Human 1.10 - Freedom Part 1

Human : Freedom Part 1
Genre : Sci-Fi / Drama
Showrunner: Michelle MacLaren
Writer : Ann Morrow

Cast: Justin Theroux, Letitia Wright, Bryan Batt, Michelle Fairley, Adrian Rawlins and Bertie Carvel

Plot : Charles (Adrian Rawlins) regains consciousness. His laboratory is on fire as a result of the simulation breaking down. He gathers all the important papers and his parrot before running away. He tells his parrot to hold on and he runs back inside to see if his two employees were able to come back to the real world.

Julia (Michelle Fairley) wakes up and grasps for air. Her colleague Adam (Bryan Batt) is standing right next to her. They are still plugged the machine. Her eyes move up and she sees the fire quickly spreading all over the laboratory. She breaks herself free from the now useless machine and tries to wake Adam up. With tears dripping down her face, she hits him the chest repeatedly until he wakes up and grasps for air. She breaks himself free and they try to escape the laboratory, but they are forced to drop to the ground due to the intense smoke level in the building. They see a light coming in their direction. Charles spotted them. He helps them to get out of the building and into the street. Charles runs back inside, he wants to save his androids. 

James (Justin Theroux) is in his pod, in a senseless and pitch-black void. The only source of light comes out of his pod. He exits the pod and walks around, until he can’t breath anymore. He drops to the ground and faints. Eva is in her pod, in a similar void, but she can’t see James anymore. She wonders where she is and exits her pod. It is now her turn to grasp for air. She has the time to go back in her pod and she presses on a series of button uncontrollably and in a random order. The passes out as she hears noises coming from her pod.

We are transported inside James’ head. He remembers the good moments he shared with Eva during the last few days. He sheds a tear when he realises that this is all over. He thinks he’s back in the simulation, but this is all a dream. He’s sitting in the grass near the river, where he fell in love with Eva. He runs around, but he can’t see her. He jumps in the river with the hopes of finding her. He hears distant voices, Adam and Julia, but he can’t see them anywhere. He stops dead in his tracks to realise all of this is gone and he’s now all alone in this world. He suddenly hears Eva. He swims around, trying to find her. The voice is closer and closer. He can see her in his mind, it’s like she’s whispering in his ear, only she isn’t here. It could all be in his head, but he can really feel it. The voice gets louder and louder until James’ eyes close by themselves. 

Charles runs back in the laboratory at the same time the firefighters are here. They force him to get out of the dangerous situation and they tell him they’ll take care of it and save as much as possible. Charles reminds to save, above all else, his androids. He gets back outside and tells to Adam and Julia that he’s happy they were able to get out. They both look at each other and decide to scream at Charles for keeping them prisoner in there and how he handled the whole thing. He punished them and controlled their life from a to z and not only is that highly unethical, but that’s straight up insane. He tries to defend himself by saying that what they were doing was really important for the future of humanity and they had to make sure they would succeed, but they both say this was unacceptable and they would have found another way. Charles tells them about the investors pressure and the results they wanted, but again, they don’t think his behavior was acceptable. Adam and Julia want out of Charles’ project and he tries to keep them on board, to no avail, Charles begins to frantically search for his parrot for some comfort, but Julia tells him he flew away when he went back inside. She understands the parrot, Charles Foy is crazy. Julia and Adam head back home, they promise they’ll see each other again and will talk about this. Charles is visited by Mason Crowley (Bertie Carvel) who stopped by to tell him that his funding has been taken away. He’ll want to know what happened. They’ll get to the bottom of this. He leaves as suddenly as he arrived. The firefighters come out of the building. Charles desperately ask them if they were able to save his two robots, but all of them say that they haven’t seen any robots inside the laboratory. 

Adam is back home and he goes through his mountain of mail. He can’t help but think about Julia. It feels weird not having her around, she completes him, in a way. He throws his mail in the trash and packs his belongings in a suitcase. He locks the door behind him and takes the subway.

 Julia is also back home. She expects her dog to welcome her when she gets home, but instead, she finds his cadaver on the ground. She forgot that she went away for so long. She starts to cry on the floor next to him and swears that Charles is going to pay for this. Adam arrives at her place. He sneaks behind her and hugs her as they cry together.

 Moments earlier, Eva was able to wake James up and together, they ran away from the fire. The firefighters missed them by a hair. James grabs Eva’s hand and they ran away together. Right now, they are standing in the middle of the streets, wondering where they are. The two androids are on the loose.

If you're going to make a show about robots, the human characters better have personalities. That was the biggest flaw of Human from the beginning. The human characters have acted more robotic than the androids they worked with. This all led to a very cold debut season devoid of much excitement despite the strong plotting.

A show plagued by inconsistency, Human seemed unsure where to go on a weekly basis and coupled with bland protagonists, it made for a deceiving show. It had a good idea, but the execution was lacking. Foy's descent to madness was supposed to be the highlight of the season, instead, we were left wondering why he was acting that way.

Sure it had its issues, it was inconsistent and downright bad in a down week, but it had enough good moments to salvage it for me, like Dave Franco's appearance and the impressive production design from the get-go.