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When one looks in the box, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the cat.

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Willie’s real.  I’m a ghost. —Avatar Tamara

I am real! —Avatar Zoe

There was so much going on in Caprica’s mid-season finale, “End of Line,” that I couldn’t contain everything I wanted to discuss in one post. CLICK HERE for Part One.

Of all the characters that represent ideals, Sister Clarice and Barnabas are probably the most straightforward. What’s interesting, though, is that the ideals they defend have very little to do with the religion they’ve attached themselves to. They are each concerned with defending their own power. Surprisingly, it is Barnabas who seems to believe in The One True God the most. Yes, he is violent and concerned with maintaining control over his cell, but when he prays it feels sincere. Sister Clarice, on the other hand, seems to be cultivating the image of Devout Leader without being too terribly concerned with belief at all. She displays her strongest emotion not while praying or when talking about God, but when her authority is challenged, her power is threatened, or when her manipulations go awry. She is similar to Kai Winn from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, another female religious leader more concerned with her own power than the power of the God(s) she serves, and this makes her fascinating. It has been a slow build for Sister Clarice’s character, but now that we can see what she truly is – a woman more concerned with killing a rival than with her faith – she’s exciting to watch. Clarice lets no one, male or female, get in her way, and when they do, she plans accordingly.

So far, we’ve seen characters devoted to science, to spouses, to family, and to culture. In Lacy, we see an almost religious devotion to her friendship with Zoe. From the beginning, she never seemed too keen on the idea of One God. In the Caprica pilot, her involvement in Zoe and Ben’s plan seems to stem less from actual belief and more from a desire to belong to a group as well as a desire to get away from an undesirable home life. Zoe provided a respite from the mundane, and when Zoe died, Lacy, like Joseph, became slavishly devoted to an avatar. Lacy could care less about the STO, but she wants to serve Zoe’s plans as well as hold onto her friendship with Avatar Zoe, so she joins the organization to that end. She chooses helping Avatar Zoe over her her nagging conscience and detonates the bomb that blows up Sister Clarice’s car. Her ideal has turned her into someone who is capable of choosing to kill.

The juxtaposition of Avatars Zoe and Tamara in “End of Line” was one of the most intriguing things about the episode, as they have differing opinions regarding their “lives” as avatars. Avatar Tamara is more accepting of building a life for herself in V-World. She calls herself a ghost, unlike the “real” people in the outside world, and gives up her father’s love, as well as a connection to life outside, in order to save him. Avatar Zoe, on the other hand, is determined to live on the outside and determined to think of herself as a person. “I am real!” she screams at Lacy, when she suspects that Lacy might consider her less than human. This might be a matter of upbringing. From the time that Avatar Zoe was “born,” created by Zoe, she was nurtured by human beings, coddled, promised a purpose and the outside world. She, therefore, feels entitled to that world and to a human place in it. Tamara, however, was created and left defenseless in V-World. She had to fend for herself, adapt to a world she wasn’t used to, and figure out a new identity. Whereas Avatar Tamara seems prepared to build a life on her own terms in a new place, Avatar Zoe would rather die than continue to live as a seven-foot cylon who is capable of accidentally killing a “nice boy” while continuing to be under the thumb of her father.

Each of these avatars seems to represent the cultures from which they’ve sprung. Avatar Tamara is the quintessential immigrant who has to pull herself up by her own bootstraps and create a new life in a new world. She is Tauron. Avatar Zoe is the product of wealth and rose-colored propaganda. She’s never had to want before, and so she rebels when she can’t have her way and can’t adapt when dealt hardships. She is Caprica.

In addition to the stunning performances from the entire cast, Michael Taylor, the writer for this episode, skillfully brought together all of these themes and characters into an epic climax. There’s a bit of confusion regarding the title of this episode. In all of the previews I’d seen, on the episode podcast, as well as the way the title came up on my DVR, it’s called “End of Line,” which I thought was a great reference to the hybrid cylon in Battlestar Galactica. However SyFy’s Caprica site now refers to it as “The End of the Line,” which still makes sense (this episode seemed to be end of the line for several people), but is not as wonderful. So, to me, the episode is called “End of Line.” I refuse to acknowledge another title!  So there.

The episode was expertly directed and paced by Roxann Dawson, sci-fi director and probably best known for playing B’Elanna Torres on Star Trek: Voyager. Between her direction and Esai Morales’ brilliant performance, it was difficult for me to restrain my squees of Puerto Rican pride. Not that we’re taking over sci-fi or anything, I’m just saying…

What really made this episode sing (Pun intended. Sorry.) was Bear McCreary’s music. The story and characters were already epic, and Dawson’s direction hit all the right notes, but the music really tied the whole thing together with a brightly-colored epic bow. As you can read about on his blog entry about the episode, McCreary basically wrote an opera for this episode, as opera seemed to be the only way to capture the grandness of this story. It worked so well, I almost wanted to put all of the actors in Ancient Greek theater masks and Viking helmets.

“End of Line” ends with Daniel Graystone receiving a phone call. Was it the authorities calling to report Amanda’s death? Was it a call to inform him that the Cylon had blown itself up? Both? I think Caprica fans will have a difficult time waiting until October to find out. But “End of Line” was a fascinating mid-season ending and a sure sign that Caprica is a show worth waiting for.


Teresa Jusino was born on the same day that Skylab fell. Coincidence? She doesn’t think so. She is a contributor to PinkRaygun.com, a webzine examining geekery from a feminine perspective. Her work has also been seen on PopMatters.com, on the sadly-defunct literary site CentralBooking.com, edited by Kevin Smokler, and in the Elmont Life community newspaper. She is currently writing a web series for Pareidolia Films called The Pack, which is set to debut in Fall 2010! Get Twitterpated with Teresa, Follow The Pack or visit her at The Teresa Jusino Experience.

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Teresa Jusino

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Teresa Jusino was born the day Skylab fell. Coincidence? She doesn't think so. A native New Yorker, Jusino has been telling stories since she was three years old, and she wrote a picture book in crayon in nursery school. However, nursery school also found her playing the angel Gabriel in a Christmas pageant, and so her competing love of performing existed from an early age. Her two great loves competed all the way through early adulthood. She attended NYU's Tisch School of the Arts where she majored in Drama and English Literature, after which she focused on acting, performing in countless plays and musicals in and around New York City, as well as short films, feature length independent films, and the one time she got to play an FBI agent in a PBS thing, which she thought was really cool, because she got to wear sunglasses and a dark suit and look badass. Eventually, producing was thrown into the mix. For four years, she was a company member and associate producer for a theater company called Stone Soup Theater Arts. She also produced a musical in which she also performed at Theater For the New City called Emergency Contraception: The Musical! by Sara Cooper, during which she ended every performance covered in fake blood. Don't ask. After eight years of acting, Jusino decided that she missed her first love – writing – and in 2008 decided to devote herself wholly to that pursuit. She has since brought her "feminist brown person" perspective to pop culture criticism at such diverse sites as Tor.com, ChinaShop Magazine, PopMatters, Newsarama, Pink Raygun, as well as her own blog, The Teresa Jusino Experience (teresajusino.wordpress.com), and her Tumblr for feminist criticism, The Gender Blender (tumblwithteresa.tumblr.com). She is also the editor of a Caprica fan fiction site called Beginning of Line (beginningofline.weebly.com), because dammit, that was a good show, and if SyFy won't tell any more of those characters' stories, she'll do it herself. Her travel-writer alter ego is Geek Girl Traveler, and her travel articles can be followed at ChinaShop while she herself can be followed on Twitter (@teresajusino). Her essay, "Why Joss is More Important Than His 'Verse" can be found in the book Whedonistas: A Celebration of the Worlds of Joss Whedon By the Women Who Love Them (Mad Norwegian Press). In addition to her non-fiction, Jusino is also a writer of fiction. Her short story, December, was published in Issue #24 of the sci-fi literary journal, Crossed Genres. A writer of both prose and film/television scripts, she relocated to Los Angeles in September 2011 to give the whole television thing a whirl. She'll let you know how that goes just as soon as she stops writing bios about herself in the third person.
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