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Well, that's proof that great direction and acting can redeem bad writing. Even terrible writing. Even writing from the WGA-nominated team that brought you Tomb Raider. And to be fair, the tone-deaf dialogue itself smoothed out about halfway through. But I have never been able to understand why it is that people on science fiction shows always talk like they're on science fiction shows. Or why this show, which is usually so much better than that, doesn't mind lowering the bar every now and again.
Anyway, fun episode, with as many twists and turns as we've come to expect. Olaf, Clarice and Nestor are like 24 hours away from their plan to blow up that stadium, which apparently was a serious plan. Since they're the only ones with Zoë's program currently, I guess it makes sense to move forward. Of course now that Jordan's got burnt by the Agency, he has nothing to lose, and sends Amanda in with a fake holoband.
Of course Amanda has no idea trading them will put her in possession of Apotheosis/Grace, but Jordan gets shot by a GDD sniper -- and she takes him to see DOC COTTLE -- she knows it's only a minute before they notice the traded bands it's about five seconds to realize that Amanda was the mole, Mar-Beth was innocent, and they are all wife-killers. Killers of wives. Of course Clarice and Amanda are both super conflicted about the fight they're about to have, but when crazy meets crazy only awesome can result.
An old terrorist buddy -- And one-time Joseph mistress! Named Fiddy Cent! -- reappears to comb the Graystone Ind. books for possible Cylon-skimming, confirming that the Guatrau is blatantly supporting the Playboy Dictator. Looking for other ways to help the cause (and remove the threat of Tamara-A and the very famous Avenging Angels to Joe's shaky sanity), Sam agrees to help Daniel and Amanda -- in their best shearling Brokeback gear -- get to Tower Avenging, where Tamara has just installed a possible dragon. (Also, the best McCreary since Amanda's Theme, recalling "Violence & Variations" and the Opera House variations.)
Meanwhile, over on Gemenon -- which appears to be closer to Caprica than our moon is to us -- Lacy interrupts materiel training to prove she's the Dragonlady of Pern apparently. All the robots are in love with her and would rather listen to her than even the people they're programmed to obey. Odin -- interrupted mid-climax during a Tantric session with pretend-Lacy, if you're not squicked enough yet -- goes with her to visit her new army of killer friends, smokes her out with his ingenious fake-pistol pipe, and then they make out and it's awesome. Too bad Pope Meg has decided that Lacy needs to die. On the other hand: Robot army. Maybe she'll get to see Heaven after all.
week: No idea, silly. I'm writing this last November.
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Want more? The full recap starts right below!We're going to overlook the ass-horrible dialogue in this episode because I don't have time to get angry right now. Suffice to say that when science fiction starts sounding like science fiction, I -- and much of the rest of your fellows in neurotypical America -- check the fuck out. But hey, good thing all that whoring to the lowest common denominator got the show renewed, huh?
Anyway, the Angels are putting the finishing touches on the former NCC, which is now paradise. All it needs -- apparently -- is a castle and a dragon. No, I'm not kidding. An actual dragon*. Try and get a teenage girl to do a God's job and you will be putting up with some dragons, I suppose.**
*(Which even though it's Tamara's idea here, it'll later be ascribed to Zoë, because she was a Pern fan, which is an intense in-joke having to do with Ron Moore's history of development hell but also about every single one of us, don't lie, and which series was on Caprica called Dragonfighters Of Kobol. Which in my opinion would have been funnier still if they'd followed BSG conceit and it were called something like "Pernion," or "Pernprica," or my pernsonal*** favorite, "Pernis." I'm sure all of these were discussed and ruled out, because they didn't have time to follow up on this horribly absurd idea, because they were too busy having people say queer bullshit like, "Our fortress is complete!" and "I tried to flush her out by exploiting her fear of fire!")
**(And ain't that shit the truth.)
***(Sorry.)
Daniel's got the beasts purring down in his lab, showing off the "digital architecture of New Cap City," to which of course he has backdoor access because he is Bill Gates and has access to your personal shit and also to "any virtual worlds" that might be created within it. "My eyes are everywhere!" he says, and then notes some moving Neocode where Zoë (and Tamara, not that she exists from this point forward as far as we're concerned, not even in the coda) is messing with nature and building castles and your whatnot.
The Graystones muddle about protesting that each of them was more abusive to their daughter than the other; Amanda's all upset because she slapped her the day she blew up, and Daniel kind of stammers and talks about the time he tortured the robot with fire and it was super gross, and way worse than the slapping. (Which we all know she deserved.) It's nice to hear him admit how awful that was, because it was maybe the nastiest thing that's happened on this show, but he leaves out the part where it was a pissing contest that Zoë pretty much totally won, which made it also kind of awesome. With their daughter's dead burnt robot body lying on a table across the room, Amanda bitchslaps him in turn and he's like, "Valid." I love these two so very much.
Just as Zoë's allowing herself a smile, up on the battlement, allowing herself to hope that this new, pure heaven is what they were supposed to be doing all along, Daniel spots them in the code and grabs... The wrong daughter. Insult to injury, because no way is she going to open the doors to them now.
Daniel stands in the Black Room, with Tamara his prisoner, and he's like, "Oh, sorry. The site of your worst trauma, right. My bad. Hey, could you ask Zoë to come talk to me? It would be super awesome of you." Zoë appears behind him, pissed as all get out, and he gets so happy for a second -- "Thank the Gods!" -- before she slashes him open with her samurai sword and he wakes up back in the lab, screaming: "There's only One," she says. When Daniel Graystone puts his foot in his mouth he sticks it in all the way to his knee, doesn't he?
So he's screaming and Amanda's like, "What's up?" and once he gets over being killed, Daniel just kinda sighs and goes: "She's still mad."
Was that the first joke that ever happened on this show? Nice one. That was a pretty good one, show.
So but now Daniel can't even get into the backdoors because of how NCC works. "No hacks and no workarounds." Amanda's like, "Unless you're Daniel Graystone, obvs" and he's like, "Apparently not." Back to square one. "They say our children have nothing to teach us," she says, "Like maybe we should learn not to be shallow self-absorbed upper-class elite parents who turn their kids into cultmembers." Daniel says all of this "lesson we're meant to learn" shit is some Clarice-sounding bushwa and she's like, "What I would really like is to be crazy the way Clarice is crazy, because say what you will about her methods and intentions, but the bitch always knows what she's supposed to do ."
Right then Jordan calls, from beyond the lands of his burn notice, and Amanda's like, "Right. For example, I've been hiding in her polyamorous cult compound spying on them for the government, which it turns out is rife with STO and probably they are coming to kill us because of me being a stooge. I didn't mention it before, sorry, but in light of our conversation about being authentic and self-respecting people, I thought now might be the best time to tell you about the whole other shitstorm I have called down upon us."
Jordan starts whining at Amanda immediately for telling Daniel about their super secret plans, and she goes, "Look. I can only lie to so many people at once." (Okay, this episode also has some of the best dialogue in the show, but still. It strikes this tone that you get from self-satisfied scripts on much worse shows, like things with the word "Star" in the title, where the person is embarrassed about writing science fiction and wants you to know that they are clever, which is one way to do it but also the most annoying way to do it and far less effective than just refusing to write it like science fiction in the first place.)
Jordan confirms he got burnt and promises Amanda she's safe, thanks to him getting Mar-Beth murdered, but leaves out that particular part. And now apparently that holoband Amanda's been trying to steal, the special one, is locked up in the attic. Jordan gives her a rigged holoband to switch with Clarice's, which is wicked scary for everybody, and when she feints her balk he's like, "Something is happening, and it's happening soon. Honestly, it's the last arrow we've got." And it's better than waiting around for Daniel to come up with whatever impossible thing he's going to come up with now that the show is suddenly (irrevocably, randomly) all about these two parents trying to reconcile with their Godlike, emotionally scarred daughter.*
*(With which I don't really have a problem? Except for the fact that Zoë is right about pretty much everything, and the Angels are way cooler than pretty much everybody, and rerouting the story this way reduces all of that -- her holy rage, her divine inspiration, the way she stoked the fires in Clarice and sent Lacy into the flames, the knowledge and conversation of her Holy Guardian Angel, the fall of coarse consumerism and rise of monotheism, and thus like the entire Apocalypse -- to the teenage tantrum of a rich white girl who didn't get enough attention from her rich WASPy parents. Which is not really the same thing at all.**)
**(Well, to me it is, but I think you'd have to be pretty specifically me to see it that way.***)
***(Or Zoë Graystone, come to think of it, so I guess it all comes out in the wash.)
Anyway, Clan Willow has got the whole stadium on lock, as was prophesied by earlier episodes and the bughouse crazy of Clarice: "Structural stress points," a fake repair crew with supplemental charges, all of their martyrs ready to go including a family of four... So I guess it's go time. They explain the entire plan to us one more time -- everybody dies, the faithful are reborn in Heaven, and Clarice goes on TV to explain about the OTG about a month later, after the grieving are finally done and ready to shut up about it:
"It's important, though, that the miracle conveys a sense of buoyancy, of joy. The servants of the One True God, lifted to Paradise in a grand Apotheosis!"
Very exciting, when she gets all caffeinated. So Nestor suddenly is like, "Wait, is this a horrible stupid vicious dumb idea?" Yes, yes it is. But on the other hand, even the innocents who are just accidental martyrs are still dying for the OTG, they just won't be in Clarice's stupid junk heaven with the rest of them: "Because they're not actually going to Heaven, their scanned avatars are." Right, right, complete the thought...
He points out that they already have the avatars ready to go: Technically, he could just upload them already. So blowing up all those people is "just showmanship," he says. Totally irrelevant. I mean, he will never be redeemed after the number he pulled on Lacy, but it's nice to see somebody asking the big questions. Clarice, of course, is not having that shit and immediately takes action: "Why don't you ask Him yourself? I've squirreled away a few extra tickets to the big game. Are you ready to die for your faith?" That shuts his sexy ass right up.
The child soldiers are already ducking around the Cylons, integrated with them as another part of the awful STO experience. Somebody misused a term so now the fake-Poly from the shuttle is yelling at all of them: "This is not a mortar. This is a mortar bomb. If you're old enough to kill people, you're old enough to know the right words to describe how you did it."
He goes on, in depth, but Lacy's distracted from this showing of his dick by the showing of another dick as some soldier takes another soldier to task for failing to salute. Again she notes that war is inherently stupid and made for insecure men, but then when suddenly the yelling soldier has the other one on his knees and orders a Cylon to execute him for -- again -- failing to salute. Fuck that. Lacy runs out of the tent and over to the scene of this bullshit and tells the robot to cut that shit right out, and... It does. And doesn't move another muscle to hurt the guy. But the wonderful feeling of seeing a stop to senseless playground politics at their Blackwater worst gets goosebumps on it when the Cylon says, "By your command."
Oh, yeah. It's all happening this week on Caprica.
Too bad "this week" is a figure of speech, but you know what I mean. Anyway, Diego hauls her in for unlawful discharge of a robot being cool for once, and she points out that murdering this kid Lexon for refusing to salute not only teaches us nothing about discipline or chain of command, and everything about how this place is a terrible idea covered in fucked-up ideology sauce. Plus, how are you supposed to hold a conversation and look at Diego at the same time? Hats off to Lacy Rand. "What happened to inspiring people to fight for what's right?" she asks, for about the millionth time, and Diego tiredly tells her that when she's in charge, she can do whatever she wants. She's like, "Buddy, I fuckin' will."
Oh but also, why are you magic on robots? No idea. Maybe because my best friend blew herself up because of jerks like you -- and because her boyfriend couldn't handle her unique gender situation -- and now a little tiny fragment of her beautiful soul lies in each and every one of the robots, and all they know is that they loved me long after she died? (Every time she died? And okay but also, how funny that this story is so much like Zoë's favorite book series when she was a kid? Maybe Lacy can ride the robots and discover robot-riding time travel? And go back to Kobol and get the Thirteenth Colony to come forward with her in time and stop all this monotheist nonsense, thus explaining where the Thirteenth Colony went but also stranding us with the backwater crumminess of the Thirteenth Colony?) But Lacy's not about to spill these little factoids, because then she'd have to explain about Clarice and Barnabus and the whole Operation Dumbo Drop situation and they really would kill her, so she shakes her head with that Lacy face: "Maybe he has a sense of decency."
They really do. Cylons get up to some very bad shit, but they always have great reasons.
You know who doesn't? Taurons. While Amanda stashes the faked holoband up in the Willow attic, let's hie to Goldie's and meet the lovely Fidelia Fazekas, daughter of the Guatrau, buddy of Sam and former lover of Joe, with whom she cheated on Shannon well before the STO blew her up, because every time you think Joe can't suck more, he sucks more.
Fidelia -- Fiddy to her friends, Dirty Diddy Money on the rap circuit -- just got back from Cap City Max, having been bumped to probation on account of all the terrorists getting locked up. She is every bit as hard and every bit as beautiful as Samuel Adama, and very happy to see him. They talk about how Joe's family got blown up, and she's sorry about that, and about how she took the rap for something before, and he's sorry about that, and how -- and this is classy of Sam to say, in a way, and she's surprised to hear him say it -- she should know that Yusif took it hardest of all when she went to jail. Anyway, is she going to be around for awhile? If I revealed the details, I'd have to return you to the soil, she says, but it's not really a joke and they both know that, so mostly it's just kinda weird and awkward. Luckily, of the two of them he's the only one that knows he's working against her father in broad daylight...
Which won't stay true if Daniel doesn't keep showing up all the damn time like they're best friends. He tells this to Daniel, but Daniel is no longer about that plotline: "Tamara is alive in V-world. She's with my daughter." It happened a long time ago, but remember how she shot herself and her father and Evelyn was Emmanuelle and Joseph thought the whole thing was real? Yeah. And he was addicted to eyeball inhalers? That was awesome.
Anyway, Daniel needs like some big strong stud with a NCC pass to get the Graystones into the Matrix and protect them long enough to have a little conversation with Zoë, and Sam is the biggest most protective stud he's ever met, so he immediately thought of him. Of course Sam doesn't take the compliment. Daniel, as is his wont, continues talking at Sam until he says something objectionable, like mentioning how they have to keep this mission quiet because the Worlds already think Zoë's a terrorist, which sets Sam the fuck off, predictably, but Daniel just tells him to cram it.
"I've been working on improved design models for a mechanical body for Zoë. Artificial skin. And given enough time, I should be able to devise a believable simulacrum..." Sam interrupts him, because that is clearly every nightmare happening at once, dead Frankenstein bodies full of dead Frankenstein girls, and they returned Tammy to the soil and Joe is finally adjusting to the world, sort of, and Daniel is not allowed to frak that up, and Daniel is super gross. In time it's possible Joe will actually be a human person again, and wouldn't you like to see that for once. "It's her. They are both real. It shouldn't be true, but it is. Please, I need to get my family back." They stare into each other's eyes for a good long time, but I don't think Sam's convinced. Not yet.
Amanda meets Jordan up on a running trail that is just gorgeous, to give him the original Willow band, and he tells her to go deep and stay safe until it's over; she knows something is wrong and when he finally admits that Mar-Beth is dead, she closes her eyes in sadness. She really did end up bonding with that lady. Jordan explains how he engineered her murder, but before Amanda can high-horse him he points out that Mar-Beth was a member of a terrorist cult who just shit out a baby that will also become a member of a terrorist cult.
Which is admittedly awful on every level, but before Amanda can even take off her earrings to administer her second bitchslap of the day somebody shoots Jordan and he goes rolling down the hill, rolling rolling, ass over teakettle, holoband in hand, and Amanda finds herself in the usual spot of every episode where she's alone in a vulnerable exposed position and nobody can help her and so she better just roll around in her peril and yell as loud as possible so everybody can come kill her in the face.
Just kidding this one time: Her doctor skillz kick in and she takes Jordan to the ER, where a member of the Caprican Cottle dynasty of medical professionals can see to him. (Pointless and somewhat embarrassingly dorky callbacks at this time being a driving factor of some scenes; pls see above re: the awkward creation of both "toaster" and "box" in this context. Ugh. Nerds are not so easily satisfied these days, guys. Lost irrevocably broke that bone.)
Sam and Ruth tease Evelyn about her noodle-making abilities and it's pretty cute but also that sort of weakly improvised scene where you feel like the script just said "Sam gives Evelyn a ribbing about her noodles" and they did their best. Willie comes in wearing an Avenging Angels t-shirt, I guess because he's an idiot, and Sam wigs out about it because that's exactly what Daniel was talking about, and he gets right up in Willie's face about taking it the frak off and also don't talk to Joe about the Avenging Angels and Willie's feelings get pretty hurt, is the long and short of it.
"You can't destroy all the shirts," the ladies point out. "Sarno makes jokes about them. Sooner or later, Joseph is going to notice." So then what does Evelyn want, they just give up on Joe? Maybe rig some more murder-suicides to freak his brain out more? Evelyn's like, "No, it's real simple. You go with Daniel and Amanda to find the girls, and then you kill Tamara. Done." Or if he can't do that, which he can't, "Weigh it down with virtual weights, put it into a virtual lake. Joseph needs to be rid of the dead things in his life. He needs to move on." Especially with Fiddy showing up it's natural that his brain goes here, today, but it's still a frakking horrible thing to say: "Yeah, move onto you." Mee-yow, Samuel. To be fair, and characteristically, he immediately apologizes like a million times, but still. Stings. And only after Ruth comes after him with a meat cleaver for acting like a bitch.
Fidelia's lookin' for a little Adeste, if you know what I'm saying, so she and Joe make out for a little while before he remembers he's dating his secretary and tells her to chilllllll. There's a very cat-and-mouse thing where she slowly reveals over the course of about a million years that about two in every two dozen robots is getting skimmed, and not for the STO. He lies that it's a performance thing, they get scrapped, but she already checked on that and the reclamation company isn't getting those either, and the whole time she's like, "See, you know how I have to make the math work out, I'm crazy like that," and in a normal context it would be annoying and passive-aggressive but in this case she's doing it right, considering she's saying, "My father will kill you so please hide whatever you're doing." She kisses him goodbye and assures him she'll keep looking but she better not fucking find anything, thanks.
If you ever wondered what Odin's near-o face would look like after a long session of literal tantric sex with Lacy Rand, and let's be honest, now's your chance to find out. It's about the most sexy sex of this show, which isn't saying much... And also it is a lie. Lacy rips the holoband off his face to go on a little adventure and she's like, "You're totally watching porn!" He says it's not her business -- which it totally is, actually, which we already talked about when Daniel was having his little jerking-off-into-my-wife's-ghost phase -- and she's like, "It's gross but mostly you will get shot for contraband," and he tells her to stop bossing everybody around, like robots and him.
Which is what she's there for: She wants help figuring out the robot issue and she needs somebody to watch. When they get to the robots all the robots are like Greetings BFF and Odin can't believe it and Lacy's like, "Robot: Raise your arm. Robot: Lower your arm. Robot: Do the hokey-pokey and turn yourself around. Robot: That's what it's all about."
Somebody's coming before she can get them to admit they have Zoë inside them, but since they really don't, not in the way she's thinking or a way that would really matter, she doesn't get an answer. She just begs one of them to please be Zoë, because she is lonely and in over her head and misses her best friend. Lacy is a damn trooper, I don't say that enough. They take off down a corridor and Odin's like, "Who's Zoë now?" She won't tell her, so he pulls out a one-hitter -- Odin is chock full of surprises that are not surprises -- and peer pressures her to smoke some pot and have some sex with him. I don't know if you've seen Odin Sinclair but he's at least as cute as every other boy these two girls has ruined lately, so it doesn't take much to convince her. Plus, she deserves a break if anybody does.
Lacy explains the situation with the help of marijuana and dry-humping, and it's so great. "Zoë was my friend. She died. It's hard to explain... Hello! [That's when her buzz hits.] Zoë Graystone was a true believer in God's grace. An inspiration. She was my friend, and I loved her." Just then he recognizes the name, and realizes that Lacy is a total freakshow, but Lacy's like, "Yeah, best friend was a terrorist and the richest girl in the world, and now I am magic on robots, but more importantly let's get to third base and talk about it way, way later because momma's got stress you wouldn't believe."
While Sam calls Daniel and they banter about money so that Daniel will think he's just doing it for money because that's what Capricans are like because Sam is racist just like everybody else, the Blessed Mother comes down to visit Diego and discuss how the currently fucked-up and frakking Lacy Rand is big old trouble in little Gemenon due to her being magic on robots. Is this some kind of Clarice bullshit? Diego doesn't know. It's a secret! Let's find out the answer!
But no, the Blessed Mother explains, in fact it is not a secret, it's a mystery. Which is to say, to paraphrase Alan Moore, that secrets have answers, while mysteries get killed in mysterious accidents down at child terrorist camp, so the Blessed Mother doesn't have to deal with this, because Clarice Willow is a thorn in the Blessed Mother's ass, and frankly this magic robot girl situation is giving the Blessed Mother a headache the size of Zeus -- if we believed in Zeus -- and so maybe Diego should stop worrying about secrets and give in to the mystery instead. And then maybe if Lacy were to die accidentally, Diego might just take the place of advisor Obal Ferras, last seen getting dramatically stabbed to death by about a million monks thanks to Diego and to Clarice's total spookiness.
Amanda left Jordan at the hospital, stable and in Cottle's care, and came home to feel bad about how she got in over her head with the cult that killed their daughter. (I'd just committed suicide and taken up smoking hash and my dead brother was all over the place, and you had joined the Mob and were having people killed, and it was just a very confusing time.) Daniel tells Serge to call the GDD and she belays that shit because obviously it was Singh that shot him, so then Daniel offers to hack the holoband instead. But whoops, she left that at the scene of the guy getting shot by the people that want it.
So what then, wait? No way. "I'll lose my mind!" And you know, when Amanda Graystone says that? Trust. You better find another frakkin' way around because that is the sound of a countdown starting.
It takes Nestor like one second to figure out that it's the wrong holoband because, of course, he has a photographic memory we've never heard about -- of all the insulting, lazy hack writer tricks this and amnesia are my very favorite -- and then they're all like, "Well clearly Amanda Graystone switched the holobands," jumping to that conclusion out of nowhere, and also "She's the one that's been spying on us the whole time," and also "We killed Mar-Beth for no reason," which does logically follow from the illogical things they just deduced. So fucking annoying. So unnecessary. And the whole time Clarice is trying to defend Amanda and they're getting more and more pissed at her, and finally it comes down to this: We now have, suddenly, 24 hours before the stadium explodes. So thanks for that update.
And that means while the Graystones are looking for Zoë and the Adamas are who cares, the Willows are going to be hunting for Amanda so they can get her holoband back, reinstall Heaven, and have a nice long talk about stabbing and stuff.
Which admittedly does sound thrilling, but not quite as thrilling as the fact that Daniel, Sam and Amanda are heading up the mountain right this second -- on packhorses, naturally -- nor the fact of Zoë, standing on the battlements in the Heaven she made, dragons in the darkening skies, waiting and ready for them. Not sad, not happy, not ruling it out but not quite ready to stop being angry: Zoë's parents, making the long trek home to her, unsure what they'll find.
The burned girl? The one who killed herself? The one who walks with angels? The one who loved them? The one that hated them? The one who killed innocents, or the one that was killed before her time? The one who learned to love only after they'd taken her body away? The one who led revolution across the dirty world, and then again, across its dirty dreams? And when they ask her if she's alive, what will she have to say? And what will she ask of them, in her turn?