This Friday on “Caprica” ep 09: “End of Line”

I was going to start with the title. Shouldn’t it be “End of THE Line?” However, someone in the trivia section explained that “end of line” is a computer term, and that it was often used by the Cylons in BSG. As I have only gotten to episode #7 of BSG, I haven’t run across that yet. Anyway, then I was going to segue into the fact that the CAPRICA titles have been weird-sounding with little connection to the episode. However, taking a look back we have “Rebirth”, “Know Thy Enemy”, and “Ghost in the Machine” which all fit well. “There is Another Sky” – well, it was set mostly in the virtual world, so there’s some logic to it. “Imperfections of Memory” – Amanda did have bad memories in that one. That leaves “Reins of a Waterfall” and “Gravedancing” as kind of weak, but two bad titles isn’t really worth complaining about.

Okay, on to the show. We have that “start in the middle and then go back and find out how we got there” – a once unusual concept, now done fairly regularly on virtually any drama. But it lets us know early on things are going to happen in this episode, and that is true.

Daniel decides he needs to sell the team to Tomas Vergis in order to keep his company solvent long enough to mass produce the Cylons. Now, with Daniel going to him almost hat in hand, would be a good time for Tomas to say, “You know I offered you 3 billion cubits for the team but since you’re desperate, how about one instead?” Meanwhile the government, who really thinks Daniel stole the chip from Vergis anyway, ups the deadline to one week so he can fail and they can go elsewhere. Just to make sure, the government lady secretly tells Vergis that if he can get the company from Graystone, she’ll give him the contract. Note that the woman dresses like a military business agent with Daniel, but like a hottie with Vergis. Granted she and Vergis are meeting for dinner, but still...even her hair looks sexier when she’s with Vergis.

Barnabas and Clarice have a “big whoop” showdown. They come pointing guns at each other, make a few threats, and leave. However, Barnabas is a sore loser. He decides to get rid of Clarice by planting a bomb in her car, with the unwitting help of Lacy, who earns the title of “worst spy ever.” Asked to swap out Clarice’s key fob, she dumps out Sister Willow’s purse, desperately pulls the fob loose from the other attachments, and then crams everything back into the purse. Amazingly, she is not caught in the act even though Clarice seems to be on her way to her office, and Sister Willow doesn’t notice anything odd about her purse. Barnabas refers to his one god as “the one who cast out the many.” Again, no relation to the God I know, which is fine by me. The gods the others worship, however, are called Aphrodite, Eros, and Jupiter. Not only are they names familiar to our Earth, but they’re a combination of both Greek and Roman mythology. Bizarre!

Philo has a better virtual date with Zoe, this time in a bed floating on a lake – much preferable to the dopey fighter pilot routine. But it’s all downhill from there. First he hears from Daniel that instead of finding those unique parts of the machine (via a psych profile) and mass producing them, he wants him to eradicate them and just mass produce some lifeless automatons instead. Later Zoe reveals herself, and it turns out having a robot Zoe putting the moves on you is not sexy! He sets off the alarm, and then Zoe kills him! Granted, she really didn’t mean to, but she did. At least it was quick for poor Philo, who got a little virtual nookie, but never the real thing.

The Joseph story got some solid traction. I was a little disappointed to find out the Emmy wasn’t Tamara in disguise. But that was a solid surprise to find out it was actually Evelyn, his faithful assistant who is probably also in love with him. Poor Joseph is wasting away in his virtual world, taking amp while his real body gets no nourishment. Avatar Tamara finally confronts him and tells him he needs to stop chasing her and go back to the real world. She shoots herself and then him to knock him out of the game forever. (As for shooting herself, she might not have been sure that he knew she couldn’t die in this world, and thus was hoping he’d think her avatar was dead now). Once again, Avatar Tamara shows more soul than most of the other characters in this drama. What she did, she did out of genuine love. Hopefully, Joseph will concentrate on raising his son Will now, so that maybe he can someday be a decent man like the respected captain of a Battlestar or something. Nah, couldn’t ever happen.

Meanwhile, Amanda asks Daniel about whether the accusations from Vergis were true or not, and gets the time-honored chestnut response, “It’s complicated,” aka “You don’t want to know.” She looks up the story on the Internet (or whatever they call it there) and finds out it seems to be true. (The news stories, incidentally, say the two men were “shot execution style” rather than beaten to death as he claimed – not that it’s that big a distinction.) That led to the ugliest scene of the episode. There was Amanda standing on the edge of the bridge poised to jump. I was shouting “Don’t jump,” while madp was shouting, “Jump! Please, jump!” Madp has the louder voice apparently and off the ledge she went. Ironically, her last act on the planet (or is it? She is a regular cast member after all, and they'd have to redo those theme graphics.) was to save Clarice, who left the car out of apparent genuine concern for Amanda after seeing her standing on the ledge. As a result, she escaped the bomb.

So, lastly, we have Zoe, fleeing for her life in the truck. She was mean to Lacy, who found a way to ship her off the planet but had the temerity to ask her to wait a week. You’re letting me down again, she gripes alluding to her not getting on the maglev again – despite that fact that if she’d been on it she’d be...oh never mind. Then she kills Philo, of course. Daniel has strict orders for the Cylon not to be hurt so that he can de-Zoe-ify the chip and then copy it. Won’t look as good as it did in the demo but hey, close enough for government work, huh? Zoe rams the accelerator, crashes the barricade, sails through the air and explodes.

Wow, you would think this was one of those season-ending cliffhanger shows where nothing has happened for several weeks, then suddenly all hell breaks loose. But it’s just on again next week, right? Six months? I have to wait six months to see the next episode? This is outrageous! I’m writing a nasty letter to SYFY! I’m…. (Sorry, just trying to get the whole “watching the original version of CAPRICA” experience.)

Well, I certainly can’t complain that nothing happened this week. Still, I wasn’t really wowed either. But I will give it 8 gravestones for poor Philomon – may he rest in peace.

A BIG FLASHBACK

Oh, no… Another “x hours earlier” episode. I’m tired of those, as this plot device has been used to often. But we have to admit it’s the first time they’ve used it in this show, so I guess one per season is admissible. And the ending paid off. When I first watched, I was really involved, and got really pissed off I had to wait several months to know the resolution, especially what had happened to the robot and iZoe. But we will just have to wait a week!


JOSEPH FINALLY MEETS TAMARA…

And it was a letdown. At least that boring storyline is over. Really, all that buildup for that. Joseph was getting sick and so were we.

OK, so Joseph had become an internet/video game junkie. I wonder if the ever has to work for a living. I guess he has good savings. His guide kept talking about her looks in VR, how they were not real, so I was guessing this was a real important point and I was curious to know what she looked like. It had to be someone we know, otherwise, why make such a fuss? Ha! So it was Evelyn. The way she talked to iTamara, she must really care for Joseph. I wonder how she got those badass New Cap City skills. She doesn’t strike me the kind who would spend hours and hours playing.


AMANDA IS LED TO THE EDGE

Amanda getting dressed, moping, listening to depressing music. I’ve had it with Amanda. And I don’t like people who mope in general. Wow, I had read that she would be sent to the edge, but I didn’t remember it was the edge of a bridge.

“Daniel, Vergis told me you killed two of his employees. Tell me it isn’t true.”
“Amanda, see these vegetables I’m cutting? They are metaphors for the people I had killed.”


BARNABAS VS. CLARICE, WITH LACY IN BETWEEN

Since the beginning, the Barnabas vs. Clarice conflict promised to be explosive as neither character is up to any good. Enters Lacy, still trying to find meaning for her character. If I had to sneak into a room and do something sneaky in a matter of seconds, I’m sure I would screw that up, but on TV they always manage to get it done in time.

Barnabas is a real terrorist, a bad seed. But Lacy knew all the trouble sister Clarice was still gonna cause, she would gladly have pushed that button and ended Clarice’s life at once. Now Clarice is going to come back with an extreme vengeance wish.

LOVE IS A MANY-SPLENDORED THING, BUT IT ENDS TRAGICALLY

“The difficulties in reverse-engineering stolen technology.” Ouch! A punch right to the gut. No sense in sugar-coating the situation anymore. And the military lady decides to move up the deadline to, say, mid-season finale. After all, they cannot wait another ten months, when the show comes back, to have Daniel fulfill his part of the contract.

So Daniel decides to “format the hard drive” and start with the MCPas a clean slate. Philo protests that this would erase everything that makes the robot distinctive, unique. But wasn’t it unique because it was partly analog? (And being analog wouldn’t be affected by burning it clean.) Or that theory has been completely shelved?

Philo and Zoe’s date offered a very beautiful, curious and effective scene (a bed in a lake with rose petals scattered around them). I thought it was something easily accomplished in production terms and also passed the oddity of the virtual world, and at the same time it was touching and tender. I wonder what it was like to shoot a scene in such a place, unless they used CGI, of course. If it was CGI it was very good, unlike the scene of Daniel in the Buccaneer’s arena, which was clearly CGI.

Meanwhile, desperate Zoe was bullying Lacy into helping her one last time. I wonder how much longer she’ll be able to use the “You’re letting me down like you let the real Zoe down” card. The problem with Lacy is that she lets everyone boss her around.

“You’re the smartest person I know.” Well, Philo was dating a computer, so, no wonder… Talk about a tech fetish. Long story short, their sweet love story came to a tragic ending. “It doesn’t matter what you look like, my a$$! You totally freak me out. Get away, you freaking robot!” It’s interesting how the affair seemed much longer the first time, when in fact they had, as far as I remember, just three major scenes: their first meeting in the V-Club, the date in the jets, and the one with the bed in the lake.

OK, when I saw this for the first time, the outcome caught me by surprise, because for a moment I thought love would conquer everything and Philo would look “past Rachel’s looks” and see a sweet girl behind a killer robot façade. But nope. And Philo has the honor of becoming the first human ever killed by a Cylon. It was a shocking conclusion because I really thought the two had chemistry and would have liked to have seen more of their romance.

And in the end… I got really angry I had to wait several months to know what happened to the robot once it would be caught.


ALL IN ALL

The show unfortunately suffers from the excess of characters, so none of them could be properly developed. In older days perhaps we would have these stories developed in separate episodes or episode arcs, like one arc for Barnabas vs. Clarice, another one for Joseph’s search, another for Philo and Zoe, etc. And then they would have to put meaningful action in them. But anyway, I found that most of them had a good appeal, at least in general. And in this episode, lots of things happened and they actually closed many chapters. Questions were answered, and new ones were asked. Except for the Joseph part, it was a very good episode.

This one gets 9 online profiles of girlfriends whose looks do matter after all…

well I have managed to catch up. As previously stated numerous times this show is so slow. I liked the opening which showed great promise and a faster pace but alas they managed to slow it down to a grinding operatic pace. Just don't know what to say, not my type of show and it sucks the air out of me every time I turn it on.
I hope Amanda is dead and when i realized this it hit me.....My real problem with this show is, I hope everyone but the dog gets killed. Everyone!!
The poor lab tech didn't make it and I actually liked him but you can't cross a cylon with no repercussions. At this point all I can do is take a page from Finding Nemo and just keep swimming just keep swimming. all in all just a 43 minute time kill.....I'll give this one 5 wrecked zoeies on the Caprica scale.

http://codenamestone.blogspot.com/

And this would be the classic tragedy episode.

Greystone orders the MCP wiped, thereby forcing Zoe's hand, and it's downhill from there.

Zoe forgets the robot's strength (horse power?) and accidentally kills her main squeeze Philo in a moment of panic.

Lacy gets in way over her head with the STO and is anchored to Barnabus, the one guy over whom I would root for Clarice.

Amanda jumps off a bridge.

And Zoe kamikazes a road block thereby wrecking her cylon body.

That's a final score of 4 Greek tragedies, but I would be more charitable to the episode than that and give it 7 awesome hoverjets chasing a killer robot in a stole truck.

Sorry I'm not more indepth than that. Another busy weekend for me.


___________

I'd've gotten away with it, too, if it weren't for you meddling kids.

This Friday on “Caprica” ep 09: “End of Line”

After Stone returned from his mission I had to report to re-education camp since I had lost my focus on Caprica. Now I’m back on the straight and narrow.

Wow a lot went on in this episode almost too much for my little mind to process. The government has put the squeeze on Graystone industries. They want there Robots now nothing less than 50% yields by June. With the procurement lady on the Tauron side Daniel doesn’t stand a chance. Amanda now dead after taking a header off the bridge what’s the odds of Sister Willow just happening to look up and seeing Amanda jump. Well that random action apparently saved the Sisters life. Joseph is now out of Vworld he finally finds his daughter and she shoots herself and takes out her father. Joseph was spending way too much in Vworld it was starting to affect his health. The robot lovers done for good hell has no fury like a mad female robot on her time of the month. Boom bang and you are out of her. I find it humorous Zoe tells Lacy to take it easy on Dr. Phil. Guess we have to wait until Friday to find out how iZoe escapes the crash. I’ve got a feeling Sister Willow going to go hunting next week.