By Jacob
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.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.