The “big idea” guys, high on more than the Internets, called big meetings so they could rhapsodize on creating virtual communities and breaking down traditional Western phallocentric patriarchies and enabling subcultures to reach out and robustly interface with like-minded hives.

My bosses at Suck.com, meanwhile, accurately predicted that the Web would soon become something between a gigantic mall catering to the lowest common denominator and an infinite tabloid echo chamber. Their mantra: Sell out early and often. Why? Because those of us musing about murderous robot showdowns (or scratching out angry cartoons under a pseudonym, for that matter) would all go back to grabbing ankle for The Man sooner than we thought.

What they didn’t know, and never could’ve predicted, was that the Web would also transform itself into an enormous, never-ending high school reunion (See also: hell).

Revolutionary in a coal mine

Even though I’ve opted out of the big-idea, Future-of-the-Web bloviating business over the years (mostly because it’s more my style to wallow in obscurity, wearing outdated shoes), I think it’s finally safe to proclaim, together, that the information age has officially arrived. After all, my 13-year-old stepson texts more often than he speaks, my 3-year-old daughter wants her own bright pink iPad so she can see what Cinderella is doing right now, I waste most of my day reading Tweets from a Laura Ingalls Wilder impersonator and a recent dinner guest spent half the night answering lingering trivial conversational unknowns by looking them up on his iPhone.

Let’s see, so the digital revolution led us all to this: a gigantic, commercial, high school reunion/mall filthy with insipid tabloid trivia, populated by perpetually distracted, texting, tweeting demi-humans. Yes, the information age truly is every bit as glorious and special as everyone predicted it would be!

Apparently our futuristic “Blade Runner”-esque digital dystopia is so bewildering that even Internet “big idea” man Douglas Rushkoff is currently reconsidering his unconditional love for new media in Frontline’s “Digital Nation” (premieres 9 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 2, on PBS, check local listings), an in-depth investigation into the possibilities and side effects of our digital immersion.

“I want the luxury of being able to push the pause button, you know,” Rushkoff, one of the producers of this 90-minute report, muses to the other producer, Rachel Dretzin, as the cameras roll. Rushkoff says he wants to “really ask whether we’re tinkering with some part of ourselves that’s a little bit deeper than we might realize at first. You know, how are we changing what it means to be a human being by using all this stuff?”

Keep in mind, this is a guy who, despite his Dilbert-meets-Derrida perspective, spent the better half of the ’90s gushing about the power and the glory of the Internets in intelligently written books and on crappy “all about the Internets” shows like “The Site” (Christ, remember that one?). If Rushkoff is rethinking his ardor for the digital realm, you know we’re in trouble.

Even if you’re too distracted by your iPhone to care whether continual distractions will take a toll on our souls, “Digital Nation” should beat a little sense into you. You know the routine: A kid says proudly, “I never read books. I’ll be honest. I can’t remember the last time I read a book”; an English professor tells the camera, solemnly, “I can’t assign a novel that’s more than 200 pages”; we learn of a Kaiser Family Foundation study indicating that 8- to 18-year-old kids spend 53 hours a week using media.

And don’t believe the hype about a whole new generation of effective multitaskers, either. “Most multitaskers think that they’re brilliant at multitasking,” says Stanford professor Clifford Nass. But “it turns out that multitaskers are terrible at nearly every aspect of multitasking.” (In an article on the Stanford News Web site, his colleague Eyal Ophir comments, “We kept looking for what they’re better at, and we didn’t find it.”)

Even Sherry Turkle, director of MIT’s Initiative on Technology and Self, confesses that a plugged-in state doesn’t necessarily make her life more satisfying or more productive. “I’ve been busy all day, and I haven’t thought about anything hard,” Turkle says. “I mean, the point of it is to be our most creative selves, not to distract ourselves to death.”

“I’ve always prided myself on offering soothing answers to people’s anxieties about this stuff,” Rushkoff continues later. “I felt like I was in on a secret, that these old fuddy-duddies were panicking unnecessarily, underestimating our kids’ ability to adapt to the new reality unfolding before us.”

But Rushkoff’s mind has changed, and now he feels like a fuddy-duddy himself. But, as he accurately points out, stepping away from it all isn’t always possible. “Combating distraction, it’s not as easy as just turning off your e-mail program. You turn off your e-mail program, it’s not your e-mail program that complains, it’s your friends, it’s your boss, it’s your bills. You know, ‘Where’s that report?’ ‘Why haven’t you answered your e-mail?’ ‘Are you mad at me?’ You can’t do this in isolation. If you’re going to deal with the problem of distraction it’s something that we’re all going to have to deal with together.”

But how, Doug? How? Instead of suggesting some answers, we’re off to South Korea to watch teenagers in a dark underground PC Bangs (gaming centers) playing video games for hours on end, then we’re off to an Army Experience Center, an eerie new style of recruitment center that lures young men with violent video games and then discusses enlisting with the ones who are legally eligible. Next, we watch a guy in front of a computer screen operating an unmanned drone, then view footage of similar drones dropping bombs on targets a world away.

And just when you’re pretty sure that technological advances are transforming our globe into a seething cauldron of violence, hatred and pointless musings about Snooki from “Jersey Shore,” here’s a lighter segment on “Second Life” to distract us back into a state of complacency. Apparently IBM uses “Second Life” to hold virtual meetings between people who live thousands of miles from each other. Each person at the meeting is embodied by a different avatar, and the participants end up feeling like they’ve met in person, even though they’re actually in upstate New York, Vermont and San Paolo, Brazil. (Note to boss: Can we hold our Salon meetings this way, and can my avatar be an enormous roach that occasionally hits other people over the head with a crowbar?)

“It may be decades until we know what living in a state of constant distraction will do to us,” offers Rushkoff, although right now I’m a little more concerned about what the people getting bombed to smithereens by those drones are going to do to us, once they have the means.

But don’t worry, everyone! “For all of the moments of isolation the digital may promote, there’s also a chance for engagement,” Rushkoff says. “So I guess that means you can still count me among the faithful!” With that chirpy conclusion, Rushkoff shuts off his computer and heads outside to his garden. Suddenly I can’t help picturing Louis Rossetto and the big idea guys (plus that guy who sold “big.com” for a few million dollars) all padding out to their lush backyard gardens, paid for by those years as Web visionaries, and I think: I should’ve sold out earlier, and more often.

Not that I had anything to sell in the first place. But who’s going to help the rest of us turn this stuff off? Doug? Before you leave, um, where’s the exit to the mall? How do we filter out the tabloids and the instant messages from long-lost high school acquaintances? Doug? Dooouuuug! Come back here! Help us!

C
amera disappears into screaming mouth, “Invasion of the Body Snatchers”-style. Fade to black.

Assuming that I must be missing something, I took a closer look at this phenomenon that answers to the name of “Snooki.” Imagine my delight in discovering that every single word out of Snooki’s mouth is rich with metaphor! Remember Peter Sellers’ simple-minded gardener, Chance, in the 1979 comedy “Being There,” whose statements (“As long as the roots are not severed, all is well”) were revealed to be cunning explorations of larger philosophical and socioeconomic themes? Snooki is just like that, but with bigger hair.

So cringe not, my friends, when you spot this woman’s enormous orange head on your TV screens. Instead, go forth and spread the word of Snooki!

Snookism: When I woke up, I was like, “What did I do last night? Like what did I do?” I fucked up. Story of my life.

Real meaning: Without the glow of nostalgia, our lives amount to little more than a series of pointless foibles. 

Snookism: My ultimate dream is to move to Jersey, find a nice, juiced, hot, tanned guy and live my life.

Real meaning: Lower your expectations and your dreams may come true.

Snookism: I am a princess at home, like, I am the fucking princess of fucking Poughkeepsie. Here, I am nobody. I’m, like, emotionally exhausted.

Real meaning: You can never go home again.

Snookism: Snooki’s stayin’ and I’m ready to party. I’m ready to meet sexy guidos and I’m ready just to fucking be single.

Real meaning: Seize the day or surrender your mortal flesh to the eternal abyss.

Snookism: Mike can be a nice guy. Like, he shows his good side then he shows his jerk-off side. That’s what I like: a good guy and a jerk off, it’s all in the same.

Real meaning: Be wary of the man who struggles to hide his inner darkness.

Snookism: Pickles is my thing.

Real meaning: Self-knowledge offers emancipation from the mundane.

Snookism: I look over and I see like hair being pulled and all this shit, I’m like, “Oh my God, how do I get in?”

Real meaning: Touching divinity is impossible without a blind leap into the unknown.

Snookism: I’m fat. I’m about to eat a sausage right now. Fuck you all! Ha ha!

Real meaning: No finer pleasure awaits us than to sup as night falls, heedless of the larger world outside.

Snookism: Um, I don’t read books. I tried to read “Twilight,” but it got boring the second page. There’s no pictures, so, I’m not readin’ it.

Real meaning: The empty vessel makes the greatest sound.

Snookism: My most prized possession would probably be my bronzer and eyeliner. Bronzer because, just in case you go out and then you look in the mirror and you look pale? Just apply the bronzer. You don’t have enough eyeliner on? Put the eyeliner on.

Real meaning: Assume a virtue if you have it not.

(Yes, Snooki was conjuring Shakespeare in those last two.)

“It’s not a mask, what you see is what you get,” Patty says lightly.

Julian isn’t convinced, but we still don’t understand what he wants from her. What is he trying to pull, anyway? Why is he acting like he has her number?

And so, two minutes into a new season of “Damages” (premieres 10 p.m. Monday, Jan. 25, on FX), things are already getting creepy, and we can’t look away. And that’s before we find out about Patty’s current case, prosecuting Louis Tobin, a Bernie Madoff-type financier who pulled off the biggest Ponzi scheme in history, that’s before we see that Ellen (Rose Byrne) has left Hewes & Associates to work for the city prosecutor’s office, that’s before we witness a mysterious accident, meet a strange homeless man with secrets, and discover a dead body in a dumpster. Somehow, the writers of “Damages” take a crude little whodunit and weave it into a masterpiece of suspense and provocation. Somehow, by simply presenting a volley of edgy, brief scenes and odd little clues, they pull us in: Who is this Julian? What does he have on Patty? Why is Patty messing with Ellen? Where is Tobin’s money stashed?

Is my wiring really so easily jumped? The mind reels. Why in the world do I care?

It would be easy enough to reduce “Damages” to the status of a pulpy page-turner. After all, it’s all plot, right? Start with a story that we’re already invested in (Bernie Madoff) but that’s still shrouded in mystery even now that Madoff is doing time, throw in some high stakes for everyone involved, toss in a mystery man and a murder, and we’re sold.

“Damages” could be far worse and still have an audience, as evidenced by the glut of lackluster whodunits on the air. Despite appearances, though, this show transcends the base level of twisty procedurals with one thing: Patty Hewes. Like Tony Soprano, Vic Mackey or Al Swearengen, Patty Hewes is that formidable villainess that makes the whole crazy mess sing. “Oh sure, she hisses at people. How compelling,” you’re thinking, and who would blame you? The world tends to encounter the nasty, powerful female character as a stroke of genius even when her evil is limited to a few cutting words and a willingness to slash someone across the face with her pointy red nails.

But Patty Hewes is different. She’s a self-serving manipulator, sure, but she’s guided by some odd mix of vanity, pride, vengeance, a commitment to appearances, a genuine desire to seek justice for the underdog, and the vaguest outlines of a conscience. Even after two seasons, during which Hewes has proven that she’s willing to screw over almost anyone to win her cases and have her way, we’re still not completely sure what the woman is and isn’t capable of. She is haunted by her crimes, there’s no doubt about that. It’s hard not to be a little bit daunted when your husband ditches you and your own son tells you, “People either leave you, or they die. Those are the only two endings possible.”

What’s interesting about Patty is that she keeps thriving in spite of everything — or is she just appearing to thrive? Glenn Close shows us so much of Patty’s emotions, but she also keeps a tight lid on Patty’s deepest desires. When Patty is offered a chance to bring love back into her life, will she take it? We can’t tell. She’s utterly unpredictable, and that brings  a palpable charge to every scene she’s in. She moves through the world as this confrontational, straight-talking lawyer, but in truth she’s unable to speak honestly or directly to anyone in her life, sending Ellen odd gifts (As a sign of allegiance? Remorse? Because she wants a favor?), making warm, friendly statements that can also sound like veiled threats.

But when Julian refers to her “mask,” Patty really does seem to believe that with her, “what you see is what you get.”

Of course, the most dangerous people in the world are the ones who have mastered the art of self-deception. And if there’s one thing Patty Hewes is better at than fooling others, it’s fooling herself. Even if Patty seems benign at the outset of Season 3, even if that seething, enraged dragon lady is nowhere to be found, in Patty’s own words, “She’ll be back. Trust me.“ 

Back in reality, creative professionals of every stripe are pegged with the word “aspiring” well past their prime. Told again and again that every step forward requires the kindness of strangers, they reach self-consciously through the Internets toward strangers (who are, themselves, perpetually “aspiring”) whose best advice is that they must continue to reach out, without shame, to more strangers, and hope for more kindness. At the end of this yellow brick road, even success feels like it was cobbled together from a series of favors and failures. “How did you manage it?” kind strangers will ask you, but really, they’re just about to ask for a favor themselves.

Meanwhile, an angelic choir of suited, earpiece-adorned agents and lawyers and executives chime in with a rousing chorus of “It’s a big world after all!”

Dream-ah! You’re nothing but a dream-ah!

The American dream is just that, now: a dream. There’s only one way to ascend to that precious realm of catered cocktails by a sparkling blue pool floating above an endless maze of smoggy auto body shops and El Pollo Locos: by using your powers of imagination.

Recognizing this odd moment in our history when creative success is something gaseous that depends on just the right conditions, then evaporates in seconds, comedian Marc Wootton, a more complicated, more perverse and arguably just as brilliant version of Sacha Baron Cohen, lands in Los Angeles armed with three tenacious alter egos poised to grab the zeitgeist by its skinny throat and choke the life out of it: Gary Garner, an aspiring actor/confused meathead with an unfortunate penchant for tedious anecdotes; Brendan Allen, an aspiring documentary filmmaker determined to bend inconvenient facts to his will to suit his narrative; and Shirley Ghostman, a psychic in a white suit who, when things go south, resorts to snapping in people’s faces in order to put them in a trance. In Showtime’s “La La Land” (premieres 11 p.m. Monday, Jan. 25) Wootton’s three characters arrive in the promised land determined to make it, no matter what.

Along the way, Wootton’s alter egos encounter a steady lineup of real human beings who tolerate their obnoxious, semi-repugnant behaviors for as long as they humanly can, presumably because they themselves are striving, the cameras are rolling, and to do otherwise might be unseemly. Just as Cohen uses Ali G, Bruno and Borat’s awkwardness and “foreigner” status as a means of forcing random strangers into a state of extreme kindness, Wootton presents three characters who are made to draw out the peculiar mix of entertainment professionals, semi-professionals and miscellaneous secretly aspiring types who reside in L.A. and uniformly seem to clamor for a chance to join in the madness in front of any functioning camera.

With Wootton, though, the fun only lasts so long before things get very, very dark. Clad in an awful combination of lime-green too-small polo shirt, gray too-small Members Only jacket, and perpetually in-place Bluetooth earpiece, Wootton becomes actor Gary Garner, a guy who moves through the world with the graceless, lumbering, guffawing charms of a confused donkey. Wootton’s meaty face and beady little eyes and the bizarre red crew cut and awful teeth he wears really work for him in this role, particularly when Gary offers to demonstrate his fine acting chops, which mostly consist of making a deliriously funny face best described as a rhesus monkey being shocked by a high-voltage current.

Even the ass-kissing bystanders of Los Angeles are horrified on the spot by Gary, but that doesn’t stop them from begrudgingly playing along, starting with the former starlet Ruta Lee, that irrepressible variety of aging diva that floats through her photograph-and-memorabilia-cluttered house with a white feather boa around her shoulders, happy to wax philosophic on the business. Los Angeles is filled with women like Ruta, of course, but that doesn’t make her any less charming, particularly when she’s brusquely cutting Gary off mid-sentence and leveling with him, “You’re a baby when it comes to this business!” And, “Your little facacta ideas don’t mean anything!”

It’s hard not to wonder how Wootton’s producers found Lee or how she reacted when she discovered he was playing make-believe with her. In some ways, in fact, “La La Land” can feel, as Baron Cohen’s show sometimes did, like a really smart version of “Punk’d” without the big reveal at the end. On the other hand, Wootton doesn’t need a big reveal for him to have you on the floor, doubled over in pain, weeping into your carpet over the exquisite absurdity of what he pulls off with total strangers. Wootton dips as far into darkness as even Baron Cohen, but instead of merely relying on cursing and butt thongs to create comic gold, Wootton crafts a well-thought-out narrative and puts a few props in place before he meets his real-life characters.

Take Brendan Allen, who at first appears to be the least interesting of Wootton’s three alter egos. Nothing can quite match the absurdity of this scene, in which Brendan explains to producer Jeff Schubert his intention to create a “Touching the Void”-style documentary about two climbers.

Brendan: Two guys, climbing buddies, they go up kind of an icy mountain, one of them takes a tumble. I’m close enough to get the cracks in the bones, the blood splattering on the lens, and they have to live off their own piss for a week.

Schubert: So this is scripted, right?

Brendan: No, actually …

Schubert: So you would have to randomly wait and see someone die?

Brendan: Well, not necessarily die, because I think it would be nice if there were a nice upbeat ending, where maybe they get found at the last minute.

Schubert: But how would they be in this much peril, and it be on camera …

Brendan: I’m gonna film it.

Schubert: But, for the audience’s sake, you know, you’re going on this documentary to film these two guys climbing, oh by the way, one of them just happened to …

Brendan: Yes, it’ll look like an accident. It needs to look like an accident, otherwise I’m going to be in a lot of legal shit, because they’ll say, “He tampered with the ropes!”

Schubert: Right, it’ll look like an accident. Boom, this is what just happened to happen, and boom, and then you’re filming it … (pause) That could work. Absolutely.

Before you can catch your breath from that stunning glimpse of Hollywood depravity, Brendan finds two climbers who are game to be filmed on one of their climbing trips, and they all set off for the day. Brendan explains, as they’re driving in the car, that he likes to do his narration live. So, as the cameras roll, he murmurs ominously into the microphone, “There was nothing about the day that seemed out of the ordinary. Everything seemed perfectly fine. You could say eerily fine.” One of the climbers, Bob, looks disturbed by this, but says nothing.

When they arrive at the climbing site, Brendan starts to anger the other climber, Tony, with his attempts to mold reality to fit his predetermined narrative.

Brendan: And would you say, your relationship with Bob, he’s kind of guided you, he’s helped you in a fatherly way?

Tony: Uh, I don’t see it that way.

Brendan: He’s like a father figure.

Tony: No, he’s not. You’re wrong. This guy is seven or eight years older than me. We’re almost the same age!

A few minutes later, things break down entirely and Tony storms off, at which point Brendan goes to Bob and tells him, “Can you calm him down? Talk to him as a dad to a son.” And later: “He’s your son, speak to him!”

After that, Brendan tries to patch things up with Bob by showing him his storyboards: “Look. You meet at the climbing store. You go climb. Look, if you just call him back, we can get this.”

“But what’s this? Let’s take a look,” Bob asks after catching a glimpse of a storyboard in which one of the climbers is depicted falling on his back and spurting blood, then drinking a bottle that has an arrow pointing to it that says “Own piss.”

“No!” Allen says, covering that frame with his hand. “It just ends … we can end with you climbing.”

If I’m going into a lot of detail here, it’s because this second episode of “La La Land,” featuring Brendan Allen and the climbers, may be the single funniest thing I’ve seen on TV in the past year. For Wootton to take one of the world’s most odious and repugnant archetypes — the self-important documentary filmmaker — and then capture the insanity as we watch him force reality to fit his story arc?

It’s just too rich. And as clear as it is that, unlike Borat or Bruno, Brendan Allen is the guy you’re supposed to really loathe in this picture, once the park rangers arrive and it looks like Brendan and his camera lady (Kiki, an exotic dancer who isn’t in on the joke but appears willing to cut the climbers’ ropes for the sake of Brendan’s documentary) might end up in jail, it’s hard not to wonder if Marc Wootton himself isn’t some kind of evil provocateur, if not an outright sociopath.

I spoke with Wootton on the phone in order to find out (the interview will appear after readers have had a chance to see a few episodes of the show) and, well, he seems like a very nice guy, actually. Also, as good as he is at pulling people in, stringing them along, engaging them and, in some cases, tormenting them until they can’t take it anymore, he does seem to aim his worst stunts at people, from volunteer border patrol to so-called psychics to proselytizing actors, who truly deserve to be grilled as the cameras roll. And where in the world but L.A. can you find such a delicious assortment of industry types who cry out for some uncomfortable but ultimately harmless hazing?

Most of all, “La La Land” captures the jackassery inherent to striving. None of us are above it, after all. When Gary Garner grits his gigantic teeth and looms awkwardly by the bar at a networking party or Shirley Ghostman makes queasily bad small talk at a casting call for psychics, we laugh out loud, but we recall that humbling moment where we reached for our business cards with wobbly hands, or tapped out our latest thin-veiled self-promotional drivel on Twitter. We’re a nation of strivers whose secret dreams amount to a nowhere land of smoke and mirrors, a steady succession of favors and failures, pointless aspiration without end, Amen. Or, as Garner puts it, “I’m Gary Garner, the best actor in the world, ever. Bish bash bosh!” 

Likewise “Caprica,” SyFy’s much-anticipated “Battlestar Galactica” prequel, suffers from the awkward starting block of presenting “the burgeoning technology of artificial intelligence and robotics that will eventually lead to the creation of the Cylons,” but it’s also charged with exploring the same looming questions that “Battlestar” did over the course of its run. This means that, not only does every plot point of “Caprica” feel like a big, obvious explanation for the far more compelling original (“So that’s how the Cylons were created to think for themselves!” “Ah, that’s why the Cylons are monotheistic!”), but the whole thing is stuffed with the worst sorts of flashy but skin-deep characters. Here’s a rebellious teenager with delusions of grandeur, an arrogant, heartbroken father turning to technology to cure his grief, a working-class girl hungering for some way to belong, a nurturing nun who’s also a drug addict.

Feeling dizzy yet? Sure, as with the “Star Wars” prequel, there are plenty of provocative scenes to pull you in, whether it’s a Cylon prototype blowing up smaller robots with merciless efficiency (I don’t recall the Centurions from “Battlestar” being such good shots) or two fathers, Daniel Graystone and Joseph Adama, reunited (in a virtual world) with their poor, dead daughters. We know by now that creators Ronald D. Moore and David Eick are skillful at translating their groovy story ideas into compelling, emotionally wrenching snapshots of anguish or ominous portrayals of arrogance and bluster among the ruling elite. We also know that they’ll weave in heavy-handed commentary on class, race, gender, religion, politics and anything else that might lend this soapy robot circus more intellectual flair and street cred.

On “Battlestar Galactica” these elements usually felt organic, like another smart layer to complement an already full plate of suspense, action and the emotional reverberations and post-traumatic shock befitting the wake of a nuclear holocaust. But on “Caprica,” hearing the same echoes of meaning sort of feels like seeing Yoda fly: It’s cool and everything, but it’s also out of step with our understanding of him. Basically, we want Yoda bickering with R2D2 on swampy Dagoba, not leaping through the air or playing preschool teacher to a bunch of saucer-eyed “younglings.”

And just as we knew the damn younglings were going to get slaughtered the second they ambled adorably into the picture, we recognize early on that Zoe (Alessandra Torresani), with her big, pretty Zooey Deschanel look-alike face and her genius brain and her girly, foot-stomping alienation, is going to use her talents for evil rather than good. She hangs out in a virtual club where people virtually slaughter each other for fun and entertainment, after all. Or are we just prejudiced against the sensationalistic hobbies of this younger generation?

See how everything in “Caprica” reverberates with the most irritatingly primitive social commentary? Maybe this kind of button-pushing — Terrorist teens! Sexy murder/dance club! Criminal underworlds! Thoughtful robots! — was present in the “Battlestar” series, and we were just too distracted by the gigantic spaceships and look-alike robot spies to mind. Maybe it was the weight of the nuclear holocaust, looming at the edges of every frame, that legitimized the soapiness of “Battlestar.” All I know is, now that we’re on Caprica, “58 years before the fall,” i.e., the nuclear attack by the Cylons, the story feels like the worst sort of retread: “Caprica” has few of the charms of the original series, and because it’s a prequel, it doesn’t even further the story. We’re forced to rewind to a time that’s less weighty and less intriguing, yet everyone is walking around talking to each other in the same over-the-top heavy tones that made sense within the claustrophobic confines of “Galactica” but just feel unnecessarily melodramatic here. Not only does every line feel too obvious, but it’s tripped up by clumsy back story. It’s as if we’re being treated to some bullet-pointed character profile where key traits are highlighted, circled and underlined three times.

“You have no idea what it means to build something, or to work hard for anything! It’s all just been handed to you, Zoe!” says Zoe’s mom (Polly Walker).

“We come from a long, proud line of Tauron peasants!” Joseph Adama (Esai Morales) tells his son (Sina Najafi). “You’re named after your grandfather, I ever tell you that? William. He was killed after the Tauron uprising.”

“Let’s be clear. I don’t like your boss, I don’t like your planet, and I don’t like your people!” a high-level government official practically spits at Joseph Adama.

“Blood for blood!” Sam (Sasha Roiz) says to his brother, Joseph. “It’s the Tauron way!”

“You mean only the gods have power over death? Well, I reject that notion!” says Daniel Graystone (Eric Stoltz), Zoe’s father and the head of the company that’s working on creating the Cylons.

“When did you ever listen? You and Mom, you knew it all!” Zoe’s avatar says to Daniel. “Your arrogance was killing your daughter!”

It was easy to take issue with those who called “Battlestar” foolish: There was so much suspense and action and political intrigue in the mix that a few dippy scenes where Starbuck and Lee made googoo eyes at each other or Six and Baltar debated the meaning of life for the 50th time were tolerable. Somehow the same clunky philosophizing and heartfelt confessions fall flat in “Caprica.” Although the second and third episodes of the prequel are a little more intriguing and less gummed up with melodrama than the pilot, the overall picture is a world apart from the dynamism and intensity of “Battlestar.”

When grieving daddies first try to reunite virtually with their dead daughters, then become enemies, when monotheist nuns hatch eeevil plans and Cylons all but scribble in their diaries about their no-good very-bad days, it’s hard not to wish that we could pick up in the hopelessly cheesy spot we left “Battlestar” instead, with Bill Adama making a happy little Cro-Magnon family on the planet Earth. As Daniel Graystone and Joseph Adama know all too well, sometimes anything is better than trying to recapture the past.