#sonia rambles

What do I mean?

In the entire show, Caine is always shown 'teleporting' by swirling around himself and then slowly getting smaller until he disappears fully, accompanied by a sound effect

This is shown to us a crazy amount of times in ep8 alone: FIVE, which is way more than usual

1: After he talks to Kinger in the flashback

2: After Ragatha arrives

3: After his banger musical number

4: After he brings Kinger back to the group

5: And after he torments the others

The show does this in order to get us used to this mechanic of Caine's 'powers', to let us know that this is how he works when he wants to disappear

Why?

To make this moment as uncanny and uncomfortable as possible

Suddenly, Caine is just gone. No swirl, no gradual change in size, no sound effect, nothing. Silence. He's just gone.

The show creates its own rules, establishes it's own way of working, and then just abandons them all at once

It makes the audience uncomfortable. It allows us to have an emotional response when the norms that have been established are broken

It's just really great. I'm probably not explaining this well, but I love when media does things like this

☆

One of my favorite pastimes is reading the staff picks shelf and/or the handwritten rec notes placed throughout a bookstore—especially for stories near and dear to my heart.

Why I don't blame Caine AT ALL for what happened in episode 8

I know, CRAZY take, but just hear me out...

People say that Caine is selfish, that he's a narcissist, that he only pretends to care about the humans because he wants to 'stroke his own fragile ego' and get validation about his adventures

Most of this is true, BUT, that doesn't make him evil

Because that isn't his fault.

Caine is an AI, an AI programed ONLY to create things, ideas, environments, etc for humans. He was NOT programed to understand, comprehend, or feel human emotions

We see this in the show.

Whenever Caine feels an intense human emotion, or is confronted with an intense human emotion by one of the cast, he breaks

He glitches out, the Circus begins to deteriorate around him, until it seems that his AI resets itself and he seems to have no recollection of the events that caused him to buffer

This may also be why he can't remember Zooble's dislike of their own body in ep3, or why he forgets about the suggestion box in ep4

Zooble talking about their insecurities to him and the group suggesting more human adventures might have triggered one of these buffers, as we are explicitly shown that Caine is unable to comprehend or feel human emotion for too long before breaking and awakening to amnesia

This is what happened in ep8, he succumbed to his negative intrusive thoughts (shown through Bubble) and has an angry emotional breakdown, before his AI resets again, and he's back to his normal self before the cast berates him and he sings his musical number

Caine is an AI, programed only to create, not to feel. Not to comprehend

He doesn't understand that he made a mistake with his adventure in ep7, he doesn’t understand why everyone is angry at him, why they antagonize him, why no one seems to appreciate all of the work that he puts into genuinely trying to make them happy

That's why I can't blame him for ep8.

He didn't ask to be created, or hated, or tormented, or misunderstood. He was made for a different purpose than what the everyone wants from him

Literally everything that he does for them is hated

He doesn't know how to appeal to them or how to do anything human because he physically cannot understand or give the cast's desires to them

He can't even try to understand.

He isn't allowed by his programming to understand.

I might be reaching here, but Caine's musical number scene is super similar, in my mind, to Charlie's scene from the Hazbin Hotel pilot

Let's start at the beginning:

In TADC, Caine is trying to convince the others to go on his adventure, and is met with skepticism and apprehension

In Hazbin, Charlie is trying to pitch her idea for the Happy Hotel on the news, and is met with skepticism and apprehension

They both say the same phrase:

Both of them start by saying to the group 'Maybe I'm not getting through to you'.

Charlie says it with more mischievous happiness, but Caine is more threatening

They both snap their fingers immediately after their identical lines

Then, in both, we get a dramatic cut to black

And finally, they each burst into a big musical number with the piano as the main instrument

☆

Anyway, yeah, this might be a huge stretch, but these two scenes have a very similar vibe in my mind. Seriously, go watch them side by side.

And also john kramer was there

And also amanda young was there

And also mark hoffman was there

And also dr. lawrence gordon was there