Bottles are flying in the wake of Amanda outing Zoe as a terrorist, but no one wants to duck and cover.
After blurting out that Zoe is a member of the Soldiers of the One on interplanetary television, the Graystones are now personae non gratae. Protestors are boycotting Graystone Industries, the company’s stock is plummeting, and its $2 billion loan to the twelve colonies’ banking system is almost up for repayment. Is it too big to fail? Will there be a bailout? We find the economic allusions to real life more unseemly than the terrorist ones.
Each parental unit tries to reconcile the fact that Zoe might be a suicide bomber in his/her own way. Daniel slums it at a dive-y boxing gym and takes out his angst on his sparring partner (who is the reincarnation of eighties John Oates). Amanda, on the other hand, is over her crying jag from the last episode. She doesn’t have as much trouble swallowing the Zoe-as-troubled-mastermind theory. She just wants to forget it all with a good frak on the desk in Daniel’s lab. But oops, the Zoebot is watching. Awwwkward.
Rather than stab out her robo-eye visor, Avatar Zoe gets creative. She figures out how to hook up the holoband to the Cylon body and “ta-frakin-dah” she’s back in the virtual world. Well, actually, the blank virtual box where Daniel also hid the avatar of Adama’s daughter, Tamara, who still has no clue why her heart’s not beating. The girls feel along the walls for a rift in the space-time continuum, er, a piece of shared code that manifests itself as a doorway to the rest of the virtual world. Freaked out by all bacchanalia once they get to Club V, Tamara tries another doorway out. Memo to the writers: little-girl-lost scenes work best when David Bowie is somehow involved.
Caprica has gestured at the possibility that Avatar Zoe might make different decisions than Human Zoe. But for now the copy is happy to follow its master’s plans. This means hightailing it to the STO safe house on Gemenon, never mind that the evidence-tampering police have their sights fixed on Castle Graystone. We suspect the writers are holding off until Human Zoe’s grand scheme turns out to mean that some harm will come to the Avatar (which maybe triggers the Cylon’s latent homicidal tendencies?). But the idea that a clone could turn out differently than the original is something Battlestar Galatica did well (e.g., “I’m Sharon, but I’m a different Sharon”), and we hope they play around with it here.
Poor little Lacy Ringwald. First she has figure out how to lug 2,000 pounds of Cylon to Gemenon. Plus, things are rough for her at the Athena School now that everyone knows she’s been palling around with terrorists. But wait, are those sympathetic looks from Keon Gatwick (Liam Sproule)? He mocks her like the other cool kids, but something in his eyes says different. It’s all very Blaine and makes our heart patter.
Avatar Zoe informs Lacy that Keon is actually Bomber Ben’s BFF. Keon’s strapping; maybe he can help with Cylon logistics. To get his attention, naturally, Lacy tackles him in broad daylight after leaping out from behind a tree. (We really relate to her spazziness.) Keon says he doesn’t find her physically threatening. Lacy, still straddling him, replies, “My knees are pointy and fast and hard.” Foreplay! Where is this feisty attitude when she’s getting bossed around by Avatar Alpha Brat?
Wayward Willie Adama skips school to hang out with the ruffians at an OTB in Little Tauron. Uncle Sam’s ticked off that he didn’t sneak off after attendance and advises him to call the school and say he’s out for the Tauron Day of Devotion to Mars. (From personal experience, we can attest that faking ethnic holidays is actually a versatile get-out-of-jail card. I mean, what public-school teacher knows which day Diwali really falls on, are we right?)
Meanwhile, Zoe and Lacy aren’t the only ones getting virtual. Sister Clarice holobands herself into the hallway of a Comfort Inn. Inside one of the rooms is a confessional with an anonymous higher-up from the STO. He/she wants Clarice to lay low during the investigation, but she tells him she’s close to tracking down Zoe’s avatar, who turns out to be part of a prophecy about apotheosis. Uh, we were just kidding about the whole Zoebot being Jesus thing. But maybe the writers weren’t?
SyFy billed this series as a tale of two families, and the Graystones and the Adamas get further intertwined this week. Like, physically intertwined, when Sam’s fist connects with Daniel’s face outside the boxing ring. Joseph wants to see his daughter’s avatar and try to create a copy of his wife, but when Daniel can’t deliver, he decides to have Sam off Amanda. Caprica has a penchant for cliff-hanger endings, but the threat falls flat. Thug-with-a-heart-o’-gold Sam will have a moral crisis over it. Or the police presence at the Graystones will make it impossible. But really, we just don’t buy that Joseph, who’s been half-present (and half-acted), is at his breaking point yet.
While everyone’s hating on the Graystones, the Graystones are hating on the media-industrial complex. Amanda is pleased when a bottle aimed at her head nicks a reporter instead. And Cyrus Xander, Daniel’s No. 2, hires a PR flack who tries to get the CEO to sit down with late-night talk-show host Baxter Sarno (Patton Oswalt playing some amalgam of Bill Maher and Jon Stewart.) “More than half of college-aged viewers get their news from Sarno!” But Daniel’s no Bill Keller, and he doesn’t want to sell out his little girl. In the end, after watching his brand suffer, he agrees to go on the show. Daniel in the hot seat with his dastardly new slicked-back hairdo! Sarno’s low-blows! We actually can’t wait for the showdown.
