Well, one thing’s for sure. Whether or not the PreservationAux team gets to complete the objectives that made them come on this terrible mission, they’ll go back with stories for a lifetime. If they manage to hold out until the Corporation car pulls up, that is. Even with Murderbot doing its best to help them, they’re really going to need luck on their side to get out of the whole mess. The worst part? They don’t even know who they’re fighting. Thankfully, if this week’s episode of Murderbot is any sign, they might just save their necks by doing the smart things accidentally.
Spoiler Alert
Gurathin sure projects a lot
It may not seem super meaningful at first when we’re taken a month back in time to watch the PreservationAux team play this game of communicating heavy stuff. They’re in Corporation Rim. And this is probably the celebratory dinner that follows them signing their contract with the Company. But we aren’t back for the sake of the central mystery at all. We’re here to understand this group of wholesome goofs a little better. I mean, they’re kind of silly for sure. But they also have this endearing tendency to make a party out of even the most mundane things. They have this game where they sit in a circle and each of them communicate something sweet and something bitter about someone. We don’t get to hear all of them out, but what Bharadwaj and Gurathin dig into explains some of the quirks that we’ve come to know. Wasn’t it odd how Bharadwaj was so easily swayed by a few sweet words from Leebeebee? Turns out, she has a tendency to make it bigger in her head when people are nice to her. Or at least that’s what I think is the case after hearing her very vulnerable confession about Pin-Lee. Pin-Lee was being a good friend when they skipped their favorite theatre group’s performance to be there for the lecture that had Bharadwaj freaking out. But being kind of a hopeless romantic, Bharadwaj saw it as a more-than-platonic gesture from Pin-Lee. You know the best thing about these people though? They can talk about everything. The elephant in the room never goes unaddressed, even when it’s far more awkward than the whole thing with Bharadwaj and Pin-Lee. It takes Gura a minute to get his bearings before he can start talking about Mensah. Yeah, it’s that big. It seems that trusting Gurathin was rather Russian Roulette-y for Mensah. When they met, he was a disturbed spy working for the evil Corporation Rim. Mensah took a chance on Gurathin because she was moved by his moral turmoil. If you question the moral implications of your actions, you might be a safe bet. So say what you will about this group’s practically self-harming blanket faith in humans and constructs, Mensah’s instincts have usually been right. She trusted Gurathin, an augmented human working against her and her fellow free humans, and in turn she got a friend who would lay down his life for her in a breath. Although I’m sure that Gugu would like to be a lot more than that to Mensah. But you know what stinks? Gurathin didn’t learn the right lesson from Mensah’s act of kindness. Instead of absorbing that empathy, Gurathin has grown kind of territorial about it. There’s also this sense that Gurathin might be projecting his own latent guilt onto Murderbot. He’s so blinded by his need to question Murderbot’s motives that he dismisses Mensah’s instincts, the very thing that basically saved him when he was ready to call it a day. But what am I saying? Nothing proves just how blind Gurathin is when it comes to Murderbot more than his fury at being saved by the SecUnit. Lucky for Murderbot, its secret being out has given it the option to be mean to Gurathin’s face. It’s not doing it unprompted. Gurathin reeks of insecurity every time he opens his mouth to say something ungrateful about Murderbot. I’d say that Murderbot’s actually holding back a lot when it comes to the unwarranted jabs from the other half-construct on the team. And Gurathin, well, he’s struggling so bad that he can hardly keep it in anymore in front of Mensah. It looks like he’s jealous of Murderbot for more than one reason. When he accidentally slips and calls Murderbot a he, not an it, he basically confesses to seeing the SecUnit as a rival augmented human. But Murderbot’s not human. It isn’t capable of romantic feelings. So when Gurathin has a meltdown and asks Mensah if she’s in love with Murderbot, he lays it out plain and simple. Terrified of communicating the feelings he has for Mensah, Gurathin has imagined this future scenario where she will replace him with Murderbot. Mensah and the rest of them can only do so much when it comes to making it a safe space for their friends to talk about anything that’s weighing on them. So now it’s up to Gurathin to fight his fear of being vulnerable and actually say what he wants to say. But if it’s a fear of rejection, I don’t see how things are going to get any better between Gura, Mensah, and the party-crashing rogue SecUnit.
What’s Murderbot’s crisis?
Murderbot is way nicer than it gives itself credit for. Not a lot of people or constructs would have the patience to gentle-parent a group of terrified grown ups in a very urgent and stressful situation. The hostiles can’t be too far away now. They have to stop cribbing over the death of someone who tried to kill them and get busy saving their own darn lives at this point. Murderbot gets that. But it’s still sweet enough to take off its helmet just to pacify the frightened folks who now perceive its every move as a possible attack. Even when they inevitably take the hopper up in the air to look for a safe place, they’re still divided over what to do with Murderbot. Mensah trusts the SecUnit, no questions asked. But knowing that it can wipe them out in a second if it wants, Pin-Lee’s not too keen on keeping Murderbot around. But you get it, right? It’s the fear of being around someone who’s so good at killing people. Ratthi’s awkward attempts at keeping things chill with Murderbot only result in an ironic threat that he isn’t nearly brave enough to handle. But at the end of the day, they have to agree with Murderbot’s logic. If it wanted to kill them, they wouldn’t be alive to pester it with their inane fear all day long. And then there’s the fact that even if they wanted to, they wouldn’t get very far without Murderbot keeping them alive. Aside from Mensah being a natural with a giant drill and Pin-Lee being overconfident, they’re not the most combat-trained group. So it’s up to Murderbot to keep them from going ahead and getting themselves killed whether it wants to or not. I mean, it does experience doubt on its walk to check the perimeter when they land in a seemingly safe patch of the planet. You see, Murderbot’s not too unlike you and me. It says so itself, although not in those words. But what could be more human of Murderbot than to live in a constant state of confusion over its next course of action? Whether it’s a person or a half organic-half machine construct like Murderbot, the chaotic confusion between the sense of duty and the instinct to save your own neck gets us all. Murderbot’s not immune to existential crises. Hell, it’s not even immune to prolonged thoughts of death and becoming a part of the scenery after. But it’s not like it could just wait it out until its battery ran out. It hasn’t downloaded enough shows to pass the time. Besides, it doesn’t want to abandon this annoying group of ungrateful people knowing they’re not gonna make it an hour without it. And I guess that’s what proves the accuracy of Mensah’s instincts more than anything else. While they’re all busy debating whether or not they should leave Murderbot and take off, Mensah’s the only one not taking it for granted. By even wondering if it wants to leave them and go live its own life, Mensah’s the first person to actually believe that Murderbot is its own construct and has wishes of its own. Now how could Murderbot not come back to save someone that nice?
Will Gurathin make it?
What really keeps PreservationAux afloat is the rational half of the group. No matter how much Pin-Lee might want Arada to believe that they can take care of her, she knows that there’s no way they can take on what’s coming without Murderbot’s help. And this helpless feeling isn’t making it any easier for Gurathin to handle his other uncomfortable feelings. He’s gone ahead and made it so that all the exchanges between him and Murderbot are passive aggressive. But I don’t think Murderbot minds that too much. All it really wants is for them to come to an agreement on what they want to do about their SecUnit. It’s not going to force them to keep it around. But it’s proved its intentions towards the group time and again. It’s protected them even though it had the choice not to, it’s tried to kill itself for them, and it’s killed the creepy Leebeebee before she could turn one of their heads into mush. So it’s supremely frustrating for Murderbot when the group’s divided into teams for and against trusting it. What’s it done to deserve this suspicion?
Lucky for Murderbot, it doesn’t have to put up with their cringey communication circle for too long. But you have to give it to the SecUnit for doing as much as it does to assuage the panicky bunch. Despite having the choice to decline, Murderbot takes off its helmet to seem friendly just because it respects Mensah. I doubt that Murderbot finds Mensah naive anymore. And that’s one of the ways that it understands Mensah even more than Gurathin does. But when it comes down to their usual “we can talk about it” session, they don’t even get the chance to have it out. Before they can really get into it, Murderbot detects a threat and makes them all take shelter in the hopper. Bharadwaj is bound to have a fresh batch of nightmares now that one of those giant centipedes has jumped on their hopper. It was terrifying enough with just one of these. But when another giant creature with tentacles lands on the hopper, they figure that they’re goners. Amusingly enough, what they initially think is a fighting match between these two gargantuan animals turns out to be a hookup sesh. That’s right. As Ratthi would say to Pin-Lee’s dismay, they’re “making love” on their very weak, very shaky hopper. The hits just keep coming with this guy. Fortunately, the animals are done before the hopper’s structural integrity is totally done for. And what comes as a treat for the fascinated eyes of Arada are the fertilized eggs they left over the hopper’s door. If you know this group, you can practically see the argument about the eggs coming. But I’m against Murderbot on this one. They really should leave these eggs alone. It’s a good thing that they don’t get to come to a conclusion about what to do with the eggs.
Because in the ending of Murderbot episode 7, not messing with nature is what keeps them alive, at least for the moment. It’s a learning moment for Murderbot when it figures out that the newer, more advanced SecUnits can evade its threat detection module. And that only means that when Murderbot is jumped by a hostile SecUnit right outside the hopper, it’s not prepared to defend itself. The freaked out humans trying to help it out initially seems to make things worse. But that’s what makes the fight unpredictable enough for the evil SecUnit to get stuck in the eggsac. No biggie for it though. It can just shoot its way out, which it does. But what none of these people and constructs knew is that one of the animals, possibly the mother, has holed up right under their yard to keep a watch over her babies. And for hurting them, the bad SecUnit gets its head chomped off by the furious centipede. So yeah. In retrospect, they really avoided terrible deaths by leaving the eggs be. This has also bought them enough time to get somewhere safer. But what do you know? It looks like everyone was right about Gurathin needing more time in medbay. He’s fainted. And no matter how badly it might endanger them to go back to their habitat to save him, they’re not the type to leave their friends behind. So Murderbot doesn’t really have an option but to go along with them, even though it thinks that it would be suicidal to go back to the habitat. The bad people might already be there. But if they’re lucky, the hostiles have checked out the empty habitat and left. It’s not like they have an option anyway. Gurathin needs urgent medical attention if he’s to survive. And since they’ve been fairly lucky so far, I think he might just make it.
