Hey, let’s start with this good news: They finally made a Rise And Fall Of Sanctuary Moon segment that I actually liked! And really, what’s not to like in the excerpt from the deliberately over-the-top show-within-a-show that starts our time with Murderbot this week? We’ve got Clark Gregg hamming it up, a decapitated Jon Cho in a quick cutaway, and DeWanda Wise actually getting to do something fun for once from within this supposedly fun exercise in genre silliness: grinning like an artificial maniac, before doing her damnedest to pop Gregg’s head like a bizarrely sideburned pimple. Hell, the clip even has actual thematic relevance to the episode at large, highlighting the anti-construct attitudes that inform how easily some of the PresAux team can be led to distrust our own beloved Murderbot. If all of these sequences had gone this hard, and this wild, from the start of the season—instead of just coasting on a very basic vibe of “it’s funny that we’re making this kind of bad”—I wouldn’t have been half as grouchy about the amount of time and energy they’ve swallowed up across the season.
Speaking of MB: It is not, admittedly, making itself easy to either like or trust in “Foreign Object,” which brings a whole host of trouble down on our titular bot’s head when it goes snooping around in Gurathin’s. The nosy construct might have drawn attention to the augmented human’s miserable crush on Mensah while poking around in his skull (ostensibly in the interest of blocking his pain receptors in the midst of an emergency surgery). But Gura comes away from their impromptu brain link with something far more damning: footage of those 57 dead “clients” that MB has been trying really, really hard not to think about ever since we met it…and, of course, the knowledge of what our favorite construct calls itself inside the supposed sanctuary of its own mind.
Alexander Skarsgård and David Dastmalchian are, per usual, great throughout the episode’s biggest sequence, which pops up a bit past the halfway point in its runtime. Watching their two characters briefly get in sync with each other, when they both think of the pain-blocking idea, is genuinely thrilling. But the entire surgery scene, and then its ugly aftermath, is full of little grace notes for both actors. There’s the soft pleading in Dastmalchian’s voice as Gurathin begs not to be given painkillers that might trigger his old addictions. There’s the tiny “That was private”—taken directly from Martha Wells’ books—after Murderbot’s name for itself is exposed. And most especially, there’s the “yes, maybe” after Gurathin—whose loathing for the construct always feels, in part, like self-loathing—pushes past all of the explanations MB has tried to create for itself to explain away those 57 deaths and says aloud the one it’s terrified is true: “Maybe you’re just defective. A defective unit that’s one thought from killing everyone around you.”
Murderbot’s ability to put at least one absolutely stellar scene like this on the screen every week earns it a lot of latitude from me—with that forgiveness, in this case, mostly being focused on the episode’s ending, which asks us to believe that Murderbot might actually betray the PresAux team to save its own hide. The show has gotten a bit of juice, here and there, out of playing up the humans’ fear that their SecUnit might be a danger. But at this point in the season, it’s impossible to imagine it actually hurting any of them, let alone letting down Mensah in such a dramatically fatal way. The end result of hyping up the possibility, then, is to (almost) end the episode on a clearly artificial cliffhanger, one that produces no actual tension, just the anticipation of being jerked around a bit next episode. (The actual ending, with one last installment of The Skarsgård And Dastmalchian Show, is actually pretty delightful.)
I’m jumping around a bit, but outside my ending quibbles this is mostly a pretty decent episode of TV, as the series cruises toward its season finale. We get introduced to our mysterious antagonists, for one thing, with Amanda Brugel appearing (via a pre-recorded message left with one of MB’s “hidden” cameras) as the leader of the corporate team that killed everybody on DeltFall. (Nobody buys the “huge misunderstanding” line she tries to peddle, because these characters might be dopes, but they’re not actively suicidal.) Stating that PresAux is stranded on the planet now that the emergency beacon has been blown up, the unnamed woman proposes a meetup. Later (in another strong scene, taking place after Murderbot storms off), the humans work out what’s probably actually going on here: Mining goons GrayCris are on the planet to dig up (very illegal) alien artifacts, and they’re very happy to kill any and all witnesses to keep their secrets. The only reason they want to “negotiate” is because Mensah actually found said artifacts, back in episode two; most of the team is pretty sure they’re looking to torture the info of their location out of her before getting on with killing all the other loose ends. The whole sequence might be a tad exposition-y, but I can’t be mad. It’s honestly just great to have all of our characters acting like they’re both intelligent and good at their jobs for once.
See also, god help me, the latest installment of the throuple drama, in which Ratthi, Pin-Lee, and Arada all act nearly like adults for once. (Okay, Arada and Pin-Lee bickering over how “plausible” it is that Ratthi fell for Pin-Lee and not Arada skirts the line, but I’m grading aggressively on a curve with this material.) For all that I’ve complained about these three characters, I think all of them, and the performances bringing them to life, have strengths and potential. (I’ve gone hardest on Akshay Khanna, but his handling of Ratthi here lands funny without tipping over into goonish.) I just can’t hang when the script makes them act so stupid that they’re no longer buyable as human beings. (For a comparison point, and a demonstration of why a lighter, less overtly comedic hand is so valuable, consider the bit from this episode where the PresAux team praises itself for getting in the way in last episode’s fight, which commits the double sin of making them seem like total dunces and revisiting footage that’s still perfectly fresh in memory.)
Which has me musing: Is Murderbot doomed to only have one or two really good/great scenes per episode? It feels like a consequence of the show’s nature as a comedy-drama hybrid—because the scenes that linger most in my memory are almost never the ones that are trying to make me laugh (outside the occasional voiceover quip, or the big self-insert fantasy bit, at least). The series is working with some big, heady ideas, and it has a cast that’s equipped to handle them: Skarsgård, especially when he’s freed from both the helmet and the voiceover booth, is so good at capturing every nuance of his character’s bizarre existence that he can break my heart with a flicker of an eye. But Murderbot doesn’t just want to be a heartbreaking drama; it wants to be a sort of high-concept sitcom, too, and it’s that divided nature that makes it such an oddball, far more than its anatomically incorrect sci-fi protagonist. It’s a little baffling to watch a series be so consistently excellent at one thing, and consistently mid at another, with what appears to be the exact same level of interest.
Even so, I’m hanging in here and excited to see how this story finishes up. The knowledge that we’ve almost certainly got a handful of really great scenes still to go makes this homestretch worth looking forward to.
Stray observations
- • On the topic of looking forward: Hinting around at the nature of the massacre in MB’s memory has me really hoping we get a second season covering the events of sequel novella Artificial Condition. Is that just because I really want to see how the show handles ART, my favorite character from the book series? Who can say?
- • Wise is genuinely super fun in that opening Sanctuary Moon bit.
- • “What do I think? I think I need to find out if it kills Flight Officer Hordööp-Sklanch next. But I guess I gotta deal with this shit first.”
- • Skarsgård gets a fun little look when Pin-Lee refers to GrayCris’ SecUnits (they have at least three more) as “the kind that kicked SecUnit’s ass.”
- • “Don’t move until I’ve secured the area. Especially not you.” This last bit, addressed to an indignant Ratthi, got a laugh out of me.
- • “I was telling the truth. I hadn’t seen it on Sanctuary Moon. I’d seen it on MedCenter Argala, episode 502. They always claimed the cases on the show were drawn from real life!”
- • “It’s not true that you murdered all those miners?” “No. It is not true that that’s why I call myself Murderbot.”
- • “It’s not. Your pet!” Noma Dumezweni isn’t on the frontlines of this episode, but she has some strong moments.
- • “I have a plan. I…have a plan?” “Fuck.”
