Saturday, June 16, 2018

What I’m Watching: Humans (Season Premiere)


Humans: Season 3, Episode 1 (B+)

This is a show that has largely flown under the radar, broadcasting first on Channel 4 in the UK and then on AMC, reaching a third season without much fanfare. This show truly is underrated since it’s a subtle but extremely effective picture of what advanced technology could look like if it wasn’t entirely rebellious but just malfunctioning and desiring of a right to direct its own existence. It’s been more than a year since season two finished airing on AMC, and so I had forgotten that Mattie did something major that changed everything. Picking up a full year after Day Zero, in which 110,000 casualties were suffered, shows the dire state of things, with the synths we know hiding out in a camp undisturbed by the authorities but just waiting for the big crackdown that finally came after the bombing which turned out to have been executed by a group of violent synths. Laura really is trying to hardest to advocate for them, but it’s hard when no one seems interested in giving them a chance and one sector of the population is making them all seem like villains. As usual, Niska hasn’t really chosen a side, seeking her own personal vengeance against whoever it was that perpetrated the attack, and Karen is training Sam to pick his nose like a good little human boy so that he won’t get spotted as a synth. The most resounding line of the hour came from Mia in response to another instance of irreversible system failure: “Death. Call it death.”

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