Caprica; Too Soon An End (Or 'Isn't Magda Apanowicz great?')

First things first, DID YOU SEE MISFITS ON SUNDAY? Fuck was that all about eh? Actually swore at my telly at the end there.

Ahem, anyway, to the business at hand...

(This is not the post I originally had planned for Caprica part two. That was much longer; lucky escape for you there; and went into much more depth about the pros and cons of the many changes that occurred between the first group of eps and the second. It also focused much less; but still a bit, let's be honest; on Magda Apanowicz)

The first half of Caprica was, as I said in my earlier post, really really good, while at the same time being far too slow to attract a modern audience; something you'd have thought a seasoned bunch of pros such as the Caprica producers/writers would have realised.

I said I'd revisit the show on here once I'd watched the back half of the season and here I am, being true to my word for once in my life. I'd have done it sooner, had indeed written something last week, but things went a bit tits up and you had to wait. Never mind though, better late than never eh?

The truth is, whatever they did in that final run of episodes it was going to be too little too late. Oh, I'm sure that if their had been a massive surge in popularity then the show would have been renewed; that's just common sense; but the chances of that actually happening? Slim to none. You can blame the long hiatus all you want, and no doubt it did rob the show of whatever scant momentum the cliffhanger gave it, but the truth is that the damage done by the earlier episodes' glacial pacing was too much to overcome; people had made their minds up that it was boring, and all the excitement in the world couldn't change their minds if they weren't watching to see it. It was Carnivale all over again.

Credit where it's due though, they gave it a hell of a shot.

Of course, in order to up the pace in the back half to the extent that they did they had to make some sacrifices. For one thing I refuse to believe that when they hired James Marsters they intended to write him out as quickly as they did; and the same goes for John Pyper-Ferguson.

What do you mean you're killing me off? Do you know who I am?

For another, the reduced screentime for little Willy Adama was a crying shame, because that kid is going places; and I'm sorry, but if you tell me that you saw what they did with his character coming I will flat out tell you you're a liar.

You can't kill me, I'm in the bloody sequel!

I'm not here to list all the things that were wrong, or if not wrong then...less than ideal; I want to be positive, because the show deserves it. In large part, and I make absolutely no apologies for this, due to Magda Apanowicz.

Young Miss Apanowicz was a new face to me, when I began watching Caprica; she was, as I learned from (only) regular commenter Steven Glassman; WHY WILL NO-ONE LEAVE A COMMENT AND THUS VALIDATE MY SAD EXISTENCE; on Kyle XY for a while, but that's another of the many great shows I lost track of after one season and I had no memory of her. Luckily, a quick wikipedia search tells me that she joined in S2, so hurrah, not going senile yet.

I praised Apanowicz when I watched early Caprica, but grouped with Alessandra Torresani and Sina Najafi, as 'the young cast'. In the back half, though, she's deserving of individual praise, as she manages; no easy feat when you look at some of the more experienced cast members; to effectively steal the show. From idealistic schoolgirl in over her head

through terrified trainee terrorist,

 to cylon messiah,

she has a hell of an arc and she plays it beautifully.

She may be helped in this show stealing; not to take anything away from her, because she's brill!!; by Najafi's aforementioned reduced screentime, and Torresani's character going down a storytelling cul-de-sac that not only felt like something out of another show altogether, but was also way beyond their budgetary capabilities; she wasn't best served by the writers, let's just say that.

I would have dearly loved to watch a second season of Caprica, and I didn't think I'd say that after the first run of eps. That a second year didn't materialise is a shame, but hardly a surprise, given how far out of their way they seemed to go to alienate the viewers early on. The likes of Esai Morales, Eric Stoltz and Polly Walker will of course land on their feet, but I've really got my fingers crossed that this is not the last we see of Magda Apanowicz. She's too damn good.