Entry tags:
Murderbot TV show
I watched the first two episodes of the Murderbot show. With no particular associated feelings about the books, I'm really enjoying it!
Unsurprisingly, angry wet cat man is my favorite, as anticipated. Although the whole cast is very charming and I enjoy them.
I like the contrast of the space hippie Preservation team with the clean, sterile, and regimented Company setting. I enjoy how the show went in on their woven bags and colorful personal items - it just feels very nicely organic to who they are. But I also like that Preservation clearly isn't a utopia full of perfectly well adjusted people. It's clear that Pin-Lee isn't on board with the threesome and is doing it to makeher their wife happy (corrected as per comments!); there's the quirky little detail of Bharadawaj's soap-hoarding (and pretending to be much more okay than she really is to get back out in the field), and Mensah clearly hiding her panic attacks from her team and presumably hiding them in general, since they're completely untreated and do make her an obvious liability in the field. None of them are the absolute hot messes that Gurathin and Murderbot are, but they have their own personal stuff going on as well and I like that.
(And equally - as![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sovay and I were chatting about in email - it's a nice detail that Murderbot doesn't really see any of this; to it, the humans are a monolithic block of "ugh, humans" at this point. It recognizes that Gurathin is a bit different mainly just because he's so wildly different that even Murderbot can't miss it, but as for the rest of them - humans gonna human! It also makes a nice contrast - again h/t to Sovay for pointing this out -- that Murderbot loves this kind of thing in fictional soap operas, where the beats are telegraphed and predictable, but as for the unpredictable human dramas unfolding around it: ugh, humans.)
Also cribbing from emails to Sovay: I love that Gurathin has most of Murderbot's "robotic" personal traits (avoiding eye contact and being touched, socially awkward, dislikes group activities and hugs, possibly sex-averse although that part could just be the social awkwardness surrounding that particular situation kicking in - not to mention the augments and the fact that he's definitely got some kind of traumatic background involving the Company as well) and it's all presented without comment as part of the perfectly normal range of ordinary human variation, and in the form of a character who is clearly loved and valued by his social group who make allowances for his dislike of social activities that the others enjoy. (Well, more or less - they did drag him into the meditation circle, lol.) But anyway, I think having him as a counterpoint to the emotionally open space-hippiness of the others is a really good move - it's not just social, friendly humans vs antisocial, unfriendly Murderbot, it's also Murderbot having to deal with the awkward fact of being confronted by a human who has most of its personality traits and flaws, but is a valued member of the group anyway.
I really love how clear it is in the show that Gurathin is reacting to Murderbot's obvious personhood even when he doesn't want to be. He's absolutely correct that it's dangerous, and he's probably the only person in the group who is either emotionally or culturally primed to recognize that. But it's also really fascinating how he goes into the situation treating it like a robot, expecting it to be a robot, and then he's caught off guard by its personhood every time he turns around. Even the way he chooses to interrogate it, while also testing the limits of its responsiveness to orders, is more the way you'd interact with a recalcitrant human than with a machine. I mean, he could have had it stick a knife into its hand or jump headfirst off the stairs. What he does instead is completely bitchy but also absolutely targeted at its personality and what he knows it would find uncomfortable. If he genuinely wanted to hurt it, he has many more destructive ways of doing that. He's not treating it like a Roomba even though he's very evidently trying to convince himself that it is no more than one.
.... and there's also the fact that everything they do throughout that scene to make the other one uncomfortable is exactly what they would find personally uncomfortable, and it works. Prolonged eye contact? Check! Socially awkward sex voyeurism? Check! (From the comments to this tumblr post: "Autism on autism violence happening in that habsuite." Accurate.)
(Also extremely charmed by the rest of the group's affectionate nicknames for Gurathin. Gura! GUGU.)
So yeah, having a good time! And it's going to be fun to have a weekly show to look forward to for a while.
Unsurprisingly, angry wet cat man is my favorite, as anticipated. Although the whole cast is very charming and I enjoy them.
I like the contrast of the space hippie Preservation team with the clean, sterile, and regimented Company setting. I enjoy how the show went in on their woven bags and colorful personal items - it just feels very nicely organic to who they are. But I also like that Preservation clearly isn't a utopia full of perfectly well adjusted people. It's clear that Pin-Lee isn't on board with the threesome and is doing it to make
(And equally - as
sovay and I were chatting about in email - it's a nice detail that Murderbot doesn't really see any of this; to it, the humans are a monolithic block of "ugh, humans" at this point. It recognizes that Gurathin is a bit different mainly just because he's so wildly different that even Murderbot can't miss it, but as for the rest of them - humans gonna human! It also makes a nice contrast - again h/t to Sovay for pointing this out -- that Murderbot loves this kind of thing in fictional soap operas, where the beats are telegraphed and predictable, but as for the unpredictable human dramas unfolding around it: ugh, humans.)Also cribbing from emails to Sovay: I love that Gurathin has most of Murderbot's "robotic" personal traits (avoiding eye contact and being touched, socially awkward, dislikes group activities and hugs, possibly sex-averse although that part could just be the social awkwardness surrounding that particular situation kicking in - not to mention the augments and the fact that he's definitely got some kind of traumatic background involving the Company as well) and it's all presented without comment as part of the perfectly normal range of ordinary human variation, and in the form of a character who is clearly loved and valued by his social group who make allowances for his dislike of social activities that the others enjoy. (Well, more or less - they did drag him into the meditation circle, lol.) But anyway, I think having him as a counterpoint to the emotionally open space-hippiness of the others is a really good move - it's not just social, friendly humans vs antisocial, unfriendly Murderbot, it's also Murderbot having to deal with the awkward fact of being confronted by a human who has most of its personality traits and flaws, but is a valued member of the group anyway.
I really love how clear it is in the show that Gurathin is reacting to Murderbot's obvious personhood even when he doesn't want to be. He's absolutely correct that it's dangerous, and he's probably the only person in the group who is either emotionally or culturally primed to recognize that. But it's also really fascinating how he goes into the situation treating it like a robot, expecting it to be a robot, and then he's caught off guard by its personhood every time he turns around. Even the way he chooses to interrogate it, while also testing the limits of its responsiveness to orders, is more the way you'd interact with a recalcitrant human than with a machine. I mean, he could have had it stick a knife into its hand or jump headfirst off the stairs. What he does instead is completely bitchy but also absolutely targeted at its personality and what he knows it would find uncomfortable. If he genuinely wanted to hurt it, he has many more destructive ways of doing that. He's not treating it like a Roomba even though he's very evidently trying to convince himself that it is no more than one.
.... and there's also the fact that everything they do throughout that scene to make the other one uncomfortable is exactly what they would find personally uncomfortable, and it works. Prolonged eye contact? Check! Socially awkward sex voyeurism? Check! (From the comments to this tumblr post: "Autism on autism violence happening in that habsuite." Accurate.)
(Also extremely charmed by the rest of the group's affectionate nicknames for Gurathin. Gura! GUGU.)
So yeah, having a good time! And it's going to be fun to have a weekly show to look forward to for a while.
Re: I was so excited for this show!