Caprica, "End of the Line": She doesn't know her own strength

A review of the "Caprica" mid-season finale coming up just as soon as I chop some veggies...

"Now, I finally feel like things are getting on the right track." -Daniel

I was disenchanted with the last several episodes of "Caprica," but I had hopes that "End of the Line"(*) would pull the series out of its stupor. If there was one thing you could count on from Ron Moore and company on "Battlestar Galactica," it was that the cliffhanger episodes (either at mid-season or the end of seasons) tended to pack the strongest punch, even during stretches when the show overall was struggling. (Case in point: the visit to the algae planet after a really tedious string of episodes midway through season three.)

(*) The title has been alternately listed in some places as "End of Line," which was the Hybrid's catchphrase on "BSG," but my contact at Syfy insists that the official title adds the "the."

But "End of the Line" was just as uninspiring as the episodes leading up to it - if not moreso. After all, there were certain parts of recent episodes that might have proven interesting, depending on the payoff, like the identity of Joseph's mysterious guide through New Cap City. But when it turned out to be his lovestruck secretary, deliberately manipulating events to keep Joseph and Tamara's avatar apart and to drive Joseph into her loving arms, I rolled my eyes and mentally checked out on that corner of the series, forever. Wake me when Esai Morales and Eric Stoltz are going at it again, okay?

Other than Alessandra Torresani's work as Zoe, and the horrorshow scene where Zoe finally revealed herself to Philomon, then accidentally killed him in a moment of panic, there was very little to grab onto here in terms of compelling character or story moments. And the threat of Daniel erasing Zoe's personality from the chip made no sense. Even if Daniel has decided to take the dog-shooting test as proof that Zoe's not in there, he still knows that the anomalies are the only thing that make the chip work, given that the chip did not work for Vergis.

The whole hour felt like the writing staff needed to build to a series of cliffhangers and then worked backward to see how they could justify a lot of frantic explosions, shoot-outs and suicide attempts. And they didn't even have the courtesy to blow up Sister Clarice(**) when they had the chance to ditch a character who's not working.

(**) Though I would be very amused if Nestor were to somehow survive the car bombing, lose the use of his legs, and try out for the Caprica City wheelchair Pyramid team.

Ideally, a cliffhanger is supposed to make the viewer so invested in what happens next that they'll have trouble waiting for the next episode (either in a week or, in this case, several months). At the end of "End of the Line," though, I found myself not caring if Amanda managed to land in the river without breaking her neck, if Joseph will be able to kick his Amp addiction, who will win the war for the heart of STO, or any of the rest of it. That is not a good sign. I'll see how my mood is when the second half of the season begins, but right now I'm not sure "Caprica" is a show I need in my life.

What did everybody else think?

Caprica, "Ghosts in the Machine": If you don't watch this show, he'll shoot this dog

A review of last night's "Caprica" coming up just as soon as I come back for happy hour...

Yesterday, I was feeling all pleased with myself for choosing to record all of NBC's Thursday comedies as a 2-hour-and-2-minute bloc, which solved the maddening problem of NBC letting a minute or two of each show to spill over into the next one's timeslot. Then I started watching "Caprica" on a DVR delay, and as we came to the final scene, the recording cut Zoe off in mid-sentence. When I ranted about this on Twitter, some people said the same happened to them, while others said their DVR listings knew the show was going to run a minute long, but there should be no excuse for this nonsense in this day and age, and it left such a bad taste in my mouth that I briefly contemplated using the moment as an excuse to kick "Caprica" to the curb.

And the only reason I'd be willing to think of such a thing is that I'm still finding "Caprica" to be a very promising, but at times very frustrating show. The Daniel/Zoe scenes from "Ghosts in the Machine" were mesmerizing: great performances from Eric Stoltz and Alessandra Torresani, an escalating mindgame, a disturbing view of how far Daniel will go to get what he wants (and, in turn, an explanation for why the real Zoe was so eager to run away) and by far the best use to date of the visual gimmick of letting us see Zoe standing in for the robot. There was that great moment out on the cliff where Daniel gives a heartfelt, non-manipulative plea for Zoe to make her presence known, and because we can see Torresani's face, we know he's getting through to her - just as we know that he immediately blows it by pulling out the gasoline can and turning back into the monster who's creating this slave race that will ultimately do so much damage.

Had the episode been nothing but that - had the "Caprica" producers been willing to ditch the soap opera-style episode construction for once and let all the other storylines fall by the wayside for a week - I think we could have had something incredible.

As it stands, those scenes were tremendous even intercut with the Amanda and Joseph Adama scenes. But their goodness only underscored how much the parts of the show that don't have to do directly with the girl-turned-robot aren't really working.

I have zero interest in anything to do with Clarice, Amanda and her brother, and only slightly more with Tomas Vergis or the doings in New Cap City. I appreciate that Joseph's being written with the same kind of indecisiveness that plagued grandson Lee on "Battlestar Galactica," but Jamie Bamber was more compelling at playing that confusion and inner struggle than Esai Morales has been so far. His best scenes tend to be when Joseph has decided on a course of action and is pursuing it relentlessly (as we saw briefly here after he double-Amp'ed up), but scene after scene of him looking wide-eyed, baffled and frustrated makes me grind my teeth.

(Speaking of the clan Adama, by the way, one of my Twitter followers suggested that the cross-dresser's riddle at the club was taken from a speech Bill Adama gives early in the "BSG" miniseries. This ring a bell with anybody else?)

One episode to go in this spring run. I recognize that every new show has growing pains, and that I was able to deal with them on "BSG" because I DVD-binged on it a few years after the show debuted. Watched week-to-week (particularly in a week where NBC/Universal's annoying scheduling tactics come into play), the flaws stick out more and tend to linger.

There's a really good show in here, as we saw with Daniel and Zoe, but it's in danger of being dragged down by the rest of it.

What did everybody else think?

Caprica, "The Imperfections of Memory": Slow ride

A quick review of last night's "Caprica" coming up just as soon as I get a bigger gun...

Last week's episode was the first hour of the series to really feel like a soap opera in the type of stories it was telling. Last night's "The Imperfections of Memory," meanwhile, was the first episode to feel like a soap opera in terms of its pacing. The plots moved, but very, verrrrry slowly. The episode was so flat that many of the act-out moments (which are, by design, supposed to be big and dramatic so you'll want to stick around through the commercials) were almost comical in how low-key they were (Daniel trying to puzzle out a technical problem, for instance).

Because of that, and because so much time was spent on Sister Clarice, a character who's been a colorless disappointment so far(*), this was the first time I've felt actually impatient with the series. I like the world and many of the characters, but when you're doing a pure serial (as opposed to a show with serial elements where each episode is still supposed to stand on its own), there has to be more forward momentum and urgency than I feel like we got last night.

(*) I've recently been going back through the podcast commentaries David Eick has been doing for each episode. In one of the early ones, he talks about how Clarice was originally conceived as more of a hybrid of villain and comic relief, ala Gaius Baltar on "BSG," but it was so clearly not working that they had to reshoot a lot of Polly Walker's material. Whether it's a bad match of actress and character, or the creative team not having a clear enough replacement plan once their original conception turned out to be a mistake, Clarice remains the character whose scenes most often grind the show to a halt for me.

Only two episodes left of the initial winter run. What did everybody else think?

Caprica, "Know Thy Enemy": Hostile takeover

A quick review of tonight's "Caprica" coming up just as soon as I struggle to open vacuum-sealed packaging...

"It's your dream. My dream is to tear up your dream." -Vergis

Once upon a time, Ron Moore talked about "Caprica" as a kind of "sci-fi version of 'Dallas.'" The show has since evolved from that, but an episode like "Know They Enemy" felt very much like the original space-opera-turned-soap-opera pitch with the arrival of Tomas Vergis to fill the role of the corporate arch-rival determined to crush Daniel Graystone at any cost.

That's a character type familiar to countless daytime and primetime soaps. I appreciate that he was written, and played by John Pyper-Ferguson(*), in a much quieter, forthright manner - like Sam Adama and the other Tauran tough guys we've seen, his menace is spoken softly but directly - but he definitely owed a debt to any business rival who went against JR Ewing or Blake Carrington.

(*) The appearance by Pyper-Ferguson (who played an officer on the Pegasus in several episodes of "Battlestar Galactica") prompts me to ask a question I probably should have raised when Luciana Carro (aka Kat) turned up as Graystone's publicst: how do you feel about the show dipping into the pool of "BSG" actors to fill guest roles? This isn't quite like how "NYPD Blue" (or "Law & Order") would often recycle the same actors into different roles, as these are two separate series that, while they share a continuity, are set decades apart. For those of you who watched "BSG," is it a distraction, or do you feel they've done a good enough job of making these people look different that it's okay?

The Sister Clarice/Amanda scenes also had a bit of a soap-y tinge, even though Clarice is starting to develop more nuance than she had in earlier episodes, where she was just the manipulative queen bee. It's now clear that there are different factions among the monotheists, and Clarice is trying to keep the movement peaceful, while Barnabas (played by James Marsters, making the rounds of every sci-fi/cult series he can hit) is content to kill as many as he can and let the one true God sort it out. That distinction makes me much more interested in Clarice, even as she's preying on a drunk Amanda's grief to get access to Daniel's private computers.

At first, I was wondering what Zoe was up to when she responded to Philomon the lab geek's dating website profile, but then it made sense: not only does she have some affection for the guy (the only person in the real world, other than Lacy, who treats her like a girl and not a hulking machine), but she gets to have a V-world romance with someone who likely will never object if she insists on keeping the relationship entirely virtual.

(Plus, it gives the costume department an excuse to keep giving Alessandra Torresani new outfits, when for a while it looked like she'd be in the purple dress for the life of the series.)

In all, "Know They Enemy" was a more sedate episode than we've had so far, and one I had some trouble engaging with at times. But there are always these little moments - like Zoe's reaction to hearing Cyrus and her father discuss the the theft of the MCP, or Joseph's frustration at having to deal with the welcome menu to the holo-band = that keep me interested in the larger world and the characters, and curious to see what's coming next.

What did everybody else think?

Caprica, "There Is Another Sky": New Cap hustler

A belated review of the latest "Caprica" coming up just as soon as I rip my arm off...

"What are you?" -Vesta
"I'm awake." -Tamara

One week after Daniel Graystone vowed to stop making profits off the holo-band business, and in the same episode where Daniel told his board that said business was finished, "Caprica" made its deepest plunge yet into the virtual world that sits adjacent to the 12 Colonies, in an episode that embraced all things cyber-punk(*).

(*) Question: has "The Matrix" trilogy so overtaken the public's conception of this kind of story that we now have to reference Neo and Morpheus anytime one comes up? Even in an episode whose visual aesthetic was much more "Dark City" than anything the Wachowskis did?

Until now, Tamara's avatar had been an afterthought compared to the Zoe/avatar/Cylon trinity. Not anymore. What started out as a kind of nightmare for the poor virtua-kid (not knowing who/what she is, in the control of people just looking to profit from her unique abilities) turned into a kind of Pyrrhic victory, in which Tamara discovered she was dead but also came to understand the level of power she has in this world, and that she has nothing to fear from anyone just plugging into the holo-band from the real world. A very well-played journey by Genevieve Buechner, and now I'm very curious to see how or if Tamara's story is going to intertwine with the creation of the Cylons.

And speaking of those lovably obedient sentient robots, Daniel and Zoe took a backseat to the Adamas (living and dead) this week, but Daniel's demonstration to the board was memorably macabre - so over-the-top and horrific that it likely distracted the board from a deeper questioning of Daniel's pitch - and an even better use of the show's shifting perspective of Zoe than last week's robo-boogie dance number. Zoe is sentient, but this body prevents her from entirely acting on her own free will, and as Daniel talks about making these robots do whatever humanity wants them to, it's not hard to understand why an entire race of Zoes might want to rebel some day.

More good material with the three Adama men(**), and of course Joseph would finally let himself come to terms with his wife and daughter's deaths at the exact moment he learned that Tamara's avatar isn't quite gone yet.

(**) Again, we're not going to go very in-depth about "BSG" for the sake of anyone who might seek that show out later, but watching this trio, it's not hard to see that hard old man Bill Adama took after his uncle, while indecisive Lee is very much Joseph's grandson.

"Caprica" the series is still forming itself, piece by piece. I'm not entirely sure where the story is going (other than the broad points we know from "BSG"), nor whether we're going to have a consistent style or tone from week to week, but every episode so far has held my interest while I wait to get a better view of the big picture. So Espenson, Moore, Eick and company are doing something right.

What did everybody else think?

Caprica, "Gravedancing": The Oswalt report

A review of last night's "Caprica" coming up just as soon as I'm careful with the cello...

"We're not company spokespeople. We're parents!" -Amanda
"Actually, no. We're not." -Daniel

Due to a quirk in the scheduling (Syfy didn't want to counterprogram corporate sibling NBC's coverage of the Olympics opening ceremonies), we've had two weeks to dwell on Joseph Adama's request that his brother kill Amanda.(*) "Gravedancing" drags out the suspense for an additional hour, as Joseph keeps flip-flopping on whether he wants Sam to go through with it, and as outside circumstances keep delaying Sam's opportunity to do it.

(*) That scheduling quirk also made this episode feel uncanny in its timing, as Daniel tries to make a big, televised apology on the same day that Tiger Woods tried something similar in the real world.

In the end, it turns out to be a bridge that neither Joseph nor the show are willing to cross. And while that's understandable, it also made "Gravedancing" feel a bit emptier than the previous episodes. There's a lot of talk about big plot developments, but unless you count Daniel Graystone's pledge to stop making money off of the holo-band (and whatever that means for his company, which depends so heavily on that revenue), not a lot actually happens in this one.

But even if "Gravedancing" was light on plot movement, the world-building and character development are still keeping a tight hold on my interest.

We learn that the colonies (or, at least, Caprica) legalized drugs in an attempt to eliminate drug-related crime (which would give the show the Bunny Colvin/David Simon "Wire" Seal of Approval), and I continue to enjoy just watching the production's mix of cutting-edge and retro, like the press gaggle all using cameras that look like something out of the 1930s while filming the raid on the school, even as Sister Clarice and Keon are swapping notes on their Caprican iPads.

"Gravedancing" was also a strong check-in on the Graystone marriage and the relationship between the brothers Adama. Whatever coldness exists in their marriage related to Zoe, Daniel and Amanda made a formidable team on Baxter Sarno's show(**) and even managed to find some humor in their dire situation by episode's end. And I'm really enjoying Sasha Roiz's work as Sam. He's a killer and a crook, but he's also gentle and charming and far prouder of his culture than Joseph, and it's easy to understand why Willie is drawn to his uncle far more than his dad.

(**) And I thought Jane Espenson's script and Patton Oswalt's performance neatly captured two "Daily Show" interview dynamics: both the one where Jon Stewart is determined to lecture his guests and the one where Stewart finds himself too impressed by the guests to keep asking follow-up questions.

Zoe didn't do much but dance this week (that and find a way to get out of that purple dress she's been wearing since the pilot), but the Zoe/Cylon shifting-POV gimmick continues to be fun to watch even when nothing is happening, since Alessandra Torresani has such expressive eyes (perfect for a sequence like this where Zoe's just enjoying the lab dork's attention) and looks so completely the opposite of a killer robot.

What did everybody else think?

Caprica, "Reins of a Waterfall": Boxing day

A review of last night's "Caprica" coming up just as soon as I glue your nose to your ear...

"Balance it out." -Joe Adama

And it was when we got to that line, at the end of the three screener episodes I got in late December, that I knew I was in with "Caprica" for the long haul.

It's a fundamentally different show than "Battlestar Galactica," despite sharing a universe (and Willie Adama) with it, not just because of the earthbound setting, but the elements at play: corporate intrigue, police investigations, corruption, revenge melodrama, teen angst, etc. But "different" does not equal "bad," and so far I've been enjoying seeing these elements of non-sci-fi dramas injected into this world, in the same way I dug the military and political aspects of "BSG."

And, as on the other show, Ron Moore is clearly reacting to the over-reliance on techno-babble over human drama from his "Star Trek" experience. Yes, Daniel Graystone's building sentient robots and we spend a lot of time in a virtual reality space, but Joe makes it clear where the series' priorities lie when he tells Daniel, "Don't give me techno-talk! Just help me find my daughter!"

After the pilot made it seem like these two would be reluctant, unlikely allies, the events of these next two episodes have explained how they've instead become blood enemies, and Esai Morales has been great at portraying the irrationality of grief.

I also really liked the black humor of the scene where Amanda and Daniel come home to find each other bloodied for different reasons (the Graystones are having a bad stretch) and wind up having sex with the poor Zoe/Avatar/Cylon has to stand and watch.

Things are still getting messy in both the real and holo-band world, with more hints about what Sister Clarice is up to (she was meant to use the avatar to help the cause "through apotheosis"), and with Lacy and Zoe releasing Tamara's avatar into the rest of the holo-band world because they don't realize who/what she is.

Still lots of world-building going on, from Patton Oswalt as Baxter Sarno, a kind of 12 Colonies cross between Jay Leno (the style of his jokes) and Jon Stewart ("More than half of college-age viewers say they get their news from Sarno!") to the use of old juke-joint R&B on the soundtrack in the Little Tauron scenes to our glimpses of Agent Dunham and his partner working the case. And after a casual reference in last week's dialogue, we get more explicit confirmation that Joe's brother Sam is gay, and that it doesn't seem to be a big deal for Joe or Willie. (We'll have to wait and see whether that's because they're family, or if the "BSG"/"Caprica" universe has a lack of homophobia in the same way we've seen in the past that there's no real sexism.)

Finally, since I've said in previous writings that you don't need to have seen "Battlestar Galactica" to understand or appreciate "Caprica," it occurs to me that we should try to be courteous to the "BSG" ignorant in case this show inspires them to check out the older one. That doesn't mean you can't talk about parallels between stories on the two shows, or how "Caprica" stories are pointing towards events on "BSG" - just that if we can all be a little oblique about that, I think it would be nice. Those who saw "BSG" will get what you're talking about, and those who didn't won't be spoiled.

I say this because I was too explicit in a reference to the "BSG" finale in last week's review, and I regret that. (I've since changed the reference, and I will say that if you saw the original version, it gave away too much, but still only a small aspect of the whole finale.)

And with that out of the way... what did everybody else think?

Caprica, "Rebirth": She, robot

I said some general thoughts about "Caprica" in this morning's column, so a few more specific ones on the second episode coming up just as soon as I let the old subconscious find the answers...

"Do I look male to you?" -Zoe
"Yeah." -Lacy
"Frak." -Zoe

"Caprica" is about a whole lot of things, but at its center, it's about a teenage girl (or a digital facsimile of her) who's been turned into a giant metal killing machine. It's a misunderstood monster story.

And if there was a point in the three episodes I've seen (including the pilot and next week's) where I knew I was in with this series for a while, it was when I saw the visual device in which half the time we see the Cylon body, and half the time we see Zoe (still dressed for the holo-band rave). Something about the image of Alessandra Torresani being treated like another frakking toaster cut to the heart of the artificial intelligence issue. (It's also, at times, very funny, in a way the grim-by-design "BSG" very rarely allowed itself to be.)

(On the other hand, given the virulent hatred many "BSG" fans had towards the theological portions of that show's finale, I wonder how people will react to the idea of this creature as a "trinity" - part Zoe, part avatar, part robot - given how overt the parallel is to Christianity.)

"Rebirth" was mainly about dealing with the aftermath of the terrorist bombing, of Daniel and Joe's falling-out, but it also did a lot more world-building in its depiction of Little Tauron, and Sister Clarice's polygamous family (including Scott Porter from "Friday Night Lights" as one of her husbands), and I liked a lot of the little touches like seeing the fans at the Pyramid game place both hands over their heart before the anthem played.

And at the end, right before Bear McCreary got to dust off the drums from the "BSG" theme song, Amanda Graystone (wracked with guilt and grief and mania) detonated a rhetorical bomb at the memorial by announcing (incorrectly) that Zoe was responsible for what happened on the train. That was a powerful moment, but it was also preceded by that awkward flashback montage of events from earlier in the episode, and all I could think about was David Simon ranting about how HBO made him put something similar at the end of "The Wire" pilot because they didn't yet trust the intelligence of his audience. Jane Espenson and the rest of the "Caprica" gang have been around the block a while, so they should know what their target audience can and can't figure out on their own by now, and I'm hoping that's the last we'll see of a narrative shortcut like that.

Overall, though, I was very pleased, after waiting months to see what came after the pilot on DVD.

What did everybody else think?

'Caprica' review - Sepinwall on TV

As I said last week, post-press tour fatigue prevented me from reviewing "Caprica" in time for the TV premiere of the pilot, but since many of those who care got to see that months ago (when I reviewed it the first time), I felt comfortable coming in a week late with a column review. There are pilot spoilers in there (it's rerunning tonight at 7, followed by episode two), with advance warning, so be careful as you read.

Back tonight with specific thoughts on the second episode, "Rebirth."

A long time ago, in a galaxy or empire far, far away...

I had planned to have a column for today reviewing one or both of "Caprica" (9 p.m., Syfy) and "Spartacus" (10 p.m., Starz) but a higher level of press tour exhaustion than anticipated, coupled with NBC dragging out the Conan O'Brien negotiations until yesterday, meant I never got the chance to do it. So I'll have a few thoughts on each after the jump...

UPDATE: Bumping this up so you can talk about one or both if you watched tonight.

I did review the "Caprica" pilot when it was released on DVD back in April, so you can go read that if you want. (The changes for airing are mostly cosmetic, with some of the nudity at the virtual reality rave unsurprisingly deleted.) I've since seen two more episodes, which in some ways intrigued me even more than the pilot. It's not "Battlestar Galactica"(*), in that it swaps out the military components of that show for a bit of teen angst and soap opera intrigue, but I really like the lead performances by Eric Stoltz and Esai Morales (two actors who in previous roles often made me feel like there was something missing), and the social commentary is just as sharp here as it was on "BSG." If next week works out better, I'll likely do some kind of column timed to the second episode, and on some level this is going to be added to the blog rotation. (The problem, as with all Friday shows, is that it may take me a few days to get around to writing about it once my advance screeners run out.)

(*) I recognize that for the people who are still bitter about the finale of "BSG" - to the point where they've renounced their affection for the entire series, and not just the ending - saying "It's not 'Battlestar Galactica'" might be a compliment. Then again, most of the same people - including Ron Moore, David Eick and Jane Espenson - are involved, so we'll see. To answer two questions I've received often: 1)No, "Caprica" won't spoil anything about the later seasons of "BSG" if you started but haven't finished the original series, and 2)Yes, you can watch "Caprica" without having watched "BSG" at all. It takes place almost 60 years earlier, is planet-bound and has many different concerns (and only one shared character) from the original show.

As for "Spartacus: Blood & Sand" (insert mocking fake name here), I struggled to get through two of the four episodes Starz provided for review. If you're a teenage boy who loved "300" - or any other demographic who loved "300" - you may well dig all the digitized, slow-motion blood splurts, the abundant nudity (albeit with some of the full frontal coming from male characters as well as female) and the stylized, computer-generated backgrounds. But stay far away if none of those things make you say "Hells yeah!" Not even my affection for honorary TCA member Lucy Lawless is going to keep me around.

Feel free to talk about one or both tonight. And if you've seen the "Caprica" pilot on DVD or online already, please refrain from any plot spoilers until tonight at 11 Eastern, okay?