"Spinning its wheels" is a phrase I hear bandied about from TV critics when a show takes an episode to put its ducks in order, maneuvering pieces to the right places in the plot in order to make real progress later on in the story.
Such is the case with this week's Caprica, "Retribution". It's not a bad episode of television, but it has the challenge of following up from last week's incredible "Unvanquished" and having to handle a character most people thought dead after "End of Line" -- Amanda Graystone. In attempting to handle each character with care, the episode fails in comparison to other, more focused episodes of Caprica.
The real lagging piece of the episode is the Daniel storyline. Sure, we get it -- he's going to be working with the Adamas in morally grey areas in order to get his company back. Cool. Can we not pretend that the Adamas don't have their own motives, though? It's a real shame to see sparkling characters like Joseph and Sam made out as little more than gangster pawns in Daniel Graystone's master plot. Worse yet, with the dynamic between Daniel and Zoe temporarily unavailable, why are we supposed to care about what Daniel does? I get the feeling the episode wanted us to connect with Daniel in the sense that his master creation is being used as little more than weapons, but, well, he's no Tony Stark or Mark Zuckerberg.
If we could just cut out that plot and focus instead on Lacy, Clarice, and Amanda, the episode would have been much better. The episode's basic premise is this: what would you do in the name of retribution? Daniel leans on Taurons and spies to get his job done, but Clarice prefers a more personal touch -- as Barnabas fatally discovers this week. Caught in the middle of everything is Lacy, whose life is now forfeit to Clarice for attempting to bomb her plane (and failing, thanks to Lacy's sudden lack of a backbone). Meanwhile, Amanda is debating whether or not to spy on Clarice, who may or may not be an STO agent; she's also reflecting upon the events after her bridge-jump suicide fail via a series of flashbacks and dreams that remind me of that knock-knock joke about the interrupting cow.
So yes, this episode is doing a lot of wheel-spinning. I still think Caprica spins wheels better than most shows (LOST and parent show Battlestar Galactica did it better; high praise, no?) but mechanically moving characters from Point A to Point B in a single episode is boring. My favorite quote from the episode sums things up well: "You're a disgrace. / That's not the point."
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