Almost Human—the cloning one

The challenge of making a good sci-fi show is taking thoughtful risks. That doesn’t mean the story has to be so complicated it leaves the dumb masses behind, but without a future where technology has changed morality, you’ve got another generic cop show with electric cars and quieter guns.

The drugs-are-bad episode, terrorism episode, heist episode and fuckbots episode were decent but not nearly as interesting as they could’ve been.

And now the cloning episode.

The plot we got was a literal genius who was faking being good in the eyes of the world but was really a villain, because he killed the doctor who helped clone him a few times. The story involves him and his clone family trying to kill a witness to the crime, a ditzy broad who looks like a 1980s Madonna and who is psychic from a brain-boosting process (a story in itself). The tight-(hair)-bunned cop-boss character is explored a little more but that’s really the only thing new.

A better plot would have had the good guy be likable while an unseen killer picked off the clones, causing the good guy to expose him-selves to the cops. Why was cloning conveniently made illegal 20 years earlier? Why did this guy clone himself, was it to beat an incurable disease? Do clones have legal rights? Is killing a clone considered murder?

This is the first episode where we really see Dorian’s awesome robopower as he catches up to a speeding electro-van and flips it like a cheese omelette (causing it to explode, even though it has no gas engine).

We the audience were kind-of prepped for this when earlier an MX-43 bragged about being able to lift a metric ton. I didn’t like this new information because it made Kennex look ignorant. If you didn’t know your robot buddy could lift a car, you might call in human first responders, needlessly putting them in the line of fire.

The MXs are as useless as stormtroopers. They’re supposed to provide a cold, glaring contrast to “crazy” warm Dorian, but their design is not well thought-out.

If an MX-43 can effortlessly carry a metric ton, they should all be walking around with 200 extra pounds of body armor, especially since every episode the bad guys get the jump on them. MX headwear is clearly not bulletproof, as their heads always get blown apart like rock candy.

It’s not necessary to build humanoid robots so that their recording devices are fragile chips of glass in their rock candy skulls…the head should have sensors-only while recording modules used as evidence should be heavily shielded in the robots’ torsos.  Sorry for the nerd shit, but it has to be said.

I don’t care about the hot girl cop, do you? We’ve seen McCoy break into a cold sweat in a showroom of fuckbots, why would he care about a human woman? (Prediction:  later in the season, when he’s ready to close the deal, the evil Insyndicate girlfriend will come along to ruin everything).

We also learned this week that Dorian has a giant robocock. The patrol car cop-buddy banter gets amusingly gayer every week.

Tags: 1980s Madonna, 2048, androids, cloning, DNA bomb, Dorian, evil clones, flashmasks, fuckbots, fuckbottery, giant robocock, holograms, I, J.J. Abrams, JJ Abrams, Judge Dredd, karl urban, Madonna, Massive Dynamic, McCoy, meat puppets, Michael Ealy, MX-43, Neuromancer, obama sucks, psychic powers, Robot, robots, robromance, sexbots, Star Wars 7, William S. Gibson