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Murderbot season finale (1x10)
*SCREAM*
I did actually guess correctly (early in the season) that they were going to close the open Gurathin-MB loop by having Gurathin become aware of Murderbot leaving and let him go because he recognizes from his own experience why MB needs to do this. Though I figured it was going to be something like, he looks up and sees it slipping out, or catches it on a security camera, and doesn't tell anyone.
I did not expect that last conversation AT ALL
OR ANY OF THE REST OF IT
HELP
HE DOWNLOADED IT TO HIS SQUISHY HUMAN BRAIN THAT IS NOT MEANT FOR THIS KIND OF THING AND COULD'VE LOBOTOMIZED HIMSELF AND HAD TO STAGGER HOME WHILE SAFELY HOLDING THE WHOLE ENTIRE ESSENCE OF IT IN HIS HEAD
IT THANKED HIM AND SMILED AT HIM
I CAN'T
Everyone was just so lovely in this - Mensah standing up to the CR, Pin-Lee ready to Fuck Them Up With Legal Paperwork, Gurathin's .... everything (starting with how he's hugging himself in the corporate meeting at the beginning, and clearly traumatized and terrified to be there; and then we go from that to openly calling MB a person and going back undercover as a counter-spy in the exact opposite of his original situation and dealing with the actual person who got him addicted to drugs to get its memories back).
And Murderbot's Everything - the way the asshole techs mock it and treat it like a thing, the fact that it remembers just enough, and still has enough of itself, even after a full mindwipe that it won't fire on helpless humans again! It's true that PresAux recognizes that it's not itself anymore, but there is still something of itself underneath all the mindwipes; the basic fundamental essence of it is that it's a good person and it doesn't want to hurt people unnecessarily and .... I just realized that it possibly fried its governor module AGAIN in order to stop itself the second time, I'd need to rewatch that scene to know for sure how we're supposed to take that, but given how the governor modules work in the books - basically cause severely painful electrocution and seizures if they don't obey - I think it basically had to have. It either managed to disable its governor module a second time even while not remembering that it did it the first time, or it's so determined not to do this that it's willing to stand there in agony rather than do the thing that would make the pain stop.
AND THEN IT GETS BEAT TO SHIT FOR IT.
I love that the show continues to do a really nice job with shades-of-gray, depicting the strikers as people, not paragons - terrified, angry people who act out their anger by hurting the one symbol of the CR that is available for them to hurt. (I suggested offhandedly in an email earlier this evening that this is partly because they, like Gurathin, were raised from childhood to think it's not a person, and that might have made it easier for them to attack it - but given the volatility of the situation, I don't think knowing that it was a person would actually have changed things a whole lot. Because that, too, is part of how people react in pressure cooker situations like this.)
But then we have all of the - everything after that, the characters going to bat for it, Gurathin literally walking into everything he fears most (the Corporation Rim, drug addiction, brain damage) to save it, the cavalry showing up in the acid bath nick of time, the mind-meld memory restoration!
I hadn't noticed this until
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sovay pointed it out, but Gurathin very clearly didn't tell anyone where he was going, as evidenced by Mensah assuming at first that he's on drugs again when he stumbles in completely fucked up from the brain download. He had no backup, and no one knew where he was. If he had gotten caught by security, turned in by his old drug hookup, actually did relapse back into drug addiction, or simply dropped dead of a brain aneurysm, no one would have had the slightest clue that he'd gone off to save Murderbot and hadn't simply gotten into trouble while trying to get wasted or otherwise vanished in the CR.AAAAHHHHHH
AND THE GOODBYEEEEEEE .... the things they say and don't say, the little flicks of eye contact, the way that they get each other now and this is probably the one person in PresAux who would just let MB go without trying to make him stay, because he knows why MB has to leave even though he would have gladly been his guide to Preservation if MB had wanted it. VOLUNTARY EYE CONTACT. They can't look at each other for long, but it's no longer torture because they're not forcing themselves or being forced, they're offering. <3333
(Edit: And just the sheer difference in their body language here; we saw for most of the show what it looked like when they didn't like or care about each other, and now you see what it looks like when they do, and it's all in the way they physically relate - it's so well done.)
The entire final walking-away sequence is simply lovely. The music is gorgeous; it brings tears to my eyes. And I love the beautiful visuals of the world literally opening up around MB, first on the station and then in space, as it goes out into the bigger galaxy to figure out who it is. Very nicely done that this is very nearly the first time we've see outer space in the whole show. IIRC, there was an establishing shot at the very beginning to establish that we're in a sci-fi space universe, but from there, it's all been interiors or planetary shots. So the final scenes with the genuinely very beautiful shots of the outside of the space station gives the show a lovely feeling of opening up and expanding beyond the planet/the station and giving MB a whole wide-open galaxy to explore.
I also feel - although I realize YMMV on this - that the much more developed MB-Gurathin relationship in the show vs the books doesn't undercut Mensah-MB at all - the show fed the Gurathin people so well (me, I am people) but Mensah has had beautiful and trusting moments with it throughout, and she is the one we end on, the last person we see looking out as MB leaves, thinking about her, with its final little smile as it reiterates that she's its favorite human. ♥
Edit: BRAND NEW FINALE THOUGHT - I also just realized that Murderbot and Gurathin are (at least partly) so much more at ease with each other in the final scene not entirely because of mutual life-saving, but also because they're more at ease with *themselves*.
The show makes it clear that, at least in part, they hate and distrust each other because they hate and distrust themselves. ("You're a defective unit that kills everyone around you!")
But in the finale, MB was thrown back into its worst nightmare (being forced by its governor module to kill a bunch of people) - and stopped itself. Gurathin walked into his worst nightmare (the company, drug addiction, being undercover and alone) and got Murderbot out and put it back into its own head.
They hated each other in part because they saw the worst of themselves in each other. But they both faced down the worst of themselves and won. And suddenly they see the other person a little more clearly now.
SEASON 2 WHEN
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Season 2 NOW please!
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I don't know how to describe their dynamic but it's so good to me. I don't want them romantic, I don't want them sexual, I don't want them friendly. Whatever this is, it's perfect.
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And yes, both Gurathin and Murderbot getting put in their worst-nightmare situations, and also their linked escapes, it was a great conclusion of their arc. I am wondering whether they'll be able to keep Gurathin as a major character in future seasons, iirc the later books are far more MB and Mensah - which was also delightful here - and of course all the new bot characters... it'll be fun to see what they come up with!
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He used the tools that had chained him to the Corporation Rim to get someone else free of it! He got something good out of the worst parts of himself—the tradecraft, the dirty tricks, the addict's reputation. He couldn't have done it if he had a cleaner past. Or if he had been within hailing distance of normal about Murderbot, which using oneself as an organic flash drive for an entire other person really, really is not.
(I suggested offhandedly in an email earlier this evening that this is partly because they, like Gurathin, were raised from childhood to think it's not a person, and that might have made it easier for them to attack it - but given the volatility of the situation, I don't think knowing that it was a person would actually have changed things a whole lot. Because that, too, is part of how people react in pressure cooker situations like this.)
(Agreed. The facelessness almost certainly made it easier, but any vulnerable representative of the company they could have gotten their hands on would have done. Murderbot just happens to survive on account of being an armored and reinforced SecUnit, whereas any of its handlers would have been a jam stain on the cement. I don't believe it was taking that gamble, though: it just knew it wasn't going to be controlled to kill for others again.)
And I love the beautiful visuals of the world literally opening up around MB, first on the station and then in space, as it goes out into the bigger galaxy to figure out who it is.
Yes! The station from the outside is beautiful, like neurons branching among the stars. You can't tell that at all from the interiors, where it's all ticky-tacky little boxes on the costly cheap. (That said, as a resident of a city with a lot of Brutalist architecture, I am not sure I was as repelled by the concrete aesthetic as I was supposed to be. Random concourses and stairwells kept giving me not unpleasant déjà vu. I had to check that the show was filmed in Toronto, because one scene really looked like a museum I used to visit and another like a subway station in which I have spent a great deal of my life.)
I also feel - although I realize YMMV on this - that the much more developed MB-Gurathin relationship in the show vs the books doesn't undercut Mensah-MB at all - the show fed the Gurathin people so well (me, I am people) but Mensah has had beautiful and trusting moments with it throughout, and she is the one we end on, the last person we see looking out as MB leaves, thinking about her, with its final little smile as it reiterates that she's its favorite human.
Yes. She did not feel edged out to me. It felt more like closing the last line of a triangle.
(I do not ship any of them romantically, but their relationships are so intimate that I don't think it's relevant.)
Edit: BRAND NEW FINALE THOUGHT
GOOD THOUGHT. I LIKE IT.
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Yes! Just beautifully done. Taking the worst of himself and using that to free someone else from the same corrupt system that almost destroyed both of them.
It also makes me love even more that we had Leebeebee as a counterexample of PresAux's attempt to save somebody. Sometimes you try to save somebody, and you get your efforts flung back in your face and a gun to your head. And sometimes you get a brave, loyal friend who will take everything they learned from you and use it to save someone else.
Or if he had been within hailing distance of normal about Murderbot, which using oneself as an organic flash drive for an entire other person really, really is not.
Accurate.
A Tumblr post which I have now lost also pointed out the quote from Gurathin in one of the early episodes in which he asks Murderbot what it feels like to be itself. And then he ends up with the entire essence of everything that makes it what it is in his own head.
I'm definitely not over that look he gives it as they're being plugged in for the memory transfer. Even without words, that expression is the pure embodiment of "I see you now."
(That said, as a resident of a city with a lot of Brutalist architecture, I am not sure I was as repelled by the concrete aesthetic as I was supposed to be. Random concourses and stairwells kept giving me not unpleasant déjà vu. I had to check that the show was filmed in Toronto, because one scene really looked like a museum I used to visit and another like a subway station in which I have spent a great deal of my life.)
I didn't even realize we were supposed to find it repellent until you pointed it out! A lot of the architecture here is 1960s-70s concrete, and it all looks basically like that. I would say it reads more banal to me than repellent or ugly. (Which, to be fair, also works perfectly well for the context.)
She did not feel edged out to me. It felt more like closing the last line of a triangle.
I like that!
(I do not ship any of them romantically, but their relationships are so intimate that I don't think it's relevant.)
Yeah; I think there's even a case to be made that Gurathin's canonically romantic crush on Mensah is mostly just wanting to feel seen and loved and as important to her as she is to him. (Which is basically impossible given that she's the core of his world, and he can never be hers because she has so many other people who care about and depend on her.)
.... actually this makes me realize that the Ratthi/Pin-Lee/Arada disaster throuple, as well as giving those characters something to do and fleshing them out more, also is kind of a ... not really a mirror or reflection of the explicitly-for-the-most-part non-romantic Mensah-Gurathin-Murderbot triad, but there's definitely something there, some kind of echo of three people trying to navigate the complexities of a three-way relationship of whatever sort. Of course, in the latter case, there's one person with unusually high emotional intelligence (Mensah) and two people with the emotional IQ of damp socks, as opposed to the other group where they're all average-to-mid.
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They hated each other in part because they saw the worst of themselves in each other. But they both faced down the worst of themselves and won. And suddenly they see the other person a little more clearly now.
So well put! Yes, you've caught exactly what happens, in ways I was still trying to work out.
Loved it, loved it, loved it.
Even though I had confidence the writers wouldn't let MB kill anyone while it was without its memories, and they certainly wouldn't let it take an acid bath, I was hugging myself for the whole second half (or two thirds, or maybe just the whole thing).
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This moment immediately made me think of all the rhetoric during the lead up to the U.S. war for independence, when people kept making speeches about how they would not be "slaves" without seeming to think about hypocrisy of any kind re: enslaving other humans.
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also I detect a similarity in our tastes in fictional men. which is not exactly unexpected but I saw your Gurathin icon and I was like well, yep. /o\ but he has pretty eyesssss
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