The Imperfections of Memory

A pretty good hour of Caprica this week. Part of the appeal for me was that the episode addressed a few dangling threads for me in the story thus far.

For example, the final moment of the episode -- at long last -- got to the question I've been asking since hour one. If Daniel tried to put his daughter's avatar in his robot, and now has ONE robot that actually works, how does it not occur to him that perhaps the avatar was not lost after all? I really don't know why it took him so long to put two and two together on this one, but at least he finally did, and now we can move on with the story.

Did we always know that Amanda spent time in a mental institution? Somehow, I have this recollection of a little throwaway bit of dialogue in a conversation between her and Daniel... and yet I can't really pinpoint it. Perhaps it's just that this revelation was just so logical, it feels like it must have been part of the story all along. This mentally fragile past certainly explains why Zoe's death pushed her so far over the edge. Certainly, any parent losing a child would go through anguish, maybe even forget herself long enough to out her daughter as a terrorist on national television. But now, I don't feel that moment from the first episode feels strained at all.

At last, Zoe's flirtation with Daniel's lab geek Philomon is going somewhere. I suppose this motive -- to get his help in escaping the lab -- was obvious all along, but it's nice to have her spell it out, to better tether into the plot all these odd scenes between the two of them. The moments when it was between him and the robot were especially awkward, and should now benefit from laying out the stakes more clearly.

I was glad to see the Vergis thread kept alive this week, though disappointed not to have the Barnabas thread progressed. So far, though, Vergis has popped more as a character than Barnabas -- so if I had to pick one of those two to sit out a week, I'd make the same choice the writers did.

Joseph Adama's story just hasn't been as interesting since his brother Sam faded more into the background, though. I was also a little disappointed to see them "trade up" the character of Tad in favor of a new guide through New Cap City. Tad was an interesting character, interacting with Tamara a few weeks back, and was just as interesting this week with Joseph. I particularly liked the moment where Tad just messed with him, preparing him to "fly" in the virtual world. But now that Tad has died in the game, it seems unlikely we'll be seeing him again.

It turns out that we only have two more hours to go here before we reach mid-season, and a months-long break per Syfy's usual operating procedure. I don't like to be left on cliffhangers, really, but I'm actually kind of hoping that Caprica gets to something compelling enough to really make me miss it while it's away. We'll see...