It’s been a while, hasn’t it? And that’s probably telling. I watched the pilot a little before it aired, on DVD. I waited a couple weeks before watching the next two episodes back to back, on TiVo. Then I waited until last night to watch the next three episodes in a row as well. Now, Caprica isn’t a show the Missus has any interest in, so watching it live isn’t an option, in all fairness. But the same could have been said of Battlestar Galactica and The Sopranos, and in those cases I’d just wait until she went to bed–nothing could stop me from watching new episodes the night they first aired. Part of that was fear of getting spoiled the next day, which I’m not as concerned about regarding Caprica, since no one I know seems to be talking about. (That’s probably telling, too.) But mainly, I’m just in no hurry to watch the show. Last night’s three-episode marathon felt almost like homework.
Why? Jim Henley was close, but not quite there, when he talked about how unlikeable the characters are. I can get around that–where would The Sopranos have been without unpleasant people? What I have a harder time with are characters who are unexciting. It occurred to me sometime last night that Caprica has no Starbuck, no Baltar, no Bill Adama (well, you know what I mean), no Colonel Tigh, no Six, no President Roslin, no Apollo…no one whose continuing adventures I’d be excited to see, regardless of their level of bastardry. No one whose smiles or rages intrigue me, no one who makes me laugh, no one who makes me cheer, no one who makes me shudder. Instead it has a lot of people in expensive clothes, hiding how they really feel all the time, until it finally comes out in some big scene of melodrama, which ultimately feels just as contrived as their buttoned-up anal retentiveness elsewhere.
It’s just very difficult to get invested in Daniel and Elizabeth Graystone’s troubled marriage when we’ve never seen what would make either of them worth sticking around with. It’s difficult to feel for Joseph Adama’s plight as a man torn between two cultures when we haven’t seen what he’d really contribute to either. It’s tough to really get into the semi-villains like Sam Adama and Sister Clarice when the only thing that elevates them from cliche is an equally contrived tweak of conventional mores–look, the gangster is GAY!/look, the religious zealot is a SWINGER! Sasha Roiz’s Sam is probably my favorite performance on the show–he wears those clothes gorgeously, his eyes are intelligent, he comes across as the most at home in the show’s ersatz Coppola tones–but he’s still hampered by the rote construction of the character. Sister Clarice I’d be happy to never see again. James Marsten’s Barnabas is even more dire.
I’m also increasingly convinced that starting the show with the death of children was a big mistake. Where can you go from there, tonally? The answer, as it turns out, is pretty much nowhere–it’s just been a dour, sour show ever since. I can’t remember laughing a single time, or being on the edge of my seat. I think the one episode that managed to buck this somewhat was the fifth, “There Is Another Sky.” Between Graystone finally pitching the Cylon to his board of directors as the ultimate pet/slave, setting up the technological revolution that we viewers know will eventually lead to the destruction of civilization, and the lost avatar of Tamara Adams discovering she’s all but indestructible in the virutal world within which she’s trapped, we finally had genuine thrills–moments that weren’t mired in the inability of a bunch of jerks to properly process their grief. I mean, it wasn’t perfect–the Tamara stuff felt really Matrix-y and dated, while a third storyline involving the cultural customs of the Taurans left me scratching my head as to how almost all of the interplanetary differentiation and strife present here disappeared in time for Battlestar. (I assume the First Cylon War served as a great unifier, but it’s still weird that Bill Adama never talked about this stuff when it we’re being told it’s such a formative element of his young adulthood.) But it was something. In a weird way, it was where the series probably should have begun. Last night’s episode was a step backwards, unfortunately. I hope they can get things moving again.