A House is Not a Home

[callmeonetrack.livejournal.com]

Comments

[rachelindeed.livejournal.com]

I just have to say that little girl who plays Kacey is utterly adorable. So, so cute. I'm not a big fan of the NC story arc for Kara -- I feel it was rushed and I didn't find Leoben's dollhouse nearly as traumatic as I was supposed to, I think. Listening to him talk about destiny and stabbing him when she got sick of it? She's been through so much worse, I just don't see her personality unravelling under the influence of his sinister insight or whatever they were going for, there. But I do think KS has a really lovely chemistry with the little girl, and it was nice to see that side of Kara. She is so multi-faceted, and I love seeing the deeply caring, deeply responsible side of her personality come out.

Also, this story arc did prompt one of my favorite random podcast comments, when someone pointed out that Kara's situation resembled an evil Groundhog Day, and RDM laughed and said, "That's right. Groundhog Day 2: This Time It's Not Funny."

:)

[rayruz.livejournal.com]

Well, we only got to see part of it. We don't really know what happened over the course of 4 months. *cough*Persephone*cough*. I think the trauma comes from the fact that she was utterly powerless in that situation. She couldn't escape and she couldn't even kill the guy who was keeping her prisoner. No victories. Which I imagine made her feel too much like how she did as a child, and that's sort of where the trauma really comes from... my opinion.

[mserrada.livejournal.com]

Plus, nothing for Kara to do day after day but think? Starbuck's always been about action--she's a restless soul.
Being cooped up in what amounted to solitary confinement with far too much time to go over all the messed up things in her life would really frak with her head. Especially with no end in sight, since after four months she had to have decided that no one was coming to rescue her.

[rachelindeed.livejournal.com]

I hear you. Certainly Kara hates being powerless, as anyone would. I can see how you can approach the material with Kara's childhood background in mind and think about a lot going on off-screen and make it make sense for her character.

But for me personally, it didn't work on a dramatic level because the whole household set-up didn't play as very effective or convincing brainwashing. I just didn't believe that Leoben's constant repetition of "love" and "destiny" would somehow prove irresistible to Kara's psyche. She's heard it before from him, and she'll hear it again, and I really thought in that situation she would hurt him as much as she could as often as she could and otherwise ignore him, and I didn't see that causing her to have a mental breakdown. The fact that Leoben never does anything to her but talk, and that he doesn't seem to be saying much of anything new, didn't help me to invest in the storyline, I'm afraid. As others have said, boredom and inactivity seem to be more difficult for her to deal with than Leoben. If they were going to psychologically torture her, I wish they had delved into some more new material or played upon her relationships with people she cared about.

I can see her starting to despair/go crazy if she thought she would never be free again, but that would have been true no matter where she was locked up. If this was meant to be a recreation of her childhood traumas, I think they could have done it far more effectively (and a big part of her childhood trauma was physical abuse, IMO, which is not in evidence here, and also her love/hate for her mother, which I'm not convinced Leoben has the emotional weight to replicate).

And I'm not sure why caring about Kacey would cause her to care about Leoben. The child is innocent, Leoben is not, and Kara is quite capable of distinguishing between them. Even if she does believe she and Leoben are the child's mutual parents, she has no reason to bond with the "father," given that he took advantage of the violation of her body in The Farm and continues to violate her freedom now. Their "bond" over Kacey just doesn't follow logically or emotionally, as far as I can see. I realize that her emotions are not supposed to be rational throughout this storyline, but I personally felt they were coming out of left field. *shrugs*

[nicole-anell.livejournal.com]

Groundhog Day 2: This Time It's Not Funny.
Bahahaha!

[callmeonetrack.livejournal.com]

I remember when I heard this plotline was coming up (I was spoiled way before I got there on the DVDs) I thought it was brilliantly awful because it was the worst conceivable torture for Kara. She could easily withstand anything physical, but mental/brainwashing in some sensitive areas? Eek. Trapped and being forced to play the docile housewife and killing him over and over but him coming back and trying to force his love down her throat. UGH. And then even worse, the baby. That one especially because it's the way he actually manages to break her/give her a bit of Stockholm or whatever.

Where I do think it could have been more sinister is...if they cast a baby the right age to believably have been from Kara's ovary they took on NC. I'm not sure why they didn't do that. Although God knows they missed so many other logical connections they could've made in other plots/episodes too.

[rachelindeed.livejournal.com]

Hey there! I was just saying to rayruz that I like the idea of psychologically torturing Kara, I just didn't find this way of going about it particularly dramatically/emotionally effective. But I'm glad it worked for so many others -- I know a lot of people love the NC story for Kara :) And I admit I am biased because Leoben almost never works for me, so that's probably affecting my enjoyment of the story here.

[callmeonetrack.livejournal.com]

Well I hated the NC arc actually, but I did think it was pretty clever. I just am not sure anything else would have been able to get to Kara in the way this did, esp. with the child. (Although one would think then that her greatest fear would be neither death nor being forgotten, but....motherhood.)

I think the reason I always dread Leoben's interaction with Kara is that it does overall feel very disingenuous to me and did ever since Flesh and Bone. It didn't make sense to me that Kara would let a cylon whose goal she knows to be mindfrakking actually affect her. I also don't think his dialogue in that episode is all that strong or sensical, which means Kara has to overreact to it a bit in order for them to make it emotional and get to that hand on the glass place which I detest. And it just feels manipulative.

And then of course, since they created this "big bond" in F&B, they kind of over-rely on that later. And you just know everytime Leoben shows up, it's BSG "breaking" Kara a bit more. Which sucks, because I love when we get to see her vulnerable side, but only when it's earned. When it's logically prompted by those she actually cares about (Bill, Lee, etc.) not some manipulative situation like this.