Title: “The Reins of a Waterfall”

Writer: Michael Angeli

Director: Ron D. Moore

Story: “Caprica” opens this week on the heels of Amanda Graystone’s (Paula Malcomson) shocking, yet ironically untrue, public revelation of her daughter Zoe’s (Alessandra Torresani) participation in the terrorist bombing of the Mag-Lev train. Like last week’s post-pilot premiere, “Reins” is all over the character map, giving us brief glimpses into the assortment of developing events that grew out of the incident. The Graystones are in the media doghouse, the police continue to hound them, Zoe’s friend Lacy (Magda Apanowicz) is still being courted for information about Zoe by the school headmistress and secret member of The Soldiers of the One, and the Adamas remain players in Caprica’s criminal underworld. A new player joins the party, in the form of popular talk show host Baxter Sarno (Patton Oswalt), and he’s not a fan of the Graystone revelations.

Big Fan: Oswalt’s participation in “Reins” is minimal, but we’re going to see a lot more of him next week when Daniel Graystone (Eric Stoltz) appears on his show in the hopes of shifting the public’s vitriol away from Graystone Industries. Probably at the expense of casting a larger shadow across his daughter’s memory. Oswalt’s Sarno is minimally developed, seen only briefly in televised clips, but he comes off as a cross between Jon Stewart, Jay Leno and maybe a little Jerry Springer.

All About Adama: The Adama family continues to provide the show’s most compelling narrative so far. This is likely in part due to it offering the most direct connection for fans of “Battlestar Galactica” to that sequel series. They’re also just more interesting: given how the story turns out in “BSG,” redemption will undoubtedly come for Joseph (Esai Morales) and his son Willy (Sina Najafi), but this week they continue along their own separate spirals into the Caprican underworld. They are helped along this path by Joseph’s brother Sam (Sasha Roiz), an openly gay Tauron enforcer and one of the series’ most compelling characters thus far.

Lacy & Zoe: There’s very little further development this week as far as Zoe goes. Trapped in her robot body, she still wants to follow through with her flesh-and-blood creator’s plans to get to the planet Geminon. Only Lacy can help her, by getting to the bottom of what Zoe’s boyfriend-terrorist Ben Stark (Avan Jogia) had planned before he blew himself up. I suspect this is going to turn into something of a red herring; Ben never planned to make it to Geminon. Why he decided to sacrifice Zoe as well remains to be seen, but the boy wouldn’t have dressed himself in an explosive suit if he had any intention of making it off-world. Not that Lacy knows this, or anyone else among the living for that matter.

Dangling Threads: Perhaps we can chalk this up to the infancy of the series, but in this third episode there’s still too broad a focus. We’re looking at the ensemble cast and their various plot threads on a macro level, getting a broad picture of what’s going on but very little in the way of fine details. It was easier to condense on “BSG,” given the closed nature of the surroundings. ‘Caprica”’s more open setting — heaven forbid we move to another of the Twelve Colonies anytime soon — introduces some complications in that regard, an issue that Moore, Eick and their team will hopefully resolve as we get to know the characters a little better.

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