The ending, in particular, struck a sour note. My distaste was not that Amanda making a speech was illogical, it's that I didn't find it emotionally believable. It felt more like the writers went searching for conflict, than a natural consequence of the characters and preceding story.

I also don't think I liked the opening credits, but they reminded me of the amazing opening credits from the HBO series Carnivale (which RDM also worked on). Maybe they'll grow on me; I hope the rest of the show does as well.

I agreed completely about the ending.. it was the first thing I said after seeing the episode. usually Mr. verheiden is a great writer...

Let's try a different angle. Given a social moral code, it is possible to be honorable and adhere to the code or be dishonorable and twist it to your advantage. For example, Sam adheres to a Tauron moral code, which happens to deviate from the predominant Caprican code on the subject of murder and intimidation. But judged from the Tauran code, so far, Sam seems to be an honorable guy (and hopefully this will be born out in his relationships, if we see them). My impression of Dr. Greystone so far is that he is dishonorable in that he seems to twist the Caprican moral code to fit his purposes. Joe Adama is caught between two moral codes, and isn't doing well by either. Now, the character of Clarice could have adhered honorably to the STO moral code, which like that of Tauron's deviates from the Caprican moral code. I would have found this the more compelling approach simply because "alternative lifestyles" are such a cliched sign of "moral decline" in "decadent societies."

Some of this is coming from the fact that I was really pissed that Gaita's homosexuality wasn't revealed until he went rogue. If I had always known he was gay, that would have been fine - gay characters aren't obligated to be "good." What I objected to was the tight linkage between the two.

Aside from Zoe and the Graystone family, the rest seemed like it was just there. I love Esai Morales as Joe Adama, but he, nor his family seemed to have much relevance in this episode. I appreciate the subtle mention of Sam Adama's accepted homosexuality though, nice sci-fi move. I'm gay myself and appreciate little things like this, though I can't help but wonder if lesbians aren't being left behind in this new TV age full of gay characters.

Also interesting is Clarice's rather large family, involving several husbands with several wives. My friend commented negatively on this, and I was a bit surprised by it too. The focus, however, as in every relationship, should be based on honesty and happiness, and I'm happy that it's a part of the show. I just hope it and Clarice in particular are used more interestingly in future episodes.

Having Will use Sam's suggestion on his Dad was indeed a nice touch. I guess I'm edgy about how much corrupting of Will there is going to be.

The Will & Sam scenes struck me as being the usual "crook trying to corrupt young minds" scene except that this particular crook happened to like guys. I especially liked the line about "don't feel guilty, talk about what makes the other guy feel guilty" which little Will employs on his father later on in the episode.

I don't think that Clarice's family was meant to be portrayed as "deviant" per se, Lacy's line about "my friend was in a family like this" puts it down as unusual but not abnormal in this world. The creepy vibe is in Clarice's almost predatory behaviour towards Lacy (I wonder how many of her family members are in on this) which is made all the more disturbing by her apparent advance knowledge (from the pilot) about the bombing. I think she referred to it as "premature?" THAT is why she should not be hanging around impressionable kids, regardless of how many husbands/wives she has.

Although, I remember a line from the pilot where real-life Zoe tells Lacy "There's a new family waiting for us" when they were about to get onto the train. Were they talking about some kind of church/commune or an actual multiple marriage like the Willow family?

picky continuity question - Dr. Greystone had blocked Tracy's clearance for admission to the house, so how did she get in to talk to cyber/Zoe? it seems kind of unlikely that the house robot would be programmed to respond to commands from the cylon.

I agree that the Calvin & Hobbs-like plot device of switching from cylon to cyberZoe is good. Unfortnately, I find Alessandra Toressani to be about as expressive as the Cylon, so it doesn't have nearly the impact it could have.

I actually found Amanda Greystone's ascent to the podium believable (stupid, but believable). She had already been exposed to the suspicion that Zoe was involved in the plot. Finding out about Zoe's secrecy, combined with the confirmation of the boyfriend and the STO, would have lead to an explosive mixture of betrayal, anger and guilt on top of the powerful grief. Throw in the opportunity and a momentary impulse and there you have it. Whether is was a good plot device remains to be seen.

Rant - how sterotypical for a decaying society to have "abberrant" life styles. Wouldn't it have been refreshing to have the alternative lifestyles be a little less creepy, or god forbid, even healthy? (Common RM, lets break some fresh ground) The group marriage was modeled on a bad commune stereotype, not reasonable poly relationships. After the creepy father/daughter incest vibes from last week, the Will/Sam exchange gave me creepy homosexual incest vibes, which was unfortunate, because I, too, liked the casual gay reference. (Presumably, Will already knows that Sam is gay from meeting partners). We've also got the cougar relationship (Clarisse and young "husband"), the creepy 3 way with underage teenager vibe (Clarisse, husband, Lacy) and the Robot/young dude relationship. How ironic, that the last one is the one that feels the most authentic, even downright sweet.

Daniel is quite the piano player...

On either the TWOP boards or the boards where we poke fun at TWOP, someone noted that some of the human characters seem to have similarities to the personalities of the 1-8 (minus 7) skinjobs we eventually meet in BSG and speculated that we might eventually see Zoe (or even Dr. Greystone) take people she knows and essentially use them to create the rest of the cylons (not to be in human bodies until they eet the final 5 of course). They said they felt that Lacy is the mental profile for Boomer. Whether that will be the case remains to be seen, but upon re-watch then ending with Amanda made me think of the idea again.

Since TNG and TOS episodes have a very self-contained structure, individual character moments are easy to address in total instead of individually, because they each contribute to one big picture for the episode as a whole. For example, you don't need to describe every scene in Tapestry to talk about what it shows us about Picard's life or about the goading relationship that Q has to Picard. You could just have two generalizing paragraphs, one for each.

In a show like BSG or (so far) Caprica, there can be so many little threads running through that each thread tends to need a paragraph unto itself. The connection to a big picture may exist, but is often subtler, for good or for ill. DS9 was sometimes like this, too, although it was a little more self-contained than especially BSG S4 was, and obviously, those DS9 reviews from you were longer, too.

I guess I'm not really saying you should aim for this length. You should do whatever you want, obviously. I'm just saying I won't be surprised if something like this becomes the comfortable length for a show like Caprica.

It's still shorter than many of your BSG reviews, and hopefully between this somewhat shorter length, the lack of second viewings and detailed notetakings, and above all, the reduced number of technological hassles because of the blog format, reviewing will become more fun for you. I look forward to reading!