Hey, look, we’re on time this week, that’s novel. Normally I’d be coy about this, but I think for this one I’m going to open with it: this was Almost Human‘s best episode yet. They basically took all my qualms from the first three episodes, addressed them and then threw in the best parts of the first three episodes into this episode.
Hey, look out! What’s that behind you? Oh no, it’s a spoiler! Because… I might be discussing spoilers… and you should run because you want to avoid spoilers. I should have thought this joke through. Spoiler warning.
Mackenzie Crook Got To Do Something!
Clearly I can tell the future because one of my thoughts last time was that Mackenzie Crook needs more to do in this show and, lo and behold, we get an episode (mostly, sort of) dedicated to him. And he pulls it off really well. Mind you, the story is built on Kennex and Dorian and they then have to turn to Crook’s Rudy for help, but he does play an integral role in the third act of the episode and carries it well with a lot of humour (some of it out of place) and grace. If this leads to the show using him more and more, I have no problems with that.
Now… Minka Kelly Needs More To Do
Seeing as I managed to predict a Mackenzie Crook-centric episode, now I would like to mention that Minka Kelly needs more to do in this show. She’s been standing quietly in the background of all of the episodes and I refuse to believe she’s just there to be pretty. Give me a Minka Kelly-centric episode and let her be the badass cop I know she can be. Get on that, FOX.
Really? Fart Jokes? Really?
This was my biggest problem with the episode because I’m pedantic and high-brow, but there are a couple of fart jokes near the end of the episode that were really unnecessary. They did end up cluing everyone in to the real identity of the bad guy for the episode so I can see why they were used, but I think they could have done it another way. There’s a time and a place for a good fart joke and I don’t think this was it because it definitely broke the mood of scenes.
How To Improve With Each Episode: The Almost Human Way
As I said before, this is the best episode of the show so far. I still stand by that. That’s because this episode takes what few problems the first episodes had and addresses them and then it takes the best moments of the first episodes and builds on them. Remember that badass Dorian moment last episode where he takes out a room full of guys with two handguns? Yeah, here we get a knockout brawl between Dorian and another android that’s even more badass. We get to see even more of Kennex dealing with his time in the coma as he begins to realise the world may have moved on without him. We even get to see more of how this show presents how crime could really have escalated in the face of the technological advancement. I just hope they haven’t peaked too early.
At The End Of The Day, This Is Just A Solid Cop Show
For all the futuristic sci-fi bells and whistles with robots and hand-based facetime and future meth, this show’s core is that of a really good cop show. It’s not exactly The Wire or anything, but the sci-fi elements work because they’re dressing atop a pretty great cop show. If they can keep this up and use that to delve more into the personal life of Kennex, the humanity of Dorian and allow episodes to flesh out the other cops in the department, we could be looking at a really great show. And this is only four episodes in so they have a lot of opportunity for this.
