AND WE WERE INTERESTED IN HER AND HER CLIENTELE

So, what’s the giveaway with Clarice? At the beginning of the episode, a construction worker immediately pegs her as a member of the clergy, despite the fact that she’s in plain clothes and hasn’t said anything. My best guess is that giant ring she wears. I don’t think we ever saw any of the priests later on wearing anything like that, though.

Clarice’s attempts to ingratiate herself with Amanda go off swimmingly, aided by Amanda’s nervous breakdown. And, might I say, the fact that the Darius storyline doesn’t go anywhere is a frakking mercy compared to the original concept that Vergis hired an actor to impersonate Amanda’s dead brother in the hopes of provoking a mental breakdown as part of his campaign of vengeance against Daniel. I mean, Jesus. We were really spared some awful, awful things thanks to further consideration, weren’t we? I’m not even going to talk about Saul and Ellen’s marriage almost becoming the lynchpin of the finale. Yet. Anyway, after Amanda and Clarice go out to the Dive, Clarice begins telling her how she needs to trust in God, and Amanda obliviously asks which of the gods she’s talking about. In light of that drunk-dialing deleted scene I talked about before, I think we can conclusively say that Clarice is the worst secret terrorist ever. Amanda isn’t doing much better, since she’ll be utterly shocked once Durham tells her the Willow family is one giant STO cell. In the deleted scenes, Clarice snaps out of it with admirable swiftness and fingers Zeus as the god in question. Yep, just go to Zeus with all your problems. He’s the guy you need.

There’s an interesting moment after Daniel comes home and he’s so distracted that he repeatedly almost notices that Amanda had someone over, and once it finally sinks in, he asks if he should be jealous. Amanda say’s she isn’t sure yet. I don’t recall if there was ever any compelling indications that Clarice and Amanda actually got it on at any point. I suppose if it happened, it was probably while they were in her secret love cabin after the suicide attempt. I’ll have to keep an eye out for that when I get there.

WHO MAKES THE RULES? SOMEONE ELSE

There was also a deleted subplot with the GDD using their new facial recognition software (acquired in an earlier episode’s deleted scene) to mass-screen the spectators of a Pyramid game. There’s some stuff with Durham going after a guy who’s 75% likely to be an old-hand STO bomber who’s served his time and been released, arresting him because he looks like he might be an ex-con at a sporting event. The real meat is another one of Durham’s cracking anti-Monad speeches. I always loved how twisted these were, ever since a quote from his first one in “Pilot” was put into an early review about the dangers of a single God who could, on a whim, decide that murder or theft were morally virtuous. More or less, he says today that “Monotheists are weak people who need God to tell them right and wrong because they have no sense of personal conscience or respect for law.” Can’t say I never met someone religiously or politically doctrinaire enough to have that description apply to them. I may use it sometime myself.

SHE’S GOING TO SMILE TO MAKE YOU FROWN, WHAT A CLOWN

Zoe and Philo go on a date where, in her attempts to sweet-talk him into taking the robot on a field trip to Gemenon, she accidentally explains why her chip is different from all other chips. There’s a bit of eyecandy with proto-Vipers that, interestingly, have Greystone logos painted on them. That’s probably because they’re in a computer game, and not because Greystone actually manufactures Vipers. I’m curious about what all those off-shore platforms were for, though. Do you need to get that much petroleum if you aren’t burning it for fuel? Zoe’s loose lips, along with Vergis taunting him about how the chip he stole was a lemon, finally let Daniel put two and two together and realize Zoe-A faked her death and is still in the U-87. It’s still odd to me that no one ever commented on how the robot’s eye would go crazy whenever someone talked about Zoe, but I guess no one pays attention to the help.

Lacy continues her attempt to get the STO to take the robot to Gemenon through the magic of flirting (it’s a shame she doesn’t know how much they want killer robots. It’d make things so simple to just ship Zoe with a batch of other U-87s. Of course, the others won’t work until she abandons the chip to give them a duplicatable operating system, so it’s a bit of a catch 22, there). Ben’s friend explains the holocafe bombings are being prompted by the fact that V-World allows people to go and sin against God’s will without having to face the consequences of their amoral behavior as they would in the real world. This is actually pretty similar to the reason Zoe-A will condemn V-World heaven in the finale, but it also opens up an interesting philosophical question: are evil acts still evil if they’re divorced from their negative effects? And, if they aren’t, then what’s the intrinsic problem with V-World depravity? I mean, there’s the concern that it can lead to acting out in the real world, the theory Baxter Sarno advanced, but Zoe and Barnabus were offended that people would even contemplate doing the sorts of things seen in V-World, even if the reasons they were wrong didn’t exist there, just leaving the theater and spectacle of it all.

It’s a complex question, and I’m a little surprised they never had anyone challenge Zoe-A to explain why, for instance, a human sacrifice was so bad if no one actually died in it?

SHE WAS A GIRL, SOFT BUT ESTRANGED

Joe begins his wild trip through V-World. When he’s talking to Tad and convincing him to help him look for Tamara, he seems really fuzzy on the relationship between the Avatar and the original. This despite the fact that Tamara-A is so obviously not the same person as Tamara. I’m going to chalk this one up to his mind being clouded by grief, as well as Daniel’s attempt to up-sell the realness and perfectibility of the Avatars. Still, the makes me wonder whether Adama would’ve bought Clarice’s spiel about V-Heaven.

There’s a hilarious deleted scene where he tells Tad/Heracles to stop calling him “Joe,” and when Tad says “Or what?” Joe reaches up and yanks his holoband off, making him scream and cry like a little girl since “That’s connected to my brain! You don’t go ripping things off people’s brains!” Don’t be a baby. Adama didn’t blubber like that when Daniel yanked off his holoband a few weeks ago. The whole bit is something to think about and smile the next time a keyboard warrior starts getting under your skin.

I don’t think I’ve mentioned it in these reviews yet, but I’ve always wondered about the blimp in New Cap City. Is it an in-game hazard, or is there some asshole who’s been playing the game for months or years, saved his cubits, and then went and bought a blimp and just uses it to grief the other players? I have to say, I’m personally a fan of the asshole theory. Anyway, Tad gets blasted by the blimp, leaving an opening for Emmanuelle to show up. It’s never really gone into, but we get another look at the kind of person who plays New Cap. Evelyn is a professional adult, but she’s evidently quite experienced with the game, and can play the role of disinterested guide for Adama to the hilt, enough so that it didn’t seem likely to me that she might be someone Adama knows until well into the next episode (also, I’m looking at the DVD, and I’m surprised that this whole arc is only three episodes. The second quarter of the season feels a lot more dense, story-wise, than the first quarter).

STEP FROM THE ROAD TO THE SEA TO THE SKY

This episode suffered a bit of Caprica-itis. Too many running plotlines, and no real through-line for the episode. The closest thing to a main plot was Tomas Vergis’s introduction, but it didn’t really coalesce into a complete something that you could call an “episode.” The troublesome part is, having everything on DVD means that I could indulge the show in its desperate, desperate desire to be a couple of ten-hour movies. My desire to just smash through the whole thing almost makes me regret starting this project. Of course, that might just be because I delayed writing about the last two episodes, and there isn’t much meaty stuff to sink into in this one.

There’s a small bit of Adama with Joe buying a holoband, Daniel visiting him, paranoid that Joe sold him out, rather than Vergis simply not being an idiot and figuring out that Greystone was responsible when there was a break-in at his lab and the device stolen just happened to start showing up in Greystone products, and Joe and Evelyn finding the kid from the last episode who was hanging around with Tamara. The most interesting part was Daniel mentioning that Ruth let him in. This, despite the fact that she recognized him on-sight a few episodes ago as “that man you don’t like.” Ruth just don’t give a frak. I think I may have laughed out loud at how sanguine Willy was about being woken up in the middle of the night by his father arguing with the richest man in the universe in their living room.

There’s a little bit of Tauron culture when Vergis is having lunch with Daniel. He cuts his food with his fork and knife, but actually eats it with his fingers. I think this is also our first indication that Clarice and Amanda are both immigrants. I don’t remember if we ever found out which planets they were from originally, but they do both seem to have a taste for Scorpian booze. Oddly, Daniel later tells Vergis it might be easier to win over Capricans by marrying a Caprican woman “if you dare.” Well, how in the hell would you know, Daniel?

There’s more of Daniel and Amanda being all married and shit when she picks up on the fact that there’s something wrong with Vegis. And might I add that Vergis is… wow. I give major kudos to the actor, because he really sells that part. With the PR Lady and Tauron mobster, I still see or hear Kat and Duck, but I really have to be reminded that this is the same guy who played Asshole Pegasus CAG on BSG. Of course, Asshole Pegasus CAG was in one episode, but, still. Vergis. Man. That whole closing scene is something else, the way he just straight up declares his intent to Daniel to destroy him piece by piece, but he still seems so genuinely happy for Daniel when talking about his childhood dream of being a sports star.

I’d forgotten that little bit where it’s confirmed that Barnabus was, indeed, responsible for the train bombing. I wonder if we ever would’ve found out how the cells all were before the bombing. My assumption would’ve been that Zoe and Ben just dealt with Clarice, but apparently not, at least in Ben’s case.

SHE’S ONLY EIGHTEEN, DON’T LIKE THE ROLLING STONES

There’s some interesting robo-human relations. Clarice is extremely put-off by Serge, and thinks the U-87 is scary looking (I’ll assume she’s gotten past that once she starts performing sacraments with them). Philomon got caught flirting with the robot by Daniel, who thinks it’s weird (because it is).

(Quick aside: I just remembered that during the whole “You can’t rape a machine” debate during the Resurrection Ship trilogy, a line I used more than once was that I’d buy that theory the day Lt. Thorne or the Sunshine Boys bent over a centurion, dropped trow, and gave it what-for. It’s not even so much the fact that Philo is feminizing and sweet-talking the U-87 as that he does it while it’s standing there, suspended. It’s like macking on someone while they’re asleep. I wonder if there was someone in the Fleet (or one of the Humanoid Models, for that matter) who actually would’ve contemplated a tender moment with a centurion.)

Probably because she can’t see what it looks like to an outside observer, Zoe-A thinks it’s sweet, and concocts a fake on-line profile to flirt with Philo at OkEros.cap. Despite those giant blocky fingers, the U-87 touch-types surprisingly well. I had some freeze-frame fun with that. “Rachel” is a 21 year old Caprican University student who loves playing the cello (quite possibly the most overtly underplayed aspect of her backstory), Sci-Fi novels, Software Beta testing (oh, you so funny), and the Nicky Casino TV show. Normally, lying about your age to get dates with men on the internet is a bit earlier on the path to juvenile delinquency than running away to another planet, but, what the hell. You’re only a horny teenage robot once. On the actual date, she adopts this ridiculous shy geek girl persona, apparently to put Philo at ease, but she might overplay it a little. I think she might’ve actually snorted when she laughed. She also mentions that she was “cash poor” while concocting her cover story about why she looked like Zoe and couldn’t change her avatar again. I wonder if that means avatar changes are a paid service, and V-World is Free-to-Play like Farmville or something, or if there’s some kind of in-game currency or points you can accumulate that allow you to switch faces, like the customizable armor in Halo.

THE MEAN INDIVIDUAL, HE VANISHED IN THE BLACK OF NIGHT

I didn’t actually take notes on this one at all, so this review’s really gonna suck. The V-World bits were interesting. It prompts the question of exactly who these people are on the outside, sometimes. The older woman who hired Tamara and the New Cap mob boss she was sent to knock over both prompt the obvious questions of why, in a world where you could look like anything, they would choose to be so tired and fat, respectively. On the other hand, we didn’t see many examples of people with done-up avatars (as far as we know). In fact, it was just Evelyn. Zoe claimed to have done it (but she couldn’t in actuality, but that’s another episode), but that’s it. I realize a lot of that was probably to limit confusion; if there wasn’t an explicit story need for it, like in Evelyn’s case, it’d just be irritating to have the V-World person and their real-world body played by different people.

There’s also a question that I wondered about in the pilot. My guess is that all the V-World environments are populated with a mix of real people and NPCs. I figure there’s some way to tell the difference (possibly the ancestor to the Humanoid Cylons’ sixth sense for telling identical copies of the same model apart), but we as the audience don’t know. The reason I bring it up is the fat guy (I’d look up the names, but, honestly, they’re one-shots and you probably wouldn’t remember their names any better than I do) had a boy and a girl hanging off of him. So were these Avatar tramps, or does someone actually get off work, flop on the couch in their jammies with a cup of hot chocolate, and put on their holoband so they can play a game that consists of being stroked by an obese mobster in an ivory suit? I’m not an MMORPG player, so maybe I just don’t get the mentality. Maybe it’s just another form of grinding. Maybe its an S&M thing, and the players for those two have some high-stakes, high-responsibility jobs and they unwind by getting to be some fat bastard’s pet for a few hours.

Tamara picks up on the fact that she owns the game pretty quickly, all told, and her head start in messing with V-World will serve her well in several episodes when she decides to make Zoe pay for her progenitor’s crimes.

I WAS UNDERAGE IN THIS FUNKY BAR, AND I STEPPED OUTSIDE TO SMOKE MYSELF A J

There’s an interesting deleted scene where Clarice is high as a kite in the Dive (love that name) and leaves a detailed, if rambling, voicemail for Amanda explaining the specialness of Zoe-A, her importance in the Apotheosis project, and asking Amanda out on a coffee date so she could become part of the One True God. She later wakes up from a sound sleep and remembers what she did and panics. Nestor panics, too, and he’s a bit of a prick about. Granted, Clarice just recorded a full confession, but, still. It’d be more helpful to just concentrate on how to fix it which, I presume, happens in a deleted scene in the next episode. (Edited to add; it isn’t on the DVD, but I think it was in the script. There are some harsh edits in a phone call between Amanda and Clarice suggesting something was moved around.)

TAKE THE NOOSE OFF YOUR AMBITION

Zoe just has one scene in the episode. It is a doozy, though, when Daniel gives his “Let’s see how much hubris we can get away with before it finally bites us in the ass” speech, where he actually explicitly says that the beauty of the Cylon is that it’s a thinking being with no rights. The best part is that she’s really enjoying the show and tell, eyeballing all the fine folks on the board, beaming as Daniel brags about how intelligent “it” is. Daniel probably wouldn’t have had nearly as much trouble getting her to talk in a few weeks if he hadn’t gone and made her mutilate herself. And then he had to go and cross every line he could find trying to get Zoe back.

THE MORE I SEE, THE LESS I KNOW, THE MORE I’D LIKE TO LET IT GO

While Daniel’s trip down that character arc is still in the future, Joe’s version of it is a bit more compressed. Having found last week that just offing people for the hell of it doesn’t make him feel good, he’s just kind of listless. His son’s a little punk, his brother has long since gotten tired of being helpful, and his mother in law just sits there chopping raw rabbits with that damn cleaver and telling him that all his problems would go away if he’d just man up and kill someone. Anyone! Joe tries to win back Willie by reliving a family fishing trip, but Willie is a terrible human being and just bitches and whines the whole time, before he ends up rising to the bait of a bunch of other kids who, by methods I don’t fully understand, can tell that he and Joe are Taurons. God only knows how, since accents and ethnicities are spread throughout the Colonies, and they aren’t visibly tattooed. Finally, Sam convinces Joe that he needs to move on, so they have a proper Tauron funeral/wake/shiva-sitting, where Joseph and Willie both get mourning tattoos (clue #23 that he’s not Bill Adama, though he can borrow his family theme music). Joe has finally accepted that his wife and daughter are gone, and is ready to move on with his life… and at that exact moment, some punk kid comes up and tells him that Tamara-A is still around.

Isn’t that how it always is? Now, I’ve never suffered a loss anywhere near on the scale of losing a spouse or child, but we’ve all had something upsetting happen to us. A disaster, a firing, a break-up, whatever. And you’re going around, finally getting over it, having a really good day, and then something happens to remind you of how you got hurt, and it all comes crashing back down again. It’s worse for Joe and Daniel in their cases, though, because Zoe-A and Tamara-A give them the illusion that they can do something about it, even though they really can’t (the final scene of Caprica notwithstanding). In that respect, it’s almost less like a death and more like a dumping, in that neither of them can move on until they manage to obliterate the irrational belief that everything is going to go back to the way it was. Joe’s just going to have to learn that Tamara isn’t going to get back together with him, and there’s nothing he can do to change that. Well, he’ll certainly get the message in the end.

THROW AWAY YOUR TELEVISION

I took sparse notes on this episode, and then waited two days to actually do the writeup, which has taught me an important lesson about how much easier this is when the show is fresh in my mind. You know, I realized watching this one that Joe never actually met Amanda. In fact, it’s kind of surprising in shows like this when you remember that some pair of main characters never actually ever saw each other. Most of the time, your main cast in a show tends to live or work together so everybody can be expected to know everybody else to some degree. In other random thoughts, Zoe’s holoband was making modem noises which could possibly make sense on some level. Sam has a little bull statue on the dash of his car, because he’s from Tauron. There’s a quick line in the Baxter Sarno interview about New Cap City, so it doesn’t come totally out of nowhere in the next episode.

Daniel and Amanda start to move on in the grieving process, on live TV as it turns out. Daniel makes the fateful decision to stop making money off holobands, hitching his company’s wagon completely to the incipient Cylon product line (which, let’s recall, has exactly one working robot. I don’t know much about manufacturing, but I don’t think you can really absorb the cost of a 99.9999% defective rate). Daniel caves in on calling Zoe “troubled,” which probably didn’t help his massive guilt complex but, hey, she and her ghost are gone, so nothing for it.

I appreciated that the show was willing not to stop and spell everything out when Amanda makes it clear to Daniel that she knows he’s bullshitting something when he said he was able to make a VR Avatar of Zoe that magically knew her secret opinions about the state of the world. Especially in a show like this, that deals with a lot of concepts and a lot of made-up rules, it’d be very tempting to hold the audience’s hand about things like the difference between Zoe-A, Tamara-A, and general dumb avatars. Actually, as long as the drama works, it doesn’t seem to matter how much you explain of the world. The people who care will figure it out, and the people who don’t will let it wash over them.

By the way, Alessandra Torresani dances really hypnotically.