The episode picks up with Joe in the game, complaining about the clothes Emmanuelle made him wear. She says he's gotta be on his toes, and offers him a speed-like drug. It's like eye drops that make you all jumpy. Apparently it can kill you, because it's a hack and overrides the holobands' safety protections that prevent addiction. They head to the Adama's real life apartment looking for Tamara, thinking she might have gone there. But in the virtual world it's inhabited by a druggie. They manage to overpower him and ask about Tamara.He knows of the dead girl, says she must be a new part of the game, and that she can't die. He says he heard she was at a club, and then some other guy comes into the apartment. It seems Emmanuelle secured the perimeter but was pretty lax on guarding the door. The new guy is kinda upset that the dead girl is Joe's daughter and that she killed a bunch of his friends. And also confused because he thought the dead girl was part of the game. Emmanuelle tries to smooth it over as just a drug deal but the dude doesn't go for it and people start shooting. Everyone dies, but Emmanuelle is only grazed. So she manages to stay in the game, and tells Joe to go away until he gets braver and more Tauron-like. That's gotta sting.
Back in the real world apartment he's pondering a card from Tamara, talking about how she signed her name with a flower with Sam. Sam's confused, since he's supposed to be getting over it what with the ceremony and the closure and all. Joe asks Sam how he kills people; a random enough question to set Sam off. Eventually he breaks down and says he can do it because he tells himself it's not real. That he turns people into targets and everything seems like a game. Which shouldn't be difficult to mimic in New Cap City, since it actually is a game. They manage to find the club and Joe gets picked to unwillingly participate in a high stakes riddle answering mini-game of sorts. He insists he's just looking for his daughter, which unsurprisingly doesn't
help much. Instead of answering the riddle, he punks out and the ringmaster calls him a coward and has him taken away. Emmanuelle and Joe make it out of the club and he notices Tamara's flower signature on the wall. He then takes some drugs and kills the guard. Then he goes back into the club and starts shooting up the place. He confronts the ringmaster and asks about his daughter more forcefully. He admits she was there, and actually brought in quite a crowd because she tried the riddle game but couldn't be killed when she answered the riddle wrong. He doesn't know where she went after that, though, but mentions the game changes people. They head out the back and ponder Tamara's role in the game, before finding a bunch more of her signs on the wall outside. Emmanuelle observes that she seems to have found a home in the game.
Interspersed with these scenes, Daniel is talking to the robot, convinced that Zoe is inside and frustrated that she's giving him the silent treatment. He decides to try to manipulate his daughter's avatar into revealing herself. She's smart though, and acts convincingly as the robot should. Daniel isn't discouraged though. He resorts to psychological warfare, getting the robot to assemble and dismantle a rifle over and over again while talking about their house and it's fiery end. He waits for the robot to slip up in the repetitiveness, and smokes lots of cigarettes because he knows it would annoy Zoe. This does work in getting to her, but she doesn't slip up and instead just gets angrier. In v-world Zoe recounts the tale to Lacy, and talks about how it drove her nearly to murder, but then realizes that was what he wanted. She thinks that Daniel would just use her for his own plans if he knew she was in there, and decides to just be the robot in order to stay hidden from him.
The next day, after an apparently sleepless night, a weary Daniel keeps on with his mission to get Zoe to react. This time he's appealing to her by losing his temper and acting like he's sincerely hurt that she continues to hide from him in the robot. His fussy fit is really funny, but when his temper doesn't work he surrounds the robot with a circle of fire, hoping to smoke her out I guess. It doesn't work, and the flames die down. Two for Zoe none for Daniel. The final test Daniel has is commanding the robot to kill the family doggie, Cesar. He figures she wouldn't do it and override the robot brain to save the doggie. Again, Zoe wins, but so does Cesar since there were blanks in the gun. In the VIP room with Lacy, Zoe tells her about how she knew there were blanks in the gun because the robot sensed that the gun was a little lighter than usual. But she adds that if they had been real bullets she would have been tempted to shoot Daniel instead of Cesar. She implores Lacy to get the plan in action before she does something she regrets. At home, Daniel gives up on the robot for a while and goes upstairs to find Amanda and finds the alcohol instead. He turns on the television to see that she was last watching home videos of Zoe and the doggie. Amanda is outside sulking by the pool, and sees Daniel watching the same home movies.
Throughout the episode, Amanda is still being haunted by her memories and dead brother and such. Clarice is still trying to comfort her, and tells her that this is all because of Zoe and not her brother at all. She asks about the avatar and Amanda says Daniel told her that it was unstable and didn't work out. Later Amanda is staring at a painting of her and Darius, when the sad little robot tells her that Tomas Vergis is at the door. He's wearing gloves, and tells her that it's because two of his employees were murdered during a break in at his company. He tells her the story of the MCP and the contract for killer robots, and how he lost it to her husband because he developed an identical product right after his own was stolen. She catches on and gets
surprisingly defensive of Daniel, and tells Vergis to leave with his lies and slander.
The scenes with Daniel and the robot were really good. And also hilarious, at least to me. A Daniel on edge is pretty entertaining. I don't understand Joe's difficulties with killing people in the game. It's not like they really die, they just can't play anymore. Perhaps the writer's thought that it fit his character. Or v-world seems so real that it creeps him out even though when players die they just disappear. But I am happy that he got over it and learned to just play the game. I liked that this episode concentrated on fewer storylines, it was a lot less jumpy yet a lot was still covered. I'm excited to see how everything works out in the last episode, and what will be left unresolved.
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