Retribution

At some point during tonight's episode of Caprica, it struck me that the show has reached a strange dichotomy.

On the one hand, the series is now delivering quite a wealth of visceral thrills in every episode. This installment opened with the botched train bombing, and proceeded through Clarice's crazed revenge killings before culminating in her execution of her rival Barnabas.

There were also powerful moments of a much quieter nature too. We watched Daniel's callous blackmailing of his former co-workers, and his being forced to face the consequences of that. And there was the ice cold confrontation between him and Amanda, over the still-open wound of Zoe.

The emotion on Caprica is as high as it has ever been. But the "connective tissue" has never felt more lacking to me.

At what point did Clarice suddenly become such a homicidal maniac? She seemed rather sweet just a half dozen episodes ago as the series was unfolding. She was honey, not vinegar. Less a delicious villain, but rather a more compelling character. And why was she in such a feud with Barnabas anyway? Was there some past between them that I missed somewhere?

And what about the Clarice-Amanda relationship? I know that the last few episodes in the first half of the season showed Clarice trying to worm her way close to Amanda to learn information about the Zoe-avatar. But I sensed only the very beginnings of a friendship there. I'm not quite seeing the path from there, over just two or three episodes, that gets us to the closeness they have now.

When did Lacy transform into such a crazy soldier for the cause? Wasn't it just three episodes ago that she was figuratively holding her nose over all these dark deeds, but sucking it all up because her friend Zoe asked her to? Did Barnabas brainwash her into the cult or something? Couldn't we have seen that happen?

And why is Joseph Adama barely a supporting player all of a sudden?

There are some powerful moments being presented on the show right now. But since it feels so disconnected to me from what the show was just a few episodes ago, I wouldn't call it powerful storytelling. I'm rather reminded of an improv game where one player is forced to stop making up a story mid-sentence, and another player suddenly jumps in to continue it in his own completely different style. Was the long break meant to make us forget about where we just came from in the story?

Or perhaps this "new story" will pick up enough in the next episode or two that I won't mind the jarring lack of transition so much? If I'm enjoying the new story more, does it matter if it doesn't quite cohere with the old one?