Tag: Humans

Humans Season 1 Episode 5 Recap

~ Metacrone

Hum105Leo&Mia

This episode is full of lost souls and mistaken identities. Mattie takes Anita to visit Leo, but Leo is unable to break through the Anita persona to find Mia. Leo becomes inconsolable and wants to give up on his family altogether. Mattie looks through the diagnostics log and discovers that Anita’s adult function has been used. She assumes it was Toby and yells at him for being gross and rapey. Toby tries to protect the family by accepting responsibility. Odi is found in the woods, then lost again. Niska stays with George, and they debate what kind of being she is with Vera. Niska doesn’t trust George at first, but slowly they begin to become friends. Pete continues to take in arguments for and against synths as he wanders through his day.

Niska races away from the smash club and meets Leo and Max at their usual rendezvous spot. Leo tells her about the program that David Elster hid in their root code. Niska is excited about it, and wants to get going on putting it all together. Leo says that she has to stay in hiding for now, since she’s wanted for murder, and sends her to George Millican’s house. He tells her to be nice. Niska says, “I am nice.”

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Humans Season 1 Episode 4 Recap

~ Metacrone

Hum104NiskaCharges

Everyone develops complicated feelings in this episode, as the lines between humans and synths continue to blur. Pete finds a temporary new home, but it’s not as synth-free as he thinks. Niska takes on a fight club for anti-synth bigots and almost gets caught by Hobb. Leo and Max make a discovery after examining Mia’s root code, but don’t seem much closer to getting her back. They do meet up with Mattie and George, bringing all of the plot strands together for the first time. The Hawkins explore the realities of synth rights and feelings, with mixed results. Joe takes his primary user status with Anita to the next level, and immediately regrets it. I don’t actually think his experience with Anita was good for any of us, including, maybe especially, her.

Pete starts his morning in fine form, snapping at Jill when she asks him to join her for breakfast and ignoring her in favor of calling Karen at the office.

Mattie checks in with Anita to make sure that she’s okay after the hacking session the other night. Anita doesn’t remember the session, and says all of her systems are running fine. Mattie is surprised that Anita doesn’t remember what happened, after she was so upset. Anita goes back to her chores, saying hello to Laura, who was eavesdropping out of sight, as she goes.

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Humans Season 1 Episode 3 Recap

~ Metacrone

Hum103Laura&AnitaCar

The game of lost and found continues in episode 3, as Leo and the conscious synths continue their complicated lives together and apart, the Hawkins family searches for answers to the mysteries surrounding Anita, and George and Odi become separated on an outing. The death at the brothel is officially ruled an accident, sending Pete into an anti-synth tirade.

Hobb wakes Fred up. Fred refuses to speak during the entire scene, but he does subtly try to break the straps binding his wrists to the lab chair he’s in. Hobb says that he’ll do all of the talking for now, and spills everything he’s figured out about the conscious synths.

He believes there are five synths. One of them is the female the lab isolated from Fred’s memory of swimming (holds up a picture of Anita/Mia). Hobb thinks they were made by David Elster, who kept them a secret. When Elster died, they ran away and hid, but then they got separated, allowing him to capture Fred. Fred turns his head all the way to the right. The lab tech says that he’s hiding his thoughts from them. The screens that have been showing his memories go dark, then show only Hobb.

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Humans Season 1 Episode 2 Recap

~ Metacrone

Hum102Odi

We get to know the Hawkins family and the rest of the characters a little better in episode 2. We also learn more about synths, the effects they’ve had on society, and the effects humans are having on them. It’s complicated, with the synths ranging from harmless to helpful to sinister. And that’s just the ones in George Millican’s house.

Laura wakes up in bed the morning after episode 1 ended. She’s had a hair, make up and wardrobe upgrade since the pilot was shot. Nothing like a little competition from a young synth to up your game. Or the increased budget from a season long episode order.

She senses something’s wrong and goes to check on Sophie, discovering that Sophie is wearing different pajamas. The ones she went to bed in are wet and in the hamper. Sophie doesn’t know why they’re wet or who changed her clothes. Laura is confused.

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Humans Season 1 Episode 1 Recap

~ Metacrone
Hum101MiaStartup
Joe Hawkins activates the family’s new domestic synth, Anita.

Humans is a joint production of Channel 4 in Britain and AMC in the US that focusses on humanlike robots called “synths”, some of whom have become self-aware like Real Humans, which just happens to be the name of the original Swedish version of the show that this remake is based on. The first two seasons are currently available for streaming on Amazon Prime.

Season 1 follows a human family, the Hawkins of London, who acquire a synth when the dad, Joe, becomes overwhelmed with trying to keep up with the house and kids while his wife travels frequently for work. The family mom, Laura, and oldest daughter, Mattie, are suspicious of the new synth from the start, with the mom bordering on paranoid.

Their new synth, Anita/Mia, does turn out to have a past and a family of her own, which has been wiped from her memories. She is a self-aware, conscious synth, made by synth creator David Elster in his later years when he’d become a recluse. Elster made at least four conscious synths, who have become separated and are trying to find each other again, along with Elster’s son/their brother, Leo. Besides the Hawkins, the show follows the conscious synths, the people who help them, and the police who are chasing them.

Episode 1, with catchy title of Episode 1, begins in a room full of deactivated synths, clad only in underpants. One is wheeled out of the room, sealed in packaging. The lights are turned off, the door is closed, and the synths are alone. They do not start chanting “one of us, one of us” because the writers are stronger people than I. One synth, who will go on to become Anita/Mia, does look up through a conveniently placed skylight at the moon. She doesn’t sing “Somewhere Out There” to her lost brothers and sister, so pop culture references are clearly lost on synths, which is a terrible, terrible waste, and may require a return to the factory.

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