Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: A+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Jackknife Juggernaut
By Jacob Clifton | Season 1 | Episode 2 | Aired on 01.29.2010
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.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.
Watch full episodes and video clips.
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.