Humans 2.5
I can’t see this ending without humanity bowing down before its synth overlords and deserving most of what it ets. Poor Sophie.
Before the big reveal that Seraphs = child synths (who may or may not have consciousness, but in any case, aren’t they a bit niche? Wouldn’t adult i.e. bigger synths be stronger? Are the writers just going for the embodiment of synths as children?) plenty happened. Perhaps too much, and perhaps what we got shown wasn’t always what I wanted to see.
Several characters got shunted aside to give the Big Name Star (Carrie-Ann Moss is good, both steely and broken on the turn, but while a lot happened to Athena, it wasn’t THAT revelatory. And V will break her heart. Some more) action. Even the Hawkins got short shrift, let alone the Elstrees.
We started off with a new synth snowflake, who seemed to have a moral compass based on her interaction with the children (I refuse to deal with the signifiers of race, gender and uniforms they carried). Flash seemed chirpy and it was nice that Sweet Max found her, given what unfolded elsewhere, but it’s yet another new character to take time away from longer established ones.
Karen’s decision to bolt for the episode seemed to be because the episode was too full for her than anything else. They can redeem that by making it be a reaction to (stupid) Pete getting injured instead of what she said she was. See also Odi. Laura and Joe barely flickered at his actions - even if they were freaking out about the synth that ‘got hacked, but everything’s fine!’ and Sophie and Niska’s case, didn’t they wonder that something was off. So Mattie tells him to go for a walkabout and off he tootles.
Most egregiously, the later parts of the episode ignored Mia, who is probably Anita again now (I suspect she’ll be the Elster synth Athena uses as V’s body, because her theme is identity). I feel badly left hanging, because I’ve been all for Mia finding out who Mia is - and what will she do with the fact that she can be as mad as Niska from how she lashed out at Ed’s betrayal? Does she still have the phone with the code on it? Is that where ‘Mia’ lives? It was a great survival technique, but WHAT NEXT?
I am glad Niska was pessimistic about her chances of getting a fair trial, and I was extremely delighted that she found a way out. All those in authority are going to rue not dealing with her fairly, with the fast-moving situation with synths and with people like Mattie casually ‘fixing’ the consciousness code. It took TOBY to suggest she might want to think about the consequences. She was too excited about having a good excuse to see Leo again (oh, Mattie) and solving the puzzle.
And aww, Toby, just wanting to get to know Reenie. What we did know made me even more worried about what she’s living on (sweets and orange juice) and we got a hint of what drove her to pretend to be a synth. She wasn’t to know that he was going to have issues with her moves. Toby is one of the few male characters I don’t have major issues with, right now, although I know that human frailty is one of the show’s themes.
So, Leo. Sticking his head somewhere untenable as Hester did her revolutionary torture for The Mission, pretending that it was just a little blood. And while I comprehend Hester’s POV, and it wasn’t played as her being turned on by what she’d done as much as curious, she’s possibly worse than Niska (or maybe less easy to identify with? Or getting in the way of a ship that the show seeded so I didn’t like her.)
We finally got an explanation for the eye colour thing that I’d half-noticed, but never analysed.
This entry was originally posted at http://shallowness.dreamwidth.org/262302.html.