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Murderbot 1x06
OOOOOOO. The episodes just keep getting better!
The show still has a wonderful pulp-action-serial feeling, and both this week's parallel storylines were really tense, cutting back and forth between Mensah and MB in the crashed shuttle, and everyone else dealing with an increasingly unhinged Leebeebee back at the habitat.
Gurathin's reactions to Leebeebee are honestly delightful (his FACE at some of the things she says! also his reaction to Bharadwaj inviting her to come back with them!) and I love how he very obviously twigs to Leebeebee being completely Not On Their Side and starts trying to put the brakes on giving her even more access to them and their stuff before she pulls the gun on them.
In general, this episode really showcased how differently he thinks than the native Preservationers and that was just fascinating, from his deadpan "Debt" about how Preservation as a society functions (I feel like Gurathin as an outsider is probably more aware that Preservation's independent existence is a bit precarious, as opposed to the native Preservationers for whom things are just how things are and don't really question it), to being far less willing to trust or open up to Leebeebee - justifiably, as it turned out in her case.
I also just need to point out that it wasn't Leebeebee shooting him in the leg that made him capitulate and agree to do what she's demanding; it was when she told him she'd start shooting his friends next.
Meanwhile over on the Murderbot and Mensah side of things, I am really delighted with how subtle yet clear the show has been with MB's slow relaxing and opening up to Mensah. MB is still awkward, but it's visibly more relaxed and natural and more "itself" when interacting with her in this episode. And Mensah gets to see MB's ridiculous nerdy side. "Sanctuary FUCKING Moon?" Perfect line delivery, A+++. xD And also the two of them helping each other, and pushing out of their respective comfort zones, and cooperating to get each other working again, and the shuttle working again, was just really satisfying.
(Murderbot cursing itself for having deleted the manual to make space for TV shows! HONEY.)
But then at the end, the humans and Murderbot slam directly into the uncanny valley of difference between them - because it *isn't* like them, and now they all have to deal with having that brought home to them in an extremely violent way.
Also, wow, did Leebeebee ever pick the wrong human to take hostage. I mean, MB would probably have done more or less exactly what it did regardless of whose head she had a gun pressed to - it might have had more trouble with Mensah - but Leebeebee picked the one that wasn't going to cause it an instant of hesitation. I assume Murderbot's matter-of-fact execution of Leebeebee is what's going to lead into
book/trailer spoilers
Gurathin telling everyone that it calls itself Murderbot and honestly .... I can see why! Like. As well as killing Leebeebee, it made it clear that it didn't particularly care if it killed him too, and this is in a situation when he's hurt and traumatized and covered in someone else's blood. Revealing its secret name for itself is not only a relatively small thing under the circumstances, but from his point of view, completely justified in protecting his friends from a rogue SecUnit that very clearly does not mind killing people. (Not to say that this doesn't come across as a betrayal from SecUnit's point of view, but it feels like he's been given ample setup for doing it.)I am really curious what the last two episodes have in store! I know the very broadest strokes of it, but I'm looking forward to seeing how it happens.
Also, this is just complete speculation now, but
some book spoilers
the show has signposted clearly enough that Gurathin is narratively Important (he's probably the ... triteuroganist, I guess? after MB and Mensah) that I wouldn't be surprised if Gurathin and his corporate trauma come into play somehow in MB leaving the group - I'm kind of vaguely speculating that he is aware of it leaving and chooses to let it go without telling anyone, or facilitates it leaving; anyway, I halfway expect the show to give us some kind of closure on Gurathin and MB, because it's done too much with them so far not to.Edit: Also a spoilery thing about show vs trailer.
It's really fascinating to me how differently that brief exchange with Gurathin's "You could have killed me!" and Murderbot's "It's a chance I was willing to take." plays out in the show vs. the trailer.
In the trailer, out of context, it reads like a brief action-movie quippy scene and gives you an idea of the show as a light, funny comedy-drama. (Which it is to an extent.) But the actual scene is just - really heavy and not at all funny, actually, except in a very bleakly funny way, when you've seen everything leading up to it so we know that Gurathin is injured and traumatized, in a room full of scared, traumatized people; we saw him trying not to cry earlier because he thought his friend was dead, and we know just how terrified he is; we know that what Murderbot just shot off him wasn't some kind of alien monster (which I think is a reasonable assumption just based on the trailer; it was certainly mine) but rather, a human being whose head it just blew off and covered everyone in the vicinity in gore.
In context, it's really not a quip, Murderbot is completely serious (it was okay with a risk of him dying to take out the threat) and it's a really cold thing to say to a shocky, traumatized person, actually! Not that it's out of character for Murderbot to say it, but it's fascinating how differently all of that reads when you have the full context.
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I couldn't tell if her referring to him as a "walking data port" was more of her flippant rudeness or if it indicated something about attitudes toward augmented humans in the Corporation Rim, but it interested me because the Preservation characters never remark on his augments as such. (Murderbot does, but only competitively.)
his deadpan "Debt" about how Preservation as a society functions
That was fascinating not just because of the difference in perspectives between Gurathin and Bharadwaj, but again because of what it implies about the sustainability of the Preservation Alliance, looping back around to the survey team's reasons for being on this planet in the first place and the Corporation Rim's willingness not just to set them up to fail, but to scoop and exploit them if they succeed.
I also just need to point out that it wasn't Leebeebee shooting him in the leg that made him capitulate and agree to do what she's demanding; it was when she told him she'd start shooting his friends next.
He also doesn't make many of the noises you would expect from a person who has just been kneecapped. And even shocky, wounded, covered in head-shot splatter and generally not all right with any part of this situation, Gurathin is the person who yells at Murderbot that it's hard to get the identity of someone who no longer has a head, which he's not wrong about. It may be unanswerable, but I would like to know just how much information Leebeebee was given about her targets.
MB is still awkward, but it's visibly more relaxed and natural and more "itself" when interacting with her in this episode.
I was interested by its admission to itself that it was giving curt, blank replies to Mensah so as not to sound as freaked out as it actually was, since even its internal monologue does not usually acknowledge that much emotion.
But then at the end, the humans and Murderbot slam directly into the uncanny valley of difference between them - because it *isn't* like them, and now they all have to deal with having that brought home to them in an extremely violent way.
While Murderbot observes that in the serials it watches, there's a lot more gratitude when people's lives are saved with lethal force and a lot less stunned vomiting.
The thing about violence adduced as the point of difference between Murderbot and the humans is that while it makes a banger of an ending to the episode, it doesn't hold metaphysical water for me: since we live in a culture with armies and militarized police and an extraordinarily high level of normalized gun violence, I know that a person does not need to be a cyborg with arm cannons to take a close-range, high-risk shot and feel good about it. The fact that a strand of Murderbot's spine can be spliced into the hopper to replace a blown fuse (the information that neural tissue is a normal component of mechanized transport was another nice touch of nightmare fuel in the Corporation Rim) seemed rather more significant to me. I did like its assertion that it felt good to kill Leebeebee following directly on the clip from Sanctuary Moon about external and internal commands. Presumably it is programmed as well as socialized to prioritize blowing a threat away over incapacitating it, governor module or no.
(he's probably the ... triteuroganist, I guess? after MB and Mensah)
Tritagonist! Yes. In the early episodes, we got much more emotional-relational information about him than we did about Mensah.
Gurathin's "You could have killed me!" and Murderbot's "It's a chance I was willing to take."
It specifically says, "There was a chance, yes. But everything turned out fine," which strikes me as less deliberately cold, but definitely not at all accommodating Gurathin's feelings about almost getting killed. Then again, it doesn't like him. ("Yeah, sure, him too.")
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Yes! I really like that the show approaches head-on to the inherent precariousness of Preservation's existence as a small, relatively resource-poor polity within a larger political context. The fact that Preservation isn't a giant hegemonic empire-building entity (and also has nothing that makes it especially valuable to its neighbors) is inherent to what it is, but simply as a fact of existing in the world/universe as it is, this makes it vulnerable in particular ways, and I really like that the show doesn't simply gloss over this. But at the same time, Bharadwaj and Gurathin are each approaching the issue from their own frame of reference. I don't think it's unrealistic to say that Bharadwaj has bought into a particular cultural myth of self-sufficiency in a way that Gurathin, an outsider, hasn't. But Gurathin also sees Preservation's prospects from his own cynical, conditioned-to-expect-the-bad-end point of view.
He also doesn't make many of the noises you would expect from a person who has just been kneecapped.
Yes! Someone on Tumblr said that this probably relates somewhat to what he said in a previous episode about learning not to make a sound. And there are also the self-soothing things he does a little earlier in the same scene, wringing his hands and then wrapping his arms around himself. I like that the show doesn't have to tell you that Gurathin is badly fucked up by his Corporation Rim past. It's obvious.
And I also like that some of Leebeebee's slightly off-kilter body language is similar to Gurathin's. It's impossible to untangle how much of Gurathin's physical affect is inherent neurodiversity and how much is due to upbringing and/or trauma (and this isn't a question that most people in the real world can or should be asked to answer for themselves, either) but I do feel like it's not implausible to see both of them as products of the same dysfunctional culture. Their coping mechanisms are wildly different; I suspect Leebeebee uses sex as an appeasement strategy/way of defusing stress - which makes me appreciate all over again that the show shows this as creepy and awful, rather than portraying her in a sexy/femme fatale kind of way! She may be TRYING to come off as a femme fatale, but instead she's emoting "weird creep," which is extraordinarily rare to see in a conventionally attractive female character. Anyway, though, as much as Gurathin and Leebeebee's unique ways of being out of step with the cultural norms around them are individual to them, and as much as she clearly is a very different person than him, you can also see both of them having been fucked in the head in similar ways.
The thing about violence adduced as the point of difference between Murderbot and the humans is that while it makes a banger of an ending to the episode, it doesn't hold metaphysical water for me: since we live in a culture with armies and militarized police and an extraordinarily high level of normalized gun violence, I know that a person does not need to be a cyborg with arm cannons to take a close-range, high-risk shot and feel good about it.
[Edit: thinking about this some more, re: violence, I wrote all this out but I think I'm thinking down a slightly wrong track; see second comment. I'm leaving it up as there might be food for thought anyway. ]
This is true re: humans, but there's also abundant evidence that witnessing and participating in lethal violence is extremely corrosive and damaging (to humans), even ones who think they're okay with it in the moment, no matter how vindicated they feel about their justification for it. With Murderbot, I think it's a little of both. It's been socialized to violence in a way that not just the PresAux people, but most humans in most societies, aren't. (Gurathin is a bit more capable of dealing with the sudden gore explosion simply because of temperament and/or more experience with adversity than his friends, but clearly isn't any more inured to an unexpected gore splash than anyone around him.) But Murderbot also doesn't quite have the same mental architecture as a human, it just physically doesn't, which may or may not matter to how it deals with this in the long run, but I think both the humans *and it* are having to figure out what that means for them and for it in both the short and the long term. Because it really isn't human, and that might mean it'll deal with things exactly as a human would, or it might not mean that, and even Murderbot doesn't know that, but both it and they have to come to terms with the fact that it is both physically and emotionally different than they are -- and the reasons are a mix of socialization and what it physically is.
They cannot human it into being human, and both it and they are going to have to deal with that.
But also, MB is still in the very rudimentary stages of figuring out who it is, too! So this is another piece of that slotting into place. It can't be sure whether it feels good about it because it's programmed to feel good about it, or whether it's because it did the right thing and saved the humans it's supposed to save (and whether or not that even matters, IIRC was also part of the Sanctuary Moon clip - you are your programming, whatever that means). And it has to figure out how *it* wants to relate to its ability to deal violence, as a personal choice.
I also think having to cope with MB's ability to deal violence (and reaching for instant violence as a first resort, in some cases) is a necessary step in the PresAux humans learning to deal with MB as a fellow adult with a history, a past, and opinions that may not agree with theirs, as opposed to a kind of, idk, childlike 'we have adopted a stray robot' thing. They're not malicious about it, or creepy in the way Leebeebee was, but they did have a tendency to romanticize and maybe even infantalize it ("Seccy") and now they're having to deal with the fact that their new robot friend was made to kill people and they're going to have to learn to accept that as part of its personality and history. On a visceral level, they had an easier time with MB gorily dealing violence to alien monsters or even fellow constructs than to a human. (And actually, it's interesting to think about how violently Pin-Lee and Arada took out the construct that was attacking Mensah, Ratthi and Murderbot, and how everyone's reaction to that was more along the lines of "eww" than their visceral horror at Leebeebee's death. They might not THINK that they think of constructs differently, but they obviously do.)
/ramble
Then again, it doesn't like him. ("Yeah, sure, him too.")
I was highly amused by that. (And yeah, I remembered the quote a little wrong! Another thing someone said on Tumblr is that MB might be doing another show quote there, which is also plausible.)
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Which was not at all clear at the start of the show, and I am really enjoying the ongoing illumination of their economics and culture, especially the parts where it isn't a utopia, but it still sounds a hell of a lot healthier than the Corporation Rim.
Someone on Tumblr said that this probably relates somewhat to what he said in a previous episode about learning not to make a sound.
Absolutely. He just does that thing where he goes very still and folds into himself. It's almost his exact reaction to the choke-out threat display by Murderbot in the previous episode, actually, which says a lot about Gurathin and his experiences of violence, but also underlines the parallels between Murderbot and Leebeebee, which the show was really leaning on in this episode: bought agents of the Company, the kind who literally shoot first and ask questions later.
I suspect Leebeebee uses sex as an appeasement strategy/way of defusing stress - which makes me appreciate all over again that the show shows this as creepy and awful, rather than portraying her in a sexy/femme fatale kind of way!
Yes! And I was fascinated by the places where it does and doesn't work on the Preservation team: Bharadwaj is visibly weirded out by Leebeebee kissing her hand but plays down her discomfort in order to be supportive to the stranger, but when Leebeebee flanges off onto another one of her sexual fantasies about turning a SecUnit into a dildo, this time Bharadwaj just tells her to cut it out. "My mind fails to find an analogy." Gurathin was zero percent willing to tolerate her ingratiation from the start and if she tried to get at him, it was through drugs, not sex, anyway.
[Edit: thinking about this some more, re: violence, I wrote all this out but I think I'm thinking down a slightly wrong track; see second comment. I'm leaving it up as there might be food for thought anyway. ]
[edit] No problem! I like your thoughts! Leaving mine in place for the same reason.
This is true re: humans, but there's also abundant evidence that witnessing and participating in lethal violence is extremely corrosive and damaging (to humans), even ones who think they're okay with it in the moment, no matter how vindicated they feel about their justification for it.
I am not interested in claiming that Murderbot has human-norm reactions to the job it was cloned and printed to do! The juxtaposition of Murderbot's monologue with the clip of robot-human relations from Sanctuary Moon seemed to advance the argument of difference on the show's part and while Murderbot may agree in the same way that it consistently frames humans as weak and squishy, I can't not be reminded—especially in the same episode as Leebeebee kneecapping Gurathin as an opening move—that killing one another off is one of the things our species is traditionally good at. In this future, they just built enslaved cyborgs to do it, too.
It's been socialized to violence in a way that not just the PresAux people, but most humans in most societies, aren't.
Well, it's one of the ideals of the soldier, especially from the perspective of a capitalist hellscape that instrumentalizes people any which way it can: infinitely capable of violence on command with no conscience and no consequences. I am not convinced that all these factors actually apply in the case of Murderbot, but it is clearly the point of all those apathetically mass-produced SecUnits.
and maybe even infantalize it ("Seccy")
In fairness, that was Ratthi's coinage and he's the same person who came up with "Gugu." But I absolutely agree that the only characters so far who really engage with Murderbot as a SecUnit are Gurathin and Mensah. Her response to Murderbot bleeding out and crashing (and blurring languages into what really sounded like Swedish for a moment there) is to treat it like the combination of meat and machine that it is: she gives it a hydraulics transfusion from the hopper, which gives it the idea to patch the hopper with one of its own nerve fibers. Gurathin is still much more on the killing machine with no asimov end of things, but he got the lethal violence part from the start—he's had a harder time accepting that preferentially it slacks off to watch telenovelas in space. Bharadwaj is the team member I am most interested in seeing come up to speed on the latest developments, because she was the one who argued for Murderbot's free will and sense of ethics, which now includes things like a calculated risk that could have blown one of her friends' head off.
[edit edit] I had been thinking of Bharadwaj's offer of sanctuary to Leebeebee in parallel to the team's implied similar history with Gurathin, but I just realized it's also in line with her initial acceptance of Murderbot and, no, Leebeebee really would rather kill a lot of people for a lot of money than break her contract for the Preservation Alliance and Murderbot really does have an irreducible core of shooting things.
(And actually, it's interesting to think about how violently Pin-Lee and Arada took out the construct that was attacking Mensah, Ratthi and Murderbot, and how everyone's reaction to that was more along the lines of "eww" than their visceral horror at Leebeebee's death. They might not THINK that they think of constructs differently, but they obviously do.)
It works on the audience, too: I am pretty sure that Leebeebee's death is not staged more gorily than either the fight with the centipede monster or the crushing of the hostile construct, but neither of them bled human red, so the splatter has a different visceral impact, and while the timing of her explosive decapitation has a black comedy suddenness, it does not have the cartoony quality of either of the previous scenes and neither does it have the action movie values of Murderbot's fight with the other SecUnits. It's treated dead serious including the aftermath where everyone is in one kind of shock or another. The genre-switch is really effective.
Another thing someone said on Tumblr is that MB might be doing another show quote there, which is also plausible.
I would be willing to believe it. It may well have played better in its original context.
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(I really look forward to seeing how the whole group is going to deal with the emotional fallout from this.)
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I actually could have sworn I had left a line in my original comment about cultural norms around violence between the Preservation Alliance and the Corporation Rim—Pin-Lee, Arada, and Ratthi play a first-person shooter with a ludicrously trigger-happy name, but Bharadwaj has so little expectation of violence in her real life that when confronted with a gun, she asks blankly what it is—but apparently I was so tired that either it stayed in my brain or I accidentally deleted it. So, yes, co-signed to all of this, because regardless of what is normal for humans, in-your-face deadly force is not normal for this particular group of humans, and in-your-face deadly force from someone they had previously seen as violent mostly in cool, nerdily heroic ways is fucking frightening.
(I really look forward to seeing how the whole group is going to deal with the emotional fallout from this.)
(Agreed.)
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The show continues to surprise me and I love how they have really run with the idea of having Sanctuary Moon be such a part of the show.
I am looking forward to watching a lot of episodes back to back once we have them all.
I thought it was ten episodes, not 8?
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I'm really having a great time.
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My horrible thought is that Murderbot (etc) would be a TERRIFIC training patient/assistant to student SURGEONS. It's so blasé and matter-of-fact about being cut open in a way that I strongly associate with, well, growing up in a surgeon's household.
Agreed that the scene is quite violent and traumatic and, given the starting premises, that's handled pretty well. I was also startled at the lack of SCREAMING/fainting/etc from the kneecap shot!
I don't find Murderbot's "That was a risky shot and I was okay with the risk" off-putting or cold to me, and in fact this is the most relatable I've found Murderbot (not a criticism; I love this TV version of Murderbot!) and I find the "I did a calculated risk assessment" reassuring; but I'm pretty sure this is an idiosyncratic response. I agree that it is a cold thing to say to shocked/traumatized people and that uh, this would not be the high-EQ move. Murderbot has adorably terrible bedside manner. :p
But the alternative is finding some OTHER way to deal with a woman who's cold-blooded/desperate enough to worm her way into this place full of mostly naive people while lying about everything and then SHOOT SOMEONE IN THE KNEE while threatening more to come, and I don't think anyone in the TV show cast has the negotiation skills to talk her down. Also she had a gun and knew how to use it, so at some point, either you do something to try to take her out or you don't.
In real life I would have fainted and/or screamed like a deranged chicken because I have no combat skills, but sitting here safely in the audience, I 1000000000% endorse Murderbot's decision while at the same time, with people unused to having someone's head blown off right in front of them, I find the group's shock/trauma reactions completely believable and understandable, and someone please send them a chaplain and/or therapist and/or counselor and/or ??? to help them cope. I want to give them all teddy bears.
Structurally, I enjoy how we have Murderbot as the pivot/hinge, and Dr. Mensah to one side (trust/friendship) and Gurathin to the other (distrust/hostility). It's very elegant and it's done in a way that works in terms of interpersonal dynamics and theme.
My other thought is that I was initially skeptical of the way the opening theme was scored when I saw the first episode, not because it was badly orchestrated/composed but because it was much more, hmm, aggro and suggestive of violent action in terms of musical style (specifically the ostinato strings in minor/major seconds, that's pretty much action trope central musically), and I was coming in expecting something ~cozier and more like the book(s) I'd read. But the more "serious"/action/drama score segments contrast very nicely with the cheesy over-the-top deliberately godawful score bits for Sanctuary Moon (I lolcried at the over-the-top sentimental trashy harp arpeggios with not!Sulu romancing the android! it was perfect!) and it does in fact match the tone of the show (fairly serious/traumatic action) vs. the tone of the books. In any case, the composer did in fact accurately capture the vibe of the show; I wasn't prepared for the vibe of the show to diverge from the books in this way. (Which is not a bad decision; I like it a lot! But there is a difference, I guess is what I'm trying to say very poorly.) This may be a minority opinion though. :p