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Sooo good! Okay, it's been some amount of weeks since they put Zoë in her robot body, and now everybody at Graystone is flipping out because they can't seem to duplicate the process with any other robot bodies. They have robots, but without that sparkle -- or the weird REM-cycle RoboCop shit she's been going through while getting control of herself. Among those troubled by this are two hot Graystone hobbits, one good and one evil, who are totally fascinated by the Zoëbot and one of whom might be mutually crushing on it. Daniel takes her home to work on her, but can't make much headway, and Amanda talks about how ugly she is. Oh, and she bites off one hobbit's finger Gollum-style for getting too familiar with her body, which is totally satisfying.
And all of which is a lot more interesting if you know that visually, she's Zoë most of the time, as far as we can see. It starts as a subjective little trick, moves through overused device, and right on into awesome conceit, with some really striking visuals in there -- like Lacy embracing Zoë and being hugged in turn by her giant killer robot self, or the hobbits tying down a thrashing robot who becomes a little girl. It's super intense both ways, and works in ways you probably never considered.
Meanwhile, just about everything goes batshit insane. Gay uncle Sam takes Willie skiving off on Tauron schul so that he can teach him the way of the gangsta, how to be generally awesome and dick the cops over, what people get when they don't pay their protection money, and also how to sociopathically manipulate his dad. That part was the most shocking and the most awesome.
Lacy goes to lunch at Sister Clarice's house, where we learn that she is married to about six other people, men and women, who include Scott Porter, who played my favorite character (and second favorite Six ever) on Friday Night Lights. The rest of us live on Caprica, but Clarice is inventing Amsterdam all on her hot MILFy own. There's some kind of agenda there that seems really creepy and complicated, but all I know is that the husband, Nestor, is way too hot to be that close to a borderline tween like Lacy. The family agrees, accuses her of trying to seduce Lacy through their college-age hubbie, and so Clarice heads off down to the hookah bar, where she gets her opium on and watches the big memorial service for the victims of the bomb.
Where Amanda Graystone, heretofore mostly a stoic figure, realizes that all of Agent Duram's not-so-sensitive questions about Zoë's boyfriend Ben (whom Amanda never knew about) and Zoë's total being a terrorist in a cult (which Amanda would prefer not to know about) are pretty on target. So good old Amanda looks around herself and says, "You know what this public mourning ceremony is really lacking is me throwing a fucking riot" and then screams about how her daughter was in a cult and a terrorist and killed everybody's family that is there, causing everybody to flip out. And just like that, Amanda Graystone became amazing.
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Want more? The full recap starts right below!Previously, the richest little girl in the world got upset about moral relativism -- because like all teenagers dating back to Holden, she assumed she invented figuring things out -- so she joined a fundamentalist cult and made a virtual double of herself for some unknown culty reason. Then her boyfriend blew her up, so Dad kidnapped her avatar and put her in a robot body, which didn't work out -- as far as he knew. Actually, it worked pretty well, but he still rent his garments and screamed in the rain and made best friends with some Tauron about it.
That was two weeks ago. Now Zoë's swimming in Cylon red Matrix stuff like the beginning of Robocop, coming in and out of weird dreams where she remembers being Zoë, and their secret virtual clubhouse, and playing with her dog Caesar and brushing her hair and dancing at the club, but also being a killer robot and destroying Serges. (I would say at this point that I would have been fine with it if they'd gone full Robocop and had Drew and Philo drunk and putting tinsel on her head at the Whatever They Call Xmas party, and shots like that. Mostly, more Drew and Philo in any fashion would be good.)
She finally settles on one memory: The day real Zoë took her to the gorgeous temple/clubhouse and showed her the infinity sign on the door, explaining all about the Soldiers Of The One and acting creepy as usual. Dead Zoë is so awesome because she's one of those girls who's always sort of playing pretend, so if she's going to be a superspy or cyberterrorist or whatever, damn right she's going to catwalk through dancing crowds and flip her hair around and act all dramatic. That's like the entire point. I approve. So dead Zoë introduced her to beautiful dead Ben, and she saw herself in his mirrorshades, and he declared her "perfect." And Zoë said, "It's all going to change. You're a gift. And everyone will know it soon" and her smile was very loving and pretty well insane. The memories flip out again and she remembers the day before the bomb, when she derezzed watching them sacrifice a girl to Hecate. And then she wakes fully, in the Graystone labs.
Philomon means "affectionate." In the Greek version of the Lot myth -- which is at its heart a cautionary tale about the way we have to treat strangers if we're going collectively to survive -- Philemon and Baucis are an older couple who perform the functions Lot does in the Bible story: They treat the Gods as valued guests instead of mugging or raping them, and are rewarded with salvation. A lot of old myths work that way: If a societal more isn't self-sufficient, we make up stories to keep it relevant in the face of self-interest, which will always degrade commandments unless you make them special by inviting God into the equation. "Don't treat strangers cruddy or try to rape them, because then we'll have no people left because the desert is a shitty place to be wandering" -- because it disagrees with self-interest and your natural disinclination to share food with strangers -- becomes "Or else God will burn your city." Don't eat pork because you haven't gotten to refrigerators yet. Don't do gay stuff, because it might turn out to be too awesome and you might never stop, and then you're just living in the movie 300.
They're tools to keep us in line, which is why I mention it here: Because that's exactly how terrorism works, too. "Oh, simply asking for my rights and a political voice doesn't catch your attention? Better mark it as special, by scaring you to death." God does that shit all the time. But I also mention it because Sam Adama hates terrorists even though as an enforcer he is one, and because Sister Clarice wants to save the world by destroying it, and because Joe and Daniel both want to become good men by doing bad things, and the way they can all think both at the same time is the reason God makes laws: Because there has to be a law outside the law that the law is built on.
Affectionate Philo, one of the two hot hobbits in charge of Zoë's body, is working on her when her dad and Cyrus Xander enter, talking about the problems. Specifically, it's been two weeks and she's still the only robot that works right. Take her chip out of this body and stick it in another one, and it doesn't work the same. There's a connection between her body and her mind -- which we call the soul, and involves inhabiting the body instead of operating it, which is something that we learn to do starting in puberty and figure out somewhere around Oprah's age if we're not lucky enough to get there sooner -- but they don't know that yet. "Put this chip in any other body, and it doesn't innovate, doesn't anticipate." Even though all the bodies are identical, and there's a glitchy moment where Daniel is like "That can't be true!" and Cyrus is like, "Um, but it actually is, so catch up?"
Daniel looks at her, and his daughter looks back. He recognizes her as the original prototype that he did his sneaky Dr. Frankenstein stuff to, and something pings in him. His brain was on fire with grief for two weeks, but he eventually gave up. And now here she is again, confounding his project. There are supposed to be a hundred thousand of them, not just this one, and Cyrus's team -- which is Philomon the dewy sweet blonde one and Drew the mean dark-haired one whom we'll meet in a bit -- can't replicate her at all. Finally Daniel cuts him off and says he'll just take her home and work on her there.
At the house, that dreadfully sad Amanda song plays while she digs through plastic bins looking for memories of her daughter. She asks Serge to help her find "home movie tiles" and continues to dig, sort of nuttily. These people keep thinking up new ways to grieve.
Lacy's the last one out the door when the bell rings, and Sister Willow approaches her about the invite she extended, to visit her house for lunch on "Saturday." (What is that word? Are they trying to say "Saturnday"? Or would that just sound so stupid that we've decided Saturday is a day of the week? Like how you say Scorpion like the animal and not "Scorpi-ahn" to go with the other Colonies?) Anyway, Lacy's very nervous about going to a teacher's house, but Clarice is as usual sanguine and feline: "Well, we do eat. Can I expect you?" Lacy gets very nervous as her phone starts to ring, and she snatches all her stuff and runs, promising to come. Clarice continues to be freaky, I don't really need to mention that but there it is: Status quo w/r/t Willow's freakiness.
Out in the hallway, Lacy answers the phone, and it's Zoë. Who can't believe she's been dreaming those weird dreams for two whole days since they last spoke, which I guess they've done multiple times since the end of the pilot. Lacy tells her about lunch with Sister Clarice, and offers to ask for help with the whole captive-robot situation. Zoë cuts her off and goes, "No. The only control that I have right now is that no one knows I'm in here. Promise me you won't tell." Power, and control. Which again, is a thing that teenagers understand: When you're an object, sometimes the only power you have is in keeping your real self a secret. Let them bash you around and put you wherever they want, and just stay quiet, and you can stay in control.
Lacy promises, and all this time Zoë and the robot body keep trading places on the screen. This is brilliant because it's completely flexible and meaningful depending on the aim of the scene. Sometimes it's obvious, like when they're touching her body and she hates it, but sometimes it's just about who she's being. Right now, she's being both. She tells Lacy about the plan to take her to the Graystone palace, and says she'll try to at least get ahold of the original Zoë program for her move. Then she hangs up because the hot hobbits are coming, but Lacy takes a while to figure that out.
The hot mean one, Drew, makes a mean gross face up at her and calls her a "great piece of engineering," and the hot nice one Philo says that she gives him "chills." Drew doesn't like him feminizing the robot, but Philo's not sure that's a bad idea. Drew looks up at her. "Except it's not a person. It's useful. Just a tool." She watches him, and he steps down. It's all about power, and control. Every tool is a weapon if you hold it right.
The credits are pretty much insane, but with very pretty, very sad music. This show is so sad. I think in some ways more sad than BSG, because it's sad from both directions. At least in sixty years they'll be running away from a tragedy toward something, but here they're running from one tragedy to another one, and they're the ones making it happen the whole time. By far the queerest part of the credits is the Lacy/Clarice part, but even that has to do with Clarice as a twisted angel. The rest is pretty cool though -- Joseph mourning, Sam protecting Willie, Daniel and Amanda on top of the world -- and it ends with a whole Cylon eyeball buzz that's kind of chilling... I don't know, I can't hate it. It's dorky and overly ambitious and highly literal -- which I don't know is a bad thing because it tells you what you need to know, which is how everybody adds up -- but the music is good and it's sort of sad to see the big word CAPRICA over what Caprica City used to look like. I guess I still have feelings about the Colonies, which is weird, but a good feeling.
Then there's that commercial I love where Zoë scatters glitter over all the dancers, that's been giving me chills since like before BSG ended, and then there's a whole long weird sequence of different Caprica TV channels catching you up on what's going down. What's weird about it is that they never show who's watching the TV, so it's just like you're watching TV on Caprica and switching channels yourself. That seems like it violates some kind of filmmaker rule, somehow. But it works, and we already know the show is going to use TV a lot to keep us caught up on the situations, so maybe it's just a conceit.
So we've got GDD Special Agent Jordan Duram (which is chyroned as "Durham" on CAP News; it's the little things) explaining one more time about the STO, which we know freaks Duram right out. There's also a visual of the infinity symbol and what STO stands for. Then it switches to CAP2, where they're showing the GDD rounding up kids for interrogation about the bombing, which was a month ago. Then on a show called Cubits & Pieces they talk about how Graystone stock is at its 52-week low, and there are rumors of some kind of investment or loan issue we haven't yet heard about. The last channel is CAP Sports, where a Pyramid game is about to start, and then we go there.
The dome looks like the Resurrection Ship crossed with the Pantheon. Lots of buttresses, but not classically Greek or Roman in design, so it looks like white Giger. There's a giant six-story statue watching over them, I'm guessing one of the ones that's patron of the Olympics but I can't see any identifiers. Wait, it's the Atlas Arena so it's probably Atlas... that makes sense. And then lots of sparks and explosions like American Gladiators or wrestling, and the Buccaneers come running out. Their symbol is a black pirate ship that's kind of awesome looking; in addition to the pennants and flags there's also a dirigible with their insignia on it overhead. All-Star C-Bucs Mid-Corner JG Moon, #7, comes running out. He's superfine. Actually all the Pyramid players are outrageously hot. And apparently male (I don't remember, was that the case in the pilot?). And they apparently have ... Cheerleaders. The frak? That doesn't sound right. Oh, later on there are girl players so it's okay. I'm still flummoxed by the cheerleaders, though.
The Olympia Stallions have been looking for a rematch ever since "last year's controversial overtime victory," if you're wondering about intra-league rivalries at all, and Joe Adama is sitting outside school waiting for Willie as the announcers discuss how Daniel and Dr. Amanda, the owners of the Bucs, are in the box. They wave down at the crowd like eupatrides. A woman player's face flashes on the Jumbotron and they show the Caprica flag, while the announcers talk about the whole MAGLEV bombing a month ago, and then they play the Caprica National (Planetary?) Anthem. All we here is a repeated chorus of "So Say We All," but apparently we'll hear more later. When they play the Anthem you cross your hands over your chest. The second that shit is over, Amanda grabs her coat, preoccupied, and Daniel asks her to stay and hang out, make fun of the cheerleaders. (I know, right?) She tells him she is not feeling like it yet, and he's sad.
Meanwhile Joe is calling to bother Daniel one more time, and leaving a voicemail about he's reconsidering the whole "repudiation of his daughter's ghoulish avatar" thing, but Daniel won't call him back. Daniel is guilty of both the thing and the running away from the thing, and now so is Joseph. When he hangs up, he finally realizes that he's parked at Tamara's high school and not Willie's elementary, so he calls the other school and stutters and feels very sad about his dead daughter. You know what's still creepy? The fact that nobody has brought up his dead wife beyond one drive-by mention, and that wasn't even his idea. All about Tamara.
Drew bitches at Philo while he practices voice commands with the robot, because after all they're supposed to be loading her up and taking her to Castle Graystone. Philo is sort of being annoying if you look at it that way, but he's so pretty it would be hard to yell at him. Zoë likes playing with him; she likes it even better when he calls her a work of art. They work just long enough to really piss Drew off, so he grabs her and starts strapping her to the table, one arm at a time, and then the legs. Philo tells him to go easy on her, but Drew says she told him she likes it rough. Needless to say, we're 60/40 looking at Zoë the girl throughout this whole manhandling creepfest, because her perspective matters more than theirs. A steel carton slides up over her bed.
When Joe gets home, Willie's already there playing on a laptop. When the Cylon War starts they won't have laptops anymore, or anything networked, no holobands or v-clubs. It's one of the few cases where the prequel having better science makes sense. Willie immediately asks if Joe went to Tammy's school again, but he lies and says he was in court. While Joe checks the answering machine for messages from Daniel, of which there are none, Tsattie Ruth shows him the invite that arrived: A public memorial for the people who died in MAGLEV 23. Joe's not having that, even though Ruth points out that the Graystones donated, which means it's going to be a high-class, connected event. The word she uses here is eupatrides [lit. "good families"] who were the noble ruling class in Athens. Anyway, Joe interrupts and informs her that the Graystones can frak themselves and stomps away from her appalled expression. Meanwhile, Willie looks weird some more.
Zoë struggles in Drew's truck on the way to the Graystone house, shoving her wrists up and against the shackles over and over, strong enough to cut or break human wrists. Inside the house, Amanda's on the couch watching home videos of Zoë on their entire back window, which is amazing. She's very young in this set. Serge announces Agent Duram and she sighs angrily and says to let him in, but then answers the door herself, in heels. She informs him that he can't search the house because of Daniel's defense contracts, and Jordan is classy as usual and just quietly asks if they can talk about Ben Stark. Of course, Amanda has no idea who that is, so he produces pictures of Ben and Zoë together and then Amanda and Jordan are both horrified that she never met him. She chokes out some babble and goes into denial mode and then shuts the door in Jordan's face. She stands behind the couch, looking up at her two-story baby daughter, and tries to figure her out.
The hobbits pull up outside, giggling about how they get to see Daniel's home lab, but when they open the back of the van it's just chaos: Zoë's gotten one arm free and is hurling shit around. Stuff flies past their heads as she struggles, and Drew freaks out almost as bad as she's doing, but Philo goes back around to the side to get closer to her. He calms her down, talking slowly and calmly and apologizing and being totally sweet, and they look into each other's eyes -- this might be my favorite plot thread for now, just because it's so emotionally real, like, the cute boy is never going to love you in that monstrous body, but he sure does look at you that way sometimes, and maybe on some level unbeknownst to himself he knows how special you are, etc. etc. -- and she lets him pull her chip. It lies at her throat, essentially. She goes limp, and Drew spazzes out more, and Philo hates him, and her body is cold.
It's not just my penchant for teen stories and feminist stories, it's actually happening. That's so exciting, but also maddening because of how science fiction people are. Comparing it to Dallas is one thing, but people have been calling it Melrose Place and invoking CW comparisons, and it's like: Why? Because it's character-centered? Because the main characters are often children? It just seems like blatant and unconsidered sexism to blow the show off for that, like the whole Starbuck GINO bullshit that was so unbelievable back in the day. There's nothing CW about this. I guess the difference between a SF show and a real show in a SF world is more of a danger area than we could have considered. I'm really impressed that they're taking it as far as they can, between the whole alien body theme and the general omnisexual explosion of gay uncle Sam and Clarissa's family we don't even have a word for. It's a little dangerous/ambitious, but analogous to looking at Grey's Anatomy (and people do, and make the comparison too) and getting weird about how many of the characters are black, Latino, Asian, etc. as though they're trying to make a point or that Shonda Rhimes is taking full advantage of her position to highlight the freaky sameness of TV. Which point they are making, here and there, but it hardly invalidates the result. If you can't investigate sexuality along with everything else -- especially with metaphors like this -- what are you actually doing?
Willie and Ruth have a pretty great scene where they fight about how he doesn't want to eat traditional Tauron cooking just because it's Tauron. It's just extremely well-acted and surprising from both quarters, because you get a serious hit of that sparkly-eyed Adama stuff from the kid, and Ruth is a bad-ass, and they talk over each other in this completely naturalistic way, and it's thrilling. He talks about how he's not being a self-hating T, he just isn't hungry, but when Joe offers him a burger -- because Gods forbid he support Ruth in her attempts to keep Tauron tradition alive in their family, even though he totally does -- Willie immediately admits that his appetite might be coming back. Ruth throws a tiny fit and the two of them scatter into the kitchen, cutely sniping at each other, but Joe is too busy hallucinating Tamara to notice how great his family still is. And I mean literally, like she's sitting there hounding him, and you can just bet that the very thing he does is leave Daniel his 85th voicemail message.
Philo's obsessing on why Zoë flipped out like that, and Drew makes fun of him because Zoë is so "totally cool," and Philo gets defensive and lists all the amazing things about the Zoë robot, but she doesn't have her chip in yet so she doesn't hear any of it. They put it in, and she wakes up and sort of spazzes around, so Philo offers to do a diagnostic but Drew's just weird and hateful and wants to drill her face or something. So he gets closer and closer and scarier-looking and rapier, and finally of course she bites off his finger and sends it flying, because Zoë rules. He starts screaming and Philo runs to his aid and Drew hollers, "Get the tip! Get my fingertip!" which made me laugh, and then Philo finds it in this adorable squeamish way and carries Drew off to the hospital. Left alone, Zoë touches her cheek and looks at the blood on her hands.
It's fascinating because there's the level on which there's no moral message (What, "don't treat machines like machines?" That made no sense in the BSG finale and makes less sense here), but on the other hand, don't treat girls like this. So the character Drew is paying the price for the metaphor and not his actual shitty behavior -- although by the same token, you have Philo's intuitive sense of Zoë telling you that Drew should at least pick up on this a little bit, which makes his cruelty more cruel and less the normal thing it would otherwise be.
Amanda spends some time wandering around a not so great neighborhood before finding Lacy on her front steps with her holoband on. They talk about how Lacy's house is hard to find because all poverty looks the same -- down to the motorcycle in the front lawn with duct tape all over the seat -- and Lacy's like "sorry im so poor FML" and refuses to meet Amanda's eyes. Of course, the last time she dealt with the Graystones they got super scary on her and threw her out of the house, so I'd tell her to fuck off, but instead she just looks anxious. Amanda asks if she's okay, and then asks if they can talk about Zoë. Lacy's in no mood to talk about any of the Zoës because all of them are basically her problem, so she is relieved when her no-doubt drunken mother yells at her to come inside and sweep the hearth or whatever.
When Lacy gets to the door, Amanda kind of quelch-screams her name, and she finally looks at her. "What was she running away from? Was it from us? From me?" Amanda sounds just completely desperate and sad, like in a Holly Hunter way. Lacy stupidly goes, "She just said that there'd be a new family waiting for us on Gemenon." Amanda is totally grossed out, because the last thing she ever did was slap the ever-loving shit out of her dead daughter, and the last thing her dead daughter ever said was how much she'd regret it. (And then sent her a seeming suicide note/apology, but still.) So combine the guilt and shame with the necessary narcissism of grief and you've got a whole host of reasons for Amanda to think she killed her daughter. "Sorry, it's the last thing I heard her say," Lacy says, sealing the deal. She goes inside, and Amanda cries in her yard and feels like crap some more.
As little Amanda as we got in the pilot, I'm still just shocked at what a powerful character they create in this episode. Everybody's so much more alive and vibrant. There's an emotional component that you can't teach; it's the difference between Weddle/Thompson and Espenson or Verheiden (who did this one) or even good old Angeli. I can't say whether it's better or worse because there are plenty of people who prefer the classic SF stuff that doesn't care about feelings or whatever, and even more people I'd wager who don't see a difference at all, but after years of watching Nankin put the missing heart back into the Starbuck episodes it's something to which I'm really sensitive. Here, the chemistry is perfect. The whole thing reminds me of how bored I got/get with the BSG miniseries but how much I loved and still love "33" and "Water"; that's how much I love this episode.
Sorry to keep mentioning BSG, if you're the kind of person who feels like bitching about that, but it's literally unavoidable, and as long as we use them for comparison and not contrast -- not saying one is better than the other or complaining about this show through the lens of the other one -- I don't see what the problem is. See, like right now Daniel is playing Nomion's Third Sonata in his lab while Philo explains the same shit we already knew, about how the chip only works in this one body, because it's "diffusing some of its control to the peripheral subunits of this particular model." Inhabiting the body, in other words. Daniel continues to play and act nuts the whole time, and it doesn't matter how much Philo loves her -- and he does, and she can see it -- that's still only one victory out of a hundred thousand failures. And while the defense contract is a huge issue, and Graystone stock is tanking, there's also the other thing going on here, which is that the MCP chip was stolen from Tomas Vergis (Tauron) by Joseph Adama (Tauron) with the help of the Ha'la'tha (Tauron mob) -- so if it doesn't work, a lot of shit that shouldn't have happened just happened, but... Isn't that also how Val Chambers got murdered? Using the Taurons until he didn't need them anymore?
Inside Casa Willow there's music playing and all kinds of raucous kids yelling and stuff. Lacy's wearing a sad dumb church dress with a peter-pan dickie and has forgotten to bring any gifts for the hostess. Clarice welcomes her in with that curious mix of awkwardness and creepiness, and gives her a spooky hug. The second she's in the door, Scott Porter comes downstairs shirtless and looking like the invention of sex. He introduces himself to Lacy, flirting, and runs off again to shower. Lacy doesn't know what to think about all that, but is even more flummoxed when she learns that Nestor isn't Clarice's son -- although she admits he's the right age to be -- but her husband. Along with at least five other guys, and three other ladies. Lacy is surprised, but familiar with the concept of group marriage -- "it's cool," she says unconvincingly -- and stutters and stammers a bunch more.
Clarice's wives are the very pregnant and pointy Mar-Beth, Helena who is black and awesome-looking, and Desiree, the hottest one, whom we learn was the original to have the surname Willow that they all took. The menfolk are hot-as-hell Nestor, mustachioed Tanner, a graying blonde named Olaf, somebody named Rashawn, and a couple other guys we also don't get to see. Everybody seems sort of tense except for poor Tanner, who calls everybody in to dinner once Lacy's in the door. Clarice makes Lacy giggle, saying they have to sit together so she can watch out for her, and Tanner makes a joke about the three available varieties of hobo stew: Spicy, Vegetarian and Squirrel. He has a weird accent that goes back and forth between what sounds vaguely Canadian and something vaguely Australian, and he has very sad eyes. I like him.
Desiree assures Lacy that the squirrel stew is actually just "regular," and she asks for that. Tanner laughs heartily and starts tossing rolls at all the kids and it's very lovable, and then Clarice calls a freshly bathed-and-dressed Nestor in to eat. He rubs Lacy's shoulders and recommends the squirrel, and Mar-Beth registers that weird little moment, and then when Nestor sits down he and Clarice share a weird look. I wonder if the whole family is STO, or just those two? They're definitely the only ones who know how important Lacy is. I mean, we barely know how important she is, because we still don't know what Zoë's point was in making her double in the first place, and Lacy seems confused about that as well as everything else that is going on in this show, but Clarice clearly does. Plus they've hooked me with the whole Philo crush, bigtime obviously, and anything that keeps Lacy out of that particular teenage nightmare scenario is fine by me. That's going to be a wretched hell no matter what, but I don't think I could handle it if Lacy got mixed up in it.
Uncle Sam leads Willie through the fruit bins and shops of Little Tauron, which Willie really likes. Sam tells about how he and Joe used to hang out here all the time and he'd strike out with dudes, but Joe would always score with their sisters. He describes Joe as liparos, "smooth" [lit. "oiled"], and then laughs that he's teaching Willie Tauron after all. Because they are playing hookie from Tauron School, you see, which seems to be a culture-based extracurricular analogous to Hebrew school. Sam grabs something out of a bin and eats it, to the nervous grin and nod of the shopkeeper, and explains to Willie that he recognized Sam from his Eastern Promises mafia tattoos, and thus was more than willing to let him sneak a bite. Then the phone rings and Sam curses, because now he has to go do mafia stuff even though he's got Willie with him. "Was it the Gautrau?" Willie asks, and Sam tells him to shush. They rush past a couple of guys playing Go so that, as Sam explains, he can break some stuff.
After lunch, Lacy sits in the Willow parlor with Clarice and Nestor and they make totally awkward small talk, including that strange word "Saturday" again. Lacy says it's nice because her mom's "kind of formal," whereas here, everybody's totally chill and married to everybody else. Nestor makes a weird face about how maybe he'd like to get comfy with Lacy's underage ass, and then those two weirdos get all Boris and Natasha and start saying the most outrageously fake shit to Lacy. This can't be Clarice's first seduction of the innocent into her cult, after all, but they're sure looking like it.
Like Nestor pretends to be surprised to learn that Zoë was Lacy's best friend, and then Clarice changes the subject to Zoë's genius, and then Nestor changes the subject to "interesting" facts about how some programming code survives for decades, and Clarice pretends to find this fascinating, but the endgame is when Nestor flashes his megawatt hotness at Lacy and gives an impassioned speech about how maybe Zoë's brilliance will live on in her code, that maybe she's an artist -- just like Philo says about the U-87 Zoë robot, that she's a work of art -- and that's the entire point. They jump right back up Lacy's ass about how Zoë's legacy must live on, and Lacy starts to get weirded out because Zoë specifically said she didn't want Clarice involved yet, but it's hard to feel too bad with that Nestor shit going on right in your face, so she just wiggles around on her chair and stares at the floor and eventually mumbles something indistinguishable. I cannot wait for Lacy to get her groove back, because she is such a dynamic actress and it's just frustrating watching her play out the whole mourning fugue like she has a head trauma when you know she's about to get fucking hardcore and bring all those colors back.
Daniel rocks in a chair in his lab/den, watching sports with Zoë watching him from the corner. Amanda wanders down there to razz him about not working, but he says he's letting his subconscious do the work. He turns off the TV, and then Amanda notices Zoë looking at them. "Oh, Gods. Think I saw this guy in a movie once!" She talks about how Zoë looks like robot Godzilla and is a disgusting and horrible monster to look at. Zoë just stands there listening to her mother saying this shit and feeling like the worst piece of all time. Amanda finally brings up the public ceremony tomorrow, and Daniel whines that he's got a lot of work to do and this and that, and Zoë watches her parents go back and forth about whether or not to attend her memorial. Caesar sits at her feet, staring up lovingly, until Amanda finally gives up and leaves, taking him with her. Left alone with the robot, Daniel stares into space for a second until Serge announces that Joe's at the front door. He thinks about that for like one second and then says to deny Joe, because he's guilty of the thing and now also guilty of running away from the thing.
Lacy says goodbye to Nestor, leftovers in hand, and left alone in the foyer Clarice and Nestor share another worried, hopeful look. Back inside, Mar-Beth and Tanner stare at her and act creeped out until she finally asks them WTF is wrong. They have a whole showdown about whether or not Clarice is using Nestor to seduce Lacy for some reason, and she and Nestor laugh like that's so totally silly, but the others remember something about Clarice's "track record" that makes her suspicious in this instance. She turns on two kinds of guilt at once, the first being that Lacy is a girl who just lost her two best friends in the world and needs guidance, and the second being that they are grudging grudge-holders who will never let her forget anything. (If somebody tries to make you feel guilty about something, find out what they're guilty about and talk about that instead.) Tanner and Mar-Beth backtrack and apologize and, finally with the upper hand, Clarice excuses herself in a fake huff to go for a walk so they'll stop bugging her about her total terrorist plots.
Daniel plays office Pyramid with a tiny goal against the wall, and it's fairly adorable, but not as cute as when he reminds Serge to say what they practiced. "The crowd goes frakking wild, sir. They're tearing up the seats. It's bedlam. They demand another hour of game time, sir." Daniel drinks in their imaginary applause, but finally decides it's time to work on Zoë. Makes sense that he's been avoiding it, though. He flips through schematics and has a long embarrassing conversation with himself about how he put Zoë in the robot but then couldn't find Zoë in the robot, so she's gone, but where did she go because she's not in the "mainframe" and how come this robot is so special. Around and around and around. Zoë just stares at him and I'm assuming hopes fervently that he won't figure it out. And that he will.
Sam lectures Willie with some boilerplate patter about a car on the street while picking up a garbage can and shaking out the trash. Then he walks it across the street to a printshop and hurls it through their window. They walk away quite quickly, Willie having a nervous breakdown and Sam being adorably suave about the whole thing. "You run away, you're guilty of two things: The thing, and the running away from the thing." Eventually the cops do nab them, which gives Willie a heart attack, but he just keeps telling him to be cool and making jokes with the officers. (Their handcuffs have a really cool/smart/hard to explain design, where your wrists are basically crossed like a Z behind your back, arms parallel so that your hands are immobile and pointed in opposite directions.) "Give in on the little things, they miss the big things, okay?" Sam is full of advice. He tells Willie that they're going to let themselves get put in jail, and then immediately pay the fine -- which the cops don't tell you that you can do, usually -- and this will drive the cops crazy, but also means the net cost of his protection-racket attack on those people is just a matter of already factored-in money. I have more respect for terrorists than mobsters because they do the same things for the same reason -- using innocents to make a point -- but terrorists are appealing to a higher law behind the law, while this kind of shit is just saying "You need to play by the rules we made up, or else," like, they put their law in front of and not behind the regular law, if you see what I'm saying.
Amanda's watching the home movies in her bedroom: Lacy gets shy about the camera and puts Zoë in front of it, and Zoë -- wearing a gold infinity pin on her sailor dress -- talks more crazy cult talk about how their lives are about to totally change, and also that she is a very pretty girl. Amanda weeps, and then Daniel shows up in the bedroom looking drunk and nuts, and without prelude he asks why she even wants to go to the ceremony. She's not sure why. Daniel flops down on the bed by her -- this scene is the best scene in the whole episode, I think -- and nearly starts crying when he tries to explain. "I don't want to think. I just feel awful, and angry, and numb, and..." Amanda asks who on earth he's mad at, and she cries listening to him: "Everybody. And everything. Myself, and the world. Her." Amanda can't even really hear him say that last one. It's too true. It's too unbearably disgusting.
When he mentions the robot, Amanda nearly laughs. "The robot didn't do anything," she says dully, stroking his hair. He laughs, because that's the problem, and finally sits up. They both admit that they are going fucking loony-tunes, and are just wonderfully in love and so sad. He finally touches her face and goes, "I sure love you," and offers to go to the memorial with her if she wants. Her sad, sad song plays and she gets kind of angry for a second -- "Because you're ready to think?" -- but he masterfully turns it around: "Because I promised Serge some time alone with the U87..." She rolls her eyes, exasperated, not wanting to laugh, like it would be some kind of betrayal to laugh right then; she begs him to stop. "I think he's got a little crush," Daniel continues, and they shake the bed, trying not to burst into tears, or laughter, or screams. "It's not pretty, it's not a pretty thing, but... They need to be alone," he says, and holds her tight while they weep.
As surprised as I am to have fallen so quickly and deeply in love with Amanda Graystone -- Did you ever watch Once & Again? She reminds me in some ways of my favorite character on that show and one of my favorite actors of all time, Susanna Thompson as Karen Sammler -- I am that much happy that their marriage works like this. I'm beyond grateful that the whole plot point about Amanda having an affair was left out of the pilot, because having them this way -- scared and angry and holding desperately onto each other, and all the prickliness and sweetness of them -- is so much more powerful and plays to the actors' strengths so much better. Plus you also get to contrast them with Willie/Joseph, and how both families have completely lost the plot or definition of what a family is, and they're all just scattering through time and space and trying to find their ways back to each other. Most marriages where the child dies end in divorce, that's the statistical truth; meanwhile Joe and Willie and Sam and Ruth are just this whole extended-family immigrant song about how much they love each other and hate the parts of themselves in each other. And that's before you get to the Willows, or Sam's husband, which are two more angles on just how silly the old concept of "family" really is in this context.
Now out of jail again, Sam offers Willie some more advice. "Someone tries to make you feel guilty, you figure out what they feel guilty about. You talk about that." Also, as he lights a cigarette, don't smoke. Not because it's bad for you -- "Life's bad for you" -- but because they can get your DNA off a butt now. But don't tell Joe, um, any of this. Willie is all over that. They're really pushing the Sam/Willie bonding stuff hard, aren't they? I wonder what that's going to turn into. I really don't like it when adults strike bargains with kids like this, like when the mom says we have to keep a secret from dad or stuff like that. It never ends up working out and it gives me the creeps, even if you're being asked to pick wonderful Sam over taciturn messed-up Joe.
Lacy's back in her scary yard, slinging recycling bins -- "Mom, you gotta get them in the thing or they don't take them!" is one of the best lines in the episode -- when Zoë calls: She's at the house, at large -- I guess it's about time for the memorial, actually -- and moving around, and she wants Lacy to come help. Serge, like the dog, recognizes Zoë as herself, and will let Lacy in. We don't see it, but that's what happens later. Kind of a trope -- only the robot and the dog accept you in your different body without question/know there's something hinky about the stranger/can tell when you're possessed/etc. -- but given the fact that Philo's doing the same thing, and so much of this story is about intuition and the definition of the soul, it becomes more. Actually, given Graystone's complete emotional illiteracy, it becomes essential.
Willie comes home to Joe making that scary angry face: Apparently the teacher at Tauron school, Despoina Kollas (of all the really creative Greekisms in this episode -- which I personally love because it's like pretending college ever did a damn thing for you, and because once again Donna Tartt's effect on my life has time-traveled from 1992 in the strangest way -- this is my favorite because it's so natural that you would call Miss Kollas despoina instead, given the sort of homespun things you can take from the Hebrew school analogy) was worried about him because he didn't show up. Willie tells Joe exactly zero percent of the shit he was into today, doesn't even mention the Uncle Sam bit, and just licks his lips quietly. Joe gets very het up about how Tauron school is about "us, finding out who you are, about being Tauron, being part of a family." Willie doesn't give a damn. "It's hard being part of a family, Dad. When there is no family..." he executes a slow turn, offers to let his dad punish him however he wants, but of course Joe swoops in and holds him wicked tight. And over Joe's shoulder, Willie smiles in a truly eerie way. (Although it's less creepy if you knew him as a grownup, because that's still going to be like his one move fifty years from now.)
Clarice wanders the streets, stops at a newsstand, stops bullshitting herself and heads across the street toward Dive, which is an opium den, where she chills the bartender's flirty hard sell and orders a room, a hookah, and 2 g of "purple." Clarice Willow is just a wonderwall of fucked up things, I love her. There's also a strong sort of implication that she used to have a problem, and has now decided to jump off the wagon again because of the pressure of sending off little kids to kill themselves. So she goes off with her smoker and gets her opium on and everything is trippy and a hazy shade of winter and whatever. It's a constant battle in these early days not to confuse her character with Adelle DeWitt so I don't trust myself to know her yet, but if I don't think about that then it seems like she's probably got the biggest heart of anybody on the show, and has to dull the pain or whatever, but that we'll take forever to figure it out because her ideals and plans are so yucky and personal. But that's Adelle defined, so I can't commit to saying that because it's the rare circumstance where I don't trust my perceptions yet.
Robot Zoë opens the dead girl's closet, stares around, picks up shit and looks at it, sits on the bed, breaks it underneath herself, gets embarrassed and stands back up, wanders the room a bit, and finally crouches to look under the bed. Lacy comes in and stares at the monster for the first time, totally shocked and in awe, and Zoë stands in front of her, nearly laughing. "It's me. Lacy. Lacy, it's me! It's okay. You can take a good look." Lacy circles her, mesmerized and less scared by the second. "Wow. So this is you. Your arms and... Your face... Your voice comes out of here? And you see here. Look at your arms..." She stares at them, not without affection, and Zoë thinks about Philo. She knows she shouldn't. "Do I look male to you?" Lacy stares, and admits that she does (with a classic Dawn Summers 'yeah-huh' at that). This bums Zoë out and she stares out the window, cursing. Lacy points out that, upside, she's out walking around in the world just like the dead girl always said she would, and that's pretty awesome. The downside is of course that she's totally trapped and getting manhandled and occasionally having to bite people's fingers off. She's cargo, she's a tool. "God," she grunts, and sits back on the broken bed.
Lacy comes closer and asks what she can do and what the plan is. Zoë gets super intense and says there's no more original program anywhere, so at least Daniel can't duplicate the process and put her in more copies. She gets grossed out and starts talking about how confusing it is, being the dead girl and the new girl and the robot all at the same time, and Lacy calls her a "trinity," in fact "three faces of one thing," and Zoë retorts that also, according to her mom, she is a monster. "Well? To be fair..." Lacy says, in exactly the right tone that it doesn't come off mean or rude in any way. Zoë nearly laughs, but it's still a pretty sad situation. She holds out a hand to Lacy, who finally takes it, and then bends her huge body down to embrace her. And you might think that a schoolgirl getting a hug from a giant killer robot would look silly or funny, and maybe on some level it does, but in the moment it's mostly, amazingly, neither. It's just sort of sweet and sad, and a little bit terrifying.
Memorial service. The whole time everything else is going on, people are on the PA telling their stories -- one guy didn't wake his son up in time to walk to class, so he took the train; somebody else lost her mom -- and it's nice the way that keeps weaving back in. Daniel and Amanda are essentially incognito in the crowd for now, bodyguards subtle but close by, and Daniel asks if she wants to speak. Of course she doesn't. She sees people from the Athenian Academy and wants to talk to them, but Daniel whines that she'll end up being "everyone's shoulder to cry on," and that they'll never leave. This is not only generally offensive, but especially unimpressive. She has no idea that Daniel has been grieving longer than she has, in secret, and looking for their daughter in places she doesn't even know about, so he just seems bizarre and uncouth. She takes off at a clop and Daniel looks to his bodyguard Sean for some kind of emotional support.
Once separated, both Graystones are approached by people: Daniel by Joseph, who is all shook up, and Amanda by Ben's mom, Natalie Stark. Daniel calls off Sean so he can speak to Joe, who is very angry about the phone calls he's not returning, and Joe gets sort of threatening about how he stole the MCP chip in the first place, which grosses Daniel out. Meanwhile, Natalie gives Amanda an envelope of stuff Zoë left at their house, and talks about how much Ben loved Zoë. Which is the worst, because Amanda can't even respond in kind, because she never heard of Ben until yesterday, so the nicer Natalie gets the worse it is for Amanda, until finally she snaps "Thank you! Thank you!" in a very "the servants are excused" kind of way, and Natalie nods and turns, and then Amanda finally chokes out a real one, nearly back into sobbing again.
One of the coolest pre-show interview things so far was, I think Eick was talking about Amanda and how her character works, which is that sometimes she doesn't actually freak out when you would expect her to, or in the way you expect, but that other times she will -- what was the quote, something like "lose her shit completely" for no apparent reason. I love that concept of a character, so much, because it's so completely true to life. And we have our first example now, as she looks at the pictures, and a brooch falls into her hand: It's shaped like a teardrop, but Amanda's seen it before. She twists the pieces -- her daughter is a puzzle -- and it forms the infinity symbol, and Jordan Duram is actually watching her as she figures out that he was right about it all.
Joe's still hounding Daniel about how he needs to see his daughter again, and Daniel's trying to fend him off in a way where he's not promising anything -- "We can talk. Just call my office and we'll set up a time" -- and Joe keeps at him until he admits that the Tamara he made for Joe is gone. Zoë's gone, so Tamara's gone. Joe is past logic and starts yelling at him, but then asks a science question that turns on Daniel's heartless logic mode as he explains -- without even thinking about what it sounds like -- that from Tammy's perspective, Joe is the one that vanished, when he took off the band. There's a whole meta thing about dead loved ones and missing us from the other side of the veil and how she's maybe all alone and scared and stuff, or half-dead/half-alive, and he just twists himself into the worst knots. Grief is so ugly. Daniel thinks for just one second about how to help Joe, but then he notices that his wife's brain has shit the bed.
Amanda is now at the podium, addressing the ceremony and press, explaining how she misses Zoë, but then also she's not sure what that even means, because she had this secret boyfriend and was in this secret weird cult she doesn't really understand, and the whole time Daniel is running through the crowd toward her, and at the Adama house Ruth shushes Willie, and Amanda thinks aloud about how maybe our kids just show us what they want us to see: "I just didn't know her!" Zoë picks up a piece of TV paper and watches her mother speak: "You've all talked about how guilty you feel? It's our job. We create life, and then one day we have to face who they are. What they become, and what they do." Zoë turns to metal as her mother speaks. Turns to steel. "My daughter, Zoë Graystone, died in the bombing of MAGLEV train number 23." Everybody stares, there is a long pause. "But I think she may have caused it." They all yell, Daniel stares with mouth agape, twelve worlds go "OH NO SHE DIDN'T." Amanda Graystone is galactically mind-blowing.
Everybody's murmuring, but not screaming quite yet. Amanda holds up the infinity thing and starts yelling -- this is when Agent Duram gets the eff out of there -- about how it proves that her daughter was STO, and Daniel starts calling all his bodyguards to fix this up, and the people start screaming, and Amanda yells, "My daughter was a terrorist! I'm sorry!" Even Clarice, who is high as hell, notices the TV at this point: "My daughter was part of the Soldiers Of The One. She was a terrorist!" They pull her down off the podium and start shoving people back, first with fists and then guns, as the crowd tries to get at Amanda, socking her in the face and pulling on her hair, just going riot-crazy to a Greek tragedy degree, and finally they get her in the car and drive away. And all we're left with is Joe Adama, who now has two problems with the Graystones.
week: It's all about Tammy, apparently.