Sketches - You’re not coming back

Dollhouse Season Two Episode Thirteen: Epitaph Two: The Return.

When Dollhouse jumps ten years into the future, it’s clear that things will be different. We have only seen the beginnings of the apocalypse, and more to the point, we’ve only seen the first steps that take the characters to who they will be in 2019. The decision to wrap up the story in “Epitaph Two” finally, not to leave the end open but not to explain everything that lies in-between (which would be impossible always) either, fits in with the general otherness of “Dollhouse” within what the viewer is used to be shown.
“Epitaph One” did not feature the well-known characters in the year 2019: instead, we saw fragments of memories, displayed by a group of rebels who accidentally break into the dollhouse (haunted by a ghost who keeps the treasures, the memories and the information of how to get to safe haven, save). The ghost Whiskey remains as elusive as she was after “The Hollow Men” – we will never know how she ended up there, left behind. The episode starts with Zone, Mag and the girl Caroline, making their way to the promised land but finding the wasteland that lies between that spot where all hope is centred considerably more dangerous than Caroline remembers. This is our first glimpse, in daylight, into the world that Rossum’s tech without Boyd has created. It’s infinitely more shocking than we might have imagined: Rossum itself has turned into a comic villainy empire of evil, lead by a decadent Harding who goes through “suits” and celebrates the end of the world by residing over an endless supply of food and slaves. The aesthetic change in Rossum – from a cold, capitalist company easily recognizable to us, into a futuristic version of capitalism (Harding is literally a parasite, switching bodies, sucking out the live of a new body every so often), in a world with no central authority – is achieved remarkably well. There are no shades of grey here – ultimately, there is maybe the hint of an idea that Boyd’s vision of the future might have been the lesser of two evils. Ultimately, Rossum has turned into what people have said the Dollhouse was from the beginning: a corporation that deals in slaves, just that now, the fancy façade has dropped.
Then we see what Echo and her tiny group of rebels have probably been doing for the past years: occasionally raiding the place for tech, disposing of whoever Harding and Ambrose currently are.

Echo: “Still living the dream, Harding?”
Harding: “It is a little bit tarnished. Do you ever think if you didn’t cut off Rossum at the head, the tech might have never gotten out of control?”
Echo: “Yeah. You’re a model of control, butterball.”
Harding: “At least I’m having some fun. Please, you know I’m backed up. Why do you bother anymore?”
Echo: “Ask me against some time (shooting him).”

We see how pointless the past few years must have been for Echo: repeating the same action over and over again, never really getting anywhere. No matter how often she kills Harding and Ambrose, they just always come back (Possibly even less human than before, like Clyde 2.0). Just that now, coinciding with the point in time that they pick up Zone, Mag and miniCaroline in the camp, they also find Topher, who has been a prisoner of Rossum for an infinite time, forced to develop a technology that will finally wipe the entire planet, seeing one person killed for every day that he did not succeed. It’s heartbreaking to see Topher like this, even more broken than he was in “Epitaph One”, but still working on a plan to make all the bad things go away.

Topher: “I’m so close, so close to solving both problems. They had no idea.”
Echo: “Close to what? Wiping everyone?”
Topher: “The opposite. Reflection, like an Echo. Put things back the way they were, minds back the way they were. I can bring back the world.”

Of course it’s like a deus ex machina that Topher should come up with a solution for all the problems on the spot, finishing the circle that started episodes ago: but on the other hand, it’s fitting that Joss should try to wrap this show up the best way he can, by giving Topher the opportunity to undo his wrongs, to use his marvellous mind to get the world back. This becomes the goal for team Echo this episode: enabling Topher to finish the tech to put back the world it used to be, to put back every single person who was wiped.

“I want the advent of a degree of functional nanotechnology in a world that will remain recognizably descended from the one I woke in this morning. I want my world transfigured, yet I want my place in that world to be equivalent to the one I now occupy. I want to have my cake and eat it too.”

William Gibson: All Tomorrow’s Parties, p 250

There is a bitter irony in the fact that the world Boyd imagined he might create with the help of Echo would actually be a better one than this: This doesn’t really look like the future, it’s more like the end, and the changes that happened over the past ten years are so radical that it’s not just the world that is not recognizably descended, but also the relationships between the people, as they adapt differently to the circumstances. Safe Haven looks like a pre-technological place, held together by the idea of family. There is a farm house, a large dinner table, surrounding fields and green houses to provide for basic food, and no tech. Adelle, when we meet her, stripped of the power of the dollhouse, reduced to her basic humanity, appears as a mother figure who holds together the small community and nurtures it. Echo does now allow herself to be with Paul (although the connections that were lost after Topher saved him are clearly re-established) – and it’s the other Caroline who tells Paul that Echo loves him. Priya has a son, but it is only when we see Anthony’s gang of techheads break up an idyllic dinner scene that we realize how far they have grown apart: Priya set on raising T without any tech, Anthony/Victor utilizing the tech to be the best soldier he can possibly be in this apocalyptic wasteland (although Priya seems to think that this decision was selfish: “You chose to be Victor”). This fits in with the Victor we met right after he was released from his contract, who was so willing to sign up as a soldier again because he did not know how to function without the forever war – and at the same time, it was Priya who decided to “upgrade” him in the first place, and we saw how much Anthony enjoyed his super-strength in the aftermath of “The Hollow Men”. This is the one way he knows to protect his family, even if it means that he can’t be a father to T (who doesn’t know he is his father, although he looks like the perfect combination of the two). The tech itself has lost the shiny surface and is a practical, anarchic version of Topher’s inventions: the tech heads use flashdrives to store abilities as they don’t have Echo’s powers of carrying different imprints at once.
When the tech heads rebel against Echo’s plans back in the dollhouse, they do so because they have chosen to adapt to the circumstances, instead of wanting to go back to before. It’s one of the many marvellous details that “Epitaph Two” establishes in such a short time: that there are completely different groups of humans now, whose idea of history and society differ radically. Echo wants the world to return to the way it was before, but also realizes that every one of her friends who has doll architecture in their head would lose their precarious identity, the one they fought so hard to retain – which is why they will spend a year underground after the EMP. The tech heads just want to use the tech found in the dollhouse to become even more powerful in the world as it is, “to rule the wastelands”. Echo considers what she is doing the great act to right the wrongs of the past ten years, but at the same time, she destroys who the tech heads are, and retains the right to remain the way she is for herself. In the end, the team with the better fighting skills wins.
The individual issues are even more interesting. While Paul seems to think that setting the world back would end their fight, Echo points out that this is only the starting point:

Echo: “Do you think after the pulse the world is gonna be all hunky-dory?”
Paul: “I think it’s not your fight. I think for a good long while you’re gonna be who you are, and I think that scares you.”
Echo: “I hate when you pretend to know me.”
[…]
Paul: “What happens if you’re sure we’re gonna live?”
[…]
“I think you’ve got a hundred people living inside your head, and you’re the loneliest person I know.”

The tragic thing about this dialogue is that Paul dies on his way back to the dollhouse, in the same sudden way everybody else has died this season. There is no great build-up, just a shot in the head and Echo, unable to deal with it right now. While Harding and Ambrose have given up their humanity for the sake of becoming immortal, the fragility of life for everybody becomes apparent in this scene. Echo breaks down much later, after finding that a different Alpha (an Alpha, we assume, possibly radically changed after imprinting himself with Paul) has turned the Dollhouse into a refuge for dumbshows, leaving no traces of the destruction of “Epitaph One” (the ghost Whiskey is gone).

Echo: “He’s in love with you. Are you really that thick? This isn’t something that comes on a drive, they tried to pull it out of him, they wiped is mind for years, and he never stopped loving you. You wanna kill the tech? Kill it. Shut it down. Lock him up. Give him nothing. You can string him along for years, you’ve head years together, and whatever you did, it’s wasted. Never tell him that you loved him, never tell him that you’re grateful for him. He’s dead. He’s dead. He’s just dead. I never told him. Paul is dead, and I’m alone. Alone alone alone I’m always alone.”

The episode is also a small swan song for Topher. He is far gone when Paul and Echo find him in Neuropolis, and he knows that the little bit of sanity he finds at the Dollhouse isn’t going to last. (he didn’t really need to go there for the tech, but it is his home, the place where he was last a functioning human being, and it is also where he finds tapes of Bennett, a bitter-sweet moment of longing for a potential life he has lost). He probably doesn’t really need to trigger the bomb that will put the world back on his own, but he decides to do it, because this way, he also wipes out the mind that caused all this in the first place (“I don’t wanna cause any more pain”). It’s heartbreaking to see Adelle’s reaction to this, because he is the closest thing she has to a son.

Adelle: “You don’t have to do it, you know. At least not alone.”
Topher: “I do. I’ll fix what we did to their head. You fix what we did to the rest of the world. Your job is way harder.”

The absurdity of this episode is that it is a happy end, and everybody gets what they wanted, even though it is different from the way they might have imagined it. Priya, Anthony and T become a family, reading a book together at the moment of the explosion (a moment reminiscent of when Sierra and Victor were reading together, when things were less complicated). Adelle is the one leading the dolls outside to become human again, “ever the shepherd”, to help them find their way in the brave new world. She argues that this is ultimately Caroline’s (and Echo’s) fantasy: the one that turned out to be a lie in “Needs”, when the dolls walked into the light (just that now, they drop down and awake as themselves again, and Zone reassures the girl that used to be Caroline that things are going to be okay – before this she said, looking at Echo, “I’m the lucky one. I get to start over.”). Echo gets a parting gift from Alpha, who hopes that he will get rid of his demons in the impulse, but goes where he can’t hurt anyone in case he doesn’t – the part of him that was Paul, on a wedge. In the end, Echo isn’t lonely anymore. She lies in the pod where we first saw her, and she is content to be herself. That’s such an unlikely ending to the show, yet it’s perfect.


Random thoughts:
I think I never before mentioned how fond I’ve grown of Franz Kranz’ performance as Topher. I really did not like his character for the most part of season one, but ever since the beginning of this season (yes, it started with Whiskey in “Vows”, not with “Belonging”), he’s grown up and become a real boy, and not unlike Wesley, who met a similar end in “Angel” (not taking into account the comic books), he had the greatest story arc, in spite of the fact of being the least likely character to come so far.

The creation of a specific vernacular for this world, in the good tradition of “Fray” (a comic book about a future slayer). Butchers, Actuals, Dumbshows, “Log off”

In the Whedonverse, sometimes people just simply are evil. Usually, they wear suits (even after the apocalypse) and head big corporations.

Talking about suits: how genius is the idea that Harding and Ambrose would refer to new bodies as their “suits”?

It’s a family episode: Eliza Dushku’s brother plays the younger Ambrose, Maurissa Tancharoen returns as Kilo, the younger Whedon can be seen in the background.

Zone: “Who doesn’t want to spend some quality time with this awesomely normal people.”
Mag: “I don’t know. Could be alright. The little Asian’s kinda cute.”
Zone: “But she’s a tech head Mag. She’s a girl, Mag!”

Oh Joss, you tease. It was a nice acknowledgment of the fact that these two have been travelling together for a while now, yet have no idea who they were before.

Back in the Dollhouse: “I try to be my best.” / “Oh hell.” –Echo

Alpha: “Victor. Why would someone do something so horrible to your face” (yes, thank you, we do remember how Alpha slashed Victor up in season one).

“Did he just call me a Luddite ?” –Alpha

Strawberries! Made me miss Kaylee. I didn’t catch the “keep a civil tongue” reference though.

In “Hollow Men”, Topher referenced “The Wizard of Oz” in response to Boyd’s claim that he is responsible for their humanity: “Wow Boyd. You’re right, I’m the tin man, she’s the lion, and you’re the head of the lollipop guild who’s a traitor!” Topher found his heart, Adelle her bravery (and I guess Ballard would be the scarecrow, finding his brain).
Here, Zone calls miniCaroline the “the great and terrible Caroline, the one who knows how to save us.” (in Baum’s the Wizard of Oz the line goes: "I am Oz, the Great and Terrible," spoke the Beast, in a voice that was one great roar. "Who are you, and why do you seek me?"), and Adelle says “There’s no place like home” when they decide to return to the Dollhouse (and what is Topher’s EMP, if not the figurative tapping of the shoes?)
I still like the “Down the hole”-Alice in Wonderland-thing better though (that is, naturally, clearly a Matrix-reference).

Fantastic Mr. Fox

Wes Anderson's movie is based on Roald Dahl children's novel. It's about a fox (George Clooney) that is unwilling to give up his life of crime even after promising his wife (Meryl Streep). It's in his nature, he is a fox after all, even though he chooses to move his family from a fox hole ("there is a reason why foxes live in holes" he says, but "it makes me feel poor) into the beautiful inside of an old tree. The stealing of chicken and apple cider from the nearby factories gets his family and the entire community of wild animals (who all live peacefully with each other and only eat uncommunicative poultry) in danger, as the evil capitalist farmers set out to kill them. It is also a heartbreaking tale of family and friendship. Since it's a Wes Anderson movie, the soundtrack is warm and fuzzy, and it all looks like you would want to pack your bags and move right into the frame

2009, Regie: Wes Anderson, with the voices of George Clooney, Meryl Streep, Jason Schwartzman, Bill Murray, Wallace Wolodarsky, Eric Anderson, Michael Gambon, Willem Dafoe, Owen Wilson, Jarvis Cocker

Skins - I thought I could keep you safe

Skins Season Four Episode Two: Emily.

Oh “Skins”. The cuteness. The drama. Oh Naomi.

Before I can even start to discuss the episode, we have to talk about something else: the fact that “Skins” pulls off something that no other show could. We do not know these characters. They get one episode tops per season, and play more or less important parts in the episodes of the other characters, but they certainly do not get enough screen time that we could really know what motivates them, understand their background and anticipate what they will do. “Skins” is a show that makes it impossible to use phrases like “out of character” – because seriously, how could you tell whether it’s out-of-character for Pandora to cheat on Thomas, for the mysterious Effy to fall in love with Freddie, for Naomi to cheat on Emily and then (and this is what shocked me more about her character this episode, to be perfectly honest) lie about it for an entire episode, not even telling the truth at the end because she didn’t have to, as all the evidence (the whole story, you could say) was neatly delivered to Emily in a box. The miraculous thing about “Skins” is that the characters don’t lose any depth. I have no idea who they are and only a vague understanding of what they are about, yet I care about them (well, most of them, anyway) deeply, I follow them through overly dramatic twists in the story (all these things probably happen to like a thousand people in 20 years in real life, in “Skins”, it’s ten people living through the drama of several lifetimes in two years), I am emotionally engaged. But why does it work? What keeps this show together? How does it not fall into pieces every week? One of the first thoughts I had about this episode was that two hours into the new season of “Skins”, we still haven’t really seen all the characters. There were barely any group scenes. Both “Thomas” and “Emily” took the characters out of Roundview and away from the group, and this generation of “Skins” feels far less contained than the last one. I couldn’t imagine something like the scene in which all the characters apart from Cassie and Tony were building the pyramid with sugar cubes (in “Effy”, Season Two) because I don’t see them as a group of friends. They are smaller entities, barely connected, which makes watching this season a bit harder because even if things got really bad in season two, you at least had this feeling of community and friendship to fall back on. These two episodes feel dark because there is nothing to rely on once we see the characters falling apart so badly.

One thing that certainly holds the show together is the acting. The actors seem to have a very firm grasp on their characters, which is incredible because they all seem so changed after the break. The events at the end of season one of “Skins” didn’t bring a radical shift in all the characters, it only forced some of them to grow up, and the change occurred more subtly, over the course of the next episodes. After the events of season three, most of these characters have changed over the summer, without us seeing the circumstances that facilitated this change. Cook is even more on the edge than he used to be not that he’s lost Effy, Emily seems happy and content for once until things start falling apart, Katie is calmer and seems to be looking out a bit better for herself after having been hit over the head by a rock, and Naomi…. Well, more about her later. All these characters have changed without us really seeing it – I guess we’ll see Pandora grow up a bit (although I believe she won’t have her own episode this season), and I am looking forward to see what this season has in store for JJ, as these two seem to be the only ones who made it through the summer without growing up and into someone slightly different than before.

Now, on to the episode.

First of, I usually don’t write about whether I think that something looks particularly pretty or that I noticed the directing being better than usually – but this time around, everything just seemed perfect. The selection of music for this episode was gorgeous (from the Tiny Masters of Today’s “Skeletons” to Dinosaur Jr at the very end – and the awful eighties music playing over Rob Fitch, midlifecrisying his way through the garage, cracked me up), the wardrobe department did a great job, and the small decisions about scenes – like the fact that Matt’s brother and Emily turn away from Naomi when they open the box – added another level to this episode. In addition, it was incredibly well-structured: Emily looked at Naomi’s childhood pictures in the first scene, trying to get a grasp of this person that she is so in love with, and about midway through the episode, she admits that she does not know her at all (neither do we, really).

Naomi

“We just have to act like everything’s fine.”

I tried to pinpoint the exact point at which Naomi must have realized that this wouldn’t go well, and how often she tells Emily to let it go, as she just sinks deeper and deeper. After the happy first scene between them, when she gets her the goggles, and the glorious ride to school that not even the small scene at Emily’s house can thwart, there is this tiny little moment: they kiss and Naomi suddenly stops, having seen the posters of Sophia – and this is when it all changes. Naomi seems to be a different person from here on, and not even the small interlude when she thinks that she got away with it (when she says “she stalked me”, it almost sounds like she is happy about it, because this is the perfect explanation for Emily) brings back the lovestruck Naomi of the first scene. She says “I forgot for a second”, and when Emily responds “Forgot what? Nothing to do with us”, her face already tells the viewer almost everything – that this has everything to do with them, as a couple.

Everytime Emily found a new piece of information, she had to find another lie (or half-truth) to explain herself, and the fact that she never decided to just tell the truth about what happened, although it must have been clear to her that she wouldn’t get away with this, was to me even more shocking than to find out that she cheated on Emily. Looking back at that very first scene, which seems so incredibly truthful and heart-warming when you first see it, Naomi must have been at a very complex emotional state. She just bought her girlfriend goggles with money she made selling to a girl she cheated on Emily with, who killed herself after seeing them kiss at the club (in fact, they are the last people Sophia passes in that scene at the beginning of “Thomas”, although we’ll never know whether she made the decision to jump at that precise moment). She says “I love you” (“Yeah I know”) / “Don’t you forget it though” – which already sounds like an excuse for what Emily will find out, like Naomi, close to tears because she can’t deal with being so badly in love, already knows what is going to happen.

Her “I thought I could keep you safe” is foreshadowing for the entire episode, only that we realize that she is trying to keep Emily safe from herself, safe from the knowledge that she is not the good person Emily thinks she is, we thought she was because we assumed it, from how much Emily cared about her.

Emily

“I’m gonna find out if you’re lying.”

Emily isn’t any less conflicted about this than Naomi is. She tells herself to stop this again and again, already guessing that she isn’t going to like the outcome once she does find out the

truth, but unable to stop.

The fact that her family is going through a crisis at the same moment only puts her into a more precarious situation: after all, she has just moved in with Naomi. She has just defied her mother and Katie who both told her that there is something about Naomi they don’t like – and there is a speck of truth in that statement, at the end of this episode. In her first confrontation with her mom, she is so self-assured, the fact that her mom tries to bribe her into leaving Naomi doesn’t concern her because she can leave and ride to school on her ridiculous moped with her girlfriend. Later on, as she starts to suspect that Naomi is keeping something secret, her protective shield against Jenna’s homophobia disappears,

Katie: “You know mom doesn’t mean to be a total bitch.”
Emily: “Yes she does. And you let her.”
Katie: “She’s trying to help you.”
Emily: “It’s all fake. This whole family is fake.”
Katie: “I’m not fake.”
Emily: “Ugh. Fake tan, fake boyfriend, fake concern.”
Katie: “I am concerned, bitch. And for your information, I was in the sun for five hours today. And as for my boyfriend: he may be little, but for your further information, he’s sweet, trustworthy and totally hun, okay?”

[…]

Katie: “God, you’re a selfish cow. Please don’t go. I’ll back you up.”
Emily: “I’m sorry.”

 It’s heartbreaking to see how Emily’s confidence in Naomi crumbles as the episode goes on, as the web of lies becomes visible. First, Naomi lies to the police about seeing Sophia at the club, then she admits that she was the one who sold the drugs to her, then Emily slowly realizes that there is more to the story, as she can not stop investigating. She goes to Sophia’s house and pretends to be someone else, and finds out that Sophia pretended that she was friends with her and Naomi. She finds a picture of Naomi and Sophia in a University folder, and upon being confronted with this, Naomi has to admit that she did indeed see Sophia: and went to an open day for a University although they made plans to go to Mexico (since we don’t really see them talk about their future, we just have to take Naomi’s word that Emily is a bit pushy when the decision-making-process is concerned). We don’t really see Naomi’s perspective in all this (at the end, we see Naomi from Sophia’s perspective) – but it’s clear that she can’t handle being in a relationship with Emily, although the most tragic aspect of this episode is probably that Naomi feels she can be the person she needs to be NOW, she is so obviously in love and so accepting of the fact that Emily moves in (calling her home “ours” is such a telling slip of the tongue), but she has to face up to what she did in the past. She told Sophia that she felt “trapped” (and it’s telling that Rob Fitch, when he talks to Emily after she found out the truth, immediately guesses that this is what Naomi felt). Last season, Emily pinpointed Naomi’s essential dilemma: she needs someone, but she has no clue how to deal with being in love. Now we find out that she also doesn’t realize the consequences of her actions, and isn’t willing to face them. The girl she kissed fell in love, got obsessed over her (and it’s an essential point of the episode to show that Emily understands that impulse, she tells a joke when she says “you are very stalkable” but she loves Naomi, and looking around in Sophia’s room and locker, she seems to understand what it means to be in love with someone who doesn’t reciprocate that feeling. And she knows what it means to lock your secrets up in a box.), and finally killed herself over her.

“Can’t we just go home” / “I don’t think we can”.

I love the execution of the great reveal at the end: Emily walking away from Naomi, who begs her to let it go, when everything is about the box that contains the diary (Naomi knows what’s in there). They literally go from the darkness of the club into the revealing light of day, Emily and Sophia’s brother Matt sitting on the ledge of the building. The diary itself, or rather the story of “Love on a train” that Sophia, the ghost haunting this episode, tells, is well done as well: she doesn’t come across as pitiful or ridiculous at all (in that regard, she’s unlike Sketch in the second season of “Skins”, who was so badly written). It’s only a couple of lines, but we understand her character, and the connection she had with Naomi (two strangers sharing secrets). Part of Emily's shock at seeing this is that Sophia provided Naomi with something she couldn’t give her.

Emily: “You’ve ruined it. You don’t want anyone to care. I could be dead in a second. Everything’s so fragile. Didn’t you realize that? We were special.”

In her final note to Matt she writes: “Once I had a love and it was a gas. Soon turned out she had a heart of glass. So sorry. I love you.” In the end, on the rooftop, Emily doesn’t just blame Naomi for cheating on her, for destroying their relationship: she also doesn’t understand how Naomi could do this to Sophia, how she can be completely ignorant about other people’s emotions.

Naomi: “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

In Naomi’s episode last season it was the surprisingly insightful and fitting words her mom found – and here it’s Rob Fitch who tries to explain Naomi to Emily (because he realizes how much his daughter loves her, and that she won’t be able to let it go). “people do stupid things when they’re trying to act like they’re not trapped.” Some people might think that Emily walking into Naomi’s house after finding the “I’ll do anything” note is a sign of weakness – but I think she knows what she’s doing. She knows what she’s going to ask for.

Random notes:

Before everything else: wow, how amazing was Kathryn Prescott in this episode? Emily just gets sadder and sadder in the course of this, yet remains so contained, and never really gives the extent of devastation away, until she breaks down in front of her dad. Lily Loveless’ Naomi is the exact opposite, and it’s frightening to see the previously seemingly untouchable Naomi so terrified and vulnerable.

I don’t want to, but I love this episode.

I love how Effy steals every single one of the tiny scenes she gets, usually popping up unexpectedly, but PLEASE, Effy, step away from Freddie. (“It’s you I spent all summer thinking about” GAH but I agree with her: Chlamydia probably liked him more than Cook).

I know that Naomi’s actions are horrible and you can’t find any excuses for them, but having sombreros, fake moustaches and a piñata lying around is a bit redeeming, isn’t it? (“It’ll be great. You can be my pyjamas.” sounds like the kind of line you’d want to hear after forcefully U-hauling into your girlfriend’s apartment, right?)

Is Naomi getting her own episode this season? I feel like I need to know more about her, to be able to decide whether I can still like her. I mean I like complicated, flawed characters, but I certainly thought she was a more likeable person before this episode, and I guess so did pretty much anyone else.

Jenna: “He’s an adult, he’s earned the right to be gay. You’re too young to know what you are”. Homophobic and dumb. Also, kind of funny. (it’s also vaguely amusing that Jenna thinks it takes exactly a thousand pounds to pay away the gay – and how the fact that she won’t be able to pay off Emily after Rob lost his job is the first thing she thinks about, not feeding her family or providing a roof or anything)

Seriously, with the clothes Ems and Naoms were wearing that day, they could not have sneaked into military school. I take everything back I ever said about colour-coordination.

Also: giggly love scene over band music? Weird, but also cute. A bit of happiness to get us over the dread and drama of the rest of the episode.

Katie’s new boyfriend is hilarious, but she kinda has a point when she tells Emily that he is responsible and trustworthy – her decision not to date a complete idiot this time around is kind of a sign of her growing up (though I’m guessing he’s not a keeper), and I love how honest her impulse is to beg her twin to stay at the house, while everything turns into a shouting hell downstairs (after Rob admitted to losing the gym).

James Fitch. FTW. Well, everyone thinks Naomi is hot, but it’s refreshing how articulate the male members of the Fitch family are about it. (Also: “this is a six seater table” – so your girlfriend of months can’t come, but this random guy is totally welcome. Oh, Jenna).

Let’s get fitched. Snort.

Pandora at the awful party, making Thomas jealous. Because Pandora’s dancing always saves the moment.

“Dance, muff-monkey?” Cook, even at his worst, is still pretty darn loveable.

Caprica - Three Faces of One Thing.

Caprica Season One Episode One: Rebirth.

The ghost in the shell

Daniel Graystone (Eric Stoltz), unable to recognize that he has trapped his own daughter (or rather, the avatar Zoe created of herself before her death, now for the lack of a better term called Zoe 2.0) in the metallic body of his Cylon prototype, struggles with the fact that the consciousness is not reproducible. The chip he had Joseph Adama steal only works in this one body (apparently, a difference that makes no difference here makes a difference - without going into the depths of discussion regarding "souls" that "Battlestar Galactica" dove into, here there is more to a sentient being than a body and a reprintable mind). Not unlike John Henry in "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles" (who was also the first of his kind, at least in the present time), Zoe's mind can not be separated from the body.
This poses a business problem for Daniel, who is going to lose his government contract if he can't supply an army of Cylons, but the personal issues Zoe faces are even more terrifying. Seeing her own reflection, she is unable to recognize herself. The viewer sees both: the virtual body of Zoe, and the giant machine that seems entirely disconnected from the small girl. It's also important to remember that this Zoe never really had a body: she is a programme, and how precise a copy of the real Zoe she is we will never know, as this girl was lost in the explosion. I would even go as far as to assert that we can tell from Zoe 2.0 memories of Zoe that this version of her is far more vulnerable and less self-secure than the girl that is now lost.
We see Zoe as the product that Daniel Graystone creates - when she is manhandled by his employees, trying to figure out why she is special. One of them "humanizes" ("feminizes") her - although this is mostly an expression of advanced geekery than actual recognition of her humanity - the other treats her the way we would, seeing her metallic surface, although these scenes are more disturbing when the person we see is actually the girl, not the machine.

Engineer 1: “Great piece of engineering.”
Engineer 2: “Yeah I know, she gives me the chills.”
Engineer 1: “She? Dude, stop feminizing, it’s weird. It’s unnatural.”
Engineer 2: “I really don’t think there’s anything wrong with feminizing it.”
Engineer 1: “Nothing wrong except it’s not a person. It’s useful. It’s just a tool.”

The question of identity is different than in "Battlestar Galactica", where the skin jobs had to deal with the fact that their memories were false and they were actually the enemy most of them had been fighting for most of their life: Zoe is different - she is a programme of a person in a machine, and she is most interesting when confronted with Lacy Rand (Magda Apanowicz), Zoe's best friend who decided at the last moment to stay behind at the platform when Ben, Zoe's boyfriend, blew up the train.  In this episode, we see the stark contrast between Lacy's family and the Graystones: The Rands live in a run-down house, and Lacy is clearly an outcast at school because she is not as rich as the other students. Now she is the only person Zoe trusts with the knowledge that she is still herself, inside the machine, and Lacy is the only one who seems to be able to accept that (although seeing her hug the machine that somehow contains her friend doesn't just make her feel uncomfortable).

Zoe 2.0: “The only control that I have right now is that no one knows I’m in here. Promise me that you won’t tell”.

The question remains whether Lacy can deal with that responsibility. When she first sees Zoe, after Daniel had her transported to his home, she stares at her both in terror and awe (“So this is you. Your arms and, your face. Your voice come out of her, and you see here? Look at your arms.”) – while Zoe tries to read in her face who she sees when she looks at her.

Zoe: “God it’s confusing. I mean I’m Zoe, and the Avatar, and a robot. Like some kind of, what do you call it, three parter.”
Lacy: “Trinity. That’s what you are. Three faces of one thing. Sort of.”
Zoe: “My mom called me a monster.”
Lacy: “To be fair…“

As the only remaining member of the three-party terrorist group Ben Stark led, she is also immediately confronted with different demands: Sister Clarice (Polly Walker), the headmistress of the college, tries to involve her in her polygamist family, to find out what Lacy knows about Zoe's project.

Nestor: “Computer stuff, right? That’s my major. Did you know that there are bits of software that you use every day that were written decades ago? You write a great program and, you know, it can outlive you, it’s like a work of art. Maybe Zoe was an artist? Maybe her work will live on.”

This moment highlights how alone Lacy is in this: she knows how right Nestor, Clarice’s husband, is in this, as the code Zoe wrote literally keeps her alive beyond her death.

"My daughter was a terrorist"

Another storyline in this episode follows the Graystones and Adamas as they try to deal with their respective losses. Zoe’s loss has devided Daniel and Amanda, as both deal differently with her death. While Daniel has moved on and focuses on his project, just trying not to think about his daughter and unable to tell his wife what he did with the Avatar that is now, although he doesn’t know, stuck in the prototype, Amanda slowly figures out that she did not know her daughter at all. She watches videos of her as a child, and at the same time keeps what the investigating officer told her about Zoe in the back of her mind (that she was a terrorist, not a victim of the explosion). Of all the things the investigating officer tells her, the one thing that really shocks her is finding out that she had a boyfriend (“My daughter didn’t have a boyfriend, she wasn’t old enough, she died before…”). Later, at the memorial service, Ben Stark’s mother gives her an envelope containing items Zoe left in his room, among them a brooch with the symbol of the Soldiers of the One. It’s interesting to see how Amanda deals with that information: instead of internalizing her pain, she decides to step up, to share this with everybody at the service, to the horror of Daniel Graystone.

“I miss Zoe, I miss her with every breath, but I don’t really know what I’m missing. My daughter had a whole life, and a boyfriend, that I knew nothing about. Beliefs that I don’t understand at all.  Looking back I think that she only showed me what she wanted me to see. I just didn’t know her. You’ve all talked about how guilty you feel. It’s our hob, we create life, and one day we have to face who they are. What they become and what they do. My daughter, Zoe Graystone died in the bombing of the Meg Lab Train number tree. But I think she might have caused it. This was hers. I found this, my daughter was part of the Soldiers of the One. My daughter was a terrorist. I’m sorry.”

Random notes:

Hi, Jason Street, nice to see you again.

As Jane Espenson indicated in an interview: sexual orientation really is a non-issue on Caprica. Tough uncle Sam Adama just mentions in a very by-the-way sentence that he is gay, and Lacy takes the fact that Sister Clarice has several wives and husbands very calmly (one of these husbands trying to seduce her, not to well).

“The crowd goes frakking wild, sir. They’re tearing off the seats, it’s bedlam.”

You know the scientist is troubled when he programs the house robot to cheer him on.