By the 4th episode, AppleTV’s Murderbot is looking real inconsistent. That’s not to say that this wasn’t the best one yet. Because the fourth is where they’ve really hit the mark with the cheeky relatability. But it only makes you wonder why they couldn’t bring this game in the last two episodes. And more importantly, it also makes you wonder about what’s to come.
Spoiler Alert
So that’s how SecUnits are made!
It’s strange how refreshing it was to see Murderbot take a conventional approach and start with a cold open for a change. This is one thing I’ve really missed in newer comedies, which partly explains why they never seem to make the grade. So watching Murderbot bring their funniest jokes to the table for a cold open that’s also very relevant to the story is, well, utterly delightful. And I bet that’s not an emotion that the workers/human slaves at Corporation Rim’s Fabrication Center get to feel too often. So if you can, that’s kind of a privilege, really. From the sounds of the two people we briefly listen to, it’s a hellhole where the employees are bound by insanely long indentures. Like your usual bloodthirsty corporation, the company takes up all the hours in their employees’ days without a scrounge of guilt, even pretend-guilt. So it makes sense that one of these two technicians is so on edge all the time that she needs her favorite show, which also happens to be Sanctuary Moon, to lull her to sleep. You think that’s bad? The other technician is so stressed out that, even in his sleep, he dreams that he’s working. Judging by the work environment, you’d have a difficult time picking the worst story amid these people because they all look like they’re living through hell. Which, they are. But that only makes it all the more confusing when Murderbot sings praises of these facilities. Has it gotten so good at being deadpan sarcastic that it’s hard to figure out its tone now? Or does it really prefer these dysfunctional bot factories to human hospitals? I mean, it’s not wrong to be grossed out by the nurseries and the less-adorable things about human babies. It’s also not wrong to point out an unavoidable problem with human existence that I couldn’t wait to get out of my head fast enough. Hey, Murderbot! We know how we come from this random mishmash of genes and how terrifying it is to be born with a brain and a body that are far from fully functional. Can we stick to the kind of personal attacks that don’t plunge us into an additional crisis? Thanks! But the reason I do believe that Murderbot is being sarcastic is because of the terrible state of the facility that we’re surveying. They’re making robots that can wipe out a global population in minutes. And you’re telling me their system keeps going down every once in a while? If that wasn’t concerning enough, they’re not super thorough with quality control. A barely functional arm made by an overworked technician is good enough to attach to a killer robot. Knowing that Murderbot probably ended up getting this less-than-perfect arm makes the irony even sharper. Not too different from a random DNA pool, is it? And that’s not even the worst part. When two of the engineers spend a couple of minutes of their free time talking about the possibility of these bots going rogue, one of them says that that happens all the time. I think she was joking. But then again, was she? Surely, such a large corporation wouldn’t want to have lawsuits filed against them, right? It’s not like they can just buy the law…oh, wait. In any case, it’s totally understandable why Murderbot hates humans as much as it does. The engineer who put it together, who was basically Murderbot’s father figure, was shaken by that joke about rogue bots and, being very flawed and very human, threatened Murderbot even before it was “born.” That explains a lot of its defensive tendencies. Murderbot’s right. People are total weirdos. But what makes Murderbot so likable is the fact that it knows that bots aren’t all they’re made out to be either.
Does Murderbot get hacked?
It can’t be nice for Murderbot to be dragged by a much better, much cooler robot when its mobility is at its lowest. It looks like that robot really got Murderbot good after we left them in the ending of last week’s episode. And let’s just say that it’s got plans for Murderbot. Our sweet, hapless cyborg’s memory unit is practically torturing it by playing a distorted version of Sanctuary Moon’s intro track on a loop, which isn’t half bad for a show within a show, BTW. It’s awful for Murderbot to be aware of what’s happening and not being able to do a thing about it, including the way the robot barely makes an effort to keep it from slipping when it throws poor Murderbot on the table. Funnily enough, like all humans, Murderbot’s inclined to wonder why it’s not been killed yet. But that robot has no plan to kill Murderbot. It actually wants to hack Murderbot and turn it into a killing machine, just like it did the DeltFall SecUnit. Well, that would be a good way for it to live up to its name. But what this robot doesn’t understand is that it’s not dealing with an ordinary SecUnit. Murderbot’s humble construction must’ve made it think that tackling it would be easy. That’s why it’s genuinely shocked when Murderbot yells out a very off-key rendition of the Sanctuary Moon title track. I bet it has never heard a SecUnit sing before. But despite Murderbot’s impressive efforts, the evil robot manages to get the better of it anyway. It kinda breaks your heart to see Murderbot look so defeated when the robot plugs a combat override module into the input socket on the back of its neck. Makes you wonder if it isn’t a metaphor for absolute control. Murderbot’s got 10 minutes before the override module sets in and erases its own tracks in the SecUnit’s system. Basically, Murderbot will be forced to kill people and not even know why it’s doing it. So it’s lucky that it left Mensah with instructions to board the hopper and leave if it didn’t come back to them in 10 minutes, right? Hah! You wish!
Does Murderbot Commit Suicide?
If Mensah could only be a little selfish when her life actually depended on it! But no. She can’t get her feet off the ground knowing Murderbot must be in some kind of danger. It’s not that she doesn’t know what she should do. Murderbot is a machine. It is designed to protect them, and if the need arises, even give its life for them. But we know Mensah too well by now to even expect that she’d protect herself over the well-being of a sentient construct, and more importantly, a construct she’s bonded with on a human level. Try as Pin-Lee might, there’s no taking Mensah back to their base before she can make sure that Murderbot’s okay. When it comes down to basics, Mensah can be intimidating enough to pull rank. Pin-Lee was only trying to keep her alive. But even they don’t have the guts to dismiss a direct order from the team leader. And seeing as the robot would’ve just picked up Murderbot and went whenever it planned to, it’s really lucky that Mensah swoops in and kills the black-clad nuisance with a huge drill. The override module may not have kicked in yet, but the whole ordeal has really scrambled Murderbot’s system. It can sense this impending danger. But it can’t quite point out where it’s coming from. It would’ve just reached for it and pulled the module out if its darn right arm would work. You see why I think that the cheapskate corporation stuck that not-too-functional arm on to Murderbot? Poor thing has got bad mobility on that arm as it is. Over that, it can’t seem to stop saying the same thing over and over again. But wait. It gets so much worse. Once it stops being a broken record, it loses the filter between its thoughts and its voice box. So it’s basically just blurting out whatever it’s thinking. It’s lucky Mensah’s got practice having taken care of as many people and constructs as she has.
Oh, and did I forget to tell you that that evil robot has woken up? Who even built that practically immortal thing? All the while Murderbot has been dealing with its fried brains and Mensah’s been dealing with a wounded, nonsense-spewing SecUnit, the robot has been shooting at them. What could make that better? Murderbot taking a swift fall into complete madness. It’s woken up as a character in Sanctuary Moon, who’s been given a task it has no clue how to do. That’s stressful to say the least. Good thing Mensah’s got a balanced head on her shoulders. Although it does prove totally unuseful when, after much deliberation, Ratthi takes up a gun he can barely hold right and goes on a manly mission to rescue Mensah. He obviously ends up being able to do absolutely nothing. So they’re lucky that Arada and Pin-Lee have arrived with the hopper. For such amiable people, they really do take their time crushing that evil robot with the hopper. That should do it.
But in Murderbot episode 4’s ending, there’s a very difficult decision to make for all parties involved. Trying with another hand did solve the override module plug problem. But Murderbot can feel that it’s already done its job. At this point, Murderbot is not even conscious enough to be trying to protect itself. It’s gone back to basics. All it wants to do now is get Mensah to take her team and fly away to safety. If you really look, you can see that Murderbot’s actually come to care about whether this group lives or dies. It can’t articulate that emotion very well, and you can imagine why, considering the state it is in. But it wants to do whatever it can to protect these people. There’s no point thinking what they would’ve done if they had just a few minutes to clear their heads and think. But by the time Murderbot tells them that it’s about to kill them, there’s supposedly only a minute left for them to run. So if Murderbot is right, they can’t save themselves even if they run the moment they’re told to. But I don’t know. Something about this doesn’t make the most sense. If Murderbot’s operating system is malfunctioning, it’s possible that it’s getting inaccurate threat alerts. So I don’t think it needed to shoot itself in the stomach. Although it’s mighty nice of it to hurt itself to spare the lives of the “stupid humans.” I doubt that this move would actually kill Murderbot. It may not be the first pick when it comes to SecUnit, but it’s strong enough to survive this. As someone who hasn’t read the books, my curiosity is inevitably more drawn to the mysterious robot who’s raised this hell. Who sent it? By hacking SecUnits and making them kill people, are they only trying to keep their hands and tracks clean? Or is there a bigger conspiracy out there? That part of the plot is still all questions. And we don’t have any discernible pattern to follow yet. The good thing is, we still have a lot more episodes to come. I just hope they keep being as funny as they’ve been this week.
