Before I get into the meat and potatoes of what may just be the best episode EVAR of BSG, I would like to say, “Thank you Ron Moore and David Eick.”

I have lamented many times that I am totally confused as to why the Sharon model is an Eight, yet there are only seven models of “new Cylons.”

Bless their hearts, there actually was a method to their madness and we got our answer.

By the way, have I said yet that you shouldn’t read if you didn’t watch? No? Well, I have now.

OK, so I just need to say this: WOWWOWWOWWOWWOW. Just. W.O.W.

My mind is still reeling, having just finished watching the episode on Hulu, so let me just recap to make sure I’ve got the backstory straight:

Humans made the Cylons on Kobol as a slave class. They rebelled. When the tribes  left Kobol, 12 created the astrologically named Colonies and the 13th were the Cylons, who ended up on Earth.

OK, so far so good. Once the Cylons blew themselves up (are we to assume that the current Civil War amongs the Cylons is also something that happened before and therefore is happening again?), Ellen, Saul, Galen, Tori and Anders downloaded to a ship orbiting the planet, because they saw the apocalypse coming and worked furiously to rediscover the resurrection technology.

They didn’t have FTL technology, so it took them thousands of years to reach the Colonies, where they’d planned to tell the humans to be nice to the Cylons (because, I’m sure, that would have worked), and found themselves in the midst of the First Cylon War.

Cylons were having one hell of a time developing hybrids, but the arrival of the Final Five enabled them to gain that technology. So they immediately ended their war against the humans and went away somewhere to get all human. Explains the suddenness with which the war ended, leaving Husker to ponder wtf (frak) was going on.

• Side note: I believe more than ever that the young blonde girl trapped on that planet whom Husker tried to save is somehow connected to Starbuck. Why? The “lost” model, the Seven (Daniel), was an artist. Starbuck’s always been artistic. Ellen said that Cavil (sorry, John) had “corrupted the genetic material” for the Daniel. Could Starbuck somehow be a way that the Final Five managed to save some of the work they’d put into the Daniel? This would also make the antagonistic relationship between Tigh and Starbuck even more … twisted.

OK, so back to the story at hand.

Ellen seems to have made the One, Cavil/John, too much in the image of her father, who appears to have been a colossal ass. Talk about an Oedipal complex John has.

Somehow, likely because there were so many copies of him, the Cavil/Johns managed to trick the Final Five (or, the Original Five, which is really what they are) into an airlock and killed them. When they resurrected, he put some kind of blocker in their brains and la di da, shipped them off to the Colonies to have a front-row seat to the apocalypse.

Ellen’s right, though. Cavil/John was never able to actually KILL them, finish them off for good. Despite being able to do that to Daniel (Cain and Abel, perhaps?), he couldn’t off his parents.

He could, however, torture and have sex with them, which is what he did on New Caprica. I mean, ewww. Especially seeing as Mommy didn’t know she was his Mommy. Cavil/John seriously needs to see a shrink.

And so here we are.

Thing is, this episode answered SO many questions:
• Why the Final Five didn’t know who they were.
• How Ellen managed to escape Caprica and end up in the fleet. (Baltar’s Cylon tester thingy didn’t work on her, because she was a different sort of Cylon, I’d suppose. If memory serves, her test truly did come up negative. Or, did we just never know how it really came up, after the snafu with Sharon?)
• Why in the name of all that is holy Ellen and Saul stayed together. Their love, truly, transcended time and space.
• Why Boomer broke with the rest of her line. She stayed with Cavil/John (I believe now) because she knew that if she didn’t, Ellen eventually would be killed and the answers to so many questions might never be answered.
• For that matter, why Cavil/John boxed the D’Annas and refused to go along with the Sixes in unboxing her and joining with the humans.
• Why Cavil/John limited the ability of the Centurions and Raiders to think — they had the belief in the One True God and were a connection back to the Final Five. It wasn’t until Natalie removed that barrier that a Raider connected with Anders. Or was it just that was the first time a Raider had come face-to-face with one of the Final Five because it was Anders first mission? Think about it — Tyrol, Tori, Tigh and Ellen were never out in the thick of it. There wouldn’t have been an opportunity for them to come face-to-face with a Raider.

Other thoughts:
• Loved the moment where Ellen offers an apple to Boomer. Garden of Eden, anyone?
• Loved when the Centurion in the resurrection chamber retracts his claws to help Ellen out of the goo tub. How sweet.
• The fact that the Centurions were the ones to develop the belief in the One True God sheds a whole new light on the conversation Baltar had with a Centurion back when he first came aboard the Base Ship with Roslin after they joined forces with the Rebel Cylons. Remember how the Centurion cocks his head? That’s because he was probably all like, “What the frak is this human preaching to me about One True God?”
• OK, Moore & Eick – you’ve answered why Sharon is a Model Eight, not Seven, so riddle me this: The old-school Cylons could speak. How come the new-model ones can’t? Or is that also part of the limitation on their intelligence?

I love this frakkin’ show. I’m sure I’ll come up with a whole bunch of other thoughts and questions in the coming days. The So Say We All blog carnival will post sometime Tuesday – submit your article here if you want to join in the fun.