Real Humans: "Blind Love"

September 13, 2014 8:01 AM - Season 1, Episode 7

The episode starts with an attempted rape of Anita for which Tobbe takes revenge with a baseball bat. Inger meets Leo for the first time, realizes that he and Anita share the same tattoo and suspects there must be more to the story.

While the secret police tortures Leo to get him to talk, we see a flashback to a scene when a hubot (Flash?) is freed. Then Leo’s case is suddenly closed and there is talk about killing him off, to get to the information in his head. To protect her client, Inger has to threaten to go public.

Roger's relationship with hubots gets more and more complicated. After being let go from his decade-long job he has to train his hubot replacement, Jago, but freaks out and smashes the guy – subsequently Roger loses 12 months of compensation due to the attack. At home his love for another hubot, Bea, reaches a new high. And there is the group of free hubots camping out in Roger’s basement, unbeknownst to him.

posted by travelwithcats (13 comments total)

That liberation scene was pretty violent – reminded me of exorcism scenes in movies. Why would it be painful / scream-inducing to have an update with a new code?
posted by travelwithcats at 12:47 PM on September 13, 2014

I still need to watch these again, which will most likely be tomorrow. Still, the attack on Anita is one of the bits I had the most difficulty with. First season Mimi/Anita is a bit challenging, because she's so passive. In some ways it's an extraordinary performance - this life-size doll who reflects other people's prejudices and desires back at them. But still a bit passive.
posted by Grangousier at 1:48 PM on September 13, 2014

True. And maybe therefore she is perceived as highly likable by everyone.
posted by travelwithcats at 2:03 PM on September 13, 2014

Oh, absolutely. I don't think it's a mistake, and it's a very interesting choice (given that there's such a range of different hubot characters represented), but it does make me slightly tense, most of all when we get to a moment of Mimi In Peril. There's a lot more of that later on, of course, but it seems more earned.

In a way, she's a counterpart to Odi, the other innocent abroad. Though she's fallen into the family, just as he falls out of it.

I'll definitely watch it tomorrow, and be back.
posted by Grangousier at 2:29 PM on September 13, 2014

Enjoy! And see you tomorrow.
posted by travelwithcats at 2:32 PM on September 13, 2014

"Why would it be painful / scream-inducing to have an update with a new code?"

I think a lot of people find the idea of personal agency and moral choice to be existentially terrifying.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 5:09 PM on September 13, 2014

People maybe, but basic hubots?
posted by travelwithcats at 5:32 PM on September 13, 2014

I think that's the point, isn't it? That's how they've been changed.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 6:42 PM on September 13, 2014

Hm, I see.
posted by travelwithcats at 6:46 PM on September 13, 2014

And wasn't that specifically whatshername, the one who really just wants domestic life with a human family? If I'm remembering that correctly, then she's an example of someone who found themselves as a person and with a person's responsibilities and possibilities who really didn't want that chasm of potential opening up at their feet. What she really wants, now, is to be unborn but not literally, because she's also herself and there's no undoing it. So she wants to be herself, but without all the complications.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 8:22 PM on September 13, 2014

...which is also not unlike many of us real humans in the actual world.

More literally: what do babies do when they're born, after they've taken their first breath?
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 8:23 PM on September 13, 2014

Yes it was Flash. She is a nanny hubot, that is why she wants a family. It was programmed into her. :-)
posted by travelwithcats at 5:55 AM on September 14, 2014

But you're right, Flash left the group to be herself and find her own path - that's very human.
posted by travelwithcats at 7:46 AM on September 14, 2014