Spoiler alert: this recap covers the fifth episode of Humans showing on Channel 4. For episode four, click here.
The slow burning thriller HUMANS once again flourished in episode 5 by getting to the heart of what all good science fiction does best – making us reflect on the human condition. Our frailties, our strengths and what really makes us tick.
The action in the latest episode may not be as fast paced as some hope for, but it is like a bubbling volcano; you can’t really contain what is happening underneath and you just know that in the remaining three episodes to come, we are expecting a gripping showdown.
We can start to prepare ourselves for the imminent war against the robots, which is likely to break out any time soon. We have suspected this may be the case for the last couple of episodes now, but the We Are People (WAP) and their rage against the machines is slowly gaining momentum.
The episode opened with the mysterious Leo (Colin Morgan) despatching Niska (Emily Berrington) and her homicidal and violent tendencies (which she has now become renowned for) to George Millican’s (William Hurt) house for her safety. This involves some rather entertaining moments with the well-behaved, I-am-very-robotic nurse-synth Vera (Rebecca Front), and a little spice is added during the new household visitors stay as the robot-hating cop Drummond (Neil Maskell) turns up to question Millican about his former Synth, Odi (Will Tudor), which has been found abandoned in the woodlands.
Lying in the woodlands confused and alone would be the least of worries for Joe Hawkins (Tom Goodman-Hill) who has been well and truly rumbled for initiating Anita’s (Gemma Chan) ‘adult mode’ in the last episode, as his ‘sofa moment’ was finally revealed. Joe’s escapades were discovered thanks to his tech-savvy daughter, Mattie (Lucy Carless) who spotted that sex request in their Synth’s command chain and rather comically she, along with her mum Laura (Katherine Parkinson), accused her hormonal teenage brother Toby (Theo Stevenson) of getting it on with the household help.
Admirably Toby did take the blame to protect his Dad, but eventually Joe did confess about his extra special five-minute relationship with the family android. Having been kicked out of the house and seeing the disgust on his wife’s face, he probably would have preferred to share the same fate as Odi and lie in the woods! Robot or not, in Laura’s eyes, he still cheated.
Meanwhile, there were other revelations aplenty after we learnt that Leo had been brought back from the dead by his Synth developer father, which explains why he needs to plug himself into the mains at regular intervals. We couldn’t help but feel sorry for Leo this week after his attempts with Mattie failed to help Anita remember who she was previously – Mia. She coldly reminded them of the rules: “Any inappropriate physical contact must be reported to my primary user,” warns Anita as he embraces her as if she’s still Mia.
It was difficult to detect whether or not she was pretending to fake not remembering her previous ‘life’ as Gemma Chan is so good at being robotic, making it quite the challenge to actually work Anita out.
Will she remember? Will Leo finally be reunited with Mia, the woman/Synth he loves? We have no idea, but we certainly hope so.
It’s a rather melancholy ending to the episode: Leo is crying, Max is lonely, Odi is abandoned, Niska is snooping and Joe has been kicked out.
However, there is still a lot to look forward to in the remaining three hours of the first season, as secret Synth detective Karen Voss (Ruth Bradley) looks likely to have a showdown with Niska, as she continues to lead the police hunt for her. Prepare for a robots versus humanity conflict. Hopefully HUMANS will end up looking like a TV spin-off of TERMINATOR or BLADE RUNNER by the end of it – and that is definitely a good reason indeed to tune in to Channel 4…
[…] Spoiler alert: this recap covers the sixth episode of Humans showing on Channel 4. For episode five, click here. […]
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