Humans Season 2 Episode 4 Review: Proximity
Ron Gilmer
at
.
The synths are coming, the synths are coming!
On Humans Season 2 Episode 4, we see the beginnings of a secret synth initiative, or are synths being used by humans for their own agenda? Hmm. This should be interesting.
What started out as the simple sacking of Joe took a sinister turn. I didn't see that swerve coming, but thank goodness Joe had Mattie to sniff out the conspiracy.
How he made that leap wasn't really explained very well. I mean, why did he suspect something just from a standard buyout agreement?
Seems a tad convenient from a storytelling perspective, but it is what it is.
So, are synths REALLY making upper-level business decisions at his former company?
My guess is no. I think he was fired as punishment to Joe's family for Laura's involvement in the Niska deal.
This is how we lose, you know. It won't be robots that rise up and slaughter us in our beds. It's machines, sending silent messages in the middle of the night, when no one else is looking. I just came to tell you what I think, because that's what people do.
Joe
This was reinforced for me when the synth meter reader overtly threatened Laura at the end, but thankfully Odi was there to save the day.
Is the government secretly in bed with corporations, for the purpose of putting more and more of society under synth control?
Wouldn't be the first time government would try to control the populace, am I right?
Meanwhile, Athena is still going at it full speed in her efforts to bring her daughter's consciousness back to the world in quasi-human form.
I knew Milo couldn't be trusted, and his lunch with Athena proved as much. His sob story about his childhood didn't move the needle for me, or Athena.
I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if Milo is part of all this conspiracy deal: he is the prototypical TV weasel.
Dr. Morrow: I am about to crack how to transfer consciousness into a machine.
Milo: Human consciousness?
Dr. Morrow: Yeah. You may not be able to create a conscious synth out of nothing, but consciousness transference, that is the next big leap forward.
Milo: And if I fire you?
Dr. Morrow: Someone else will hire me to do it, and the next 20 years Qualia will be mentioned in the same sentence with laser discs and beta max.
He has her by the short hairs, though, since he owns all her work on his company servers.
The importance of this exchange is the part that brings Leo into their cross hairs.
Leo is probably the first synth human hybrid, which makes him very important to Athena's research.
Leo is barreling toward the Silo, where are the renegade synths are bring held, so he might be walking right into a trap of his own making. This could get really juicy, guys!
Laura bringing Astrid in to get a rise out of Niska had the desired result, but it was still pretty cruel, dropping such a huge reveal on her.
Niska was still the ice queen, and it was heartbreaking to see the look on Astrid's face when she was told Niska was a machine.
Astrid: What do you mean?
Laura: When you realized she wasn't human?
Astrid: I don't understand.
Laura: Niska is a synthetic.
Astrid: I don't-that can't be right.
Laura: I assure you, she was built in a lab.
Astrid: Niska?
Niska: I'm sorry.
Laura was so focused on her job that she didn't take into account what this would do to Astrid, and that's just wrong.
Hurting a human to help a synth is not acceptable, but Laura is too blind to see it.
The blurring of the lines between humans and synths causes lots of problems, both intellectual and emotional, and in this case, throwing Astrid under the bus to advance your legal case was a pretty crappy thing to do.
Lawyers. Sigh.
Like that wasn't enough, the scene between Niska and Astrid was a tear jerker, too.
Poor Astrid was jerked from pillar to post here, and though the conversation gave her a little insight into the mind of Niska, she was still emotionally gutted.
Astrid: Why didn't you tell me?
Niska: Because I didn't know if I could trust you.
Astrid: That's bullshit.
Niska: Because you liked me, and I didn't want you to stop.
Astrid: Well, I didn't. I could have loved you.
Niska: I know.
It sure doesn't seem like synths are a good thing, right? The damage caused, both socially and emotionally, seems to not be worth the possible advancements, does it?
Someone like sweet Mattie, who just wants to help a broken synth like Odi, gets no respect.
She gives him self-awareness, and the first thing he does is try to walk away from her family.
Granted, he feels that he is a free, thinking being, but he is still so child like he needs Mattie's guidance before he can function in the real world.
The Renie/Toby "courtship" is full of the usual hormone propelled teen angst, but adding to the craziness is Renie's insistence that she is a synth not a teenage girl.
Is she crazy? Maybe. My guess is something is going on at home: either a bad home life, or something even darker.
Could she be an abused child, hiding behind the facade of being a nonfeeling robot? Anything is possible.
Toby broke through the facade by getting her to laugh, but she got scared and ran. I'm sure we will get to the bottom of it all, and maybe we'll have a romance there eventually.
Speaking of romance, Ed and Mia got busy, which frankly weirds me out.
It seemed VERY fast to me like Ed was attempting to use sex to get closer to Mia for some other agenda.
Ed: I know you can feel pain, but can you feel, you know, the good stuff?
Mia: I feel happy.
Ed: I meant more like, pleasure?
Mia: I enjoy it. I like the proximity.
Ed: Proximity? Yeah, proximity's good.
Proximity. Ha! That's one way to put it.
Once he felt he got her to bond with him, the first thing he wanted her to do was to go to the bank and basically steal for him
I know he has debts, and he wants to take care of his mum, but that's wrong, and Mia saw right through that.
Turning Mia off at the end was pretty ominous, and my gut tells me he is going to sell Mia to the black market synth buyers to get enough scratch to keep his mum in the nursing home.
Don't do it, Ed!
This one had a pretty slow pace, but the threads are starting to come together, so the back half of the season should be very interesting.
Tell me what you think: will Laura give up the case? Will Ed sell Mia to the highest bidder? Will Toby and Renie hook up? Tell me in the comments.
And, of course, you can watch Humans online anytime, right here on TV Fanatic!
