Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: A+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Love Lockdown
By Jacob Clifton | Season 1 | Episode 3 | Aired on 02.05.2010
watches, horrified, because she knows -- and we know -- that it's not even true."She joined a terrorist group! She held a bomb in her hands!" Zoë shakes her head, just a little bit, horrified: "She stepped onto a crowded train, she triggered the bomb and ended her life, and the life of all those other people!" Daniel points out that they don't really know that for sure, but Amanda weeps and -- every bit as insistent as Joe w/r/t Tamara's still being in the Matrix, and for exactly the same reasons -- keeps insisting that it is true. Every word of it. And just like with Joe, Daniel can't help but give in, and betrays his daughter with a word, as she begins to cry.
"But not everything true needs to be announced to the Worlds on television!" Amanda cries, looping back around to how she didn't even know what she was doing, and she shakes her head, ashamed, but Daniel almost laughs at her: "You'd do it again," he says, because he knows her better than we do, so now we know her better. (Which is Thing Two again, but perfectly orchestrated.) She admits she'd do it again, and he shakes his head at her, terribly in love. She apologizes and he kisses her, offering to fix her wounds in turn. "Not a chance! I'll end up with my nose glued to my ear, are you kidding me?" They jump to the next space and he grins at her, sexy, and she offers him an afternoon frak. He points out that he's not really in shape for it, what with his gangster beatdown, but before he can really marshal a protest she's got him by the dick, like literally he just shuts off and stops talking, and they make love. And poor Zoë stands there over them and feels as awkward as it is possible to feel. (Angeli Thing Three, uncategorizably and unnecessarily uncomfortable sexual situations: Check.)
This blonde Youngblood woman with all the facial features is I guess Duram's partner, and she's loving the latest headlines about Amanda's massive frakup. Duram points out that she's probably just scared off the rest of the cell, and everybody out in the bullpen's getting very nervous and official as Director Gara Singh approaches, and Youngblood wonders what sent Amanda around the bend. Duram doesn't know, although as we know he was watching her run-in with Natalie Stark, which obviously was a contributing factor. Singh appears, scaring them both to death, and then shows them a VHS tape which he says was labeled "Starke" and not "Stark," and what's in there is an interrogation tape from last year where Youngblood actually had Ben in custody for being out after curfew, and asked him pointed questions about his backpack full of wires and detonators, which Ben says is for his model rocket club, which is why he was late home from school in the first place, and she eventually lets him go.
"So were you incompetent when you misspelled his name, when you let him walk out of here, or when you failed to destroy this tape?" Youngblood doesn't even remember the interview, and Singh starts in on her, and Duram points out that before the maglev bombing the whole GDD was basically just doing crap work like that anyway, but Singh's not having it. "She let him walk out of here with a pat on the bottom, an apology, and a book bag full of wires!" (Angeli Thing Four, menfolk discussing a female peer like she's not in the room: Check.) Duram notes also that there probably wasn't even a bombing plan that far back, which doesn't really help Singh's mood, and finally he just throws the tape down and leaves, disappointed. "Guys. Just... Just be better."
Youngblood freaks out not only about the dressing-down but also the fact that she literally had the bomber in her clutches and let him go, but she still can't even remember anything about the kid. Duram starts pulling tape out of the thing, like that will help, and then suddenly realizes how they can do "better." What if people found out that the house, that "Terror Mom" -- aka the Melinda Gates of the Twelve Worlds -- wasn't even getting searched, because of the red tape of Daniel's defense work? They would revolt, obviously; Youngblood loves the idea, and Duram gets some faceless switchboard operator named "Helen" to leak that fact to the Caprica Tribune.
The judge finally comes out to yell at Joe, taking him to a side hall and basically teabagging him in the face for no reason whatsoever. There's this client of Joe's, Plexico Amarcord, on whose behalf apparently Joe has paid off this judge so he won't stand trial, but now the judge is saying that he will, because he's mad because Joe didn't make the bribe personally but left it in a drop-box for him... Which Joe only did because he got confused and thought they'd already discussed this particular client. So he's offended the judge by skipping the step of kissing his ass, because he honestly thought he had not skipped that step.
The judge yells at him for awhile -- we revisit the Adama-Not-Adams thing, even, is how long this scene goes -- and then says Joe will have to pay double, and that he knows it'll come out of Joe's own pocket because what, he's going to tell the Guatrau to pay double? He stomps off and calls Joe "Adams" again, and meanwhile Joe is just getting darker and scarier by the second. But this scene, I honestly don't understand the point of it except to show that Joe is slacking off on work due to his Tamara/Daniel obsession, which is valid to show, except why did it feel so long? Maybe this will bear more fruit, like, maybe Plexico Amarcord is going to be important. Actually wait, that's likely, because they specifically mentioned a "Plex" getting nabbed in the wiseguy scene, when they were whining about the horrible treatment they, who are criminals, typically receive at the hand of the law.
Zoë screws around in Daniel's lab, and we see a holoband pulsing on the desk and then Zoë plugging into the Matrix. She sends Lacy a note on some e-paper -- this is really cool -- that's like, "It worked. Meet me here," and the "here" is a hyperlink, so Lacy puts on her band and touches the link, grinning, and then there's a neat effect where the world shivers, and the camera sweeps past the sad picket fence of her motorcycle trashy house, faster and faster, like a zoetrope. (See what you did there?)