The opening credits of a show can be the most important thirty seconds of any given episode. In Battlestar Galactica the title sequence did an excellent job of building up anticipation for the next hour of television, teasing viewers with flashes of scenes throughout the episode in a way that was both exciting and a little fatalistic. It revealed just enough to reel the audience in without giving away major plot twists. Caprica's title sequence consists of a flashy, descriptive set of images that more or less boil each of the main characters down to a few basic qualities. For the most part it's been inoffensive and easy to dismiss, but tonight those opening credits took the punch out of half of the episode's action.

At the end of "Reins of a Waterfall" Joseph Adama told his gangster brother Sam to put the knives to Amanda Graystone. So, much of "Gravedancing" involved Sam staking out the Graystone mansion and Joseph having second, third, fourth and millionth thoughts about the order. Of course there was never any real danger that Amanda would end the episode on ice. She's one of the people in the title sequence, so there's no way she would be taken out of the action so early. Caprica doesn't have a big enough cast or a disposition brutal enough to off main characters with the frequency of its predecessor. This wouldn't be a detriment to the show if whole episodes didn't hinge on mortal tension.

Thankfully, there were three other plots at work in "Gravedancing". While Amanda is narrowly but predictably escaping death, Daniel is preparing to go on Baxter Sarno's late night talk show. This gave Eric Stoltz a lot of room to play with the nuances of Daniel's character. So far he's done a remarkable job with what has turned out to be the most complex role on the show. He plays Daniel as a simultaneously decent and utterly disconnected man, the type of guy who wants to believe he doesn't exploit his wealth and power but can't resist doing so in a moment of weakness. He'll pay a makeup artist a thousand cubits to let him smoke one cigarette in her chair, maybe just because he can.

In the meantime, Sister Clarice has to deal with a sudden police raid on the school, just barely warning her teenage terrorists in time for them to move the TNT out of their lockers. The mysterious forewarning that tipped Clarice off to the raid suggests that there's a STO mole in the Global Defense Department. Given that we only know three characters there and one of them is clearly on the warpath, all signs point to either the blonde detective who interrogated Ben Stark or the ethically challenged chief. That development will likely become more interesting later.

I'm devoting this line and this line only to Zoe-bot and her dance routine because it was boring, pointless and added nothing to the episode.

The best part of the episode is the reveal that Grandma Adama is every bit as criminal as Sam. Watching her chop up that chicken with her tattooed arm made it clear where Old Admiral Bill gets his mean streak. With each passing episode, Joseph seems more and more the odd man out among his Tauron family.

As with the rest of the series thus far, the most interesting part of the show is Caprican society itself. It's a kind of topsy-turvy version of our own. While everything from homosexuality and polygamy to drug use is just a part of the mainstream, there's still a conservative edge to public opinion of things like the media and racial issues. When Caprica concentrates on these social concepts it's strong, but the soap opera stuff really weighs down everything else.

Best Moment: Patton Oswalt was awesome as Baxter Sarno. He hit every note in the late night talk show host schtick and it was hard to hate him even though he was a disturbingly right-wing version of our own liberal pundits.

Notes: Sam's bull-on-a-spring dashboard ornament was a nice touch.

Episode Rating: 4/5- The stuff with Amanda was predictable and took up too much time, but everything else was interesting and well-played. Also, Jane Espenson's script popped as most of her work tends to do.