Chief Tyrol’s wife Cally has long been one of the post sympathetic characters on Battlestar Galactica. When she, Roslin and Zarek were all in peril of being executed during the New Caprica storyline, the audience felt tremendous sadness and grief — particularly when it looked like she had been killed by the Cylons. But the following episode showed the events from Tyrol’s perspective, and we were elated to learn that the insurgency was able to save her.

All the emotion of that arc is now rendered meaningless, however, following the events of “Ties That Bind.” If you had hope for the future of humanity, you won’t after viewing this one.

Spoilers follow.

Normally, I would sit next to the DVR and recap the events of the episode blow by blow. But I have to be honest — this is not an episode I want to watch again right now. So instead, I’m going to give you a brief recap with my overall thoughts. I hope you can forgive me.

The A-story this week involves Tyrol’s wife Cally, who is fed up with good for nothing skinjob of a husband. Tyrol hasn’t been around much lately — Cally assumes he’s having an affair, but as the audience knows, since discovering his true identity as a Cylon, good ol’ Galen has been spending a heck of a lot of time with his Cylon buddies. They’re not plotting the downfall of humanity so much as angsting about their situation. And with Anders away on the sewage ship, this week the angst is intesified by the three remaining Cylons.

To cope with her troubles, Cally has been taking a lot of anti-depressants. One gets the feeling that her inevitable discovery of her husband’s identity will be explained away by Adama and the rest due to her chemical-induced paranoia. Alas, this is not to be the case — the anti-depressants only serve to show us how messed up Cally has become, not to mention her horrendous lack of judgment.

Cally ends up trailing the Chief to Galactica’s bar, where she finds him talking a little too closely to Tory. After fraking Baltar last week, Tory’s now got her sights on the Chief. Cally naturally assumes that this is the Other Woman. When Cally’s presence in is revealed, Tyrol naturally shouts out the time honored cry of all cheating men: “It’s not what you think!” However, in this case, it’s really true. Cally just hasn’t figured it out yet.

Cally has a breakdown, and the audience wonders just who’s watching her child.

Later in the episode, Cally uncovers a note revealing the next time and location for a meeting of the Cylon Club. Thinking this is where Tyrol is going to frak Tory, she follows him, only to be surprised that Tigh’s there too. She sneaks into a nearby service tunnel and overhears them reveal their Cylon identity. This horrifies her, and she heads back to her quarters to get her son.

When Tyrol comes home, she hits him over the head with a wrench, knocking him out and possibly cracking his skull. Cally grabs Nicky and heads down to one of the Viper launch tubes, where it appears she’s going to blast herself and her little Cylon halfbreed out into space. If she was a normal person, she probably would run and tell Adama, but since she’s under the influence of various medications, she decides that murder-suicide is the better option.

Before Cally can finish the act, however, Tory comes in to talk her down just enough to get her to hand over Nicky. With the hybrid child safe, Tory knocks Cally across the tube with her Cylon super-strengthTM. Triumphant, Tory shoots Cally into space.

The camera lingers long and hard on her body as it shoots off into the void. As the episode ends, we’re treated to a close-up of Cally, her eyes dead and frozen in the void. All those theories about Cally being the final Cylon are all pretty much shot, now. Sigh.

The B-plot this week deals with Cavil double-crossing Nathalie and her rebellion. He promises to travel with them to unbox the Xena’s … errr… the Three’s, but instead, he wipes out their ships. With no Resurrection Ship nearby, it now appears that half of the Cylon skinjob models have been destroyed. Oh yeah, and the really surprising part — Boomer, made famous in season one for fraking the Chief and shooting Adama — is now fraking Cavil. Dean Stockwell may be a pretty cool guy, but that’s just fraking creepy.

The C-plot may be pretty much a bonus couple of scenes, but it’s surprisingly satisfying, setting up Lee Adama’s place as a junior member of the Quorum of Twelve and revealing Zarek’s use of Lee to manipulate to Quorum to his own ends. Roslin clearly hasn’t forgotten Lee’s betrayal, as she is almost immediately degrading and antagonistic. This is the plot I want to be watching — let’s hope it gets A-story treatment soon.

The D-plot reveals that all of Galactica’s best and brightest are now aboard the Demitrious with Starbuck in search of Earth. Things are nasty, the place stinks, and Starbuck is acting kind of psycopathic, scrawling star charts on the wall. Anders shows up to try to talk her into sanity, and as usual, she beats him up and humiliates him a bit, before having sex with him. We’re led to believe that Anders thinks that Kara’s detachment from her feelings means that she’s a Cylon, too. I wouldn’t bet on it.

As with Torchwood, there’s only so much you can watch of a show’s cast being douche bags before the audience succumbs to what the medical community refers to as “douche bag fatigue.” And I’m afraid I’m about at that point with Galactica. Where have all the high notes gone? Starbuck and Helo, finding Anders and the other survivors on Caprica? Unlocking the tomb of Athena and finding the map to Earth? The reconciliation of the cast following Adama’s coup against Roslin? Adama standing up to Kaine with “I want my men?” Apollo’s daring sacrifice of Pegasus to save all of human civilization? It’s all gone.

“Ties That Bind” represents Galactica at its ugliest — some may call it dark, but I think “ugly” is a better word. It wasn’t enough that Cally was concerned about her marriage — no, she also had to be addicted to anti-depressants. I’m not sure what that was for, but it was completely unnecessary. And Starbuck and company on the S.S. Sewership is just nothing but the same achingly miserable, self-destructive crap from her since season three. The mutually abusive, co-dependent relationship with Anders is not unlike the relationship Starbuck had with Lee last year. I really want this show to be great again, but without even small victories for its characters, there’ s only so much negativity that this viewer can take. What do they think this is, the final season of Six Feet Under?

This is not to say that Galactica isn’t well-written, acted or produced, or a good show. It just isn’t that much fun to watch anymore. We’re not in Buffy season six territory here, but we’re pretty darn close.

If it wasn’t for the engaging Lee Adama and Cylon civil war mini-arcs, this episode would have rated a lot less than 3 out of 5 chrome toasters: