lands_of_magic - Challenge 1x04 - Favorite Fandom: Almost Human
Like its main actor Karl Urban, the show I want to introduce to you did, in fact, creep up on me XD Back in 2013, when the show premiered on FOX, it only was a small side note on my tv show card, so to speak. First of all, it only aired in the US, which meant it wasn’t available in any way to me here in good old Europe, and second, I already had a lot of shows to watch, without any need of adding a new one or two.
Fast forward to 2015, and you see a complete different situation. My TV world had changed - some shows were already cancelled, some were on hiatus (or the DVD boxes were too expensive), and with some, I simply lost interest in them, for several reasons. Right on that time, a local TV station here in Austria announced some new shows, including “Almost Human”. The title itself didn’t really ring a bell, but when I saw the first trailer, I knew I finally had a new show to add.
The show is set against the futuristic background of a changed Los Angeles in the year 2048. According to the show’s premise, crime has risen to a level the common police was effortless against it, so they had to come up with a new way of crime-solving. And that was the introduction of specifically designed androids to the force, first the DRN series, then the MX. Both series got assigned to a human partner, and would work with them.
The main character of “Almost Human”, or better said, the first 50 % of the title, is Detective John Kennex, exceptionally played by Karl Urban. In the pilot episode, we learn that John was, up until about 2 years ago, part of a special team, intent on taking down one of the largest gangs called “The Syndicate”. But then, a raid went terribly wrong, resulting not only in the death of all of the other team members, but also in putting John in an 18-month-coma, losing the better part of his right leg and getting a synthetic one instead.
Back in the present, he’s set to return to police squad, where he’s, like any other police detective with the LAPD, assigned a MX - the standard police android. Cold, distant, and always analyzing everything, they display pretty much every cliché of an android. Something that John can’t (or won’t) put up with. And so he gets rid of his MX in a rather creative way.
Sensing that it would be to no avail to simply assign him another android, Chief Sandra Maldonado and Dr. Rudy Lom (crime scene investigator, medical examiner and resident nerd in personal union) get John together with Dorian, the last of the DRN series around the police HQ.
Sorted out due to some kind of a malfunction of their “synthetic soul” (which allows them to have emotions and make them a quite human), Dorian was literally put on the rack in the basement. And from the moment John wakes him up, you can see the difference between him and the whole batch of MX. Despite being an android, Dorian is full of compassion, he’s enthusiastic about being back to being a cop, and he has no qualms to point out every single of John’s bad sides, much to the other’s man annoyance (and the audience’s enjoyment XD)
In the first few episodes, John visibly struggles with accepting Dorian as a partner, let alone allowing the android to oh-so-slowly breach the walls John has built up around him. But Dorian is nothing but persistent, and by the end of the show, we, the audience, are treated to the first few baby steps of a true friendship.
When I watched it the first time, the very first thing I noticed was the banter between John and Dorian, remembering me of both Peter and Neal from “White Collar” and the wonderful “carguments” between Danny and Steve from the Hawaii Five-O Reboot. And just like with these other two pairs, listening to John and Dorian discussing not only their cases, but also everything that goes on in especially John’s life (or what he’s lacking in it, according to Dorian), is absolutely a treat. A treat that is mainly made possible by the wonderful on-screen chemistry between Karl Urban and Michael Ealy.
Sure, you got your typical crime show stuff, but every single character, from John and Dorian to Sandra, Valerie, Rudy, hell even Richard, takes it up a notch, giving it a twist either in the funny or the sad direction and makes this series a definite recommendation to watch. The only negative thing about it: we only got 13 episodes, leaving us with a ton of questions, but that’s what fandom is for - we continue to tell the stories, and give our heroes the end they deserve.
Telling you everything that I love about “Almost Human” en detail would probably kill DW, so I gladly send you over to a longer text I once wrote for selenic76’s Fandom Fest
https://sandy79.livejournal.com/37679.html
And here's three sigtags that I made:
Thanks for reading, and if you decide to watch it, let me know what you think about it!
This entry was originally posted at https://sandy79.dreamwidth.org/89656.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
Fast forward to 2015, and you see a complete different situation. My TV world had changed - some shows were already cancelled, some were on hiatus (or the DVD boxes were too expensive), and with some, I simply lost interest in them, for several reasons. Right on that time, a local TV station here in Austria announced some new shows, including “Almost Human”. The title itself didn’t really ring a bell, but when I saw the first trailer, I knew I finally had a new show to add.
The show is set against the futuristic background of a changed Los Angeles in the year 2048. According to the show’s premise, crime has risen to a level the common police was effortless against it, so they had to come up with a new way of crime-solving. And that was the introduction of specifically designed androids to the force, first the DRN series, then the MX. Both series got assigned to a human partner, and would work with them.
The main character of “Almost Human”, or better said, the first 50 % of the title, is Detective John Kennex, exceptionally played by Karl Urban. In the pilot episode, we learn that John was, up until about 2 years ago, part of a special team, intent on taking down one of the largest gangs called “The Syndicate”. But then, a raid went terribly wrong, resulting not only in the death of all of the other team members, but also in putting John in an 18-month-coma, losing the better part of his right leg and getting a synthetic one instead.
Back in the present, he’s set to return to police squad, where he’s, like any other police detective with the LAPD, assigned a MX - the standard police android. Cold, distant, and always analyzing everything, they display pretty much every cliché of an android. Something that John can’t (or won’t) put up with. And so he gets rid of his MX in a rather creative way.
Sensing that it would be to no avail to simply assign him another android, Chief Sandra Maldonado and Dr. Rudy Lom (crime scene investigator, medical examiner and resident nerd in personal union) get John together with Dorian, the last of the DRN series around the police HQ.
Sorted out due to some kind of a malfunction of their “synthetic soul” (which allows them to have emotions and make them a quite human), Dorian was literally put on the rack in the basement. And from the moment John wakes him up, you can see the difference between him and the whole batch of MX. Despite being an android, Dorian is full of compassion, he’s enthusiastic about being back to being a cop, and he has no qualms to point out every single of John’s bad sides, much to the other’s man annoyance (and the audience’s enjoyment XD)
In the first few episodes, John visibly struggles with accepting Dorian as a partner, let alone allowing the android to oh-so-slowly breach the walls John has built up around him. But Dorian is nothing but persistent, and by the end of the show, we, the audience, are treated to the first few baby steps of a true friendship.
When I watched it the first time, the very first thing I noticed was the banter between John and Dorian, remembering me of both Peter and Neal from “White Collar” and the wonderful “carguments” between Danny and Steve from the Hawaii Five-O Reboot. And just like with these other two pairs, listening to John and Dorian discussing not only their cases, but also everything that goes on in especially John’s life (or what he’s lacking in it, according to Dorian), is absolutely a treat. A treat that is mainly made possible by the wonderful on-screen chemistry between Karl Urban and Michael Ealy.
Sure, you got your typical crime show stuff, but every single character, from John and Dorian to Sandra, Valerie, Rudy, hell even Richard, takes it up a notch, giving it a twist either in the funny or the sad direction and makes this series a definite recommendation to watch. The only negative thing about it: we only got 13 episodes, leaving us with a ton of questions, but that’s what fandom is for - we continue to tell the stories, and give our heroes the end they deserve.
Telling you everything that I love about “Almost Human” en detail would probably kill DW, so I gladly send you over to a longer text I once wrote for selenic76’s Fandom Fest
https://sandy79.livejournal.com/37679.html
And here's three sigtags that I made:
Thanks for reading, and if you decide to watch it, let me know what you think about it!
This entry was originally posted at https://sandy79.dreamwidth.org/89656.html. Please comment there using OpenID.