Review of Caprica 1x09: "End of Line"

[flowrs4ophelia]

I'm not sure this episode reached the "Battlestar level of intensity" David Eick promised (which I didn't even quite believe/expect it would manage to do), but it was definitely a strong and emotional one which gave a lot of storylines some not-quite-expected payoffs. This is one of the first episodes that's given me the feeling the writers finally have a pretty clear idea of where all the threads are going and exactly what they want to work toward accomplishing in this series.


— The idea of beginning the episode in the middle of some action and then jumping "x hours earlier" I'm sure is very effective...for anyone who isn't watching this show because they formerly watched BSG and doesn't remember this exact same specific pattern of unchronological editing being used in "You Can't Go Home Again." This almost comes close to seeming kind of like a pathetic attempt to convince watchers that this show can be like BSG, and it really doesn't have to do that. Maybe it hasn't grown into a series of comparable quality yet, but it's still grown into its own series and has enough going for it without relying on the constant comparison. I just found that weird and distracting because it was so familiar.

(I'm not complaining about beginning an episode that way in general, which I know has been done in a lot of TV besides BSG and used especially well in the pilot of Breaking Bad. It was just after they kept coming in from every commercial break with another glimpse of how it was going to end that it started to feel completely recycled to me...idk, maybe I've just watched the first season of Battlestar way too many times, LOL.)

— Barnabas is shaping into a pretty cool character, of course helped by James Marsters being awesome. I guess they're going for two completely different colors of bad with him and Clarice both being antagonists but rivals, and I'm wondering by this point if there's anyone in STO besides teenagers who don't have an at least slightly evil agenda. And if Barnabas is even the worst of the two evils.

— PHILOOOOOO. :'( What's really surprising is I feel sad about such a likable and fun character dying but I actually feel even worse for Zoe, after everything I said in my review for "Ghosts In the Machine" about why I see interesting potential in her character but don't really care about her yet. Now it seems clear that all the ways she's been painted as a brat and slightly despicable person were leading up to this point, and I guess this is exactly the painfully humbling kind of experience it was going to take for her to finally reflect on everything she's done and her own faults. This episode showed that she cared about Philomon a little more than I actually expected, and for her to so quickly be forced to see she's not this infallible special snowflake touched by God and has seriously fucked everything up totally humanized her in a way that seems to validate how she's been formerly written as not very relatable a lot of the time. The last scene with the montage of her memories while she's crying and about to drive into her death was really powerful and sad.

— When Bear McCreary hinted that this episode would be an exceptional one musically, a really dramatic opera piece wasn't what I was expecting, but it worked really beautifully. One of my favorite tracks from the BSG soundtracks is "Battlestar Operatica" so it's phenomenal to hear some much less comical and very moving music in that style from him. I didn't recognize the voice of Alessandro Juliani (a.k.a. Felix Gaeta) and that's great to have another connection like that to BSG in the cast and music.

— Unfortunately the scene with Tamara killing Joseph in the game was completely predictable for anyone who saw the promo for this episode. I might have to make myself stop watching those when the season resumes. Expecting it by that point didn't really make it easier to watch, though. Even if it hopefully means Joseph can finally act like a man and start eating and bathing again, lol. It's a nice touch that in this scene Tamara goes from calling Joseph "Daddy" as I think she always has before to calling him "Dad," which sounds more mature.

— I don't even know what to say about what happened with Amanda and Daniel except...damn. What Daniel said about how much his contract with the military has cost him was depressing and also premature. By the end of the episode it's cost him quite a lot more than his Pyramid team, heh.

The last episode had a running fire theme with the idea of Prometheus stealing fire from the gods related to a lot of the stories (Daniel got the knowledge to create life by stealing Zoe's code, Joseph has to "play Prometheus" in the club because's he seeking knowledge about where his daughter is and only gets the answers he needs by cheating, etc). I couldn't help thinking of that when that old note from Daniel that Amanda was looking at said "You are the light and fire of my life." Seems he has bigger obsessions now. :(

— Kudos to everyone who speculated that Emmanuelle is actually Evelyn. The crazy thing is Evelyn's avatar actually does look quite a lot like her and I just never realized it until they showed one's face right after the other's, only Emmanuelle is younger and - more curiously - not as distinctly Tauron-looking as the real Evelyn or in other words, whiter. LOL. I'd been wondering if the idea of racial differences having less meaning in the virtual world is something they'll address.

I'm pretty ambivalent about how Joseph and Evelyn are getting closer because it's pretty weird when his wife has been dead for just a couple months. The way we've seen them interacting so far really doesn't give me the impression anything has actually happened between them before as some people are wondering. But maybe there's always been some attraction and now it's getting especially awkward, like in that moment she talked to him after he'd gotten his tattoo. She obviously really cares for him and I think her support will be good for him but they won't necessarily be getting together soon.

The way she and Tamara sort of bonded to help Joseph emphasizes how she seems to be becoming part of the family, and it makes me wonder if Evelyn will continue to see her in V-world out of concern for her and to keep her informed about her family at all. I thought Tamara's relationship with Tad might be further developed because she makes a good foil for him, and in the short time of getting to know her he was challenged to do something better with his life, only to disappear from the show two episodes later so that we may or may not find out if he ever will now that his whole other life as Heracles is over. (Not to mention with how the Zoe/Philomon relationship has turned out now, it's kind of boring and repetitive for both cases to simply end abruptly with the guy freaking out and wanting nothing more to do with the dead girl after finding out what she is. Maybe Philo didn't even get a chance to get used to the idea after first freaking out, but it would still be interestingly surprising if Heracles, who for now certainly seems the much weaker and less reliable of the two characters, actually turned out to be able to accept an avatar of a dead person as a person. Not that it wouldn't still be tragic and mostly inviable as a potential romance, but hey, that's the fun. Haha.) But anyway, as long as he isn't coming back into the picture anytime soon or maybe ever, if Tamara doesn't have any kind of friend at all and is just on her own in New Cap City, she could easily lose what humanity she has left. And it's just logical from a writing viewpoint that if she's going to have a continued independent story (which I'm pretty sure Eick said she's supposed to) she needs someone as a constant to play off of in her scenes. So I'm curious about where they're going with her now that she's forced her father out of her virtual life.