It seems that with every new episode of The Amazing Digital Circus, the show digs itself a little further into my heart and leaves a piece of itself there. The show has had my rapt attention ever since I watched the pilot last year, and even more so since the second episode's premiere when I realized "Aw hell, this show is actually gonna make me feel emotions." I don't know how to segue into the next thing, so I'll just keep talking.
Something that's fascinated me right from the beginning is Caine, and particularly something he says towards the end of the pilot:
"I do have to apologize for lying about the exit. I knew how much all of you have been wanting there to be one, but, you know, I was having so much trouble figuring out what to put on the other side and ended up never quite finishing it."
It serves as a neat little way to dash out all of Pomni's hopes about the exit at once, but I've always thought it was also quite telling about Caine himself. He's supposed to be "in charge" and "know what's going on", but he also can't wrap his little artificial brain around the concept of anything outside the circus. To him, an exit can only lead to another area of the virtual world, and he doesn't know how to make something that can measure up to what his guests really want, which is their freedom. Looking at the exit door labyrinth in this context, you can kind of see him stalling as Pomni gets closer and closer to the end, like it was meant to build up to a payoff that he ultimately couldn't deliver on.
It's also kind of interesting to me that the "exit" leads to rooms upon rooms of what looks like an office building. The idea that that's the closest thing to reality that Caine can come up with has some pretty interesting implications, especially considering the mysterious C&A branding spotted towards the end. The idea that Caine's view of reality is limited to the domain of his (supposed) creators is fascinating.
I also have to wonder if the digital circus is supposed to trap people inside of it. I mean, if it was, you'd think Caine would be better at dealing with and preventing things like abstraction, wouldn't you? But then, on the other hand, if it's not supposed to do this, and Caine was not programmed with long-term run time in mind, then the poor fellow is forced to overclock and operate outside his intended parameters day in and day out. If this is the case, do you suppose this puts a strain on the computer the digital circus is hosted on?
Where is that computer, anyhow? The final shot of the pilot implies that it's in a room similar (if not identical) to the room Pomni saw towards the end of the exit door labyrinth, but where is that room? How often are people going in there? Is that computer just left on with no one at the keyboard? These are all questions that I'm not confident we'll get answers to, which is fascinating in and of itself. Some stories promise that all will make sense in the end, but other stories don't. Sometimes the grand scheme isn't the most important thing the narrative has to offer, and I'm fairly certain that this is the direction The Amazing Digital Circus is taking. I really dig it, honestly.