“The Bends”
Almost Human gets back to it’s Dredd influence in this episode that has Detective Kennex investigating a violent gang that creates designer drugs from algae.
The episode begins with a man (wearing a wire) and a “cook” getting a meeting with a drug Kingpin, known as the Bishop. Turns out the man is wearing a wire. Undercover. The two infiltrators end up dead.
Dorian and John are having a meal at a Japanese restaurant. Well, John is. Dorian (who doesn’t eat) wants to leave. John shows off his knowledge of Japanese culture and says it’s rude to leave before finishing a meal and that they will leave when he is done. Dorian speaks to the chef in Japanese and orders John a LIVE snail. Eat up. Don’t be rude, huh? (John, to his credit, eats the slimy creature.)
Back at the precinct, it is discovered that the man killed was a cop… but that he had no current undercover cases. So what was he doing there? Was he dirty? If he was, why would he have been wearing a wire. The man’s name was Cooper, he was a friend of John’s (who he hadn’t seen in 5 years) and his trunk was full of drugs. Cooper’s boss comes in to speak to Maldonado and he tells her that recently Cooper had been going off the rails.
John doesn’t buy it. After getting a tip from Coop’s wife, they head up to a remote cabin to search for clues, anything to give away Cooper’s motivation. And they find a receiver that Cooper’s wire was transmitting to. The show doesn’t dwell on it, but they listen to the meeting, Cooper trying to get the Bishop to say that he distributes “the Bends” and the hear him about to die on the recording.
John demands that Maldonado send him in undercover. Maldonado declines. Says he can’t pull it off. He doesn’t have the background in chemistry needed. But they know someone who does. Rudy! The man who refurbished Dorian! They prep him as best they can in such a short time… which is not well. But after some bumps (like introducing himself by his real name), Rudy get’s to create and proves himself valuable. He even gets to meet the real Bishop (Coops boss, Alex).
They figure out it’s an inside job when Rudy is forced to swallow the anti-serum to the liquid GPS that Rudy had choked down earlier. With no way to track Rudy, Kennex and Dorian start ummm… questionably legal investigative techniques.
Rudy pulls a daring escape when “the Bishop” gets concerned that his henchman isn’t answering his phone. He escapes with a bullet to the arm. Dorian saves him by decapitating an android. John catches Alex. And then later he begrudgingly takes them to a cop bar for celebratory beers.
But to go into more detail: When John and Dorian press the Henchman for info about Rudy’s whereabouts… they out and out torture him, shoving fingers into his bullet wounds (you can tell me they ‘had to’ I might agree). But Alex is blatantly unable to escape, flee or fight John. He is immobile could be easily detained… but he shouts at John and tells him that he’s a Captain and he’ll get away with it, says that no one will believe in John. And John shoots him dead. Just like that. The show seemed to brush it off, and no one from the department asked about the circumstances (even though investigation would have shown the Alex was sitting on the ground bleeding where John shot him in the chest), just ‘yay, it’s over’. Does John have less faith in the system he helps uphold? was he overcome with a need for revenge? I NEED TO KNOW. Because without knowing the internal motivation …and frankly, maybe even with it… that was MURDER.
Minka Kelly’s detective Stahl is still largely relegated to the sidelines while John and Dorian do all the investigating. But next week’s sneak peeks make it seem that is changing.
Dorian and John’s buddy cop awesomeness is awesome. That live snail thing was epic. Dorian, as a synthetic, is not viewed as a real cop (even though he does all the cop stuff John does), so John taking him to the cop bar (after Dorian’s all banged up and has exposed glowing purple wires protruding from his face, making it obvious that he is a synthetic) is pretty rad. Because they are friends. And they can count on each other. John has proved that he’ll risk himself for Dorian and that he values him… but John has also proved to be unstable and vengeful.
What do you think so far?
timewantsaskeleton 