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Daniel's corporate nemesis Tomas Vergis cuts a fine figure as he moves to Caprica from Tauron, starts on getting his Caprican citizenship, and makes a hostile bid for the C-Bucs. His reasoning? Daniel stole the MCP to make the Zoëbot, killing two guys in the process. Specifically, two guys whose kids were his godchildren. What Tomas doesn't know, of course, is that Daniel used Sam and the Ha'la'tha, via Joseph Adama, to get this done. So now Daniel's caught between Tauron money and the Tauron mob, and Tomas makes very clear that he wants to destroy Daniel's entire life, one thing at a time, before drinking his milkshake once and for all.
We meet Sister Willow's opposing demagogue -- the leader, as we suspected, of Ben and Keon's terrorist cell of the STO. Barnabas Greeley's got a fucked-upness level just about equal to Clarice's -- like, mortifying the flesh with barbed wire amounts of fucked up -- but he has the added issue of being a mad bomber rather than just a pervy drug addict. After a troubling couple of meetings, we learn that Barnabas won't help Lacy get to Gemenon until Keon finds out what her cargo actually is. (And yes, the cheekbones are still ridiculous. Spike don't crack).
Even without confronting Barney face to face, though, Sister Clarice has a really busy episode: Day-drinking with Amanda and committing corporate black-ops in the attempt to locate Zoë's avatar in the Graystone home lab, being totally creepy as usual with that ridiculous giant doorknob ring, and then heading off on another drug bender. She also confirms for us, in another confessional with Alvo, that her version of "apotheosis" is... Pretty much exactly what's happened to Tamara Adams. Huh.
Speaking of, Joe Adama is frankly adorable as he purchases a holoband, can't get it out of the packaging, and ends up tearing into it like a wolverine. Daniel drops by to get all racist and paranoid (re: Vergis's sudden accusations), but Joe just dives back in, eventually defeated by the concept of virtual menus and that hacking involves work. Back in the real world, Girl Friday and future wife Evelyn locates Tad/Heracles while wearing some awesome crazy shit on her head, then admires Joe's tattoo with a lascivious gleam in her eyes. You know, the tattoo that marks how dead his wife has been, for a whole month now? Yeah. That one.
And Zoë has her first date, after some okcupid-type highjinks, wherein the cutest boy in the world -- Philomon Hobbit, of course -- meets her at the v-club and immediately goes, "Whatever people say about Zoë Graystone, the girl had principles."
Dooooood. I don't know what Straight-Edge Cult Member is for "third base," but I'm hoping it at least involves tongue because that is the sexiest thing I have ever heard.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Six months ago, Tomas Vergis came back to his home/lab -- which looked a lot like Daniel's, but in Tauron City -- and immediately noticed something was awry. The door was broken so he had to shove it open with a hanky. I guess when you live on Tauron you grow up learning about crime scenes. The MCP research area was all dicked up and the chip itself was long gone, which was irritating, but then there was blood all over the place and his two guys were dead on the floor and the music was very scary.
I must admit, the crime and MCP parts of the pilot were confusing for me at the time and I'm still sort of confused about them now. Sam killed the Defense Minister while Daniel and Amanda were having sad sex, and we knew that the MCP was stolen, but I can't remember if we saw any of the details of that. But then Daniel's PTSD through this whole episode is so visceral that for a second I kept thinking, "Did Daniel fly over to Tauron and ice some dudes?" But no, because then he would have no reason to ever hang out with Joe, and Joe is not somebody you would ever hang out with if you didn't have to.
Now it's tonight, in some really beautiful late afternoon light, and the Drs. Graystone are looking glamorous at a reception for this showing of beautiful Kobol artifacts, which all look like those kind of Northwestern Indian tattoos a certain sort of Seattle person might have. Like, giant sandstone eagles and instruments of war, but with the rounded blocky Nissan angles of a Batman/Superman cartoon. The Graystones are flirting and laughing about how Daniel's back in with the board -- thanks to his "let's create sexy robots to kill us" business plan -- and Amanda has gone back to being a quietly lovely celebrity -- "No one's called me Terror Mom!" -- thanks to her last-second save on Sarno. They are, as usual, just as graceful and kind with each other in this relative peace as they were in their adversity. Daniel dips his wife, but spots Tomas Vergis hanging out near a giant sandstone eagle, remembers to get his wife back upright, and then heads over there with some steely worry.
Tomas, without looking Daniel in the eye, tells him he has every right to be there at this private function because he donated money to the museum. He explains this in that entitled resentful way Taurons do everything: As if it's every Caprican's fault that his planet totally sucks. Daniel's unfortunate soulpatch is like totally annoyed, and he starts to play the dance of death that CEOs do with each other, but then Tomas is like, "Speaking of jerks, you totally killed two of my guys and stole my computer chip." Tomas leaves, hoping that Graystone's going to barf or pass out, but Daniel's pokerface is not bad. Not bad at all.
When they get home, Amanda takes off her shoes and earrings -- 90% of this show is Amanda taking off her earrings, I don't know if you've noticed that, but it makes sense because of how they're always putting on their Doctor Graystone costumes and taking them off again -- and gets Daniel to assure her that Tomas is crazy and making things up about intellectual property. Amanda waits patiently through all of Daniel's many lies, and when he heads downstairs still in his tux, she's finally like, "But of course you're going to tell me the actual story later?" He of course will. There's a reeeeeally creepy, reeeally awesome thing going on in this episode where you can tell that Daniel really does think Taurons are horrible trash. That he is the racist everybody keeps painting him to be. But you might miss it, partially because of this show's conceit about the Colonies being all genetic kinds, but mostly because these particular Taurons that he's involved with are such fucking handful.
Zoë watches Cyrus and Daniel hash out the whole "does Vergis know what he's talking about" thing, and Daniel trying to explain that paranoia is when the person doesn't look you in the eye and give you all the details of what you did, and Cyrus is just hilariously panicking, thanks to how Daniel totally got Tauron Mob to break into the Tauron version of Daniel's house and kill some dudes, and of course Zoë is just appalled by this latest sign of her dad's grief-stricken crumminess. Because if she's going to be this wonderful messiah, she doesn't want her birth tainted by gross stuff like corporate sabotage and tattoo murders.
Since they don't know what Vergis wants -- and clearly it is not clean Caprican justice or he would have called the cops -- and they don't know how Vergis got this info, Daniel agrees to meet with him. But first he has to go talk to Joe, the biggest drag of all time, and perhaps his bitchiness is partially due to the fact that he already knows what Joe is going to say: "I don't want to talk about the murder! Where is my dead daughter? Where additionally is my dead wife?" Which at this point is what he says when they ask for his order at Starbucks. And meanwhile Tomas is sitting in a very luxe suite, looking out over the city just like Daniel last week. But, smoking and drinking and looking down at the town he's about to own, right in the center of that tableau: Graystone Industries.
Joe comes home from "Emptor Electronics," snerk, with a holoband. It came in one of those awful plastic clamshell things that you can't ever open, and there's a very funny, very heartwarming set of short shots, this like medley of frustration, before you see the packaging with a hammer nearby, looking like he bit it in half. I'm so happy about this, because I always thought I was just too thick to figure out how you're supposed to open them. Not so much that Joe and I have incompetence in common, but just the nice common-feeling that somebody wrote that down on a piece of paper and that it made people laugh and they filmed it. You know? Like, time instead of banging on it and turning it over and over like those monkeys in 2001, I'll be able to remember that it's actually impossible, and head for the scissors.
Adorable Joseph Adama -- Which is a good color on him! He looks absolutely beautiful throughout this episode -- nervously looks around (can you imagine if Willie walked in on this, after he made him throw out all his Graystone toys?) and slips them on. He appears on one of the hallways looking down on that one air hangar that is apparently all we're ever going to see of Graystone Ind., and then a dorky, hilariously big-smiled Daniel avatar pops up screaming a healthy, hearty, manic "WELCOME!" Joe immediately rips that thing off, looking like any dad who has just encountered loud new technology, feels dumb, and puts it back on. Dorky Daniel: "Welcome back to Virtual Graystone Industries! I represent Daniel Graystone! And I'm here to get you started on your adventure!" I will give you only one chance to guess what Joe immediately starts screaming at Dan-A, and I will give you a hint: It is the only thing he ever says.
There's a short comedic bit in which the Dan-A keeps trying to offer him menus and he keeps screaming about his dead kid, which plays both as a joke about Joe's singlemindedness and frustration with the entire universe, but is also very funny in that same grandpa way. How many times have you heard your mom or grandma be like, "When the phone starts giving me that Press One for this, Press Two for that, I just start mashing zero and I don't stop until a person talks to me." Finally Dan-A realizes that Joe is looking for off-label uses, and goes into the legal boilerplate about how the hacked areas are not cleared for use with this device. He's like Max Headroom on meth, it's amazing. Joe is about to punch the imaginary man, but there's stomping IRL and then the band's ripped off his face.
"We have some business to discuss, you can pull yourself away from my product for a minute." Heh. I love that, the whole thing where Daniel invented the stuff everybody's using, but we know him so it's just weird. Like, if you had to give Lee Iacocca a ride in your car, you'd probably clean it out first. Ruth let him into the house. Why? They fight and pose and do their usual, and Daniel makes reference to "you people" and how what's the point of calling in the Tauron mob if they're not going to get the job done, and it's all very ugly. Confused, of course, as to why Joe is back on the Tammy horse, he just starts laughing when Joe mentions his visit from Tad, her virtual boyfriend, at the funeral. It seems clearly a scam, although why would you run a scam on Joe Adama? Yeah, he's an absolute sucka, but he's also the poorest lawyer in creation.
Willie stares at them from his bedroom door, like the old man he sort of already is, and finally Daniel leaves. Sum net from this interaction: Nothing. Daniel came over and yelled, and confirmed that Joe is clueless, which we already knew. He has a tattoo on his arm that is Old Tauron for "clueless." Daniel goes home and chops up every vegetable on the Twelve Worlds -- seriously, it goes on forever -- while cheesy echoing voices accuse him of killing those guys. And he like remembers what it was like when the guys were killed, which is both confusing and dumb, but I think is just a valid directorial choice that I don't agree with. I mean, it's a contributing factor to the shitstorm that Tomas represents, and it's been five minutes since Daniel's last mental crisis, but instead of being just one factor of his life going nuts on him it comes off like he's psycho. Nice Santoku, though. Good heft. And there's a cool moment at the end where I think you can tell his back hurts, which hearkens back to when he dipped Amanda.
Clarice sits with her husbands (a word the plural of which, of course, MS Word finds really confusing -- "wives" not so much) Nestor and Olaf listening to the radio about yet another holocafé bombing. Which, I didn't think about this before, but it makes awesome sense that they're only hitting holocafés, doesn't it? I guess Olaf is the other STO in the family, because they seem really secretive. Between the drug use and the threats to her school -- a perfect world of children waiting for her to guide them -- Clarice has become a totally tragic figure. It's really interesting to see where they've gone with her, because the pilot had her as the Naughty Schoolmarm but now she's just a chicken running around with its head cut off, smoking occasional hash.
I think it's actually a brilliant choice to make her so ineffectual right now -- rather than the James Bond villain she first appeared to be -- because this is a recipe for desperation. When people end the world it's not because they want to, it's because they were trying to do something else. And what she's doing -- ushering in the age of Internet Heaven without killing a bunch of people -- is really important to her (and is, it's increasingly obvious, the only right answer to this show's situation), and the more they keep her from doing that, the more desperate she's going to get, until finally she's going to be in a place where she's got as much leverage, and reasons, for accidentally jumpstarting the apocalypse as any of the rest of these guys.
So the bombers, the Willow cell finally figures out, are most likely Barnabites. Clarice snaps into administrative mode and starts talking about how the STO needs to batten down and stop being tacky and bombing, and doing her Gandhi trip, and the boys are like, "Not the time." Olaf produces a truly magical technological device that can apparently download Zoë from Daniel's lab, if Clarice can get in there. "We would be able to re-create the living Zoë avatar just like he did," Nestor explains, "And as a matter of fact, we believe that we could create living avatars for any dead person, as long as they have enough data stored on the system." Which still makes no frakking sense, but points for committing to this idea.
Sister Willow clarifies her basic thing: "Well, it's not just a living avatar. It's a continuation of the soul into eternity. I mean, that's what we all knew it was about." Which made me jump out of my chair, because that's not Zoë -- Zoë is a bunch of other stuff: The body/soul connection of the Cylons, the Eve/Lyra Belacqua whose love remakes the universe -- but it is exactly Tamara. She's already hiding in plain sight of every single storyline on this show, and we only found that out last week, but there's something so beautiful, and true, about the Girl We Forgot being the actual messiah. She's the thing Clarice wants, but everybody's so focused on Zoë that it doesn't even matter.
Amanda smokes and weeps in what we haven't yet noticed is Zoë's room, completely empty and sad after the GDD raid. It's devastating because Amanda is devastating. Clarice is devastating in a whole other way, namely in how awkward and weird she always is, when she calls Amanda to discuss getting her ass up in that house to steal Amanda's daughter from her again. Lots of long weird pauses and cheers for the Sarno appearance, and then a last-minute clutch play of offering to bring some random books "of Zoë's" over to the house. Which plan is, in its own right, sort of a magical hand-wave of the complications here: "And by the way, a look around your husband's top-secret military lab?" But don't worry: Just like the magical computer-wiping drive, things will fall into place for old Clarice. "Things," in this case, being Amanda's love of getting crunk.
Speaking of ways in which this script is just a tiny bit insulting, Joseph starts the scene explaining to his brother Sam, who is in the Tauron Mob, exactly what the Tauron Mob is and how it works, and he starts this clunky pointless exposition by going, "You know why this is bad, right?" I'm fairly certain the Guatrau's main man on Caprica is aware of why sending the Ha'la'tha to raze and rob the richest man on Tauron was a dumb idea. Or at least capable of understanding it without flash cards. Sam underscores that clearly the Guatrau is not aware of this situation, because Joe and Sam would probably be dead as hell if that were the case. Joe is rude to his brother some more, and Sam blows him off as usual, and sum net for this conversation is, once again, zero.
To that one boardroom, where Tomas is gleefully tearing into his steak and making a joke that Daniel won't understand for another few hours about how you can't get a good steak on Tauron, and drinking Daniel's wine, and being just masterfully frustrating with evading all of Daniel's questions about why he's even in town. Finally, he admits that he's there to buy the C-Bucs, and Daniel's soulpatch isn't buying that, but honestly you can see his game from here. And Daniel's going to figure it out in a few minutes, so it's fine. Tomas is pretty much awesome. He played Stinger, the CAG on Pegasus that Kara replaced for five seconds, but there he was a young hottie and here he's like this vulpine businessman and it's a totally different vibe. That's cool.
The thing about this scene that disturbs me most is the way that Tomas puts a bite of steak in his mouth and then drinks from his wine glass without swallowing, which really just grossed me out for some reason even though I know it's just acting and he did neither of those things in actuality. So Tomas introduces the second bullet point on his evil plan, pointing out that in order to keep the government contract on Sexy Killer Robots Daniel's going to have to get the stolen MCP working properly -- and in order to do that, his floundering business is going to need major cash in a hurry. So: Buccaneers. And then the milkshake!
Philo's got his little profile up on the dating website, with cigarette in hand, and is clearly suffering a nerd breakdown of some sort, based on his weirdly dreamy/horny affect in this episode. Well, that and the fact that he goes from whining about the total lack of poon on the Twelve Worlds -- which is chronicles of ridic because he is still the cutest boy in the universe -- to getting sexy on Zoë, who eats it right up. He talks about how if there were a robot/boy dating site she would totally go out with him. Which is scary the way he plays it, kind of, but mostly funny because it's true, and because if there weren't a girl in there he would be the saddest motherfrakker, and finally because if there really were a robot/boy dating site, civilization would actually cease.
Daniel walks in to find his adorable assistant smoking cigarettes and dancing with his priceless killer robot, yells at him, makes him be adorable and hangdog some more, and then vanishes after Philo has officially been chastened and made to feel absolutely horrible and nearly start crying. But you can see the gears turning behind Zoë's eyes, gears which are just this once not entirely figurative.
Keon's even more dreamy when he's been riding his motorcycle and his hair's all mussed. This show does not lack for sexy people. Less sexy: The mysterious Barnabas, who apparently lives in a bombed-out boondock area of town complete with homeless-guy trashcan fires. What he is doing on the other side of a plastic tarp, while Keon tries to get Lacy an audience with him, looks like wrapping tefillin around his arms. But shortly, when old Barney comes out from behind the tarp, we learn that he's doing something different. What is that thing that he is doing? Oh, wrapping barbed wire around his bicep super tight and bleeding all over his shitty house: "Pain keeps our brain from going down bad paths. Get in here, I'll show you." No sir.
Keon is not interested in that kind of playtime, but it's intriguing because of flagellants and how their whole deal is abusing the physical in order to dissociate from it entirely. Like bed-of-nails guys, or how the Mormons will hook your balls up to a car battery and make you watch gay porn, only the gay porn in question is everything there is. From the filthy world and their filthy bodies into a clean, airy, holy place. Which, discounting for the creepy way he's doing it, is philosophically another take on Clarice's apotheosis. But you can easily then draw the line from that to their two versions of STO: The kind of person who hates his/our bodies so much that he's willing to do shit like this is exactly the kind of person who bombs holocafés and the like. So, bloody bound flesh, and Barney freaking Keon out, and saying that if Lacy's on God's mission they'll take care of it... And if she's not, same deal.
Still at home before her date with Amanda, Clarice jacks in and talks to Alvo in the usual confessional about how the STO is being total jerks about apotheosis, asking if "the Conclave" will grant her an audience to explain her concept of it. Alvo tells her that, for now, Barnabas is the one getting everybody's attention: "God calls on us to display humility and place our trust in his emissaries." Clarice gets more upset because, as she sees it, Barney's just Silas the Albino, the guy who does the Church's dirty work and not actually a planner or an emissary of any kind. "I Have A Plan, and I can make it happen!" That made me laugh, because of course Clarice has a Plan, and of course it makes as little sense/is every bit the shambles as anything the poor Cylons ever tried to pull off.
Begging sweetly, terrified that Barnabas is going to kill everybody or get everybody killed, Clarice asks for more time: "And then I can hand them something glorious. An afterlife that we can... That we can see and touch." She looks down at her hands, feeling how much of a fuckup she actually is, and says softly, "I just need a little bit more time." And I just love this, because as much as there have been complaints about placeholder plotpoints and the general series of "Clarice hammers at Lacy and acts weird and is a mess," which doesn't bother me when it's done well, you can feel the pieces coming together. I don't know what the pieces are yet, or how it will go down, but you definitely get the feeling that these factions are heating up, and that all three girls are going to get put through the grinder, and that eventually Clarice is going to have to try and save us all. And that she will fail UTTERLY.
There's a lovely overlapping-dialogue Altman/Sorkin pedeconference scene here between Cyrus and Daniel in which they discuss at length the total wildcard Vergis is turning out to be. Cyrus confirms that MCP research has just completely failed, and they actually do need Tomas's dirty Tauron money, and how ironic it is that the guy they stole it from probably knows how to make it operate but won't tell them, so they're entirely in his hands either way. Daniel's like, "Yeah, clearly this is a huge trap. So let's go ahead and dive in. Just as long as I can get really rude and dick-measury with him like a CEO should."
Serge welcomes Sister Clarice to the house, and she pulls another one of her hilarious, amazing wrong-footed faces like when Lacy screwed around with her about the teacup situation, and finally Amanda comes running in telling her to ignore the robot because he's only getting weirder. Amanda feels sad at the books, and they talk a little about Zoë and are sad, and Amanda explains that the source of her misfortunes has been Jordan Duram. Whom, of course, is one of Clarice's main problems too, so they bond over how much they hate his ass, and Amanda says "frak" for ten of the ninety times she's going to be saying it in this episode, and then they decide to do some day-drinking, having bonded more about how Capricans are wusses who can't handle Scorpion Ambrosia (which seems to be pretty much absinthe), which raises the question of where they're both from. But Scorpion is a good choice for Amanda, and you know absinthe is like three of Clarice's favorite things in one place.
Later, the ladies talk more shit about the GDD and drink a whole bunch more, and you can really see Clarice getting into it, seducing Amanda into being her new bestie, and it's nice to see the things that Clarice is good at, as well as the ways that she is broken. They talk about Zoë's little-kid art and how there are a few drawings down in Daniel's lab. Clarice lights up like a Solstice tree and sips her Ambrosia and does a wonderfully conspiratorial "Are we allowed in there?" thing, which perfectly balances on Amanda's resentments subversive feelings, and this latest secret crisis Daniel's having, and it's a really well-turned little moment for everybody concerned.
Joe gives Evelyn CCTV pictures -- whence? -- of Tad, and sends her to secretly find out who he is so Joe can, guess what, find his dead daughter. Evelyn doesn't like the idea of doing this detective work off the books, but it's clearly a huge deal for him, and the intuitions we've already gotten about their noirish Girl Friday relationship are at play, so you know she'll get it done. I love Evelyn, knowing so little about her I mean, because you can totally see how much she loves being the thing that keeps his life going and his clueless, lovable ass operable -- and it's a tiny hop from there to positing the weird, weird ways his wife (and particularly her death) probably made Evelyn feel.
The drunk ladies check out the art ("Dad works hard. Love, Zoë") and Amanda is so grateful to have a friend right now that it's sort of heartbreakingly pathetic. Clarice suggests that she take the art upstairs, where it's more public and she can keep Zoë's memory closer. Amanda loves that idea. Clarice calls her attention to the Zoë robot in the corner, and slaps the magical technology on one of the lab computers, and we get a redux of how much Amanda hates the entire MCP project and how disgusting she finds Zoë. Zoë's pain at these moments is now warring with her irritation, and once again you feel her frustration at having to pretend to be dead and unmoving all the time.
Amanda makes a good point that we haven't talked about, which is that the only thing real Zoë would have hated more than her father's entire life's work is the idea of killer robots in her house. Zoë watches and possibly notices Clarice's trickery; Clarice reminds Amanda of how much Zoë loved this house, and Amanda says no, actually the house that Zoë loved was the one that burned down when she was five. Which is so specific that I am sure it will come into play (maybe Daniel burned it down for insurance cash in that original MicroCap deal that seemed so triumphant last week?) and finally Amanda realizes she is drunk and being a drag, and very gracefully thanks Clarice for coming, like a good hostess. I love the idea of them being friends, they're both so cold and so warm at once. Plus, day-drinkers are like the only people I trust. Zoë hates to see them hugging because she doesn't trust Clarice at all -- even though more and more it seems like she should, which another piece falling into place -- and that huge Eye of Jupiter doorknob ring on Clarice's hand is, as usual, totally distracting.
Lacy and Keon drive up on their motorbike love, looking totally great separately and as a couple, and Barnabas tries and fails to act like a normal fucking person for a second before he starts grilling her about the "cargo." Lacy can't tell him that, obviously, but hasn't really developed a pokerface yet, so Barney -- wearing long sleeves but still twitching up a storm -- takes the measured move of screaming at her to get the fuck out of there, then explaining to Keon that it was just a ruse to shake her up and come clean. "God doesn't want us keeping secret's," he says, as though that wasn't clear from his total sanguinity in doing terrifying sadomasochistic shit in front of a teen in the first place.
Barnabas also confirms for us that Keon's the one that built the bomb that stupid Ben blew up on the maglev train (instead of, I guess we know now, the usual holocafé-type target for which it was intended). So now Keon's got this whole other guilt trip to hide from Lacy, like he didn't already have enough agendas happening. But then, that just means he's a character on this show. Barney tells him to get the cargo info out of Lacy, and Keon looks as young and nervous as it's capable for a six-foot young adult to look. Which is to say, very young and very nervous indeed.
Guy sees a girl and falls in love with her. Goes to see her dad and pleads his troth, and the dad's like, "Sure, just work for me for seven years and we'll get it done." Dad doesn't point out he's already got somebody in line for lovely Rachel, but he'll deal with it. Seven years go by, and Jacob's like, "Okay, tick tock," and Daddy pulls a fast one: "Here's my daughter Leah. How about you marry her instead?" The old bait-and-Shrew. But Jacob's classy as only a Biblical patriarch-in-training can be, so he stays out of small-claims court and they make a deal whereby another seven years gets him another wife. This is many years before those Dove commercials taught us that beauty is a construct, like, the news that women are people was still just this nice idea. (This recap's alliterative appellation is not directly tied to this story, except for how dating is a hassle, but a necessary one.) So he does the work, and marries the girl, and then... Well, basically our entire society starts at that point.
So Zoë waits for the lab techs to file out of the room -- Where are we? Does Philo just live there now? -- and then immediately sends Philo a wink from a photo-less account asking to meet up. Rachel's her name now. "Someone's about to get lucky..." she giggles, and then quickly resumes robot position before anybody sees her playing around on the computer. But this show is awesome because you can only get halfway to Cyrano, thanks to the fact that in the Matrix she doesn't have to look like a toaster: She can be her own other girl, and actually get the guy. As long as he never tries to make it real. (And I'm romantic enough about this that I am not ready to face the very obvious truth that -- as far as allies for a terrorist superbeing go -- dating a guy in the very lab that you're trapped in would make Gemenon a lot easier to accomplish. SHUT UP ABOUT THAT! THEIR LOVE IS REAL!)
Sarno babbles as usual about Vergis, and brings him onto the couch, and they are smarmy for a million years, and Daniel steams watching it at home. They talk about how he wants to buy the C-Bucs, they get along famously, and talk turns to the sensationalism of the Vergis/Graystone rivalry. He plays it so awesomely: Basically, they were just at a museum party last night, there is no rivalry, and why would there be? He's a serious industrialist, Graystone's just a toymaker with a love of sports teams. So genius. Then Vergis segues brilliantly from how great Amanda is to how sad it is that her kid died... And suddenly how tragedy makes you reevaluate your shit, which is why he's moving to Caprica full-time and getting citizenship. Daniel is impressed! It's impressive. Sarno welcomes him on behalf of Caprica, the crowd goes wild, and he keeps saying -- this reminded me of when JFK died, "You can't say Dallas doesn't love you," but I don't think intentionally -- how much Caprica loves Tomas Vergis. Daniel! You are screwed! More!
Philo sings weird, horny little songs to himself while he works on recalibrating Zoë's recently ripped-off arm, and the message from Rachel pops up, and the songs get weirder and hornier, but also more adorable as he giggles to himself and dances around in front of the robot, and Zoë is just overjoyed for them both. This storyline is so amazing. So he jacks in -- looking like himself but in a slick suit with big-boy hair -- and pushes past the usual Matrix dorks doing their usual Matrix dorky things, and right when he gets close to Rachel she makes a show of slipping on the floor and lands on her ass. So he runs over to help her, and she's wearing this amazing pink-check Burberry dress that looks like vinyl, lipstick, and Clark Kent glasses.
The Rachel that Zoë has made herself is, of course, a dream date nerd girl, like a total Felicia Day, and immediately starts yelling about how high heels "throw off your center of gravity and totally change the curve of your spine!" Which is exactly how a nerd date would start. But this is also a cult date, don't forget who Zoë is, because her point is that heels are just "not natural." Philo introduces himself, and she feigns pleasant surprise as though she didn't know what a total sweetheart/hottie he was, and it turns into the best blind date ever. Philo takes a second to register that she looks like Zoë Graystone, and she subtly compliments him, saying that of course he doesn't really look like the cutest boy in the universe that she knows he does, and then explains Rachel's rationale: Looking like the Most Hated Girl in the Colonies was supposed to keep the weirdos away, but seems to have instead encouraged them, but that she doesn't have money to correct her avatar mistake right now. (This is good SF, this whole conversation.)
The whole time he's trying to reassure her, because she is clearly his awesomest fantasy girl, and it's really sweet. "It's just, uh... A bold statement, is what I was trying to say." So cute. We flip back and forth between Philo in the Matrix smiling, and Philo IRL really getting into this girl, and she gets the gift of a lifetime. "You know... Despite what people say about Zoë Graystone? Girl had principles." Rachel is physically thrown backwards a little bit by this one, because what are the odds? She already knew how great he was, but I doubt his respect for her terrorist sister-mother ever really came up. It's not the kind of thing you would talk about very often, I would think, and especially not at work. And especially not when your boss is Rachel's father, and she's dead.
(Now, I don't know about you, but "integrity" is a secret panty-dropper word for most people, and the seriousness/harshness of those principles certainly the thing I've always liked/identified with about Zoë -- not to mention, of course, all her darling daughters to come -- so I was like "How does Philo keep getting more perfect?")
Poor fucking Clarice goes from getting stoned to getting way too stoned, dropping shit and batting at the fringe of a tacky Dive Bar lamp, and I guess eventually finds her way out of her Dave Matthews binge and home. Nestor and Olaf sit on her bed watching her druggie ass drowse and worrying about how clearly she is going down the tubes. Olaf's like, "And she's convinced herself she can talk her way into military labs?" Nestor finds the magical tech in her hand and sees that she's pulled it off, and smiles at Olaf in a way that is mostly cute but one hundred percent nuts: "Faith, Olaf!" He kisses her head and they run off to play with their toy. And her eyes are open, and maybe there's a smile in them, or maybe she's just that far gone. Either way, you have to admit this is her most productive day in many weeks.
More bloody nightmares and cheesy echoing until Daniel's eyes pop open, thinks about how there aren't any more vegetables to chop madly, and goes upstairs to bed. Amanda barely wakes up, asks if he's okay, and they cuddle. His eyes stare out, out, out.
Sirens going off -- more bombings? -- and Evelyn shows up Chez Adama wearing some amazing ridiculous Blade Runner hairpiece/fascinator thing that looks like it's made out of hair. I had to watch this scene three times just because I was so obsessed with it. (What is that shit on your head?! Is it awesome or stupid? Fashion is so hard sometimes!) She tosses down the file on "Tad Thorean," aka Tammy's virtual BF, and Joe's still wandering around in his bathrobe and acting out of it, but Evelyn notices the bandage covering his funeral tattoo and asks to see it. Old-man chest!
"That's nice work," Evelyn says, which I think sort of implies that she knows enough about the whole Tauron deal that she can probably read it. Although probably she would have known about the funeral anyway, given who we're dealing with. It's to be presumed that he's been sending her the same nonstop drunken all-caps text-messages about his dead family as everybody else on this entire show. (I bet after that day he decided to kill Amanda he's gotten a lot better at texting.) Evelyn momentarily loses track of her shit and starts to make her move on him, but he clams up. It's not as awkward as it could be, because he recovers wonderfully into their shtick: "If I'm even a minute late... I have this assistant who yells at me. She's a horrible woman, terrible. Let me get my coat and stuff, I'll be right back down." He runs away, she grins and sips her coffee. I cannot wait for them!
Daniel and Tomas have a sitdown at the Graystone compound, drinking delicious OJ. Pfft, if they were real men they'd be mimosas. Sometimes Amanda really has the right idea. Daniel calls Tomas a pussy pretty much immediately, I guess to call him out because he knows how cagey Tomas is going to be, and then congratulates him on the milkshake-drinking move to Caprica. "I think your best bet though, might be to simply marry a Caprican woman -- if you dare!" They laugh, no telling how much backstory that involves, and Tomas gets to the point finally. He wants the Bucs not as a means to an end, but because they are crucial to the overall milkshake-drinking: Daniel loves owning a sports team as only a childhood nerd can, and therefore Tomas will take them away from him. And then the thing he loves, and the thing.
Tomas rolls up his sleeves and you think possibly a Tauron-style ass-beating is going to occur, but then he unexpectedly beats up on Daniel's heart instead. Those dead dudes weren't just dudes, they were close buddies of Tomas. He's got tattoos of both their kids, because he's their god(s)father (nouno), which means this is never, ever going to end. Godfatherhood is a big deal, and being a Tauron is a huge deal, and this is a blood-for-blood situation because those kids are orphaned. He offers Daniel an extra two hundred million for the team, explains about the total destruction of Daniel that is about to occur, and takes his leave. And because Daniel is already having the worst couple days in his existence, once Tomas is gone he just sort of sits there drinking juice and thinking about putting some liquor in it, Amanda-style.