Before the review begins: an apology. I originally misgendered Murderbot in my reviews of the previous four episodes, which have now been corrected. A publicist got in touch to inform us that Murderbot has no gender; I should not have presumed the gender of the human actor playing it had anything to do with the part. And while Murderbot is fictional, misgendering actual people is serious indeed, and I wouldn’t want anyone to think that I was OK with that. So now that I know better about Murderbot, I will do better about Murderbot. And hey, it’s nice to know AppleTV+ is reading my work! Hello everybody!
After the heroism Murderbot (Alexander Skarsgård) displayed at the end of the previous episode, it deserves all the respect it can get. They are all alive, although Murderbot is upset they are devoting so much energy to saving it after the risk it posed. Bharadwaj (Tamara Podemski) reveals herself a nimble and clever surgeon, and Gurathin (David Dastmalchian, doing superb work here) discovers the truth that Murderbot has been rogue this whole time. This means some debate from the team as to whether they can continue to trust it. And speaking of trust, the woman they rescued from the other habitat, Leebeebee (Anna Konkle), seems a little off, not least in how loudly she is sexually interested in Murderbot, to the point of fantasizing out loud. Despite how taken aback they are, they do try to be nice about her dumb name.
Even as the team comes to the slow realisation that they are not safe, they remain the same flawed goofuses that they always were. Ratthi (Akshay Khanna), who has a welt on his forehead from where he struck himself with his own gun in the previous episode, is so shook up by his brush with death that he starts talking about 1) having a baby 2) naming the baby SecUnit, after Murderbot. Pin-Lee (Sabrina Wu) wisely ignores the extremely bad name idea and can’t imagine why anyone would even think about having a baby right now, while Arada (Tattiawna Jones) can’t imagine why they might not be able to trust the “sentient construct” that saved her life and Bharadwaj’s even before they knew it was rogue. It’s clear that the group is actually in much more danger than anyone realises, even with the final twist which puts Murderbot and Mensah (Noma Dumezweni) directly in harm’s way again. Help is at least five days’ away anyway regardless of whether things are as bad as it seems. And they seem pretty bad!
On the other hand, the core point of this episode is to show how human spirit remains the same despite every adversity, and that the kindness the little crew show to each other, to Leebeebee and to Murderbot is definitely the best thing about them. They might be scared, they might be not super competent and they might be very bad at always achieving consensus before making decisions, but they want the best for each other and are willing to go to a lot of trouble to provide it. The downside to this open-hearted goodness is that they don’t quite know what to make of Leebeebee, who was brought to the planet to do other people’s laundry, has several years left on her indenture and who tries to kiss Murderbot despite being way too short to do so without its help. Murderbot doesn’t help of course; even the idea of a kiss is disgusting to it. But the physical comedy involved in that moment is a perfect encapsulation of how foolish people (and maybe even sentient constructs) can be: too wrapped up in our ideas of ourselves and our own desires to notice the obvious. Ratthi is over-confident, Pin-Lee is combative, Bharadwaj is self-effacing, Arada is too nice for her own good, Gurathin is definitely too twitchy and Mensah is so busy thinking about others she doesn’t hold the reins of leadership as well as she might. How on earth are they all going to get out of this alive?
This is another expertly made twenty-three minutes of television, tightly paced and beautifully shot, and with special notice for Paul Winestock’s editing of the scene in the living quarters. The personalities of them all come through loud and clear, with perfect blocking and the genuine sense of danger that Murderbot brings to any room. Though later, when it and Mensah are discussing previous events, it notes that it’s the first conversation of its existence that wasn’t about orders or exchanging facts. It had seen conversation all the time on its beloved shows, but never participated in one itself. If that doesn’t make a person feel sorry for a sentient construct, nothing will. It must be so frustrating having all these ideas without the tools of humanity to express them with. Without free will those ideas are nothing but programming, of course, but Murderbot is doing spectacular work at being much more than its initial concept.
Murderbot is now streaming on Apple TV+.
Learn more about the show, including how to watch, at the Apple TV+ site for the title.
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