Caprica: End Of Line (s1e9)
Posted on 28. Mar, 2010 by Simon in Television
Taking a page out of the Battlestar playbook, Caprica is executing its first season like BSG did its last — by splitting it into two halves. I found the final 0.5 season of BSG to be some of the most disappointing television I’ve ever seen, so one can only hope that Caprica will not befall the same fate.
Watching its first semi-season finale however, I can’t help but remain antsy about Caprica. At times the writing and acting can be superb. Often however, including this week’s bookend episode, the pacing seems off kilter, the stories seem arbitrary and the characters completely disinteresting.
It’s a halfway decent show, but not good enough that I’m willing to completely invest myself. Caprica just hasn’t done quite enough to draw me in yet, despite roughly 14 cliff hangers rammed into one pseudo-season closer.
Let’s get the plot points out of the way:
Amanda’s randomly manifested crazy is suddenly enough to drive her (back, apparently) to suicidal tendencies. She jumped off a bridge, but is she dead?
ZoeBot escaped the lab GTA: Vice City style in a desperate bid for freedom. Daniel was going to wipe her clean, so our cylon heroine terrorist avatar is in a corner to say the least. She drives into a military roadblock at high speed. But is she/it dead?
In related stories, if Daniel can’t get ZoeBot replicated, he stands to lose his contract, his pyramid team, his company and possibly his entire family. Was the phone call at the end about Amanda or Zoe? Neither?
Joseph finally found her daughter hanging out in V-World, but in a strangely anticlimactic turn of events, she simply says it’s probably a bad idea for him to be following her around online (she’s probably right) then proceeds to shoot him. But… technically, does this mean Tamara is immortal? Or is she dead?
Sister Clarice almost got IRA’d by Lacey and Barnabus. She is not dead. Lacey however is one hella traumatized school girl.
That basically sums up the main cliffhangers. The episode seemed rushed, but it did enough to pique my curiosity about what happens next. That alone will have me watching when Caprica comes back, but I can’t say I will be anticipating that premier with nearly as much verve as I did, say, the recent return of AMC’s Breaking Bad.
In general, I feel Caprica has simply leaned too far on the drama so far and less on the actual science fiction premises of the show. I understand that drama makes for interesting television, but when it comes down to a question of alienating your hardcore demographic or trying to widen your net, I think it’s a delicate balance that BSG pulled off better than Caprica — so far.
I want to explore philosophical issues more about robot sentience, individualism, virtual immortality, ownership of identity, what “living” can be defined as. Most importantly, I want to watch characters deal with the ethical struggles these topics demand in their life experiences.
Caprica really hasn’t delivered enough of that, choosing instead to ladle on the action/adventure with a few sprinkles of soap opera drama and thrills thrown in.
When this show delves deep into its characters and issues, it really shines. When it does what this finale falls prey too — and it happens often — the result is a show stretched too thin to have any depth.
I’m going to keep watching. I just hope to eventually be validated.
Jef
Mar 29th, 2010
I was at the panel for this episode on Friday at Comicon — the extended clip they showed was enough to get me interested at least. I’ll catch up while the show goes on hiatus, but I’m still skeptical after what happened with the last show.
Something interesting from some of the BSG/Caprica actors: they were talking about how they sometimes would send notes to writers about their characters, every time they felt they were being written wrong, and that the writers were receptive. I’m wondering how much of this affected the final arc. (Did the notes make the storytelling worse? Or prevent it from being EVEN worse?) And 2) that the creators actively would sometimes base decisions off what the audience was expecting. i.e. If people were saying Kat was a final five cyclon, then for sure she wouldn’t be, etc. This last comment was kind of made in jest, but it felt like the funny-bc-it’s-true kind of joke.
Which sucks because I guess yeah, dodging all sensible story predictions WOULD kind of end with none of the characters in BSG having a logical end to their arc. (Which reminds me, I’m off to climb some mountains.)
Simon
Mar 29th, 2010
That’s kind of frightening to hear, but certainly enlightening. You can sense watching this show that, like BSG, most of these arcs are not predetermined as much as they are essentially made up on-the-fly. This plays into the drama quite well, as it did for BSG, but I don’t want to have to punch a hole through my screen again once this show finally ends.
Or, more precisely, for a hole to magically appear out of nowhere in my screen.