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Humans S1E3 - Review: In many ways, a revealing episode


Humans S1E3 - Review: In many ways, a revealing episode
9 out of 10

Forget artificial intelligence! Sometimes, the programming of an ordinary family can be the real unsolved mystery. A group of people, sometimes with little or nothing in common, who can simultaneously both love and despise each other, yet somehow they can function together. The system riddled with flaws, loss of memory, and even violent crashes yet still they successfully operate. In this week’s Humans, families take the centre stage as the episode examines the role of Synths in several of the show’s families.

Episode 3 – Laura’s attempts to return Anita trigger a surprising series of events to further unite the family. Following her murder and escape from the brothel, Leo and Max reunite with Niska only to discover she has her own new agenda and George’s attempts to give Vera the slip take a turn for the worse.

The main story of Anita takes a very surprising new direction following Laura driving off with Anita last time. Their battle over the mother role and the kid’s affections has been a heavy focus so far, but here we see the two slowly finding their own individual roles within their new family setup rather than fighting over the singular role in the plutonic setup. The writers convey this well with several smaller moments showing Laura’s change of heart from the early shock injury to Anita’s understanding of Laura’s feelings towards certain motherly duties. This is a curious story development that would imply darker times to come. By showing the most opposed members of the family (despite her suspicions even Mattie is coming around) accepting Anita, it builds grounds for them to support and even protect her when the truth behind her new programming is revealed. We even get a tantalising little tease as Mattie’s snooping hack allows her real “Mia” self to break out momentarily. The garage scene between Joe and Anita is also a real quirky treat. There’s some wonderful crossed messages in play as Anita’s damage inspection has the feel of a bizarre call girl routine, “Shall I remove my own clothing Joe?”. It also does a great job of reinforcing the blurring lines between Synths and Humans as despite all Anita’s reassurances, Joe still struggles to view her as a product rather than a highly alluring physical specimen standing in front of him. In the same way that an artificial mind defines reality by what it’s programmed, we define ours what we see and feel father than what our mind is telling us.

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Last episode’s big shock of Max not being entirely human is teased further. The best guess at the moment is he’s human with synthetic parts. Maybe he’s an experimental medical operation following a near fatal accident? We see him drinking and further confirm that their gang of Synth’s on the run were carrying food and water supplies. Yet when arguing with Niska he declares, “I practically am one of you” so he’s definitely not fully synthetic. Hopefully, this will be further explored in a later episode flashback. Niska’s character gets ever more interesting as she shows no remorse for her prior fatal actions (or inhibitions about repeating them). She self-identifies herself as non-human when decreeing max’s notions of family as “human words” yet subsequently spends the episode trying to fit into normal society. Her scene back at her pick up’s place is absolutely fascinating as the normalities of affection and relations completely bemuse her. It’s almost like she can’t shake off the programming or experiences from her former sex-bot occupation. The whole idea of conversation and man wanting to do more than just yank her knickers down for a swift upload is completely foreign to her. It’s a good reflection on emotional maturity. That simply being able to feel isn’t enough, she needs to understand those feelings and they mean to her. It’s something that a human woman would have learnt slowly over the decades of their life but a Synth born into adulthood would not (adolescence sucks but it serves a vital purpose).

The episode’s only weak link is Detective Peter Drummond and his jealousy over his wife’s physical therapy Synth. That story just doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. Peter does proof to be great tool in building the bigger picture following the investigations of Niska’s killing. There’s an almost I Robot feel to the way the Chief Officer subtly orders a cover up rather than trigger public panic over Synth’s. Peter’s frustrations echo the realities well as he can’t handle the truth not being the truth. Elsewhere, George and Odi’s Thelma and Louise like break for freedom has a lot of fun to it. From George’s sly tricking of Vera to the prison break, it feels like it's their getaway in reflection of George’s prior jailor remarks to Vera. Of course, it doesn’t end well and we can’t help feel for Odi at the end of it, not to mention George’s father-like fears for his wellbeing.

It’s another smart and entertaining episode from this great series. The only real qualm is the familiar feeling of wanting a series to pull its separate threads together a bit more. The mysterious Hobb character is popping up occasionally but he doesn’t yet feel like a significant presence. Well, the series is only human.

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