Extant- Episode 3

John comforts Molly with science after her miscarriage. He had already been working on an android and decides that they should raise the program. Molly, in her grief, volunteered to go into space. Molly is remembering all this while she lays in bed.

John wakes up and proposes that they throw Molly a birthday celebration since she missed her birthday in space.

Ethan is nervous about orientation. Molly is going for an invigorated run, her health monitors encourage her to slow down, she sees a spaceship blast off. Orientation doesn’t go so hot, There are angry villagers there who call Ethan “a toaster.” 

Molly tries to see Harman but he’s not there, he’s drawn weird circle patterns (like the one that appeared on Molly’s stomach) on the wall. Sam is disappointed that Molly still hasn’t told John about the pregnancy. She says some version of, “the timing isn’t right.” 

At the party Sam takes Molly’s blood (which is weird). Molly’s dress is fantastic.

Then Molly collapses and sees herself in space with Marcus. A bit later, John’s lab tech tries to flirt and insert herself into their family structure, but John pays no mind. Marcus’s brother arrives at the party, and Molly has a misunderstanding when he says that he sees Marcus everywhere.

The power goes out. John finds something moving in a box and finds it’s a chicken that Ethan caught earlier. Ethan doesn’t understand what things need food or water. John says, “no more birds and no more secrets.” That prompts Ethan to say that “mom says secrets are okay if you don’t want someone to worry.” John confronts Molly. Then she confesses.

Sparks said that the ISE implanted something in her without her consent. Which is gross and weird. 

As the party wraps up Molly looks for Tim (Marcus’s brother) to say goodbye. Her husband keeps saying that he is not there. She remembers him next to her in a group photo, which is on a screen… but there’s a empty space next to her. SO YOU ARE TELLING ME: THAT NO ONE STOOD NEXT TO HALLE AT HER OWN DAMN BIRTHDAY PARTY?! John tries to calm her but she says she’s losing it, she insists she saw Tim there, saw him talking to other people. The secrets all come out and she manically recounts her hallucinations. She goes off with Sparks because Sam will be there and something bad is happening and she trusts Sam.

Sam tries to go to her office but is held up by security, she sneaks around and shee’s that they are taking her files. Knowing they can’t be trusted she tries to call Molly, she gets John, expresses concern and then texts Molly to get out of the car. 

Molly goes for might over cunning. I thought she would fake morning sickness for sure. Anyway, Molly grabs the wheel, the car swerves and she gets out and runs as we see weird circles protruding on her torso. John is behind them and picks her up.

This show is getting serious. So much craziness, and what could ISE be up to? Halle Berry is just so phenomenal. Her/Molly’s meltdown after discovering the truth about Tim was astonishingly painful to watch. She has no idea who to trust and those she trusts are in danger… with still no clue as to why. And the plot doesn’t center around Ethan. And for Molly the baby she is carrying isn’t even the main focus., she wants to know why she has been betrayed, not gushing over possibilities. 

Which is good, because it’s majorly sick that they implanted something in her against her will and caused her to have abnormal brain scans and jeopardized her physical and mental well being as well as her family life and career ENTIRELY. 

Is Harlan real? 

I hate that Julie is being written as a romantic rival for Molly. I enjoy that John entertains none of it (and that he is supportive of Molly even when dealing with insane situations). Julie being flirty toward John and catty towards Molly her behavior makes it seem as though she is infringing on thei parenting and inserting herself into their family situation. But rather Ethan is her life’s work, too. Not just John’s.It would be nice if she was portrayed as John’s colleague and not a potential hook up.

Extant- episode 1

I’m a little wary of this show. Mostly because the overall premise is that a woman gets impregnated without consenting.

But there are things I immediately like. Halle Berry on primetime network, interracial marriage on prime time network, a mother with a high profile job, a black mother with a high profile STEM job on prime time network. 

Halle Berry’s character, Molly has just returned from space. 13 months alone. When she returns home she’s feeling ill while getting ready for her son’s party. She assumes that she’s just readjusting to earth. Her son’s party goes well, but the child pushes another and his father scolds him (no “boys will be boys” attitude? nice!). Molly’s female friends ask her how her family manages so well, her being away for so long, missing her family, her family doing family things without a matriarch and she is nonplussed. As the father tucks in the child in we see that he is an android.

The son was created, designed and programmed by the father.

Molly wakes up and looks through old news articles, photos of her and Marcus. A former romantic partner who passed away. 

Her friend and doctor, Sam calls her in. Molly’s tests have returned. She’s pregnant. Not only was she alone in space, but she wasn’t able to conceive with her husband. This is what lead her husband to “create”/program Ethan. 

Molly flashes back to an issue on the spaceship when they passed by a solar flare. She lost power and saw Marcus on the ship.13 hours missing from the log, when she meets with the panel she says she accidentally deleted the security footage instead of copying it. They don’t believe her, because she doesn’t make mistakes like that.

Ethan’s father presents his research to Yasimoto Corp, but Humantix is denied funding after he wiles out on a woman for saying his son is not equal to her daughter because Ethan doesn’t have a “soul.” He replies that Ethan has what all children have, synapses, shared experiences. Life.

Molly’s bosses contact Yasimoto and tell him that funding was denied, so Yasimoto reaches out and backs Humantix as a private citizen to get closer to the family.

Molly takes Ethan to the park for icecream, after getting a balloon with a note, Molly tells Ethan that it is time to go. He drops his icecream and lashes out and runs off, Molly chases him and finds him with a dead bird. Ethan says it was like that when he got there.

Molly is creeped out. She relays such to her husband so says Ethan is just adjusting to her return and ends with a hostile “that kid is the closest we will come to having a child!” Which, since Molly is hiding a pregnancy is not true at all.

They make up the next day. Tensions are high and no one said anything that wasn’t true. Molly is scheduled to see a psychiatrist, a previous astronaut committed suicide and now the psych evals are required. She has more flashbacks. She hallucinated Marcus coming to her on the spacecraft, she freaked out and deleted the tapes, on the footage Marcus wasn’t visible, but you could see her reaching out to him.

Then, back at home, the astronaut wo supposedly had killed himself shows up in her yard, he tells her that he is not a hallucination (so he knows about the hallucinations) and tells her not to trust anyone as her husband calls her in for dinner.

So there is a lot going on. How would a hallucination cause her to become pregnant? How would her employers have impregnate her? If that was the goal, why would they send a man first? Is her son really a creep, or did he just find a dead bird? 

Great first episode for something that seemed convoluted.

I enjoyed the next level future science: the synthetic soul (to steal the term from “Almost Human”), private sector space travel. And the it was coupled with societal standards that may never match society’s progress with science no matter how much we know: gender roles (Molly’s friends asking her how she manages to have her career) and the concept of intangible humanity that keeps us separate from other creature (and in this case:robots).

And that’s just a fabulous haircut that Halle has.

Fantastic Female Friday- Hot Ice Hilda (Outlaw Star)

The mere mention of her name gets a strong reaction from Outlaws, pirates and space forces alike. She steals and android from notorious Chinese pirate guild, the Kei Pirates, and in an altercation that ends with the death of their leader at her hands.. she loses one of them, and an eye. She gets a cybernetic arm and swears vengeance! Doesn’t that sound wonderful? Sadly, Hot Ice Hilda only lives 2 episodes in to Outlaw Star.

Hilda’s pursued by the Kei pirates across space and crash lands on Sentinel III. With her ship and arm in disrepair she plays innocent under the identity of a blonde rich girl named “Rachel Sweet” and cons Gene Starwind into helping her out with materials and repairs. She also enlists him as a bodyguard. When Kei pirates catch her scent, her true identity as the infamous outlaw is revealed. Gene attempts to complete the job he agreed to. He shoots the pirates with the magical and obsolete Caster Gun while Hilda chucks grenades, they make it to the barn where the ship is hidden, Hilda thanks Gene …and then shoots him and takes Jim hostage to finish repairs.

Gene doesn’t die and she ends up taking him along into space (which he’s always been afraid of) they get into various shenanigans and the two have sex. Hilda has the stereotypical warrior/traveller viewpoint and just wants a warm body next to hers. She on the “masculine” side, she yells at Gene when he is scared she is demanding and doesn’t do anything in the way of being sympathetic -but she still encourages him. After a brief stop over on Blue Heaven (where guns are not allowed and she fights with her badass robot hand and a taser) she, Gene, Jim and Melfina return back out into space and they are attacked by Kei Pirates and the outlaws The MacDougal Brothers. Hilda proves that she will do anything to the Kei Pirates. Even if it means her own life… Her message to Gene?  “Outlaws never go down easy, now matter what happens to them.” And she dies taking out the last pirate there to fight.

Hot Ice Hilda is responsible for the whole plot of the series! Hilda was the one searching for the Galactic Leyline. She didn’t know what it was, she just knew Kei pirates wanted it, so she wanted to get it first. And you really can’t argue with that logic. She’s vengeful, but mature and rational, capable, savvy and utterly ruthless. She was the one responsible for getting Gene into space and off Sentinel III where he was a big cocky fish in a small pond. She was the catalyst for so much of the plot. And she was fridged. But she provided more than emotional turmoil for Gene (although there certainly was that), her infamy brought them enemies, her disregard of an order from a Ctarl-Ctarl ship brought the wrath of Aisha Clan-Clan down on Gene and co., her death left Melfina’s existence a mystery and a treasure to be searched for. 

It’s just really awesome to have this REALLY not girly, not conventionally feminine love interest who gets some unassuming man caught up in the adventure of his life. In many adventure fantasies it is a woman getting dragged behind as the plot unfold because of the drive of a man. But in this one everyone else is just along for the ride, whether they want to be or not.

Too bad that she was too badass for a story about some guy with red hair and his 11 year old business partner. (Just kidding I love this show, but it would have been totally different if she hadn’t left Gene alone in space to have his adventure and get vengeance)

Almost Human -Episode 11

Since the episodes were rearranged, making last week’s super heavy drama and Kennex internal struggle and the Anna situation and this one… seemingly nothing about that. We got interesting background plot cookies about Dorian. Dorian received some implanted memories that he tries to make sense of. Rudy puts the kibosh on that, but there’s still the matter of who planted them and why. 

But the central part begins with a family. Their very secure smart-house wrongly identified an innocent teen as a threat and murdered him. Thankfully we don’t spend too many precious seconds that I could by ogling Karl Urban listening to ramblings about the family’s “right to own a smart-house.” If you think this sound like a supertech adaptation of stand-your-ground-laws gone awry: you would be very very right. With Zimmerman never shutting the fuck up, and the recent Dunn trial it’s not hard to see how a terrifying and heartbreaking sci-fi plot could be birthed from these tragedies. But Almost Human made the *interesting decision* to make the teen white and the family black. I think TECHNICALLY the house was still the vigilante/cowboy/wannabe Batman/asshat/murderer. But I’m not on board with the racial switcheroo that happened here. They didn’t lean heavy on it, racism has never been addressed (classism has frequently) and I think we are to believe that 2048 is “post-racial” the episode focussed more largely on flaws in technology that we trust with our lives.  Which is good. People still don’t understand why the “race swap” is bad? Let me take a moment: Families of PoC children have to worry about their children getting shot at for walking down a street and then victims get blamed for what time it was/how they were dressed/crimes someone else committed/other people’s racism and frankly fucking no one has to worry about being murdered by a house, AND people who programmed the house and crunched the data probably would have been skewed to NOT address a white teen cutting through the lawn a threat. That’s why it’s bullshit.

On the positive -background characters are very diverse. A few tropes were apparent (hackers that dress like they are in the matrix, the aforementioned “ironic” race role reversal) but we have brown female CEOs, female hacktivists and EOE for villains all around, every episode. Gender equality for the bad guys.

Oh, and Stahl got out of the station! She went undercover as a hacker! She went with Kennex, “Aussie?” accent +eyeliner. Weirrrrd. But cool.

More cliches survive. Kennex saves the babes and has got jokes. The jokes this time were at Detective Paul’s expense. He was out and Kennex spread increasingly embarrassing rumors about why he was absent.

Maldonado’s reaction was so rad. I love her as a character. 

The early scenes of the house turning against the family were flat out terrifying. 

This show NEEDS to be renewed. NEEDS TO BE. So far no new eps ordered. Makes me nervous. How can FOX cancel so much good Sci-Fi but still air American Dad. Get it together.

Live tweet with me next week! 

Almost Human: Episode 4

“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?

Almost Human: Episode 3

Are You Recieving?

John hops out of bed and puts on his fake leg, he rubs olive oil at the point of attachment, and it seems to be calibrating more easily than usual. 

Elsewhere: A man delivers a package to a woman in an office, he walks out and is stopped by a man with a gun who asks him only his name. James. After being shot dead: said dude with gun and posse break into a server room and put a device in the floor.

We cut back to John and Dorian who are bickering. John is late, he tries to trick Dorian into doing robot stuff to heat up his coffee. Dorian says he knows that the olive oil trick is helping him with his fake leg, John answers that he had a greek salad. At ten AM. Dorian doesn’t buy it.

They get a call. The head over to the building and watch the security footage. The men went up to the 25th floor, disabled the elevator and never left the building. John and Dorian take the stairs while the main bad guy threatens Jenna. Then they set off the device that blows a crater in the middle of the building. 

“I love that you wear your insubordination like it’s a virtue.” -Dorian. Captain Maldonado tells John and Dorian not to pursue the perps til they know what they are dealing with. Back up isn’t there yet. John’s thinking of a plan in the stairway.

Jenna’s sister, Paige, is making an emergency call, all outgoing transmissions are jammed, Dorian intercepts her call. (After replicating a females voice and speaking Portuguese for the previous caller, Dorian replicates John’s voice, says he’s an automated police officer with a difficult personality.) While on the line, the bad guys shoot a hostage. Then they chuck him off the roof with a note that says “No Cops, Stay Out.”

Then they send in a negotiating drone. Interesting.

Bad dudes want a “fission igniter” a trigger mechanism for large explosives.

Back at the station, they uncover that the men are part of a terrorist cell and have done this before. They aren’t afraid to take lives or lose them. 

Greeted by gunfire, John and Dorian pursue and take down one man. At first he seems to be a member of the aforementioned radical terrorist group. But on second look, he’s a common crook wearing a facemaker. Dorian reveals that he has been damaged and will not be able to walk in 5 minutes. John picks a QTip out of the garbage he also has fingernail clippers, he is supposed to be cutting the “magenta tendon” but goes for the one that’ lavender. 

Paige calls back to say that the men keep going to a corner window. And that Jenna is crying, one of the men keeps going over to her. Meanwhile, John is performing surgery on Dorian and patches him up with gum. One of the men that John and Dorian shot reports back and they send more men to cover the stairs. Paige decides that she needs to be with her sister and leaves the utility closet to blend with the crowd. She leaves her phone transmitting so John can still hear.

The igniter is ready for delivery. 

Paige plants the phone in a pile of confiscated phones after asking to use the bathroom. 

The “igniter” passes the initial scan, John and Dorian discover the group is using basically light graffiti to communicate outside. After calculating what’s in the area, the 2 detectives discover that it’s a palladium heist. The men activate another bomb and are set to kill all but 3 hostages.

John decides they are going straight up. Dorian tells John it won’t work. John says he doesn’t have a choice. But it is Dorian who actually doesn’t have a choice. He was created to protect humans. “Dorian. You’ve been shot. You’re head’s full of bubblegum. You can’t do this.” But he does. Climbs up elevator cables, through air ducts and busts in shooting. He takes down several of the men before the main guy gets the drop on him. John busts in with the face maker and tricks them and saves Dorian.

They secure the hostages and dismantle the bomb, unjam the transmissions and the day is saved.

“Come on, let’s go get some noodles.” -John

“You’re aware that I don’t eat.” -Dorian

“Perfect. I’m buying.” -John

And something about that whole exchange reminded me of Blade Runner and Deckard eating noodles at the White Dragon Noodle house.

Episode 3 was really great, more bonding between the partners, John treating Dorian as human. The important questions… how human is human? Dorian is created with empathy, with goals, with interests. Designed to form bonds, comfort, care. He faces off with humans who lack empathy, who are motivated by money and drugs and violence. Dorian is more human. Dorian didn’t want to die, and importantly, John didn’t want him to die either. After the death of his last partner (which he blamed largely on the MX model automated officers) he thought of Dorian facing the same fate and didn’t discount him as a machine doing what he was designed for.

And Dorian talks about it later, says he didn’t want to die. (Something else that this show has in common with Blade Runner, other than the noodles), the DRN models would go berserk in the end, because they were created to be “more human than human” (or Almost Human, whatever) but then are also seen as “less than’ as disposable, as dangerous. And they just want to live, just like the rest of us.

And that last scene, with Dorian singing “Benny and the Jets”? HILARIOUS!

Can’t get enough? Check out this interview with Karl Urban where he talks about futurism, humanity and developing characters over 22 episodes vs. 2 hours. 

Almost Human: episodes 1 + 2

Pilot. 

So the plot of this show, taking place in 2048 is essentially the plot of Dredd, which also starred Karl Urban. Which is fine, I like Dredd, Drugs have taken over schools and streets and cops are given robot reinforcements to help fight drug lords and violent gangs.

Karl Urban is there, as detective John Kennex with his robot back-up who he is arguing with because his robot does not understand the value of human life, he only understands odds, statistics. He does everything he can to save his partner but in the end they are blown to bits by the criminals they were pursuing. 

He’s getting some controversial treatments after being through the trauma and then a 17 month coma.

John gets called in to investigate following an armed robbery. His leg got blown off and he has a mechanical leg. 785 has been assigned to him. He wants a human partner but he is told by Lisa from Six Feet Under that robot partners are mandatory. She shows him the robbery video and points out why she thinks it’s connected to Syndicate. 

Richard, a fellow officer, blames John for getting his partner killed in the raid. He disobeyed instructions… blah blah.

While at the crime scene he has a flashback to the day his partner was killed. The MX says he thinks John had a seizure and he’s going to report what he saw. John says there’s nothing to report (which there is and isn’t) and it goes on from there until John pushes the bot out of the speeding car.

Saying his MX bust have experienced a software malfunction, he goes to get a new one (one who isn’t accusing him of getting black market medical treatment) and they give him a robot that got scrapped, one that was closer to human.

Dorian was decommissioned 4 years ago. “I express most data conversationally, man.” 

Richard calls the new team 2 from the scrap heap. 

Criminals in the same masks as in the robbery kidnap an detective Vogel and destroy his MX and John questions a suspect who was injured in the robbery. He shot himself to get away from the Syndicate. John threatens to throw Dorian out of the car. 

The suspect makes himself vomit and pulls a small explosive out of his stomach and sticks it on the back of the toilet.

They go to find Vogel and Dorian disobeys the MX models. Finding an elaborate trip wire and set up John knows they’ve been tricked. The tries to call in to Patel who is transporting the suspect. 

They gas Vogel right in front of him.

the suspect escapes.

MX units are made to feel nothing, Dorian wasn’t created that way. He read the file where John blamed the MX for leaving his partner behind to save others. 

Vogel was a test, the gas is designed to target cops. John heads to his doctor to undergo more treatment to remember what he needs to know about Syndicate to stop them from targetting police. While in the chamber, he recovers a memory, his girlfriend who disappeared while he was comatose was there. She was a member of Syndicate. Dorian busts in and gives him a shock to the heart. Saves his life.

Over noodles in the rain Dorian says he really did it for himself. If John were dead, he would be back to the scrap heap. John’s just lucky that he wants to be a cop so badly.

They discuss the differences in programming between MXs and Dorian’s type. John decides that they should recover the memory from Vogel’s MX’s memory and give it to Dorian because he can make the connection. Which he does, and they find that Syndicate is planning to hit the police evidence locker TONIGHT. 

Syndicate drops the MXs but Dorian, who runs on a different frequency, stays up. Evidence files get destroyed but John and Dorian save the lives of the human officers and apprehend a man high up in Syndicate.

Thanks to John and his DRN bot, lives are saved and Richard (and other haters) have no choice but to acknowledge this.

Skin.

A “bang bot” or a female robot designed specifically for sexual purposes is having tests performed on her while she flirts with a man. They are being watched and someone becomes concerned when they see she is not being used for her intended purposes. After he cuts a piece of her hair, 2 Albanian men bust in and kill the man performing the tests then they explode a DNA bomb so that there will be no traces of evidence that are not tainted. 

The man killed was an inventor, Sebastian Johns. He invented the first “sex robot” (used some of the same tech from the DRN models to make them more empathetic to the need and wishes of their partners. 

John and Dorian are showing off how cool they are to kids. Dorian shows them his glowing electrical veins under his skin… John stabs himself in his synthetic leg… the kids freak. Shocker.

They investigate the murder. The men’s faces show up as flashes of light on the security cameras, the girl shows up, the test for DNA wherever she touches on the footage and she is leaving behind traces of DNA from a 25 year old woman who was abducted from a parking garage. There have been 3 other cases that follow this pattern. The latest one was witnessed by the woman’s young child. 

John decides to show off that he can be good with kids, he gives a miniature giraffe that moves like a real giraffe to the boy, Victor, and tells him that he trusts him to take care of it, but that he needs him to be brave and tell him what he remembers with his mom. He remembers a big silver car- they find the car on security cameras with stolen plates. But atleast now they have a lead.

Sebastian Johns was being sued by his former business partner. John and Dorian go to see him. The company went bankrupt because their largest investor- Albanian business men- backed out. They said they could “cut out the middle man” but he finds it hard to believe anyone could make a bot as realistic as theirs. Of the Albanians he says, “They were good clients and they always paid on time,” that’s all he’s willing to say. 

Dorian hacks in and they find the connection. Then they head to the club and test the bots for human DNA. John is approached and asked if they want a bot. Special rate for cops.

The others have tracked the sedan to a warehouse and Detective Kennex and Dorian are dispatched. 

Dorian, noticing that John is attracted to the female robots, creates a profile for John on a dating website (his testicles were at maximum capacity). John describes what he wants in a woman and pretty much describes detective Stahl. who, speaking of, calls to say they’ve found the suspect’s vehicle. They get on the scene and find Vanessa, a sex robot who tests positive for human DNA, a woman named Lorraine who was abducted from a parking garage. Dorian is visibly upset because he knows that Vanessa is illegal and that she also has emotions the way Dorian does.

They attempt to question her for information but that doesn’t work out, so they access her data and find she was first activated in Kingston Heights. They raid Kingston Heights and find 2 of the 3 recently abducted women (including Victor’s mom) alive.

Dorian learns that Vanessa has to be deactivated but chooses to go and comfort her as it happens. John confronts his past and goes to see his former partner’s widow and son. 

There’s a ton going on here in the first two episodes, I’m glad we got further away from the “war on drugs” plotline from the first episode. I like Dorian, he’s caring, brave, determined to be a cop… but also missing many social cues while being tuned in meticulously on other levels. The idea of robots with empathy isn’t totally unique, but I think it’s really interesting that the police force was largely more comfortable with the MX models as opposed to the DRN, more inclined to use the models that played the odds, those that they don’t have to care about or feel anything for. That distance between the “authority” and other humans. It’s also very telling that the DRN models were decommissioned because they “snapped.” As robots given agency and empathy they process complex emotions but are still treated as “things” and not as people, those they risked their lives for and connected with considered them “less than.” Dorian was very concerned about who will remember him when he is gone while still worrying that he will end up back in the heap again and then witnessing Vanessa, a robot programmed to form connections, meet a cruel fate.