vocal deliveries in Hollywood, is never less than superb. And Helfer does a great job reminding us of the massively original premise that launched the show ... namely that some women may actually be worth betraying your species for.

Tyler McLendon (Baltars 1st lawyer) is a dead ringer for Curry Graham... that's who I thought it was initially, but it is such a small part, almost a cameo.

But the award for upstaging everybody goes to Mark Shepherd as Romo Lampkin (and his cat who saves everybody from an explosion).

Romo originally was in the X-Files as a guy who could start fires with his brain, the son of William Morgan Shepherd, who was seen a lot in the late 80s all through the 90s.

But this is the episode where the character of Apollo really starts stepping up. It turns out that he is almost as good a lawyer as he is a pilot.

This is also where Felix starts going to pieces...

I always come back to this episode because it is a great courtroom drama and I love those, Jamie Bamber is a real Paul Drake to Romo's Perry Mason...

If Mark Sheppard weren't in this episode, it would fall flat. Any fan of Firefly will recognize 'Badger' and his raspy but somehow friendly voice. He's one of those actors who can take ordinary lines and make them great.

And he does this here, because the writing is average, and some plot points are a bit weak. The 'mystery' solved seemed tacked on at the end. There is some good character stuff with the Adamas. And they mention Zack, who the writer's seem to have forgotten through all of the Lee/Starbuck troubles.

Not great, but above average for the season.