BSG: "33" and "Water"

[I wrote this hours after the first showing of these episodes, so some of these comments are out of date. The same is true about my comments about episodes three and four.]

I liked "33" more than "Water," but they were both good. They did the right thing by blowing away the Olympic Carrier, but they killed something like 2% of the entire human population when they did that. I'm glad that in "Water" they showed that Apollo is still haunted by pulling the trigger.

I liked the little touches:

• Tigh is rationing his liquor by making marks on the bottle so it'll last another few days.
• The pilots touch a picture of a child looking at a nuked city before going into combat and whisper, "Never forget."
• Starbuck has to tell Apollo to behave as a commanding officer and not one of the gang.
• A baby boy was born on the Rising Star. Aww! Too bad it wasn't a girl. They would've named her "Hope."
• Outside the info center where people are compiling a registry of all survivors there are hundreds of pictures of the missing. There's no space left for Dualla to put up the picture of her family.
• Baltar blows off his assignment to come up with a Cylon detector and joins Starbuck's card game. And starts coming on to her! I sure didn't see that coming.
• Starbuck's and Baltar's comments at the card game show that alcohol and tobacco are fast becoming worth more than cubits. Even civilian clothes are worth more than money. Makes sense. Unless someone knows how to create and use a loom, the Colonials won't be able to make new clothes.
• Helo on Caprica is taking anti-radiation medicine. And he looks sick. They would never bother to show that on Star Trek.
• The scene where Galactica-Boomer fights her programming and is able to report that she found water was good.

What I don't like:

• Billy is useless and boring.
• The president wasn't as strong in these two episodes.
• I want to see more of Lt. Gaeda, the guy who plots the jumps for the fleet. He seems cool, but all he gets to do is speak on the PA system. He's only left the bridge twice in 8 hours of programming.
• Why isn't Helo freaked out by being kissed by a human-looking Cylon who knows his callsign?? And then Sharon shows up, shoots Number 6, and starts acting much more forceful than ever before. Duh, Helo!