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Murderbot 1x07
The show is feeding me well.
So they really were just like "let's see how many h/c bingo squares we can tick off for Gurathin in this episode," huh. (For the record: I approve wholeheartedly.)
If the entire team only found out his whole traumatic backstory (suicidal ideation! forced drug addiction!) A MONTH AGO, no wonder they've been going out of their way to reassure him that he's loved and wanted the whole mission.
(Also: I know it's part of their culture, but I am with Gurathin - and Murderbot - on wanting nothing to do with the emotional sharing circle. And I can't help thinking that group sharing of personal grievances with each other seems likely to cause more problems than it solves. Can't wait to find out what Arada, Ratthi, and Pin-Lee have to talk about at the next one. :D)
In addition to the show still being obvious and yet (IMHO) not overly anvillicious with the Murderbot/Guarathin parallels, I think it's also really interesting how abundantly clear it is that Murderbot doesn't understand the emotions that it's feeling (including the ability to even recognize what those emotions are). Like, you're feeling hurt and rejected, you just want to walk straight off into the woods and stand there until your batteries run down and plants grow over you, and YOU HAVE NO IDEA that hurt and rejection to the point of suicidal ideation is what you're feeling, all of this is completely opaque to you.
I am really enjoying Gurathin and Bharadwaj's little individual friendship in the background of the main show. Bharadwaj laying on the bench in the hopper with her head in his lap! And she often gravitates towards him in danger scenes. In earlier episodes, it wasn't clear if they were spending time around each other just by pure circumstance (they're the two left behind in the habitat; he's the one who is available to sit with her in the medbay) but it's clear in this episode that they are friends in particular even apart from the group friendship.
Another highlight of this episode: Pin-Lee screaming and throwing themselves at the enemy SecUnit and having to be forcibly removed. They're a really interesting character (one of my faves) because temperamentally they're somewhat closer than the others to Gurathin/Murderbot in how they react to things, but without the damage; they had the same utopian upbringing as most of the others, which means they're a practical fighter type by nature who doesn't generally have enemies to fight or any experience in actual combat outside of video games. That being said, fuck them up in the courtroom, Pin-Lee!
And another unambiguous parallel in this episode: that the enemy SecUnits are people, and have as little choice about what they do as SecUnit would have had before it overrode its governor module. Murderbot pointing out that Mensah has also killed somebody! The humans do react differently to dead constructs than to dead humans - that's completely obvious at the end of the episode, Ratthi cheering and congratulating MB after the enemy SecUnit's death, a wild contrast to what happened with Leebeebee ... but they're still people, and the close shot on the face of the decapitated SecUnit at the end of the episode really underscores that.
Next episode whennnnnn.
So they really were just like "let's see how many h/c bingo squares we can tick off for Gurathin in this episode," huh. (For the record: I approve wholeheartedly.)
If the entire team only found out his whole traumatic backstory (suicidal ideation! forced drug addiction!) A MONTH AGO, no wonder they've been going out of their way to reassure him that he's loved and wanted the whole mission.
(Also: I know it's part of their culture, but I am with Gurathin - and Murderbot - on wanting nothing to do with the emotional sharing circle. And I can't help thinking that group sharing of personal grievances with each other seems likely to cause more problems than it solves. Can't wait to find out what Arada, Ratthi, and Pin-Lee have to talk about at the next one. :D)
In addition to the show still being obvious and yet (IMHO) not overly anvillicious with the Murderbot/Guarathin parallels, I think it's also really interesting how abundantly clear it is that Murderbot doesn't understand the emotions that it's feeling (including the ability to even recognize what those emotions are). Like, you're feeling hurt and rejected, you just want to walk straight off into the woods and stand there until your batteries run down and plants grow over you, and YOU HAVE NO IDEA that hurt and rejection to the point of suicidal ideation is what you're feeling, all of this is completely opaque to you.
I am really enjoying Gurathin and Bharadwaj's little individual friendship in the background of the main show. Bharadwaj laying on the bench in the hopper with her head in his lap! And she often gravitates towards him in danger scenes. In earlier episodes, it wasn't clear if they were spending time around each other just by pure circumstance (they're the two left behind in the habitat; he's the one who is available to sit with her in the medbay) but it's clear in this episode that they are friends in particular even apart from the group friendship.
Another highlight of this episode: Pin-Lee screaming and throwing themselves at the enemy SecUnit and having to be forcibly removed. They're a really interesting character (one of my faves) because temperamentally they're somewhat closer than the others to Gurathin/Murderbot in how they react to things, but without the damage; they had the same utopian upbringing as most of the others, which means they're a practical fighter type by nature who doesn't generally have enemies to fight or any experience in actual combat outside of video games. That being said, fuck them up in the courtroom, Pin-Lee!
And another unambiguous parallel in this episode: that the enemy SecUnits are people, and have as little choice about what they do as SecUnit would have had before it overrode its governor module. Murderbot pointing out that Mensah has also killed somebody! The humans do react differently to dead constructs than to dead humans - that's completely obvious at the end of the episode, Ratthi cheering and congratulating MB after the enemy SecUnit's death, a wild contrast to what happened with Leebeebee ... but they're still people, and the close shot on the face of the decapitated SecUnit at the end of the episode really underscores that.
Next episode whennnnnn.
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I am so fascinated to see what they do with the climax.
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I'm also really curious what they're going to do next! Three episodes to go ...
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Especially in light of the paralleling with Murderbot, I feel I should have seen that wet dishrag facesplat coming from the other person on the team guaranteed to insist that they are fine right until their physical apparatus dramatically nopes out on them, but I did not and it was amazing.
If the entire team only found out his whole traumatic backstory (suicidal ideation! forced drug addiction!) A MONTH AGO, no wonder they've been going out of their way to reassure him that he's loved and wanted the whole mission.
Zero percent convinced it's getting through, but I appreciate their efforts.
Also: I know it's part of their culture, but I am with Gurathin - and Murderbot - on wanting nothing to do with the emotional sharing circle.
I actually love that it seems to work as a form of check-in and mediation for the Preservation natives, but I also feel we haven't seen it really stress-tested—both times in this most recent episode, the practice gets interrupted—and I would really like to, because it's so rare to depict that kind of difficult conversation. Everybody yelling is not the same thing.
but they're still people, and the close shot on the face of the decapitated SecUnit at the end of the episode really underscores that.
Yes. I loved that. We hadn't seen one of their faces before: they might as well have been robots, video-game cannon fodder to the audience, too. Its decapitation is not machinelike.
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The fandom helpfully presents parallel gifs:
https://www.tumblr.com/apodemus-sylvaticus/786898315399790592/faceplanting-after-an-injury-yet-another-thing
We hadn't seen one of their faces before: they might as well have been robots, video-game cannon fodder to the audience, too. Its decapitation is not machinelike.
Yes, very much so. And Murderbot standing and staring at its head. I remember the end of the original novella, and I feel like the adaptation is doing a good job of underscoring the idea that they like it, they care for it, but they do not truly understand it, and for all their good intentions, they also have a huge amount of unrecognized prejudice in the way they respond to humans vs. constructs, that they haven't even begun to realize exists yet.
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"#pathetic wet cats"
I remember the end of the original novella, and I feel like the adaptation is doing a good job of underscoring the idea that they like it, they care for it, but they do not truly understand it, and for all their good intentions, they also have a huge amount of unrecognized prejudice in the way they respond to humans vs. constructs, that they haven't even begun to realize exists yet.
"As opposed to the reality that I was one whole—confused—entity."
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https://www.tumblr.com/polkadotjohnson/786918738207326208/murderbot-7-complementary-species-2025-4-of
(I really am enjoying it tremendously! I think it works well as its own experience in a slightly different complement to the books, and it's only half-hour episodes so not a huge time commitment.)
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