Oh, I don't know
Jul. 19th, 2015 07:46 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shallownessHumans episode 4
The blurb says that this is actually set in a parallel present – which would explain why it looks like now apart from the synths.
The beginning was a bit slow. At least Mattie and Laura compared notes about Anita who clearly isn’t aware she’s Mia. She continued to use Toby. I joined Mattie in the eyeroll. But Toby got worse at the party, rejecting a human girl who was throwing herself at him (WHY? Go for a boy a class or two above you, hun) because he fancies his synth. At least he was gauche about it, given what his father was about to do.
Anita’s growing rapport with Laura was more interesting, because she seemed to grasp that what Joe was asking her to do in spying on Laura was off, in some way, in resisting doing it and in trying to protect Laura.
So, as Laura did some investigating and came across a good argument about the treatment of synths but a bad example of it (although harping on about whether Howard felt something when watching the play wasn’t precisely sophisticated lawyering) we found out that Joe has had sex with a synth before and some more about the provisions around domestic synths. I started to feel last episode’s rage bubbling up.
Having a synth around to poop teenage parties started off funny, or as funny as anything gets on this show, then it got nasty and YAY! Mattie for putting her finger on why the treatment of female synths by men as sexual objects is creepy. Again, a violent solution from her, but this time to protect a synth instead of against one. How soon before she and Niska join up in a vendetta?
(At this point, I think they should actually have Jill go further and act on her desires for her synth for balance. Bet they won’t, though. Mrs Kennedy’s projections about Howard were coming from a mother’s perspective.)
Side-eyeing Joe. Obviously.
I was disappointed in Karen for being so supportive to whiny obsolete Pete, but the face she pulled once she left the office picked me back up.
Mattie was on fire in the meet with Leo and sweet Max.
Lots of unsubtle segues, like the one from discussing the brothel killing to...NISKA. I was glad to see her, finally, just as her vendetta may be hijacked by pro-human activists agitating for a ‘war’.
So, that programme within a programme is for Mia. But the real Trojan horse in the scene between Leo, Max and Gepetto was that David Elster somehow downloaded his son’s consciousness into a more human-like synth??? That and Vera clocking that Max is an odd synth.
NISKAAAAA! Of course such a thing as a smash club would exist. What she was likely to do about it wasn’t really in doubt, and a part of me wishes we’d seen more of it. It’s called stinting on the action, show. The other synth knowing what she was (except not having a clue) and not being able to respond, anymore than one of the other synths added to the emotional heft.
I pulled a face that the message inside Mia might be the equivalent of a synth baby, which it kind of is, but Leo’s realisation that the programme requires all of them to execute it, and Niska having just seen how vulnerable the other synths were without sentience, because there’s no Asimov lock for humans, was exciting. Her finding her way out was cool, because it’s Niska, but it could have been cooler if they’d push the action a bit more.
And then, I’d been thinking Karen was drugging Pete via the wine for REASONS, but it turned out that she is also a special snowflake/sentient synth, too, quite independent of the others. Or is she? Passing well enough to be a cop and to find her way on to the synth crime squad is pretty epic. And it makes me weep (metaphorically and total exaggeration) that we won’t get to see a spin-off basically about her, Niska and Mattie, possibly with Laura in support.
So, although the beginning did suffer from pacing issues and unpleasant men and boys being unpleasant, things got better towards the end as the ladies got more agency and further twists were revealed. It’s no Orphan Black, though, with the adrenaline, it’s more chin-stroky, but even though it’s wide-ranging, perhaps too much so, because apart from Laura’s family, everyone else gets short shrift, most of the questions it raises are familiar enough in SF.
The blurb says that this is actually set in a parallel present – which would explain why it looks like now apart from the synths.
The beginning was a bit slow. At least Mattie and Laura compared notes about Anita who clearly isn’t aware she’s Mia. She continued to use Toby. I joined Mattie in the eyeroll. But Toby got worse at the party, rejecting a human girl who was throwing herself at him (WHY? Go for a boy a class or two above you, hun) because he fancies his synth. At least he was gauche about it, given what his father was about to do.
Anita’s growing rapport with Laura was more interesting, because she seemed to grasp that what Joe was asking her to do in spying on Laura was off, in some way, in resisting doing it and in trying to protect Laura.
So, as Laura did some investigating and came across a good argument about the treatment of synths but a bad example of it (although harping on about whether Howard felt something when watching the play wasn’t precisely sophisticated lawyering) we found out that Joe has had sex with a synth before and some more about the provisions around domestic synths. I started to feel last episode’s rage bubbling up.
Having a synth around to poop teenage parties started off funny, or as funny as anything gets on this show, then it got nasty and YAY! Mattie for putting her finger on why the treatment of female synths by men as sexual objects is creepy. Again, a violent solution from her, but this time to protect a synth instead of against one. How soon before she and Niska join up in a vendetta?
(At this point, I think they should actually have Jill go further and act on her desires for her synth for balance. Bet they won’t, though. Mrs Kennedy’s projections about Howard were coming from a mother’s perspective.)
Side-eyeing Joe. Obviously.
I was disappointed in Karen for being so supportive to whiny obsolete Pete, but the face she pulled once she left the office picked me back up.
Mattie was on fire in the meet with Leo and sweet Max.
Lots of unsubtle segues, like the one from discussing the brothel killing to...NISKA. I was glad to see her, finally, just as her vendetta may be hijacked by pro-human activists agitating for a ‘war’.
So, that programme within a programme is for Mia. But the real Trojan horse in the scene between Leo, Max and Gepetto was that David Elster somehow downloaded his son’s consciousness into a more human-like synth??? That and Vera clocking that Max is an odd synth.
NISKAAAAA! Of course such a thing as a smash club would exist. What she was likely to do about it wasn’t really in doubt, and a part of me wishes we’d seen more of it. It’s called stinting on the action, show. The other synth knowing what she was (except not having a clue) and not being able to respond, anymore than one of the other synths added to the emotional heft.
I pulled a face that the message inside Mia might be the equivalent of a synth baby, which it kind of is, but Leo’s realisation that the programme requires all of them to execute it, and Niska having just seen how vulnerable the other synths were without sentience, because there’s no Asimov lock for humans, was exciting. Her finding her way out was cool, because it’s Niska, but it could have been cooler if they’d push the action a bit more.
And then, I’d been thinking Karen was drugging Pete via the wine for REASONS, but it turned out that she is also a special snowflake/sentient synth, too, quite independent of the others. Or is she? Passing well enough to be a cop and to find her way on to the synth crime squad is pretty epic. And it makes me weep (metaphorically and total exaggeration) that we won’t get to see a spin-off basically about her, Niska and Mattie, possibly with Laura in support.
So, although the beginning did suffer from pacing issues and unpleasant men and boys being unpleasant, things got better towards the end as the ladies got more agency and further twists were revealed. It’s no Orphan Black, though, with the adrenaline, it’s more chin-stroky, but even though it’s wide-ranging, perhaps too much so, because apart from Laura’s family, everyone else gets short shrift, most of the questions it raises are familiar enough in SF.
