look into their eyes
Humans 3.1
First, I had to swot up what had happened previously (so much! The Previouslies didn’t cover all of it.) Secondly, I was wondering how they’d cope with al they’d done before - I thought that the show was overambitious in season 2 with child synths and AIs. So, I was giving new characters dubious looks, although they mostly seemed like antagonists for the returners and I liked Anatole. (Agnes looks like the tiny offspring of Eva Green and Claire Foy.) I suppose they might use Lundstrom, the company behind the orange-eyed synths as a Trojan horse for this series’ famous American star, which I don’t think is necessary. I’d be quite happy if the focus remained with the two families we care about.
I thought the pacing was good about reuniting us with all of them and moving on the plot with revelations…and explosions.
We started off with a heap of newscasters (nobody from Channel 4 news, amusingly) informing us it was a year on from Day Zero. Mattie was blaming herself for the hundred thousand plus (human) deaths caused by the synths becoming conscious. In the meantime, orange-eyed synths had been created - safe said the adverts, slaves said the conscious synths.
A lot of which were living in what basically felt like Dark Angel’s Terminal City for me - once I’d made that connection, I was very excited. I loved the fact they’d made Max their leader, and the actor playing him got more to do, commanding - a real role reversal when you saw him with Leo. Basically, he was set up as Martin Luther King, given the bomb and his position.
Because yeah, just after we’d seen Niska and Astrid at a synth-friendly/anything goes bar - BOOM. Humanity only counted the dead biologicals. Astrid didn’t die (avoiding the dead lesbian trope? But given what happened to Flash, I did think that putting the Elsters’ love interests in danger was a bit repetitive, and why did they have to kill off half of the only synth-synth couple? Mia was pining for not!Gunner, or at least his café, I noted.)
Then a synth (the Malcolm X figure?) claimed they’d set off the bomb, cutting off any hope of building a swell of human sympathy and ruining Laura and Mia’s (rickety) plan. Laura was suffering the consequences of being a synth right activist/dolly f-----er, working on the case of a new Odi (?) and being offered a position on a commission that will surely do nothing. She and Joe were definitely separated, the kids all older - and Sophie has turned into such an eye-roller. It shouldn’t be a surprise given her older siblings. Niska has rubbed off on her too given her violent tendencies. Bless, she really does need help managing her FEELINGS.
I thought Joe made a fair point in asking that he and Laura talk to Sophie together, because that is parenting, but her reluctance to go to school came down to her feelings about synths and they have such a philosophical difference there…
They held off from showing us Leo for ages, and then Karen and Sam - the twist of her being in Little Humans Only Please/Waltringham was a zinger. The visual of what had been done to lovely Flash and the other synth, plus the contrast of the industrial complex and forest they lived in were effective. And then Max had to choose between his brother and a synth we didn’t really know - he picked making Mattie have to give medical attention she was barely qualified for, just as armed police turned up.
Every time the word ‘dolly’ was used, I flinched.
And we ended on a cliffhanger.
Rather breathless. Oh, and once I realised the TV presenter was Giles Long (who I know from commentating on the Paraolympics swimming as a former paraathlete), that added a whole other level to things.
This entry was originally posted at https://shallowness.dreamwidth.org/329873.html.
First, I had to swot up what had happened previously (so much! The Previouslies didn’t cover all of it.) Secondly, I was wondering how they’d cope with al they’d done before - I thought that the show was overambitious in season 2 with child synths and AIs. So, I was giving new characters dubious looks, although they mostly seemed like antagonists for the returners and I liked Anatole. (Agnes looks like the tiny offspring of Eva Green and Claire Foy.) I suppose they might use Lundstrom, the company behind the orange-eyed synths as a Trojan horse for this series’ famous American star, which I don’t think is necessary. I’d be quite happy if the focus remained with the two families we care about.
I thought the pacing was good about reuniting us with all of them and moving on the plot with revelations…and explosions.
We started off with a heap of newscasters (nobody from Channel 4 news, amusingly) informing us it was a year on from Day Zero. Mattie was blaming herself for the hundred thousand plus (human) deaths caused by the synths becoming conscious. In the meantime, orange-eyed synths had been created - safe said the adverts, slaves said the conscious synths.
A lot of which were living in what basically felt like Dark Angel’s Terminal City for me - once I’d made that connection, I was very excited. I loved the fact they’d made Max their leader, and the actor playing him got more to do, commanding - a real role reversal when you saw him with Leo. Basically, he was set up as Martin Luther King, given the bomb and his position.
Because yeah, just after we’d seen Niska and Astrid at a synth-friendly/anything goes bar - BOOM. Humanity only counted the dead biologicals. Astrid didn’t die (avoiding the dead lesbian trope? But given what happened to Flash, I did think that putting the Elsters’ love interests in danger was a bit repetitive, and why did they have to kill off half of the only synth-synth couple? Mia was pining for not!Gunner, or at least his café, I noted.)
Then a synth (the Malcolm X figure?) claimed they’d set off the bomb, cutting off any hope of building a swell of human sympathy and ruining Laura and Mia’s (rickety) plan. Laura was suffering the consequences of being a synth right activist/dolly f-----er, working on the case of a new Odi (?) and being offered a position on a commission that will surely do nothing. She and Joe were definitely separated, the kids all older - and Sophie has turned into such an eye-roller. It shouldn’t be a surprise given her older siblings. Niska has rubbed off on her too given her violent tendencies. Bless, she really does need help managing her FEELINGS.
I thought Joe made a fair point in asking that he and Laura talk to Sophie together, because that is parenting, but her reluctance to go to school came down to her feelings about synths and they have such a philosophical difference there…
They held off from showing us Leo for ages, and then Karen and Sam - the twist of her being in Little Humans Only Please/Waltringham was a zinger. The visual of what had been done to lovely Flash and the other synth, plus the contrast of the industrial complex and forest they lived in were effective. And then Max had to choose between his brother and a synth we didn’t really know - he picked making Mattie have to give medical attention she was barely qualified for, just as armed police turned up.
Every time the word ‘dolly’ was used, I flinched.
And we ended on a cliffhanger.
Rather breathless. Oh, and once I realised the TV presenter was Giles Long (who I know from commentating on the Paraolympics swimming as a former paraathlete), that added a whole other level to things.
This entry was originally posted at https://shallowness.dreamwidth.org/329873.html.