Tonight’s episode ended on an oddly optimistic note.

Waiting for days in his raptor, just floating out in space and determined not to give up on his lady love, Bill Adama not only is proved right but also is told he is loved.

How very un-Battlestar Galactica-y.

The entire rest of the episode, however, was vintage BSG.

First off, Baltar.

How amazingly, hilariously brilliant was Baltar’s explanation of God and slavery to the Centurion? And the Centurion actually seemed to be listening and absorbing. Interested. Curious.

I suspect we’ll see the Centurions taking some sort of role in … I’m not sure what. But I don’t think the Centurions are going to remain giant brainless robots for all of what’s left of the season.

And our Baltar confesses, finally, to his role in the destruction of humanity. But his belief in the One True God has released him of all guilt. He is perfect, he says. Just a tool of God. God wanted another flood to be unleashed on an imperfect humanity to wipe it clean. Just this time, it was a flood of fire rather than water. Baltar was a mere tool of God.

Oh, really?

Baltar’s ability to rationalize away all his guilt is typical and also disgusting.

Now, don’t get me wrong.

I’ve never really blamed Baltar for what happened. Even though he was the instrument the Cylons used to wipe out humanity, they would have found someone else to do it if he hadn’t been so susceptible to sexy blondes.

And he shouldn’t be immobilized by guilt for the rest of his days for what he’s done, either.

But to absolve himself because “That’s what God wanted” is disgraceful. And utterly, completely and totally Baltar, so it’s also brilliant.

As is his hitting on Roslin.

Which brings us to our dying leader.

I believe that in the space between here and there, Roslin actually had contact with Elosha. And Elosha was right, too. A bad man does feel his death just as keenly as a good man.

What Roslin realizes here in the end — both through not killing Baltar and by realizing that she should have played fair with the Cylons because D’Anna wasn’t going to share the information any more with her fellow Cylons around than she was going to give Roslin the information alone — is that you can’t treat your enemies the same way they treat you (or expect they would treat you).

If you do to your enemies what you expect them to do to you, then you are the same as your enemy. You are no better and can claim no moral high ground. In fact, you just might be worse, because you pretend that you’re better than them while being just the same.

Baltar, for better or worse, fully knows what he is. He knows that he’s not a particularly good human being. He just believes that that’s how God wants him. But he doesn’t think he’s better than other people because of that.

Roslin does have a superiority complex. Even her reaction to Elosha’s comment that in the old days, the people believed their continued existence depended on the health of their leader’s body. That Roslin believed, even for a moment that Elosha was implying that if Roslin died, all humanity would die, too, showed that Roslin truly believes she is all-important to humanity.

Roslin, basically, needs to get over herself.

When the Three told Roslin she was a Cylon, you could see that Roslin truly believed it for a moment. Of course, we don’t know that to actually be false. It would be very interesting if Roslin does turn out to be the final Cylon, though I still don’t believe that will be the case.

I think, though, that by the end Roslin did start to get over herself. If she continues to deny all that is human about herself, then it doesn’t matter if she’s human or Cylon. Especially now that the Cylons can’t resurrect. If she refuses to be human and feel human emotions, she really might as well be that final Cylon.

And speaking of Cylons: The Eights are a very confused line. I wonder if it mightn’t have to do with the fact that they should actually be the Sevens, as there are no Sevens. The Eights are too easily divided and confused.

Too trusting, actually.

Boomer fell in love with Cavil, so she split from the rest of the line for him.

Athena fell in love with Helo, so she betrayed her people for him.

The Eights trusted the Sixes, so they agreed to go along with the demands to stop lobotomizing the Raiders, stunting the Centurions’ mental capacity and unbox the Threes.

Then they regretted their decision, perhaps because they were now a fragmented line, and asked Athena to lead them and help overthrow the Sixes. Athena was angered because she recognized she, too, had so easily fallen in with those who would kill her people. Those she’d fallen in with happened to be human as opposed to the Sixes and Twos, but it was the same concept.

The Sharon who went to the Resurrection Hub with Helo had all Athena’s memories and also loved him because of it, and felt betrayed by his decision to follow orders and take D’Anna to Roslin.

I’m glad they stretched this episode and last over two episodes.

If they’d cut back and forth between the Cylon ship and the fleet, it would have been very choppy and I don’t see how they would have divided the entire storyline in half. There was a lot to say about a lot of characters, and it had to be split this way.

I’ll ponder more over the next few days and I’m sure I’ll have some new whackadoodle theory to share come Tuesday, when “So Say We All: The Battlestar Galactica Blog Carnival is hosted at Athens Exchange.”