Caprica: The Imperfections of Memory
By Lisa Fary
True story.
While playing Mario Kart on Wii, I fell off the track on Wario’s Gold Mine, killing my driver yet again. My four year old cousin sighed deeply, in the way that only a creepily smart tot can, and said, “Lisa, I know what you have to do. Try not to die.”
“But, I’m trying to be careful!” I protested.
“Don’t be careful,” he said, shaking his little noggin. “Try not to die,”
And that is the Caprica Cares PSA this week.
It’s a good bit of advice for Mario Kart, New Cap City, and for life. For some, though, New Cap City is life and dying there may as well be genuine death. Joseph is not sympathetic to this when his first New Cap guide, the oily kid from “There is Another Sky”, bites it while trying to help out. Of course, Joseph apologizes, but he’s not cognizant of how devastating the death is to that kid.
Also in V-World, Zoe and Phil go on their first date. Like a nerd, he picks flying Vipers as their activity, which got me running through all of my first dates (I’ve had a lot of first dates, but not a lot of second dates) looking for something equally geeky. Turned out to be my first date with John, where we played Three Word Gross Out at dinner, then looked at graphic novels at Barnes & Noble.
Even though Zoe crashes, they dig each other. Well, it’s easy to see that Phil digs Zoe, but it’s unclear whether Zoe is maintaining strict emotional distance from her target. She is, after all, using her vadge to get Phil to help her get to Gemenon.
Whatever, they had a great exchange:
“I work with top secret military robots.”
“That is really hot.”
Zoe then proves (again) that she’s smarter than all the dudes on the show and tells Phil how to make the MCP device work.
In the real world, Lacy is also using her vadge to get what she wants. The only way to get Barnabus to transport her cargo to Gemenon is to tell him what it is, or to join the Soldiers of the One. She chooses the STO and engages the vadge strategy to get a boy to vouch for her.
Also in the real world, we learn why Amanda Greystone was so eager to get in front of a mourning crowd and scream that her daughter killed their loved ones: she’s not mentally stable. Her brother died in a car accident when she was younger, and Amanda spent the next three years hallucinating in a mental institution. Now, she’s hallucinating her brother again, a state possibly brought on by her current grief. Or by God, to hear Sister Clarice tell it.
Until next time, what’s your perfect V-World date? I think mine would be a good old fashioned fantasy quest wherein I could wield a pink sword and ride a unicorn. Or I’d just want to dance in a Lady Gaga video (but not the way I actually dance. I’d program my avatar not to dance like Elaine in Seinfeld).
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 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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I'm not sure if she actually has romantic feelings for Philo, but Zoe certainly seems fond of our resident lab geek. Whether that means she'll eventually regret using him to achieve her own ends remains to be seen, though. The whole Graystone clan seems to be a bit sociopathic like that.
I was starting to work up a good rant about all the crazy people in BSG / Caprica being women, but that's not true. It's just that the men in this universe hide their crazy better. Between Baltar, Tyrol, and Gaeta, there was plenty of male insanity in the fleet, but they were all repressive about it while Starbuck, Roslin, and now Amanda have very public screaming fits. (Well, okay, Baltar screamed some, but he at least tried to cover it.) That strikes me as kind of odd, since the world of the Colonies isn't supposed to be gendered in the same way our world is, yet the writers are kind of falling into Earth-based characterizations.
However, I think the female crazy is always presented as a positive, while the male crazy is presented as sinister. I don't know if that makes it better for you or not, but the women, in their crazy, are still usually seen to be the "voices of reason" pulling the men back, or warning them against danger.
Since they are so strongly rooted in Greek myth, all the women on these two shows seem to be Cassandras in one way or the other. Screaming the truth at the top of their lungs, but no one believes them, and they are only SEEN as crazy by the men around them.
I feel like Caprica, overall, is doing a better job with writing women who aren't so crazed and needy. Zoe and Clarice are both level and calculating. Willy Adama's grandmother, in the few scenes we've seen her, has been a picture of stalwart perseverance. Amanda appears to be the lone screamer so far.
I really like GrandmAdama. She's traditionally Tauron, and doesn't hold back her opinions, even when Joseph is appalled by them. She needs to be around more. So does Evelyn, but that's mostly because I just love Teryl Rothery no matter what she does.
As for Clarice, I agree that she's calculating, but I think she — like Barnabas — is too consumed by her zealotry to be truly "level". They're both often outwardly calm, but they seem to put too little value on individual human lives for my tastes. In fact, from what little we've seen of the STO leadership, the whole movement comes across as dismissive on the subject. Clarice may not be screaming in the sense of being loud, but she's definitely talking the crazy talk and her spouses hear it pretty clearly.
Ha! My perfect V-World date? Ha'la'tha blade training.
As for "using the vadge", I actually don't think that Lacy's doing it in as calculated a manner as you seem to think, and I think that it's a weak choice in both cases. Re: Zoe – I actually liked the fact that she seemed genuinely interested in geek boy, and that her feelings about using him might be conflicted. But in this episode, it seemed purely a means to an end, which makes that story less complex. As for Lacy/Keon, Lacy's interest in Keon has always seemed really forced to me, too unearned to be a strong choice, whether it's a calculated move or not. I dunno…
I get the impression that the actual Zoe could have been interested in Philo because, although their ends are different, they're equals intellectually. At least on the engineering side of things. I'm anticipating some emotional conflict on that front. Lacy. . . I don't know about her. I agree that the Lacy/ Keon thing seems forced, but I can't decide if it's a character issue or an acting issue.
To me it seems like Lacy is trying to manipulate Keon, but she knows how wrong it is and that knowledge makes her really bad at the execution of it. She's trying to be Zoe in the situations that Zoe can't be present for, except that she's always been Zoe's sidekick and doesn't really know how to be front-and-center.
I think that under different, non-STO circumstances, Lacy and Keon really could be good friends.
I love some of my machines too! Not that anything is wrong with that because I try to be kind to all "living things."