End of Line

Now we come to the halfway point of Caprica's first (and only) season. And of course, its title is a reference to Battlestar Galactica.

Synopsis: Lacy has joined Barnabas' cell in the Soldiers of the One to gain his help shipping Zoe-bot to Gemenon. He enlists her to plant something on Sister Clarice, which she does. She thinks it's just a tracker, but of course it's a bomb detonator (of course it is, Lacy, you idiot). Adama's search for Tamara finally comes to an end as he finds her, only to have her shoot him out of the game for good. Graystone is on the verge of losing his company's contract to Vergis. In desperation, he orders a clean wipe of the aberrant (read: Zoe) bits in the MCP so they can start fresh and copy it from there. Well, that puts a time crunch on Zoe, who now must leave or die. She reveals to Philomon that she is Rachel and really Zoe and needs his help. He plays along, only to call for security. She flips out, kills him, and escapes in a truck. Amanda's insanity has made her suicidal and she goes up to a bridge to jump off. As the episode ends, Lacy is forced to set off the bomb in Clarice's car (which she does), but Clarice has luckily stepped out to look at the suicide attempt of Amanda jumping off a bridge, and Zoe tries to drive through a road block, flipping the truck and leaving everyone's fate in question.

Hey, this episode was directed by Star Trek: Voyager's Roxann Dawson! She does a lot of TV directing now.

I love that I complained in my last post about how nobody every swears by specific gods, and then in this episode it happens twice! Now that's more like it. Graystone says, "Sweet Aphrodite!" at one point.

I'm really tired of the whole New Cap City thing at this point. I don't understand why Tamara stays there. And what a giant waste of time this whole plot thread was! It was dragged out over four episodes, just so she could shoot him and get rid of him. Uh, YOU WERE THE ONE WHO ASKED FOR HIM, TAMARA!! You specifically sent Heracles into the real world to tell your dad where you were, and then you avoid him for days and when he finally finds you, you kill him. I do not understand this at all. What a waste of time. This is exactly the kind of crap I expect from the writers of BSG.

Turns out Emmanuel was actually none other than Adama's personal assistant lady! She's been stringing him along this whole time. In the real world, Adama's lying at home essentially comatose hooked up to his holoband incessantly. Can't have that, so "Emmanuel" goes to Tamara and creates a set-up for him to get him back. This was all her idea. But why does Tamara go along with it? Part of the reasoning is that Adama is becoming an "amp head". Well, 1) he only did it to find you, Tamara, so why were you avoiding him?? and 2) YOU GAVE HIM THE AMP, EMMANUEL! and now you're all "stop using that stuff!" Why do they write women as so insanely inconsistent? Adama can't ever see his fake daughter again because the woman who said she was there to help him find her got him hooked on drugs and permanently separated from her, while the woman he wants to find -- who herself was responsible for his learning she was still around -- doesn't want to see him and just gets rid of him. Adama had moved on before you sent Heracles after him! If he's a holo-addicted amp head, it's your fault, ladies! WHAT WAS THE POINT OF ANY OF THIS?

The theme of girls killing their pursuers continues with Zoe killing Philo. She really was just using him anyway, so in a way he's better off. But why does the good-natured socially awkward nerd have to be exploited by women and then killed and discarded? What kind of a horrible message is that? "I love you, as long as you do what I say." Sure, Zoe's a teenager, but that doesn't excuse the series.

As I mentioned above, Lacy is completely stupid to not think there is obviously a bomb in Sister Clarice's car. That's what Barnabas does: he blows stuff up. And we know how he dislikes Clarice. But why does Barnabas keep blowing things up? What's his objective? Yes, he's a monotheist, but how do random bombings promote your cause? The show is again trying to show its "relevance", but in the real world there is always some sort of objective, even if it's a stupid one. You bomb a target or you "take out the infidel" or something. Killing Clarice actually makes a bit of sense, but I don't understand the train bombing or the other bombings throughout Caprica. I'm also tired of the series painting all monotheistic religion with a broad brush, as if to say "and of course they use suicide bombings because they're religious!"

Amanda is now suicidal. I just don't get her character at all. I don't know why they write her the way they do. Apparently, the story was originally that she was being driven insane on purpose by Vergis. He had hired a guy who looked like her brother to show up random places and "Gaslight" her. Bizarre as that is, I think I would have preferred it. Amanda is now just randomly hallucinating, and it's making her unstable, and then she jumps off a bridge. Even telling me she has a history of mental illness doesn't make this any more believable for me. She's spent the entire season in bizarre extremes of emotion. I never feel like she's actually a character; just a function of plot and set pieces.

In a broader way, it feels like the series is essentially saying all women are stupid or insane. And that's a dangerous subtext to promote, even unconsciously. I'm sure they don't intend that to be the message, but just about every storyline here hinges on the female characters being insane or naive or violent or inconsistent. Yes, Graystone is responsible for Zoe's breakout. But it's still an episode full of women doing violent, irrational things. So every story does sort of culminate in this explosive ending, but for what? Will the second half of the series be any better? If this is the direction it's going, I doubt it.

I found the pilot pretty good overall, but the series has been an inconsistent jumble. Commentary tracks have suggested part of that was due to them not really knowing the tone of the show at first. They had planned it to be more of a prime-time soap, and to have more humor in it. Then they found it wasn't working. Well, obviously, because where was that stuff in the pilot? So many threads from the first 8 episodes start and then go nowhere. Sam grooming Willy for the underworld of the Ha'La'Tha went nowhere. Willy didn't even appear in the last few episodes. What about all that weird polygamous stuff with Sister Clarice? Irrelevant. So it was just for random shock value. There was that tease that she was grooming Lacy for it, or that one of the husbands was hitting on her, and then that went nowhere. Amanda was distraught, then believed Zoe a terrorist, then she didn't believe she was a terrorist, then she was normal, then distraught again, then hallucinating, then jumped off a bridge. They set up this tease of Tamara, and then string us along only to end it abruptly. We haven't seen anything of the GDD investigation for the past few episodes either. Vergis threatens to attack Graystone by taking away "what he loves the most". This was supposed to set up the Gaslight plot, but when that was cut the line just lies there meaning nothing. He makes a threat, then doesn't follow through. Sure, he buys the C-Bucs, but he was going to do that anyway before he made the threat. What about when Joseph Adama was a lawyer? We haven't seen him in court for four episodes. And what about that thread of the corrupt judge? That was dropped too. This series is proving once again that these writers don't know what they're doing. I'm starting to think that the sloppiness in BSG's early writing was less sloppy than this. And I thought this season started much stronger than BSG. How quickly it's dropped off. The production value is still good, and it's great to not suffer through so much zoomy shaky-cam as with BSG, but what is this show about? What is the point? Religion is bad? Religion is good? There's something about humanity bringing about destruction, but that's on the backburner. Apart from the questionable continuity problems with BSG, the show just on its own doesn't know what it wants to be. We'll see if they succeed in finding out in the remaining episodes, but I'm not hopeful.