Caprica: Rebirth

By Lisa Fary

Yeah, there was Zoe-A and her Cylon body, but I think this episode was about all the ways that families suck. You know why families suck? Because families are made of up people; and people fundamentally suck. Yes, even the ones you love and who love you back. Yep, your kids, too. Sorry.

Relationships bring responsibility and expectations. Your parents expect you to do well in school and share their beliefs. Your partner expects you to grieve for your lost child in the same way. Your kids expect you to pick them up at the correct school. Your grandmother expects you to eat your traditional ethnic foods.

But, what no one wants to acknowledge is that there is a certain amount of deception in any relationship. You fake liking the food. You lie to your kids about why you didn’t pick them up at school. You keep things from your partner. And, if you’re a kid, you sure as hell hide stuff from your parents. It makes life easier for everyone.  (BTW, parents, even the best kids hide things from parents. Sorry you have to hear it from me.)

Let’s start with the big secret that Daniel Graystone is keeping from his wife: their daughter is dead, but her personality is still alive. That’s why he doesn’t have to sit in the living room watching home videos; to him, she’s still not really dead. The data can be retrieved.

He’s a tool of the first order, and not just because of that nugget. He doesn’t want to be engaged in a discussion about his daughter, doesn’t want to acknowledge his wife’s grief. He appears to think less of Amanda for allowing herself to feel her grief.

Even the eternal lure of Eric Stolz cannot lessen my hatred toward this guy. I just want to punch him with my wee fists of doom.

Sister Clarice is also hiding something from her very large family. It’s not clear what she’s up to, other than it involves Lacey, probably Zoe, and one of her husbands.

Don’t let the frumpy, gray schoolmarm dress fool you; Sister Clarice is part of a group marriage. She has several husbands and wives, they all live together and raise the kids together.

Which, really, doesn’t seem like a terrible way to do things, even from the fatalistic “WHAT ABOUT THE CHILDREN????” perspective. There’s always a playmate, there’s always homework help, and there are plenty of parents around. And people who may not want to have (or can’t have) their own biological kids can still parent. Group marriage between consenting adults seems like a win-win all around.

That must play really well with Lacey, who is never seen with her own family. We only hear someone yell for her from inside her house. The absence of Lacey’s family is just as aggressive as the size of Clarice’s. All this girl has is a teacher and a copy of her dead best friend, trapped in a massive robot. Lacey’s embrace with Zoe-A is the most genuine, most purely affectionate act in the entire ep.

Everyone else gave lying hugs, right down to little Willy, who learned a lesson in manipulation from Uncle Sam and immediately used it on his father to get himself out of trouble.

I disparaged the existence of Caprica when it was announced last year. Since I always want quality television, I’m happy to say that I was wrong about this series back then. “Rebirth” was really good; I’m talking season one BSG/Heroes/Lost good. It’s already far more intellectually demanding than BSG ever was; hopefully that won’t damn the show to a single season existence.

While Caprica may technically be Ron D. Moore’s show, I’m giving the majority of the credit to Jane Espenson. She gave an impressive interview with AfterElton a couple weeks ago wherein she talked about the sexual diversity in the show and how the culture developed both in the writers’ room and within the Capriverse itself. Here are my two favorite excerpts:

On Sam’s sexuality
At that point, we used the word gay. I actually tried to avoid using it after that, because I think that’s a word from our world, and I feel like in this world [of Caprica], it wouldn’t be a word. People fall in love with who they fall in love with. Why do you have to have a different word for who they fall in love with? Having a different word for a same-sex relationship struck me as something this culture wouldn’t have thought of since those relationships were just considered on a par and unremarkable.

On incidental sexuality
Sam’s a killer, Clarice is a terrorist, and they’re our two most sexually diverse characters. Are we doing more harm than good? But I kept coming back to they’re complex, real people who we aren’t bending them around to accommodate their preference. They’re the most interesting people for our world and our stories, and making the sexuality incidental. It’s time to start doing that.

You can read the rest of her thought provoking interview here. The lack of diversity and lack of inclusion in sci-fi is something that’s bothered me for quite a while; I’m glad to know that the writers on Caprica are thinking in that direction.

Lisa Fary is a graduate of the creative writing program at Florida State University and holds an advanced degree in Special Education. Her earliest influences are Princess Leia, Rainbow Bright, Astronaut Barbie, and her 6th grade teacher, Ms. Palmer. She’s angry that it’s almost 2010 and she still doesn’t have a hovercraft, but will accept a jetpack as consolation. That jetpack had better be pink with a rhinestone monogram.

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