“Gravedancing” is an awkward, meandering, and mostly unremarkable episode of Caprica. Very little happens either naturally or organically. Most of the situations and conflicts are forced. And there’s almost no dramatic payoff. There are a few glimmers of hope, mostly toward the end of the episode. But otherwise, this is very much a subpar outing for a series that is in desperate need of a truly good episode.

Once again, the episode is fractured into many small and thinly connected parts. The police are continuing their vendetta investigation. The Graystones are trying to do some damage control as a result of Amanda’s outburst at the memorial. Joseph urges Sam to kill Amanda. Lacy seeks help from a classmate. And Zoe gets her groove on with a technician.In other words, it’s quantity over quality.

There’s little here that offers any real sense of urgency. And even the episode’s most suspenseful element — Sam stalking Amanda — ends up being little more than a misguided impulse from Joseph Adama, rather a real exploration of character. Put simply, Joseph spends most of the episode hounding his brother to kill Amanda then, following a TV appearance from Amanda, Joseph frantically tries to get his brother to halt the execution.

The result is to make Joseph come across as particularly weak — even the delivery of his line, “Did you kill her?!” sounds like a petulant boy than an established older brother. Maybe the intent is to show Joseph as weak. But the problem is that Joseph’s desire to kill Amanda in the first place isn’t explored with any depth or detail — no real inner conflict — so his vacillation in this episode is either contrived plotting or weakness of character.

Most interesting is Sam’s character who, after getting so many messages from his brother, decides to pretend that he did, in fact, kill Amanda — to teach his brother a lesson. It’s good that Sam wouldn’t appreciate being pulled in different directions so often. And maybe it makes sense that Joseph is cracking under the grief of his losses. But in the absence of any real in-depth character work, none of this is worthwhile.

Even worse is grandma’s morbid and murderous side comments such as telling young Willy, “You get the best things from enemies, because they’re scared of you.” Next, she’s chopping up meat and talking about killing Amanda with her bare hands as revenge. It’s so jarringly awkward that it’s more funny than fearsome. Truly, this is a family that demands a deeper level of exploration — if only to explain why the heck they behave the way they do. Chalking it all up to “They’re Taurons, therefore they’re baaaad” is overly simplistic, at best.

As for Amanda and Daniel, they spend much of the episode in disagreement about Daniel’s decision to go on television to talk about Zoe. There’s a scene in which the two yell at each other which truly encapsulates the problems with the series thus far. Amanda had, just two episodes earlier, proclaimed to the world that her daughter was a terrorist. Now she’s yelling at Daniel, telling him to not go on television to salvage a bit of their public image? To salvage the image of the company? It’s purely nonsensical. It happens only to ramp up some misguided attempt at drama. And it does nothing to get at the heart of these characters. And Amanda goes on the show anyway.

Of course, this does lead to the episode’s best scene. After too much buildup (including a pointless scene in which Daniel bribes a makeup artist to let him smoke), Daniel finally goes on the air. Amanda, without invitation, jumps onto the stage and joins him. And that’s when the episode finally gets around to being *about* something. The host needles Daniel about the immorality of the Holoband, of rampant technology in general. At first Daniel tries to defend his company, but he quickly realizes that there needs to be a change — so he offers to turn over all proceeds of the Holoband to charity, to a foundation that will help give teens guidance. And while Daniel squirms, viewers (both on Caprica and for those watching Caprica) get a chance to confront those same questions on their own.

That’s all well and good, of course, provided he follows through on it. But the confrontation, and concession from Daniel, proves to be the episode’s liveliest and most thoughtful moment. It’s important to show at least some evolution of character and Daniel’s intent is the first step toward that. Hopefully he’ll follow through — at least for the sake of the series having a character actually grow.

Beyond that, there are a number of smaller scenes. The police continue to be detriment to the series. There’s nothing in their actions or scenes that is worthwhile. They conduct their investigation in perhaps the most unprofessional manner possible. And even accepting the fact that, perhaps, their actions are the norm for Caprica, there’s nothing in the episode to even suggest that. Or to explain why such actions are condone. We do get a boss wagging his finger at the lead investigator, which would seem to indicate that what’s transpiring is over-the-line. And it all boils down to some silly catchphrases about imminent threats to conduct rather extreme search and seizure and surveillance operations.

One of those operations was to rip through Sister Clarice’s school looking for evidence. They actually took lock cutters to every lock in the school, and dumped everything on the floor (and seemed to leave it there). How is that even remotely realistic? Shouldn’t the search be done in an organized manner? One locker at a time? So as to not possibly confuse evidence? It’s all so silly that it’s impossible to take seriously.

And speaking of silly … Zoe dancing …with the lab tech … may be … one of the worst scenes of television I have ever witnessed. There was a nice moment when Zoe and the technician seemed to make a connection. Which was good. The original BSG musical theme cameo was a nice touch.  But the dance? Awful.  Embarrassing.

Putrid.

Overall Grade: C-

“Gravedancing” is a nice play on words for what transpires in the episode: Amanda and Daniel rehashing their daughter’s death on live TV, Sam’s mission to kill Amanda, even Zoe’s ridiculous dance. But there’s not much here of intrinsic value. The Backtalk sequence was the highlight of the episode. Sam messing around with Adama was entertaining. But everything else was a significant step backward. About the only thing that can be said for the episode is that, someday, there might be a payoff. Here’s hoping …

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