We start with the crime – a man with an awesome computer
game system who then uses said system to play GOLF. Karma quickly catches up
with him and he’s attacked by a scarred man with heavy bandages who tases him
and then extracts some kind of blue glowing liquid from him. People shouldn’t
have blue glowing liquid in them, I’m pretty sure that’s not healthy.
At work John’s phone rings and Dorian helpfully answers it
and informs a Samantha that John doesn’t want to talk to her and he’s
desperately waving at him not to pass the phone over.
Dorian is gloriously evil. Apparently John when on a date with her the night before and she “holoblocked him”, basically accepting every call she received, and ending up with them having dinner with holograms of her room mate and mother. He complains about being unable to just have dinner with another person but also dismisses Dorian’s attempts to be sympathetic since he can’t experience them so Dorian suggests that maybe John is just boring… ooooooooh
Further sniping is interrupting Valerie who wants their help on a murder – despite no indication of violence of foul play and the EMTs calling the death a heart attack. But Valerie doesn’t buy it, the victim’s a chrome like her (genetically enchanced), chromes don’t die young from natural causes.
To the scene of the crime with the deceased Brian who had
a perfect life and perfect health – though John throws in some doubt, Dorian
sees the teeny tiny puncture wound; he checks it for DNA (which involves
injecting himself with it – ew) and finds 7 different people’s strands.
At the police station the check the 7 – all of them are
dead, all by apparent natural causes, but none of them are chromes. There are
no patterns between them but Maldondo notes they’re all attractive people.
The heavily bandaged man goes to see a very seedy looking
doctor who doesn’t look thrilled to see him to give him the phial he took to “do
it again”. The doc isn’t thrilled but blackmail over his revoked medical
license makes him co-operate. The bandaged man is plugged into a machine and
injected with the liquid which is apparently not a very pleasant experience.
At the police station, Maldonado isn’t amuse because the
case has been leaked to the press; Valerie isn’t shocked – chromes are rich and
connected and look after their own. The dead man, Brian, had recently come from
a club before his death so it needs checking out – by Valerie, since it’s a
chrome club. Maldonado asks Valerie about going to the club and Valerie notes
that while they may hate her job, they do like what she can do for chromes; and
that chromes will be hoping it’s a murder because murder is easier for them to
face than the idea that their perfect genes won’t give them the long life they
promised.
Valerie goes to the club which gets all kinds of shock
and disgust that a chrome is a cop (and her own contempt for the elitism of the
chromes). The manager still wants to kick Valerie out because her special
members don’t want the privacy violated by piffling cops so they play game of
threat on threat until another chrome, Jake, arrives to play nice.
Lots of flirting and he pulls out his brother how is a
sculptor which is, apparently, also not an acceptable life for chrome so he’s
super tolerant of her unusual job
It apparently worked because when she returns to
Maldonado she’s all melty and happy and has had the realisation that she
resents clones so much she tends to forget they’re people (oh Jake is most
definitely evil now - this just confirms it). And they join the Dorian school
of making nifty jokes at John’s expense.
Dorian and John have one of their wonderful banter
sessions with John deciding technology is bad for how it puts barriers between
people (like him holoblocked on a date and the chromes getting special
treatment because of their vast influence) and Dorian hitting back that he
should replace his robotic limb with a tree leg, then. The banter journey gets
them to Rudy who confirms all the victims had the same tiny wound (with a nifty
hologram connection to the bodies) and Rudy playing pathetic comic relief
again; this time upset that no-one warned him that there was a “beauty” killer out
there for more rather ridiculous forced hilarity because, of course, Rudy isn’t
conventionally attractive. Try to make the comic relief at least a little
funny, Almost Human. Anyway the
injections apparently injected nano-bots into the dead victims.
The footage from the club identifies someone following
Brian – the facial recognition software recognises him, but different angles
recognise him as different people; 2 of the 7 victims. Rudy drops in the
dramatic revelation – the nanobots read and reconstruct facial tissue.
The killer is currently out complimenting a woman on her
beautiful eyes.
Dorian and John go to see a Dr. Randolph who is
apparently an expert on nanobot facial reconstruction. Apparently it was
cancelled after the trials because it stopped people’s hearts which is a pretty
bad side effect. He explains the process which is pretty obvious by now anyway,
but adds again that the “donors” all died and many of the recipients were
disfigured.
To the killer and his doctor and it appears the killer,
Eric, may have been one of those first donors, and the doctor a man who
performed them; Eric uses the doctor’s guilt to push him to keep injecting the
nanobots to create Eric’s perfect face (which, with this many procedures close
together, involves flooding his system with adrenaline which I’m sure will
become relevant). They go ahead – and Eric marvels at his new, beautiful green
eyes.
Back to John and Dorian and since the nice doctor just implied John could use Dorian’s perfect nose, Dorian is having a fun time commenting on all John’s imperfections and John hits back, rather little excessively at Dorian “being a composite”.
Banter interrupted with the latest murder and Valerie
warning them the killer is increasing the frequency of his kills. Dorian and
John head to see John’s informant who can tell them where one gets one of the
nifty injector things on the black market – and it also shows a harsh class
divide with the decided low tech bare knuckle fighting ring they approach; the
fighters are androids though, much to Dorian’s disgust. John’s contact is De
Carlo, a little person in a giant robot suit. After threatening to throw him
over the wall, he gives up the identity of a doctor who will change your face
to avoid facial recognition.
This leads them to the doctor – who prepares for their
arrival by injecting himself with adrenaline (told you it would be relevant) to
make himself super strong; that allows him to hold of John for a few seconds
but also causes a heart attack and him to die before he can be questioned. They
confirm that he was a doctor in the trials who lost his license for covering up
that pesky dying thing. They also find a picture of Eric – or rather, who Eric
wants to be; he has 9 of the facial features he needs, he’s out hunting number
10 – and the identify the guy with the desirable cheekbones
The man, Jonathon Geddes, is surprised by the sudden
appearance of very aggressive police protection with Valerie heading the body
guard team. John and Dorian stay in the doctor’s lab when the doc gets a call (from
Eric) – he wants Dorian to imitate his voice to the caller but Dorian hasn’t
heard the doctor speak.
The problem is, good cheek bones are not unique to one
person – and he just has to find someone else who fits. At the police station
they consider that and try to draw more connections with the victims –
realising they all live in the same area (a HUGE area) and they all have
special 3D photos, they realise they’ve all had their picture taken at the DMV…
so it must be a DMV employee
Unless there has been a sharp decline in the number of
people who drive in the future, I dare say a rather large number of people have
had their picture taken at that same DMV…
And we see Eric’s motive for the drastic changes – he’s
chatting to a woman online who he’s also stalking; she thinks he lives in
Arizona and is coming for a visit. He’s apparently making his “perfect” face
before that meeting.
Valerie does some detective work and finds Eric – who went
on disability from the DMV just as the trials for the nanobot technology
started. Maldonado is surprised that he would volunteer since he looks quite average
and not in need of plastic surgery and Valerie tells them about dysmorphic
disorder and the effect of seeing perfect images all around and crashing
self-esteem.
They launch their raid but Eric isn’t there when they
arrive; but it does give Dorian chance to see his chat log with the woman he’s
stalking, Judy – and notice that he lives just opposite her and can see her
through his window (and by the worn patch on his carpet, he’s spent a lot of
time watching her).
Which is also where Eric has fled, to “surprise” Judy. He
apologises for the bandage on his cheek that he promises will be gone soon; she’s
sure he’ll be beautiful but confesses she’s not told him something. She’s
blind. She daren’t tell him because she was terrified their relationship would
end if he knew the truth. They have a touching moment – and then the police arrive
with guns.
Eric runs to the roof – then gets up on the ledge ready
to jump. John tries to talk him down – but he jumps, his last words are “we’re
supposed to be loved.”
John returns to the police station to angst and Dorian
asks him if he believes there’s someone out there for everyone – surprisingly,
John says yes. Dorian offers to go to a bar with him and watch him drink
(awwww); instead he invites Valerie, but she already has a date with Jake.
Awwwwwwwww. She does watch him as she leaves though followed by an angsty
lonely moment I assume was included because the writers had a minute to fill.
The concept of holoblocking is really excellent and a surprisingly
little twist to a show that hasn’t done a great job of chasing down the social
implications of rising technology. Even today, mobile phones can leave us
overly connected and without quality alone or couple time – how much worse will
that be as the technology becomes more and more involved?
Chromes are another element that could use some development – not just genetically enhanced but they almost have their own elite subculture with their own network, their own clubs; or maybe superculture since it’s full of powerful elites an “subculture” suggests smaller and weaker.
It’s good it had these to develop because the underlying
science is awful. If you have the resources and technology to inject bots into
someone’s head, killing them to copy their face is there a reason why you don’t
have the technology to perform more conventional plastic surgery and work from
an image of them? Do you really need to copy their faces by killing them rather
than make, for example, and extremely detailed 3D hologram of them for the bots
to copy? The storyline doesn’t work, it’s an attempt at an updated “I tried to
create the perfect man/woman by killing people and chopping up their bodies”
which in turn is a clumsy Frankenstein copy.
Speaking of times when the technology feels shaky: we’ve already seen that EVERYONE is on facial recognition – Dorian can glance at a picture and automatically recognise anyone, no matter what their profession or whether they have a criminal record. Advertisers use facial recognition to tailor adverts to their recipients, we’ve seen this as well. So why would the DMV need photo ID any more? Why would it exist? The whole point of a photo ID is to identify yourself – but facial recognition is everywhere and freely available sufficient to target random spam at people so there would be no need for a photo ID – or a license at all.
I love Dorian and John’s banter but this week I think
John responded to standard teasing with a few comments that were designed to be
a lot more cutting
I appreciate the edition of a disabled character, less so her being used to have a great big “OH THE IRONY!” moment which is her sole purpose.
