Do you like Robocop?
Blade Runner? Demolition Man? Alien Nation?
Total Recall? And countless other police
drama-esque science fiction movies from the ’80s? Then you’ll love Almost Human, which
is an unapologetic pastiche of the genre, updated to reflect 21st century post-human politics and fears of pharmaceutical terrorism.
Whether you like Almost
Human or not will depend almost entirely on your reaction to the above
paragraph. Are you completely disinterested? Does this show sound terrible? Or
does a completely straight-faced recreation of these types of cheesy but
somehow earnest scifi cop stories fill you with nostalgia and put a small smile
on your face just thinking about it? If it’s the latter, you will find Almost Human to be completely predictable
but a lot of fun. (And if you don’t, you will hate it.)
In 2046, crime has gotten so terrible that all cops are
assigned robot partners called MXs to help them (they’re basically like Robocop
,but without the skills). Karl Urban plays John Spartan Kennex, a gruff,
tough cop who wanders into an ambush by the evil Insyndicate — you know they’re
extra evil because of they use a prefix in front of “syndicate” — where one of
the androids fails to help save a human cop because he’s too badly wounded, and
Karl Urban gets his leg blown off trying to help the other dude to safety.
Cut to 2048: Kennex is trying to get his memory of the
ambush back after being in a coma for 17 months, courtesy of the Total Recall machine (located in the
slums of Blade Runner, for good
measure). Kennex is running the full gamut of ’80s cop problems: He’s surly,
he’s popping pills, he hates his partner (because he hates robots), he has a
robot leg that he also hates, he’s spotted by one of the robot cops he hates in
the slums which raises the robot’s suspicions, his girlfriend prior to the ambush has mysteriously
disappeared, he’s too traumatized to go back to work — the latter of which is
dealt with when his captain tells him there’s something going down with the
Insyndicate, and he probably wants to go check it out.
Kennex returns to active duty and gets partnered with one of
the androids, who knows from the general android cop database that Kennex was in the slums the other night; when
Kennex tells him he was there for noodles — there is an outdoor noodle shop
there, just in case it wasn’t Blade
Runner-y enough for you — the android also
knows there weren’t any noodle particles on his breath the other night, and announces
he’s going to report him until Kennex tosses him out of the car in front of a
semi.
So Kennex needs a new robot partner, and he gets assigned a
DRN, a.k.a. Dorian — one of the extra-human androids programmed with emotions
and a personality and the ability to infer things and looks almost entirely
human. Kennex hates this one just as much as the others, and is determined to
be a dick to it by calling Dorian a “synthetic,” which he hates. Dorian, on the
other hand, just tries to play with the hand he’s dealt, as this is first
chance at “life” after being decommissioned for four years (the DRNs had a
habit of going crazy because of their high levels of emotion, apparently).
And then the case actually kicks in, which is not
particularly exciting despite including a captured cop, an elaborate trap, some
kind of chemical that attacks the DNA injected into future cops to protect them
from other chemical attacks, Kennex beating up a prisoner to get information,
the prisoner having secretly let himself get caught to hide a mini-EMP in the
police station, and so on. Eventually, Kennex heads back to the Total Recall machine and remembers that
the last thing he saw at the ambush that cost him his leg was his girlfriend Anna
as a member of the Insyndicate. And somehow this all means that the Insyndicate
wants something in the police department’s evidence room, and stagse a
full-blown assault to get it (the EMP takes out all the MX droids — it doesn’t
affect Dorian because he runs on a different frequency). A huge shoot-out
ensues, and of course Kennex and Dorian save the day after killing many, many
people.
Really, the whole point is watching Kennex and Dorian
together. Kennex hates Dorian for no other reason than his robo-prejudice,
which Dorian slowly erodes with his winning personality, his refusal to rat on
Kennex for beating the shit out of the Insyndicate prisoner, his ability as a
mobile crime lab, and the fact he saves Kennex from dying in the Total Recall machine. (He also calls out Kennex for blaming the MX for his fellow cop dying, when Kennex is the one who led them all into the ambush in the first place.) While the plot of
the episode is nothing special, it’s still a pleasure to watch Karl Urban go
through the steps of begrudgingly approving of and liking his new partner, even
if we’ve seen it a hundred times before.
But Almost Human’s
real pleasure comes from Michael Ealy, who plays Dorian as the most affable,
coolest robot you’ve ever met. I mean, it’s obvious that the uber-human robot
would act more human than the gruff,
emotionally closed-off cop, but Ealy does it with such ease and charm that he
singlehandedly makes the show.
The other good thing about Almost Human: The effects are gorgeous.
The L.A. of the future looks amazing, the robot effects are both stunning and
subtle, and even the practical sets look like a wonderful cross between the
’80s idea of what the future would look like and an Apple Store. Indeed, the
whole thing looks like a reasonably well-budgeted movie — and so I have to
wonder if Almost Human will even come
close to maintaining this level of SFX in future episodes.
If it doesn’t, I worry about Almost Human, because I don’t know that the show can coast on
Michael Ealy’s charms alone. Actually, even if it does keep this level of SFX,
eventually the show is going to need to bring something else to the table other
than this pastiche of ’80s scifi movie references and well-trod cop drama plots
if it wants to survive past season one. Hopefully tonight’s episode — part two
of the two-night “premiere” — will give us a better idea of whether Almost Human has anything more to offer.
Assorted Musings:
Actually, it looks like tonight’s episode is heading
straight to the sexbots trope, so I have my doubts this will be the bastion of
originality I’m hoping for.
I wouldn’t call Mika Kelly one of the greatest actresses
of her generation or anything, but man, Minka Kelly had nothing to do in this
episode. Actually, none of the other characters did besides Mackenzie Crook’s
science guy Rudy (who you might recognize as Pirates of the Caribbean’s Ragetti or Orell on Game of Thrones).
I’m no scientist, but I have my doubts that putting olive
oil in your presumably expensive cyberleg is at all a good idea.
