Caprica S01E8-9
It felt like this term would never end (it still hasn’t really). Haven’t had a chance to so much as open FCE in over a month, or finish the SCC re-watch. Or start the Boys from the Black stuff one, although I did get through the original play. I’d forgotten what Hermesetas were and what a jerk Yosser was when it all started (but always tragic). Also more Caprica.
Nothing is real. Clarice was sober and Amanda sane while Joseph drifted towards virtual addiction and Daniel showed himself more than a little crazy in the extremes he was prepared to go to, to flush Zoe out of his system.
Joseph never answers the riddle posed him by the Mysteries host:
As the gods overthrew the Titans, so has man overthrown the gods. But when man visits his sins upon his children, how shall he be repaid?
Except in blood, the future-historically correct response. The druggy subtext to V-world is a little heavy handed even for me: his V-appartment is revealed as a junkie’s den while he lies jittering and strung out on holobands in the real one. But Tamara signing herself into the very walls of New Cap City, code of their code. I liked that conceit for some reason. She is written. Also, the very on the nose conversation with Sam about how to play the game of killing. Sam, the hitman, is paradoxically the nearest the show has to a moral centre. Possibly because he’s old school, the game he plays has been running a long time. The rules and the parts are all known. There’s something there, I think, hinting at the immigrant’s love/hate/nostalgia relationship with the old country. Where (in memory at least) things are simpler if not easier.
In Daniel vs Zoe, after the trial by fire I was rooting for her to shoot the dog even though I hadn't figured out that the gun might be firing blanks at that stage. True, Zoe is her father's daughter, they both have that stubborn drive to keep moving on. Like sharks looking for that next big thing. Daniel had the power here. However, the way Zoe treats Lacy and Philomen suggests she wouldn't behave so very differently from him if their positions were reversed. Even though the way he knew too well why she hated him smoking was chillling. Could be the scientist thing, you can’t unknow what you know. Interesting what Amanda told Clarice about Zoe loving the old house - the one that burned down around her. A near death experience at a formative age followed by move from wood to cold stone mansion, following her father’s ambition. The impetus for creating an invulnerable copy of herself and to make something living, generative not replicative, all starts to come together. She’s still a poor little rich girl but her backstory is fleshing out in interesting ways. Speaking of fleshing I also like that for Zoe the Avatar all her fire memories were just memories but Daniel caused the robot to physically experience them.
Way too eager to set up its cliffhangers and significantly less coherent than the preceding episode but I liked the patterns. All three teenage girls getting blood on their hands, virtual (Tamara shooting both herself, which didn’t take, and her father’s avatar), literal (Zoe underestimating her robot strength) and metaphorical (Lacy pushing the button, at gunpoint but still pushing it).
The monotheist religion is beginning to come together a little more. The obsession with finding any form of afterlife, although for the Tamara avatar being unable to die seems more like a curse. The desire for unending existence, both Clarice and Barnabas are seducers of the young. All the adult characters in pursuit of their lost children, their childhood, their future their past as if seeking to bring it all into some eternal present.
But the STO still make no sense as terrorists. Actual terrorists are rarely situationists. They’re fighting a war, they have demands, conditions, prisoners to be freed, territories to be unannexed. I still have no idea what the STO think they might achieve with any given bomb and the only answer this episode offered was internecine disputes. Shades of “the fucking Judean People’s Front.” although I don’t think Life of Brian was ever part of the intended allusions to the Roman empire.
The Zoe-Lacy scenes were good, they really do feel like teenagers. I suppose being trapped in an alien body would be a classic metaphor for adolescnce but Zoe’s inability to judge the physical capabilities of her robot self feels like something different, not sure what. Zoe/Philomen began farcically, was briefly sweet and became once more farcical when they finally met but a much blacker version of the form. The death was shocking. I’d thought for one instant that they might be going for the Some Like it Hot ending but no.
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Nothing is real. Clarice was sober and Amanda sane while Joseph drifted towards virtual addiction and Daniel showed himself more than a little crazy in the extremes he was prepared to go to, to flush Zoe out of his system.
Joseph never answers the riddle posed him by the Mysteries host:
As the gods overthrew the Titans, so has man overthrown the gods. But when man visits his sins upon his children, how shall he be repaid?
Except in blood, the future-historically correct response. The druggy subtext to V-world is a little heavy handed even for me: his V-appartment is revealed as a junkie’s den while he lies jittering and strung out on holobands in the real one. But Tamara signing herself into the very walls of New Cap City, code of their code. I liked that conceit for some reason. She is written. Also, the very on the nose conversation with Sam about how to play the game of killing. Sam, the hitman, is paradoxically the nearest the show has to a moral centre. Possibly because he’s old school, the game he plays has been running a long time. The rules and the parts are all known. There’s something there, I think, hinting at the immigrant’s love/hate/nostalgia relationship with the old country. Where (in memory at least) things are simpler if not easier.
In Daniel vs Zoe, after the trial by fire I was rooting for her to shoot the dog even though I hadn't figured out that the gun might be firing blanks at that stage. True, Zoe is her father's daughter, they both have that stubborn drive to keep moving on. Like sharks looking for that next big thing. Daniel had the power here. However, the way Zoe treats Lacy and Philomen suggests she wouldn't behave so very differently from him if their positions were reversed. Even though the way he knew too well why she hated him smoking was chillling. Could be the scientist thing, you can’t unknow what you know. Interesting what Amanda told Clarice about Zoe loving the old house - the one that burned down around her. A near death experience at a formative age followed by move from wood to cold stone mansion, following her father’s ambition. The impetus for creating an invulnerable copy of herself and to make something living, generative not replicative, all starts to come together. She’s still a poor little rich girl but her backstory is fleshing out in interesting ways. Speaking of fleshing I also like that for Zoe the Avatar all her fire memories were just memories but Daniel caused the robot to physically experience them.
Way too eager to set up its cliffhangers and significantly less coherent than the preceding episode but I liked the patterns. All three teenage girls getting blood on their hands, virtual (Tamara shooting both herself, which didn’t take, and her father’s avatar), literal (Zoe underestimating her robot strength) and metaphorical (Lacy pushing the button, at gunpoint but still pushing it).
The monotheist religion is beginning to come together a little more. The obsession with finding any form of afterlife, although for the Tamara avatar being unable to die seems more like a curse. The desire for unending existence, both Clarice and Barnabas are seducers of the young. All the adult characters in pursuit of their lost children, their childhood, their future their past as if seeking to bring it all into some eternal present.
But the STO still make no sense as terrorists. Actual terrorists are rarely situationists. They’re fighting a war, they have demands, conditions, prisoners to be freed, territories to be unannexed. I still have no idea what the STO think they might achieve with any given bomb and the only answer this episode offered was internecine disputes. Shades of “the fucking Judean People’s Front.” although I don’t think Life of Brian was ever part of the intended allusions to the Roman empire.
The Zoe-Lacy scenes were good, they really do feel like teenagers. I suppose being trapped in an alien body would be a classic metaphor for adolescnce but Zoe’s inability to judge the physical capabilities of her robot self feels like something different, not sure what. Zoe/Philomen began farcically, was briefly sweet and became once more farcical when they finally met but a much blacker version of the form. The death was shocking. I’d thought for one instant that they might be going for the Some Like it Hot ending but no.
http://hazelk.dreamwidth.org/106486.html |
comments | Comment at Dreamwidth