Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: A+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Motorcycle Maintenance
By Jacob Clifton | Season 1 | Episode 4 | Aired on 02.19.2010
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.Okay, there was a lot of gloom and doom coming the past few weeks, but SyFy is saying that the timeshifted totals are outperforming their expectations -- and with a few more episodes this brilliant, I'm fairly certain they'll have the critical support anyway. So an early-morning bombing causes the Twelve Worlds to go even more nuts about the Graystones, and Jordan Duram (who gets more and more interesting and admirable every week) finally gets his warrant to search not only the Graystone home, but the Athena Academy. Clarice continues to melt down, warning her compatriots across the board, and the GDD comes away with essentially nothing.
...At least until Daniel goes on Sarno, coached to a thimble-sized shell of himself. Amanda pulls her signature move of going apeshit at the most inconvenient possible time, but of course this time it totally saves the day. Their impeccable intimacy and teamwork on live TV manages to charm both Sarno and the viewing public. Especially when Daniel creates a plan on the fly to open-source all holoband IP, figuring that without profit motive -- just like the legalization of drugs years ago -- there won't be a shadow economy in which kids do these fucked-up virtual things in the first place.
Like the show in general -- which has probably become my favorite show on TV as of this week -- this scene is a stunning display of what science fiction can and should be doing, and rarely does: Addressing the issues that matter now, in a timeless way. Then he does his own version of the Amanda Move by admitting that "he" created a virtual copy of Zoë, who explained to him about why these kids are joining cults in the first place. It's cut short, but still pretty effective, and the Graystones come out looking a lot better than they did last week.
Along those lines and in other Zoë news, she and Philomon continue to fall beautifully and terrifyingly in love, this time actually dancing together, in a scene that cannot really be described, but once again underscores the point that Philo is so adorable/amazing that forty years hence they'll still be trying to get human bodies working so they can do it with him. (Hint: She looks a lot better with your holoband on, Philo.)
Of course, now both Clarice and Amanda knows for sure about the existence of the avatars, which is huge; meanwhile, Lacy's getting closer with Keon -- rebuilding a motorcycle and awkwardly high-fiving like the straight-edger nerds they are -- and trying to get Zoë's robot body to Gemenon. And Grandma Ruth continues to be totally bad-ass, leveling her Tauron rage at Amanda and having a fabulously terrifying talk with little Willie about the benefits of Our Thing -- and Joseph of course changes his mind about the hit on Amanda about ten times.
Sam spends the whole episode tracking Amanda, and finally nabs her after the Sarno appearance, leading to another really unnerving bravura scene when Amanda realizes she's about to get murdered Tauron-style. Of course, he doesn't go through with it, but messes with Joseph for a good long while before admitting it anyway, because nobody has ever deserved to get fucked with quite as much as Joe Adama. Next week: Tamara Adams rocks her new Dark City eXistenZ on the 13th Floor of the Matrix.
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Want more? The full recap starts right below!Laws of nature are human inventions, like ghosts. Laws of logic, of mathematics are also human inventions, like ghosts. The whole blessed thing is a human invention, including the idea that it isn't a human invention. The world has no existence whatsoever outside the human imagination. It's all a ghost, and in antiquity was so recognized as a ghost, the whole blessed world we live in. It's run by ghosts...
Your common sense is nothing more than the voices of thousands and thousands of these ghosts from the past. Ghosts and more ghosts. Ghosts trying to find their place among the living.
Previously, a bomb blew up some people and everybody lost their shit, but especially Amanda lost her shit. This morning, on an empty street, another place gets blown up for reasons we don't really know about. Director Singh points out that there could be any number of reasons, but Jordan Duram is of course convinced that it's another STO thing. He proudly produces warrants to search the Athenian Academy -- Zoë's locker and "any other locker she might have used" -- which he got on appeal from the Libran Intercolonial Court, I guess since the STO isn't just a Caprican organization. Singh gives Duram that smile he's constantly begging for, but tells him this plan to make yet another huge media circus of this better stay classy.
Clarice wakes up her hot wife Desiree with a morning kiss, and Nestor wakes up on the other side of Desiree, cuddled against Olaf. He grins and lets Olaf's hand go, climbing sweetly over Desiree so he can kiss Clarice good morning. This is all exactly as inconvenient as I pictured it: The morning breath, the tangled-up people, the stolen sheets, the fact that Tempur-Pedic doesn't make a variable-firmness mattress for that many perverts. That's probably why the pointy pregnant one sleeps with the older guys and gals, to better share the collective burden of their college-aged husband's constant boner.
Clarice and Nestor are adorable for a few seconds before her phone goes off, and she immediately re-stresses and shoves Nestor off of her, running out the door. Desiree and Olaf are worried, but Nestor's got more pressing concerns this early in the morning. Clarice peaces out and bumps into a dude in a fedora on the street, who hands her a one-off e-paper -- how cool is that stuff? -- with which she alerts her army of high school terrorists about the incoming GDD raid, then tosses it.
There are kids laughing in the hallway when Keon gets the message and runs to his locker, where he's got like an entire terrorist starter kit including an actual stick of some explosive. A couple of day-players shoot him weird meaningful eyeballs, and Jordan leads his GDD team down into the hall, where they yell a whole lot and act real scary and start flipping open lockers left and right. Clarice stands there like this is totally normal, even though normally I'm guessing she would throw a fit because this is actually very scary.