In Which We Give Everything We Have To Our Robotic Partner

don't believe his lies

Urbane Man

by DICK CHENEY

"Sometimes newer technology isn't better," whines a robot of color shortly before a bunch of cops leap into battle without bulletproof vests. The irony is not only lost on his human partner, detective John Kennex (Karl Urban), there is in fact no irony at all in Fox's new hour long drama Almost Human. It is an impressive achievement considering any depiction of the future, no matter how unimaginative, usually manages a sense of humor about itself. Making a show that pretends to be about tech when it really concerns an absurd fear of it is a dirty trick.

Actually, newer technology is always better. I would say that there is no such thing as a bad robot, but that would only be evidence that this shitbag of a television program exists purely as a lame pun on the name of J.J. Abrams' production company. In the near-future world of Almost Human, the only thing really different is that the architecture is a lot worse, and glass a lot more plentiful. A police station composed entirely of glass might be the dumbest thing I have ever encountered.

guys in the future our tablets will be, get this, HORIZONTALIt is difficult to think of anybody as bad at anything as J.J. Abrams is at everything. Ideally he will be making terrible Star Wars films for decades on end so we don't have to actually see him try to be creative. (Super 8 was the most pathetically patronizing piece of art produced since Saving Private Ryan.) Abrams' "ideas" are only new or interesting to people whose last novel was To Kill A Mockingbird in 8th grade. Which reminds me, that book is racist, but not nearly as racist as Almost Human.

never taking the hashtag off the screen is an oblique commentary about the dangers of technology I suppose, it sucks

The android (Michael Ealy) is actually not really a robot at all. He is surrounded by "newer" versions of himself that, he explains in a glossing over that would make our president proud, cannot draw inferences. Since he is capable of such complex determinations, he may not be human, but he is certainly sentient, and killing him would be murder in any decent society.

Such moral conundrums are the least of your concerns once you realize the android is the only actor with any talent on the entire show.

she left him after she saw his performance in "doom" on cinemax one night
There appears to be no racism of any kind in 2048, except of course discrimination against androids. Gifted with one technology — but no others — the people of Almost Human appear kinda, somewhat futuristic. Yet all their other methods are not only not advanced, but completely retrograde. There was a Windows commercial during Almost Human that showed off more computing power than in the entire police station on this show.

At one point someone actually says of a police officer exposed to a deadly pathogen, "It's like he has a hundred different diseases at once!" Do you dimwits have any fucking idea how stupid that is?

so in the first episode the villains have a trick that can turn off all the robots. Think about this. OK, stop before your brain breaks.Perhaps, you are stupidly protesting, Almost Human is fun in a silly kind of way. Unfortunately, as I said, there are no jokes in it. Besides that, Karl Urban's detective, meant to be a grizzled compendium of synthetic replacements and anger management issues, enunciates all his lines in a throaty growl that is too difficult to decipher quickly enough to masturbate to its bass. Nor am I convinced that this will be the show to finally break the staid television convention of never showing a robot's penis.

um hey lili ask the tiny little napoleon you sold your soul to if he would give it back after this is canceled

Urban's police captain is portrayed by Lili Taylor. She is three feet shorter than her underling and has to tilt her neck like a door hinge to meet his eyes. The poor woman's dignity seems to ooze into a puddle at her feet. I hope she fed and clothed her memwah-writing husband Nick Flynn with the money J.J. paid her, because otherwise there is little justification for this mashup.

the future: just like now but with considerably worse architecture

Is Almost Human racist? Certainly. Imagining that racial differences would vanish completely in thirty years time is not science fiction, it is fantasy. Convincing yourself these ancient divisions would be replaced by a suspicion of androids is even less likely. Comparing racism to fear of technology on any level is an insult to both concepts.

As bad as Almost Human is, at least it does not attempt to make you care about the protagonist by showing his tender father-daughter relationship with a little girl. J.J. Abrams is simply unimaginative; Harper Lee is an asshole.

"how did you lose your eye, sir?" "I poked it out while watching Revolution obvs"

Getting cheap sympathy for some privileged white dude by having him care about a child is the most loathsome trick in narrative. Well, killing Bambi's mother was pretty bad, but Harper Lee was worse.

I really hope he didn't burn down that cute yogurt shop

One of the only positive things about J.J. Abrams is that you can instantly realize how awful his work is. You don't have to wait until my blog post fifty years after the fact, as with To Kill A Mockingbird. My wife Lynne and I were actually brainstorming a list of things that are terrible only in retrospect. I will share the part of the list that does not concern itself with late 1970s pornographic films:

American Beauty
King Lear (we get it, you were worried about your daughters or something)
Cheers
Brooke Shields
Salvador Dali's paintings
The Secret of NIMH (spoiler, the mice were dead all along)
M. Butterfly
Xbox One/Johnny Carson
Heart of Darkness (this man could not write like, at all, and the whole story makes no sense, I mean, okay, you were mad you had to kill some people, grow up)
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

Lynne and I can't decide what to call the honor of appearing on this list. We are split between the Margaret Mead Prize For Being Misguided or the Sam Mendes' Marriage Lifetime Achievement award.

ya part of ah famlee now govnah
Time to eat crow: even I have to admit that the writing on The Walking Dead has improved noticeably. By eliminating the program's tedious characters and keeping the ones still capable of meaningful change or development, The Walking Dead feels tighter and less same-y. Last night's episode began to detail what happened to the governor since he massacred his own people, and despite my dead-on balls accurate critique of its manipulative aspects, I watched in rapt attention.

Crucial to the show's improvement has been a kind of warped eroticism. Watching a divorced mother of one blow on a laceration the governor obtained on his forehead was quite stimulating. Later, in the back of a food truck, the relationship was consummated entirely in silence as the Lord intended. You have no idea how relieved I am to be able to watch sex on television without hearing Lizzy Caplan's voice resonating through the entire scene.

the brilliance of this moment can never be dissipated in retrospect

A lot of shows would be worlds better if you killed off major characters, especially if they are portrayed by Karl Urban. Maybe I would be able to watch Mad Men again if Ted Chaough was found in an unmarked grave, for example. It's unfortunate that there is really no way to kill off Sean Hayes from his own show, although maybe his daughter will stick a knife in his neck for lying to her.

The Walking Dead has pressed the same masculine sympathy button a number of times. The men in this world are all mottled, unshaved and derelict; the woman alone have an earthly effervescence that was returned to them after the fall. I don't believe this is supposed to be because they are any better or worse at surviving their lives. The reason for this disjunction lies not in how men are intrinsically, but in how they viewed themselves before the fall. Becoming powerless is not quite as difficult if you never had much of the drug to begin with. Think of how many gay slurs Alec Baldwin would use if he wasn't rich as the day is long.

Dick Cheney is the senior contributor to This Recording. He last wrote in these pages about Super Fun Night and Mom. You can find an archive of his writing on This Recording here.

"I Couldn't Say It To Your Face" - Ben Sollee (mp3)

"The Last Pale Light In The West" - Ben Nichols (mp3)