I think my thoughts on this episode overall can be summed up in the notion of dramatic irony. Essentially, that's all this episode was and very much what the show is mostly becoming. If perhaps you slept in high school English class, dramatic irony is when you the audience know something that characters do not. This episode was chock full of it. Let's examine that.
1. Zoe is inside of a Cylon body but only Lacy knows that. Everyone else, especially her parents, thinks it's just a large robot. By the way, has Graystone been doing anything with it? Does Amanda even care that he brought this robot home and know it just stands there in her way? Anyway, because we know she's there but they don't, we got that tremendously awkward scene where the Graystones get physical on the table while their daughter stands there watching. Or trying not to watch? They head seemed to turn away. But it's not like Zoe can just move out of the room or they'll think something is up. I wonder what's more awkward: the fact that Zoe sat through this, or the fact that she never referenced it again.
Question: Zoe does move around in the house, right? Like when she was going through her room in the pilot. So... don't the Graystones ever notice that this large robot is never in the same place they left it? Considering that it's programmed to be a weapon that kills with extreme prejudice, does it's ability to roam freely about their house not cause them deep concern? Or has their dead daughter just pulled their focus?
2. Amanda is convinced on very circumstantial evidence that Zoe was a terrorist (and not just friends with one), and a participant if not orchestrator of the maglev bombing. She has even gotten her husband to agree with this, seemingly. We the audience know it isn't true.
3. Zoe finds a way to tap into the holoband (I'd like to know how she does this with no one around. Isn't her father working from home so that he can find out why the Cylon is special? How does she possibly have "alone time"? When he sleeps?). She and Lacy discover a room they've never seen before. When they get light in there, they find Tamara. Now, first of all, the bright ones in the audience knew she was there before the light revealed her. But secondly, this is yet another instance of irony, as we know who she is and how she got there, but Zoe and Lacy do not.
4. Graystone takes Adama back to this virtual room and we know that Tamara was there and is now gone, but Adama is left to believe she wasn't there. I'm already sick of him yelling "Tamara!" Honestly, if this show devolves into a rehash of Michael yelling "WAAAAAAAAALT" on Lost, I'll be disappointed. ...And I already don't expect much from this show.
5. The Adama's don't seem to know that Sam has been helping Will skip Tauron school.
You can see what I mean about dramatic irony. It's troublesome to me. A little bit of that can be helpful to build a story on, but every other scene in this episode was that sort of twist. It strikes me as a desperate attempt at creating drama.
I continue to find the Catholic overtones confusing. Sometimes the parallels are with the polytheists, like the parochial school where the staff are all "sisters" and such. Sometimes it seems to go with the monothesists, like when Sister Clarice has her little "confession" meeting. Is the other guy with the STO? And what sort of abbreviation is that anyway; wouldn't it be more accurate to abbreviate Soldiers of the One as SO or at least SOTO? Anyway, because Sister Clarice is playing both sides, I don't know whether this confessional was part of the Athena school or something else. The discussion about apotheosis was somewhat interesting, though I'm not sure I see how the Zoe avatar fits in. Also, the computerized voice of the other guy seemed suspicious.
We had another interesting opening teaser, this time channel surfing. I like Patton Oswald's appearance! It made me think that he really should have his own late night talk show. If Leno ever does leave NBC and they won't take Conan back, they should give Oswald a call.
Anyway, the plot is moving forward I guess, but I'm kind of underwhelmed by the whole thing. At least Zoe is able to move about in the V Club again, for whatever reason, and we will hopefully find out why Zoe was going to Geminon. But I'm bored of all the unnecessary twists, and Sam Adama is a pain too. I don't much care about him corrupting Will. I don't care to know that he's apparently gay. I also think he's a disgrace to the name of the great Sam Adams. Oh, and Joseph Adama shaking Graystone down for info about Tamara? I thought this guy was a lawyer. Can someone please get Adama in a courtroom already? The only thing I thought might be halfway interesting about Caprica was seeing Adama's father argue cases. Instead, he's a petty thug who can't get over his dead daughter.
I'm going to need more from this show soon. As you can tell by the lateness of this post, I'm not particularly enthused by it.
Favorite line: "I could use a good frak." It continues to underscore how stupid "frak" sounds in these contexts, and it was just so silly in context.
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