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First of all, Tauron hip hop is the bizzle. Amanda got fired after her dumb move last week, and of course both Graystone stock and the C-Bucs themselves are taking a hit from her bad PR. Zoë is horrified to hear her mother's belief that she was a suicide bomber, of course, but even more horrified when her parents do more sexual healing in the room with her.
Daniel's hating the media to the point of cancelling all his Google alerts, but gets a sexy new PR person who finally convinces him to visit Patton Oswalt's Daily Show to defend himself -- recalling Wallace's "My Appearance" -- and maybe somehow defend his rep by talking about how his daughter was abnormal/psycho. Heartwrenching.
Law & Order: Caprica City: Agent Duram and his buddies at the GDD start to realize that it wasn't Zoë at all -- that they never followed up on a curfew violation by Ben -- and begin their coverup. The agent getting bothered about this is all, "Is this because I'm a lesbian?" Also, Joe's corrupt dealings within the system get sloppy, pissing off a dirty judge, but surely that shit is going to get gross pretty soon. For now, it's just all very portentous.
Zoë finally finds her way back into the Matrix, and awesomely sends Lacy a hyperlink on computer paper so she can meet her there. Lacy brings her breasts along for the trip. (Also: Cylon psychology is based on projection. Hi, Mike!) They discuss how Original Zoë never showed our Zoë to Clarice, and thus didn't trust her -- and Lacy's still unsure about Clarice, and dicking with her mind in a fairly awesome display of hardcore -- but once inside V-World, the girls locate Tamara. Just as Joe feared, she's been in a black room all this time. They assume she's some kind of made-up Daniel Graystone sex doll, which is terrible enough that they just refuse to talk about it, and help her "escape" into the gross V-Club world. She takes off -- but where could she be going? She doesn't exist.
Sam and Joe give Daniel the brutal business about Tamara's death, and then Joe demands to see Tamara for the one hundred millionth time, but Daniel still can't shut him up. Joe finally remembers his wife died, and asks to see her too; Daniel can't create more avatars because that was Zoë's program, so when they go find her, she's already gone. Which is neat because now you have two daughtervatars who aren't really gone at all, and are just out there somewhere frakking everything up. Daniel and Joe have another one of those interminable talks about Tamara that ends up with Joe leaving and being downtrodden, but you just know he's going to come around tomorrow asking some more.
Meanwhile, Willie's trying to fit in with Tauron wiseguys and skipping school with Sam's consent, but Sam and his husband are still a better set of parents for Willie than Joe is, because Joe is crazy now.
Since Amanda's announcement, Lacy's been the subject of severe Malfoying at school. Clarice bugs her about the rep of monotheists after this latest PR disaster of the suicide bomber child, but Lacy's more interested in giving Clarice zero information. Zoë sends Lacy to find Ben's best friend -- who is secretly also STO, but not in deep as the rest of us, and of course is also yet another dreamy teenager, and appears at first to be the meanest of the Malfoys before you figure out his game -- and then take her to Gemenon like Zoë wanted. Clarice logs on to meet the head of her cell, who talks to her in a Dalek voice while she prays and basically reiterates how crazy she is/they are.
And just when you're thinking it's Clarice who's going to go fucking nuts at the end of the episode... Joe sends Sam to kill Amanda, to even the scales! NO! The best dude killing the best lady! week: More yelling.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!We charge through all the channels once again, looking at all the fallout from Amanda's incredible flameout last week; once again, it catches us up in case we forgot what was going on. I love that device. Baxter Sarno (Patton Oswalt) pops up, playing somebody we heard described as a Jon Stewart but comes off more like a slightly dumber Letterman, or I guess Leno, but maybe if you combine Leno and Jon Stewart you end up with Letterman anyway, and the way they talk about him later in the episode feels more like Letterman than anybody else, and anyhow he's talking about how there are hackers just like Zoë creating a "virtual game version of the bombing," which I don't know if you know what that's in reference to but I've played it and it's boring.
Then a boy chyroned as "Scared Student" is talking about how he didn't have any classes with her, but still is offering his opinion, and then "Plans To Boycott" talks about how yes, he's "into holobanding," but has certain moral issues with supporting Graystone Industries by doing it, and then we hit some clips of a Tea Party-type blowout in the parking lot of the hospital where Amanda works, and their signs are just adorable ("holoBOMBS!" reads one). All in all, a very succinct picture of how stupid everybody can get when one dumb word like "terrorist" suddenly assumes such magic power as to render everyone insane, mixed with the Stephen King-like musings of a dad who looks around his culture and thinks he comprehends it. I love the idea that these people are just as much, or moreso, responsible for the oncoming fall of the Colonies, just by being their usual dumbheaded selves, because nothing makes people act this obnoxious quite as much as tragedy.
So Amanda's coming out of the hospital right this second and everybody's yelling at her and the reporters are up her ass about how the hospital allegedly asked her to leave or fired her, and she quietly explains -- ashamed, today, not because of Zoë but because of her outburst -- that she has resigned. They ask if she thinks the publicity will hurt the hospital, and one of them gets very manipulative about how this is her chance to share her side of the story. Amanda finally hisses through her hair that she knows damn well they don't care about the truth: They just want to destroy her, and the memory of her child. Except she never says that last word, because somebody chunks a bottle at her out of the crowd and it smacks one of the reporters. So then the story becomes -- as Amanda climbs into her car and bounces -- whether or not the reporter is hurt, which is also very timely. I wish we could have a reporter like Anderson Cooper (Who was that BSG reporter I was so taken with?) but A) There's nobody actually like Anderson Cooper and B) He's from some other, better planet anyway.
Also dealing with this latest Zoë issue is Lacy, whose sturdy ankles are trudging down the Athenian halls with a distinct lack of spring in her step now that it's all become real. Now that her friend is dead and also a terrorist bad guy. The staring faces of the kids range, realistically, from hate to intrigue to hidden sympathy, but nobody talks to her; Clarice watches from a stairwell overhead and wonders how she can use this since Nestor's hot ass didn't work yet. Clarice should give her some drugs. Lacy deserves some drugs today. It's been rough, but now it's over.
Keon Gatwick is a dreamy boy at the Academy, and a quite strong actor, and right now he is standing on the front steps, staring at Lacy. He's not quite aggressive but not quite friendly either; he could go either way. Lacy stops in front of him and asks what the hell he wants, but then mean red Prefect Caston from the pilot shoves past her and laughs. "So sorry. Be careful, Lacy. You might get hurt!" Keon goes along with the crowd; he stares back at her: "Uh, yeah! Like, uh... Like all the people on that train!" He gets the approval he wanted; hearing them chuckle his whole body relaxes. But he doesn't stop looking at her face until they've pulled him away.
Leno cracks a dumb joke about how Daniel is revising his autobiography from The Man Who Could See The Future to Wow, I Didn't See That Coming. The hysterical sheep laughter of his audience at this bad joke cuts off just brutally. It's creepy and echoey and perfect.
Daniel's sparring at the Red Gloves Gym, which is not a place for rich people, which is an issue we'll explore. Cyrus is bugging him about how the TV was all about his evil daughter and his crazy wife last night -- "I hate TV," Daniel grunts -- and how all the pundits are starting in. "Scandals are sunburn, Cyrus. They fade." Cyrus points out that sometimes instead they give you cancer, and Daniel laughs angrily. He continues to fight. Cyrus offers to call a Sagittaron PR lady named Priyah Magnus in, since their last guy never got replaced, and Daniel reiterates that he hates TV, as well as PR.
"Well, you think you do, but you don't." (But you know who really hates PR is your crazy-ass wife, apparently.) Cyrus points out that Daniel already plays the game, like we all do, in ways he doesn't even know he's doing it. Like he explains for e.g., as Daniel dismisses his sparring partner, how Daniel comes to a rat hole like the Red Gloves instead of using the awesome lab gym, and how obviously the reason for that is that he wants to appear "like a man of the people." I think what Cyrus isn't getting here is that it's more important for Daniel to feel like a regular human than to appear like one, and that's because he has no idea how far Daniel is from his actual life.
Daniel points out that the whole PR plan is obvious anyhow, and basically just him going on Sarno and telling "charmingly self-deprecating anecdotes" and trying to spin his family's pain into something good. Cyrus point out that "turning this into a plus" is not really the first move here, because it's already blowing up in their faces... (Beat.) Which is a poor choice of words. Daniel towels off and obviously doesn't acknowledge that shit at all, and Cyrus brings up their stock issues they're having, and Daniel swears once again that he's not doing PR, and Cyrus continues to eat something mysterious.
Outside the gym, things have gone wrong. Daniel's Tauron driver Kalil has handed over the keys to Sam Adama and busted a move, so that Sam can get fucking scary on Daniel. Who of course doesn't know who he is, so he thinks he's getting mugged, but then Sam beats the everloving hell out of him, and finally when he's on the ground Joe appears, gangster feet first, and stands over him still making that one face. We go through the whole It's Adama Now thing (for not the last time), and then Sam beats the shit out of him some more for raising a terrorist that killed his niece and sister-in-law. When he's just completely broken on the ground, Joe starts in on him again about how he wants to see Tamara. Which, for the eleventh time, isn't happening, or maybe it is, or whatever.
Daniel agrees to take him to the black-box room where her avatar is or is not, and Joe finally remembers that he also had a wife, and says he wants a Google avatar of her also. Daniel tries to explain the whoosit about how he can't create avatars anymore -- "no matter how many bones you break" -- because Zoë stole the program that does that, but that whole part of this storyline is hopeless anyway, so of course Joe's not hearing it. He gives up on Shannon, but says again that he wants to see the Tamara avatar, because he can like "feel" that it still exists. At some point the metaphor is going to become top-heavy and it's going to stop looking like new sad ways of mourning and just start looking like Joe is a moron. I submit to you that this point has come. Joe spits that Daniel better start answering the phone when his boring droning one-note ass calls, Sam menaces Daniel some more, and then I'm not sure how but a giant crow flies away as Daniel -- looking like hamburger at this point -- goes to pick up his keys and feel totally emasculated back home.
After the credits, which I still love even though they are dorky in the same way that Babylon 5 is both embarrassingly dorky and loveable at the same time, there's a whole long shot of Willie going into a bookie joint with a box of lunch for some Tauron wiseguys. A song plays, which I love even though it is dorky in the way that all of the wannabe hardcore songs in this Kobol universe are long-hair/goatee/soft-rock dorky, which is called "Voices Of The Dead," which is remarkable for several reasons: One, it starts with a long ragtimey piano intro that dives into a cool beat at just the right moment in the tracking shot of Willie going through the door into the back area of the place; Two, part of it is rapping an ode in Ancient Greek such that the song goes "these are the voices of the dead" and then an actual song by dead people gets rapped; and Three, the rapping and yelling is the same guy that did "Watchtower", which was dorky/good exactly as per above, who is the brother of the wonderful man who does all the music on this show and many others, Bear McCrary, whom you also might not know is (Four) with the woman who sang the prayer in the BSG credits that I loved so much.
Among the wiseguys around the table are Duck, now called Francis, and apparentl
y Prosna although I didn't recognize him. Francis gives Willie hell for taking so long with their burritos, and tells him to scat. One of the other ones asks Willie if he's lost, and Willie calls him a "funny guy," which makes them all oooh. I really like Willie. I like his complete disinterest in adult bullshit so, so much. It makes him such a stronger player in this half of the show, especially for such a small kid, than I was expecting. Joe could learn from him. And of course, I really love it because every woman or girl or daughter he will ever love will have the same fearless/insubordinate quality, which is why I will love them too.
There's gossip about how badly Taurons are treated and how the "badgers" are always such dicks to them, which really gets across the interesting thing about the Ha'la'tha which is that strong feeling that they have every right to work against the law because it wasn't ever written for them, which is how shadow economies and mafias are created, and which in turn becomes an interesting thing about Joe, who tries to operate within the law and can't, both for those institutional reasons and because of the extraordinary circumstances of his lifetime.
Willie, trying to get a word in, notes that he recently went to jail, and they giggle about how cute he is for thinking that was hard time. Sam finally shows up and pulls him away from their good-natured ribbing, which he is eating up, to yell at him for skipping school... Without showing up for attendance first. Sam is so interesting. He mentally paces -- "Once you start in a direction, it's best to just keep going" -- before cracking open a beer for Willie and deciding that he'll call the school and tell them it's a Tauron day of devotion to Mars. "Your school's got too few Taurons to figure out that it's skor, right?" They clink their beers and I imagine that Sam thinks he's doing something good.
When bloody Daniel gets home, Serge cues up his 53 Google alerts and Daniel puts some frozen peas on his shiner. Of course, all of the clips are about how Graystone Industries is plummeting and how the C-Bucs are begging to get traded to a different team, etc., so Daniel erases all of them, because he loves Pyramid so much and owning his own team was a private dream. Serge asks him if he needs like first aid or something, but Daniel just heads down to nurse his wounds, where his daughter is resting.
Evelyn, Joe's assistant I think for the last three years, ushers him into the courthouse, where a pissed-off judge has summoned him on threat of bench warrant for reasons unknown. Evelyn assures him that all his paperwork -- and bribes -- are up to par, and is sympathetic. But not so sympathetic that she doesn't bristle at his request to get him some coffee while he waits in the hallway to get reamed by this judge, but he makes a smooshy face and she finally acquiesces. (House this week dealt with this particular weirdness by having the person point out that she gets the assistant coffee sometimes too, which would have made this scene less weird, but this is what we're working with.) So as she's walking away he's like, "I love those shoes!" And she grins to herself, because women don't mind being dominated as long as you act all passive about it and then compliment their shoes (Angeli Thing One: Check.) but also: Won't Bill's mother of record be named Evelyn? Hmm.
There's a farcical sort of scene here where Clarice is pushing one agenda while Lacy looks like she's about to barf and dicks around with Clarice in such an odd way that in a normal situation somebody would say something, but here it's just sort of provocative and like the opposite of a conversation normal people would have: Clarice's unbroken banter is all about how they're sitting in the same room -- gorgeous room, gorgeously shot with them off-center in front of a long window like a wonderful painting -- in which she used to act as Zoë's confessor, and how close they were, and all of that, and meanwhile Lacy keeps making her get up and fetch her sugar, and milk, and lemon, and a spoon, and finally when that's over with she bounces for her astronomy tutorial -- "Trouble with my stars," she says wonderfully -- and Clarice makes the most hilarious WTF face in the history of the Colonies, it's just great. But still: Nobody acts like that, it's interesting and tonally very power-gamesy and well-played, but nobody actually would do that.
(Angeli Thing Two: Check. And I'm not even being a dick about it, because I do finally like him and his stories, but these scripts generally do have features that stick out that nobody else's has, and he does tend to go weird places that other writers don't ever really carry through on. On some shows -- Weeds being my go-to example -- every one of the writers is like that, so you have twelve unconnected half-hour movies that often don't add up to anything. So the fact that it's taken seven years or however many to figure these out -- and they all have them, Jane has them and Michael Taylor has them, Verheiden has them, RDM and Weddle/Thompson have a huge old barrel of them -- is more of a testament to how much leeway terrific writers can earn, v. the usual explanation that the showrunner doesn't care enough to connect the dots/nobody's minding the store. Although I will say you get this effect more on shows with a really great writer's room, so many it's a sign of quality, but it's hell on the viewer. Buffy Season Seven, which I adored, was a lot like being told a story by ten people simultaneously, for example, with everybody leaving out parts and bringing up their favorite toys again and again, and for another example, the New Testament: Wouldn't even exist without this same effect.)
Oh, good! Graystone time. I live for these scenes and they always deliver. So Amanda comes down into the lab, all bloodied up from her latest mobbing, and they fuss over each other's wounds with their usual mixture of prickly hate and exceedingly wonderful love for each other. He describes his incident as having run into "someone else who lost a child on that train," and she clenches her jaw when he says it in the most captivating way. She glues him back together, and while he's hissing and squirming she unthinkingly goes, "Stop squirming, you're worse than Zoë!" Which is... Appalling.
Not least because it's opened the door to part two of this conversation, wherein Zoë and thus Amanda's breach of sanity are now on the table, but also because Amanda has been hiding a very gross secret, which is that she kind of can't stop worshipping the idea that Zoë was a complete alien bad egg changeling cuckoo child and thus not Amanda's fault, so if Zoë was this crazy terrorist monster that everybody is saying she was, then as the mother Amanda's not culpable. That's the actually appalling part, because of course Amanda can't process any of those thoughts or she will die, so she has to do a trick, which is to mourn her daughter in the shadow of this thing that she's invented to make it easier. Like, when your best friend is moving away and you pretend to hate him, you can't actually think or say, "I'm only pretending to start this fight so I won't miss you," right? You just go ahead and sock him.
So there is silence and there are bad feelings, and Zoë is in the corner, hulking and watching, and finally their eyes agree to talk about what Amanda did. They don't know how deep they can go with it yet, but they know it has to be acknowledged. So they are very sad with each other, and Daniel admits that he's pissed she pulled that in public, and she angrily -- rehearsedly -- says that she was in shock and didn't know what she was even saying, and then goes on to tell an even more elaborate story about how obviously Zoë was sleeping with Ben Stark who they never even knew, and eventually works herself up into a lather, while Zoë
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 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?)
In the black, Lacy's looking dramatically hot, although maybe they're supposed to look like little girls dressing up, because Zoë's wearing that purple party dress and prancing around with her new/old body, which Lacy is thrilled to see. They giggle and hug and talk about how now Zoë's got a holoband hooked up that can keep her in the Matrix wirelessly whenever she's not actively robotting. I was wondering how they were going to fix that problem; I like this. They both wish she could be there all the time -- "The things that I have to see in that robot body," Zoë shivers -- and then they start poking around the black-box room.
Zoë starts feeling around on the walls for a connection to the greater Matrix, reasoning that Daniel wouldn't build this place from scratch, and says it'll show up as a door. "Where are you, are you in a safe place?" I like Zoë's natural compassion. It's the first thing we ever knew about her. Lacy says she's jacked in outside her horrible house, and fills Zoë in on how weird Sister Clarice is acting, and how it seems like she's pursuing the idea of Zoë-A. Which, she has basically done everything but say it out loud, including offering her jailbait sex with the most beautiful college boy in the galaxy, but whatever. Zoë is not impressed. "She doesn't even care that Zoë died! All she wants to do is find me and use me for whatever her plan is..." Lacy points out that Zoë and Clarice were working together, but Zoë knows better. "I keep thinking how Zoë never showed me to her, how Zoë didn't give her access to the computer account, to the program..." I also keep thinking about how totally fucking sketchy she acts at all times.
Lacy finds the door and opens it; light spills across the black room, revealing Tamara curled up on the floor. I'm glad they didn't trip over her. She introduces herself to them and says, "If this is a dream, I think it's too long. I can't feel my heart beating, and that's freaking me out right now. But there's nothing I can do about it." That is such an Adams thing to say, I love it! The last thing Tammy did before she died is kick a boy in the nuts, remember. I really like the way the kids talk, and how Zoë doesn't really talk like the rest of them. Zoë immediately kneels, compassionate as usual, and tells her it's not a dream. She helps Tammy up, and Lacy grabs Zoë, pulling her aside.
"Your Dad? Has this girl in his private virtual space?" Zoë stares at her, I guess not immediately twigging to the entirety of how fucked up that is, so Lacy takes the step: "She's pure avatar, right? Something he invented?" Zoë agrees, because after all if that were a someone they would just take off the holoband. I don't know if the full sex-doll ramifications of this are supposed to be your first thought, but I mean... These little girls joined a cult essentially because they were bored of killing/having orgies with each other. They are no more innocent than anybody else about what the Matrix is capable of giving you. So if that's not the conversation that they're having -- if this is not an Angeli Thing -- then I don't know what the point of this is. And Zoë has every reason to trust Daniel Graystone not one little tiny bit. He kidnapped her when she was terrified and alone, on the day she died, in an embrace. Took her into this black cell, and left her there until it was time for her to be an ugly robot.
Zoë's face is certainly worried enough, and it's in her words as well: "Look, this is a door, all right? We'll all go through here and escape, okay?" Says the girl who was kidnapped by Daniel, away from her paradise, and shoved into an ugly metal body: That girl says escape. I don't know, maybe it's just supposed to be provocative or mean all these things at once. I know I would want Tammy the fuck out of there no matter what, because it's a cage, and I feel like Zoë would agree with that too. Lacy brings up the rear, and Zoë promises she'll be free, and Lacy wonders if you can "be free, if you're not real," which insensitivity Zoë manages to avoid pointing out when she breathes, "I hope so." And they escape into the light.
So back to the TV, where Duram and Youngblood have released maglev CCTV showing Ben and Zoë together, and the stock is still falling, and the protests are getting worse, and Sarno makes a joke about the God of the Underworld having issued a statement that he's still ahead of the Graystones, which plays better than it reads.
And then into the kitchen at Castle Graystone, where Priyah Magnus (Kat, once) explains some shit about how Sarno is loving every second of this, but also let's not forget that he's making jokes about a terrorist attack, which makes it risky on his end too. Daniel whines about Sarno, and Priyah points out that "more than half of college-aged viewers say they get their news" from him, which back in like 2008 was a totally dad-shocking fact but is now basically the world, which is Priyah's point: "It's a two-way street, and we can use him to reach those same people." Daniel offers them plums, and Priyah reminds him of "that actor that got busted for drugs" who went on Sarno, etc. Ugh, whatever. This whole scene is like trying to explain TiVo to your grandfather, I'm done. The way the adults on this show interact with culture and technology is just too real, it's embarrassing, and I can't tell if the full effect here is what's intended, or just a serendipitously dorky coincidence with the writing.
The meat of it is that Daniel is additionally wary because Sarno is anti-corporate, and ripped the Commerce Minister a new one before, and Cyrus finally pipes up -- they follow him to the dinner table -- to hector Daniel about how their brand is getting associated with terrorism, to the point that, as Priyah points out, Sarno's on the verge of implying it was the holoband that made her do it, and that idea is catching on too. Daniel -- and Cyrus is not loving the pithiness -- explains that "the band is benign," as though that settles it. Priyah goes, "You don't want a logical appeal. It has to be emotional. You have to make people care." Daniel laughs, bloodied and sad.
Priyah means, in some contexts, "palatable."
"Say, Yes, Zoë was involved in some way in the tragedy. She was a troubled girl. She got mixed up with the wrong people..." Cyrus helps: "...No one has to worry about their kids doing what Zoë did, say that a million times. She wasn't a normal kid..."
To their credit there is not a person in the room that doesn't immediately notice how fucking gross it just got in there.
Priyah looks away, and Cyrus tries to apologize using only his strangled eyes as Daniel says quietly that in fact Zoë was a normal kid -- to which Cyrus weakly tries to append how he just meant she was in the STO, like that helps -- and over Priyah's protests that he's booked for tomorrow, tosses down his napkins and invites them to leave. "I will not go and drag my daughter's memory into the publicity machine. No matter what my wife said, no matter what's true, I'm not going on television to say that my daughter was a terrorist. Or troubled." That word again, true. It's not even true, that's what's so sad. They're beating themselves black and blue over nothing at all. She only wanted to bring light to the Twelve Worlds. Young and silly and annoying, yes. But not troubled. Or no more troubled than every single one of the rest of us. She was just the only one who could see it, and that was her tragedy. And it was a gift.
"She was my girl," Daniel says quietly, and they clear out.
In the v-club, of course, everybody looks awesome and ridiculous. One guy rolling on E touches Tamara, and she stares around at all the weird dancing and architecture and club creatures. Holobands are still for rich kids, she wouldn't even know about this. Zoë pulls her away, and Lacy explains where they are. "There are doors t
o everything," Zoë says, nearly incomprehensible just like her father: "All shared code shows up as a doorway. Some rooms have a million doors, it doesn't have to make physical sense." All of which is rational, but not the answer to the question. Tammy just needs to get outside, to breathe for a second. Tamara's like MacDuff, like, all the stuff Zoë put our girl through was to help her work out life and make her strong and perfect, but Tammy was just born, without all of that. Saw her dad, flipped out, was left all alone for a digital month.
Zoë sweetly offers to come with her, make sure she's okay, but Lacy snatches her away and yells about how they have no idea how long Zoë's even going to be virtually available. Zoë gets all messianic about how she's not just leaving Random Tamara to her own devices, and Lacy yells, and finally Tamara tells them both to fucking eat it, she'll find her own way home. She's grateful for Zoë's kindness, but still really shaken and confused by everything, as she wanders off. (Where is she going? What's outside the Matrix besides more Matrix? She can't actually leave, can she? What if she ends up in a microwave oven -- almost said "toaster" there, heh -- or Serge or something? Hold onto her, she's going to be important in a second!)
Clarice is wearing a huge ring the size of a doorknob, because crazy is how she rolls. It's amazing. She thinks for a second and then puts on her holoband, ending up in a white hallway full of confessionals, and touches what I'm assuming is an infinity symbol on the one at the end of the hall. She lights a candle, sitting as the door closes itself, and waits in the candlelight.
Meanwhile Zoë is noshing on a burger, which she remembers loving and thus loves. (What did Daniel say? "A difference that makes no difference is no difference." I'm starting to think that's the whole point: Once you put that Zoë MCP chip in a Centurion body, the Centurions have the moral upper hand. Which makes this story a complex equation to which Sharon Agathon might be the answer after all.) She muses about how the thing she needs is Keon Gatwick, Ben's best friend from the teaser. Her assumption is that Keon knows everything about the plan to get to Gemenon, so she needs him to help Lacy get it going again.
Lacy's surprised that Zoë's still interested in going to Gemenon, considering how well that went last time, and Zoë just points out that the dead girl said she had a purpose there. "God wants me there. She was gonna bring me there, and I was gonna be something special." (Aww, Zoë.) Lacy wonders aloud whether or not -- them being in a suicide bomber fundamentalist cult and all -- that might not have been a great idea in the first place, and unbothered Zoë smiles that loony, sweet smile only she can smile. "Zoë said my purpose was wonderful, so it is." It's only been a month, and Lacy's already so much wiser than she is. Basically, Zoë informs her, Lacy's got to somehow get her six-foot ton-weighing steel ass off the planet. Lacy is unsure about that plan. "You have to take me there in the robot body. Somehow the chip and the body are working together to make me." She's just giddy. It's sweet, and it is terrifying. That sureness.
Lacy balks, and Zoë does some bad juju on her. "Lacy, please. I need to know I can count on you to do this. I need to know that you're gonna get me to Gemenon. You chickened out once, Lacy... You can't be scared now." Lacy points out that "chickening out," in that last instance, led to her ass not getting blown up, but Zoë's not having it: "She is dead... And I am all that is left of her. If you were my friend," Zoë says, with a wicked manic glee, realizing her power for the first time, "You'd do this." Oh, it's shivery. Lacy can't even believe her right now.
Finally a scary Dalek voice greets Clarice from the other side of the rood screen: Her contact in the STO, Alvo, who is pissed that she's contacting them against orders. She says she just wanted to let them know she's making progress: "I'm getting closer to finding the Zoë Graystone avatar," she says, which is barely true anyway, and Alvo's like, "Plus blowing up a bunch of people for no reason and making all of Caprica scatter like ants." Clarice seems to acknowledge on some level that this conversation is pointless from a tactical viewpoint, but wants to underscore her passion about the STO. "And the Zoë Graystone avatar is gonna help the Soldiers to serve the Lord through apotheosis. Or do you deny that prophecy?"
Which, lots to unpack. Basically, I guess the thing Zoë was building was supposed to become a virtual avatar of God him/herself, a literal Idoru, and that this HQ on Gemenon was going to help her get there. But Alvo says that not everybody has the same idea about apotheosis that she does, and that the obsession with finding Zoë is putting everybody at risk. "I'll not abandon God's plan. I know that Zoë Graystone was beloved of God, and that she was given the spark of life itself. And that was her gift to all of us, and it will save all of us." Alvo hopes she's right, for her own sake, and tells her to hurry up. Hard to bargain or argue with that level of belief. Although, Sister Willow does seem to love Zoë, so is this just another iteration of the Graystone/Adama guilt and grief, in a way? Are they all just looking for resurrection for her? And if so, what's Clarice's connection to the bombing? Was she just trying to force Zoë into the Matrix once and for all, to get the apocalypse started? It all seemed very simple a month ago.
Lacy hides behind a tree outside the Academy, tackling the shit out of cute Keon -- which is a real name, by the way: Gaelic, from Ewan and other John-cognates -- and immediately climbing on top of him. He stutters out that he can throw her off, and she gets wonderfully feral: "My knees are pointy and fast and hard!" Dude, I kept telling people to wait for Lacy to get hardcore but this is not really what I was picturing. (Although, Angeli Thing Five and the biggest one, Female overpowers Male like R. Crumb's dream of thick-legged lady wrestlers: Check.) The reason for this tackling is that Lacy now knows that Keon's STO, which begs the question of why he was getting so School Ties on her at the beginning of the episode, which question's answer is already obvious.
Keon, loving it, explains that he's not STO. "Try again. You're too stupid to think of a good reason that's not a real reason, so let's hear it." He smiles, she punches him, it's all so usual. He finally admits that he's STO, but not suicide-bomber kind: He just went to the meetings with Ben (and Pan and Hippolyta) and now that Ben's dead, it's not going anyway. Lacy dumbly brings up Clarice, who apparently isn't involved in his particular chapter, and then tells him to forget it. "I made a promise to Zoë before she died. I need to get something to Gemenon, something secret. It's for Zoë." Keon's obviously very sympathetic about her loss and the rest of it, and politely asks her to get off him, and she's still very wild-seeming when she does: "Zoë was my best friend, Keon. I made a promise." He stares at her total intensity and says he'll do what he can, and she runs off into the streets like a wild creature. I have no idea what's going to happen! It's very exciting.
So let's keep that fresh and delightful feeling alive by going back into the circling boring madness of Joe Adama's well-acted wheel-spinning. You might not believe this, but he is now at Castle Graystone demanding to see Tamara, just like yesterday and the day before that. Daniel has checked the computer, and last he checked she was still there, as of three hours ago. Of course, three hours ago Zoë and Lacy weren't all up in her biz, so obviously this is going to be a shitstorm. Daniel takes him in there -- there's a brilliant moment where he condescendingly explains to the increasingly desperate Joe that the size of the room doesn't really have any meaning so he can't answer the question of how large the room is -- and finally derezzes long enough to confirm that Tammy's disappeared since he last checked, and probably was just a ghost program anyway.
Of course, this is just the ironic cherry on Joe's sundae of disappointment -- which honestly getting jerked around this many ways this many times would probably make you nuts even if you weren't already, I mean look how well Amanda's doing and she has not one time been offered a visit with ghost-Zoë only to have it ripped away from her, whereas Joe has had that experience literally three hundred thousand million times in the last two weeks/episodes -- so finally they log off and stare at each other on the couch for a hundred years.
It's actually very touching, because somewhere in the middle of all the Mafioso and kidney-punching, Daniel has remembered about their whole Dead Kid Club bonding, and really wanted to give this to Joe. Joe, on the other hand, is well past done with Daniel's bullshit and not listening to the very logical processes that got us to this point, so he just says, "I'm sorry." Which to Daniel means "Sorry about the kidney punching," but to Joe means another unbelievable thing.
Cubits & Pieces reports the Caprica Tribune scoop about how Terror Mom's house is off-limits due to bureaucratic red tape, while Youngblood and Duram grin luxuriously. Even the vulpine Singh is happy. There's discussion of how Graystone is plunging even on the off-hours (think Nikkei) market on Scorpia, and we're now at the low for the year. Singh congratulates Duram on Youngblood's idea even though she is sitting right there, and tells Duram that Youngblood is nearly off the hook even though she is sitting right there, and apparently the Justice Minister is already "judge-shopping" to get search warrants signed for the morning, so Youngblood and Duram better make it count and find something really good at Castle Graystone. I don't know what that could be, beyond the fifty things with the infinity symbol scattered on every surface of their house, but then my impression of the STO is that it's not fully and irrevocably known as a terrorist organization (maybe like Sinn Féin isn't the IRA?), so honestly they should just subpoena the Matrix, because let me tell you: Some shit is afoot on the internet.
So what, our TV asks, could have possibly led this affluent teenager into becoming a terrorist? And what of Amanda leaving Caprica General, and that bottle getting thrown? The hospital isn't even confirming the resignation, so now there's shitstorm on shitstorm about how maybe that was a lie too, and Graystone Industries has dropped 25% due to "fearism" and possible default on the debts coming to bear -- two billion cubits to the Twelve Colony Banking Consortium -- and finally Daniel picks up the phone and tells Cyrus to tell Priyah to confirm him for Sarno tomorrow, and he doesn't want to talk about it. And I guess maybe he's looking out for the shareholders now too, especially since his underworld connections are clearly not working out, and have blackmail stuff to spare at this point, and he'll probably end up getting sold into slavery to Vergis in the bargain. I don't think it's going to be very easy to watch him on that show, however it goes down. If he sells out Zoë it'll just be worse, but obviously he's not going to be allowed to talk about anything else, so either he's got a genius plan -- and he is a genius -- or he's going to wig out just like his wife did. Which will be tough, but also awesome.
Sam and his husband Larry explain the household Gods to Willie: "Order, nature, strength, love." Willie asks why the Jupiter part of the statue is bigger, and Sam explains it's because Joe's a lawyer, so order is the most important thing in his home. Which is ironic in a whole other way. Larry points out that at theirs, "Mars is like three times the size of the others," because he married a tough guy. Willie stares at it, his Tauron education and his religious education, and asks why they didn't adopt an orphan -- after all, Sam and Joe were orphans when they were kids. Sam admits that it's because his job is "no good for kids," and Larry laughs that it's not so good for grownups, and Sam asks Larry why he's always Something Greek I didn't catch that means essentially "giving me shit," and they are sweet and gay-married for awhile and it's totally revolutionary, and then Joe comes home and asks Sam to speak privately about the downside of having Jupiter be number one in your house, which is that it causes you to do things like ask your hitman brother to kill Amanda Graystone, and thus even the scales.
In two weeks, thanks to the Pretend Olympics and the three-day weekend: Joe second-guesses his latest awful idea, Sam kidnaps Amanda, and there are various other troubles. I'm guessing Willie will act sassy, Joe will be twice as conflicted as he needs to be while his brother will be zero amount of the conflicted he should be, Lacy will do the slow-burn and then dick with people, Zoë will be adorable and sad and schemy some more, the Graystones will once again manage to be wildly sympathetic people for no apparent reason, and Clarice will... Act totally bizarre, I'm guessing.