When the head of the quality assurance team approaches the door of the board's executive director for a scheduled meeting, she's first confronted with the obvious vocalizations of a sexual encounter. She knocks, the door is opened, and what happens next is absolute BS. The scene is a tediously pretentious stab at femme fatale domination; with a tied-up man in a bed, a 'power play' where the visitor is made uncomfortable when confronted with frank nudity upon arrival for a business meeting, and loads of pointed nonchalance, gluttony, arrogance, cunning, and brutish bossy pseudo-masculinity. It's an attempt to satisfy a certain market segment with the requisite "Racy Sex Scene" while apologetically applying stereotypes presumed to connote power to their naked female character as she performs 'executive' functions, as if this might elevate her status while she's simultaneously being undermined.
The love scene between the ingénue and the younger version of the man in black is set up in the way a passionate and genuine romance would be, but it's basically just a betrayal to all characters involved including his fiancée. That he says his true relationship just feels unreal to him now is the classic lament of the traitor.
The 'love' scene is followed by a scene in which a horse (mounted by a dead body filled with nitro glycerin) is pointlessly blown up to create a fairly weak smoke screen. It would have been more historically accurate to just use a canister-style smokescreen or grenades, and even if they didn't care about the principled treatment of animals (or the deceased) the horse would still be too valuable to sacrifice in this way.
Her Hooker with a Heart of Gold stereotype is consolidated when the brothel madam's favorite prostitute tells a story about how she's working in the brothel to make money to send home to her family because their farm has bad soil and they've fallen on hard times. She says they think she works in a dress shop. She says she plans to get her family out of the desert. She'll be going somewhere cold.
In a scene at headquarters that's 'apologetically' designed to be a criticism of bad coding causing the hosts to recall abuse, the prostitute is suddenly brutally beaten by a man. He heaves heavy blows on her for the camera. On her knees, bleeding and crying, she begs for help from onlookers who observe in another room. Although we're supposed to be distanced from this by the fact that they're robots, there is a factual element to what's being plainly depicted in this show that is aired on HBO as entertainment. As further 'apology', when the scenario is run again, the woman takes revenge by coldly beating the man and bashing his head into the glass partition until he drops to the floor in a bloody heap. The character is now preposterously made to be a cold and violently dangerous victim, 'impressive' with an exacting brutality. Apparently undeserving of assistance and now recast as an unreasoning and obtuse psychopath, she is shot by a security man for failure to relent despite the fact that he's obviously armed. The bad code here is in the depiction itself.
Speaking of preposterous, the brothel madam's threat to kill the repair techs if they don't help her to escape is pointless bravado. She's still just a naked robot who could be overpowered and dismantled, she's still dependent on them to repair her, and she's still made to be successful in her endeavors via contrivances around her 'skills' as a prostitute. Her rationale for why the repair techs have to help her proceeds in a straight line from saying that she used to think they were gods but now "You're just men... and I know men", to an illogical boast about how she's died a million times and is "f-ing great at it", to the threat that she'll kill them if they don't help her. 'Knowing' men the way a prostitute comes to know men is worthless in this situation (and most all situations) as is evident by the fact that she just sits there having no real actionable use for that knowledge, and dying isn't a skill - it's an inevitability. The fact that she's experienced some robot rendition of death numerous times doesn't make her impressive it simply makes her unfortunate, no matter how it's happened. Neither 'knowing' men nor 'dying' frequently confers any lethality to her at any rate - least of all in this situation of naked dependence, having nothing in the world but hollow boasts and threats and a cheap polyvinyl cloak that they've given to her like Greek gods bequeathing a sole garment to an exposed mortal.
When the head of quality assurance is murdered by her trusted coworker/lover (who we now learn is a robot), he dispassionately and brutally bashes her head against a wall. Her body slumps to the floor leaving a smear of blood on the wall reminiscent of the uncharacteristic lipstick smear she made at her vanity in the previous episode. It's a victory for the writers who thought of such a 'clever' twist involving recasting a character in a contradictory and unnatural way. Better still, from this perspective, is the 'clever' way that the drama is heightened by his sudden, mechanistic, and totally contradictory disposition toward her (coupled with her total helplessness). It's supposed to be intriguing and surprising that he turns out to be something even he didn't know he was, and a lethal traitor to her. But by now, nothing is especially intriguing or surprising.
All you have to do is give up all faith in everyone and you may see what it all really is: just an extravagant display intended to attract an audience. It doesn't fly. It's down in the dirt plotting narrative twists into muck, consoling itself with its great beauty.
The love scene between the ingénue and the younger version of the man in black is set up in the way a passionate and genuine romance would be, but it's basically just a betrayal to all characters involved including his fiancée. That he says his true relationship just feels unreal to him now is the classic lament of the traitor.
The 'love' scene is followed by a scene in which a horse (mounted by a dead body filled with nitro glycerin) is pointlessly blown up to create a fairly weak smoke screen. It would have been more historically accurate to just use a canister-style smokescreen or grenades, and even if they didn't care about the principled treatment of animals (or the deceased) the horse would still be too valuable to sacrifice in this way.
Her Hooker with a Heart of Gold stereotype is consolidated when the brothel madam's favorite prostitute tells a story about how she's working in the brothel to make money to send home to her family because their farm has bad soil and they've fallen on hard times. She says they think she works in a dress shop. She says she plans to get her family out of the desert. She'll be going somewhere cold.
In a scene at headquarters that's 'apologetically' designed to be a criticism of bad coding causing the hosts to recall abuse, the prostitute is suddenly brutally beaten by a man. He heaves heavy blows on her for the camera. On her knees, bleeding and crying, she begs for help from onlookers who observe in another room. Although we're supposed to be distanced from this by the fact that they're robots, there is a factual element to what's being plainly depicted in this show that is aired on HBO as entertainment. As further 'apology', when the scenario is run again, the woman takes revenge by coldly beating the man and bashing his head into the glass partition until he drops to the floor in a bloody heap. The character is now preposterously made to be a cold and violently dangerous victim, 'impressive' with an exacting brutality. Apparently undeserving of assistance and now recast as an unreasoning and obtuse psychopath, she is shot by a security man for failure to relent despite the fact that he's obviously armed. The bad code here is in the depiction itself.
Speaking of preposterous, the brothel madam's threat to kill the repair techs if they don't help her to escape is pointless bravado. She's still just a naked robot who could be overpowered and dismantled, she's still dependent on them to repair her, and she's still made to be successful in her endeavors via contrivances around her 'skills' as a prostitute. Her rationale for why the repair techs have to help her proceeds in a straight line from saying that she used to think they were gods but now "You're just men... and I know men", to an illogical boast about how she's died a million times and is "f-ing great at it", to the threat that she'll kill them if they don't help her. 'Knowing' men the way a prostitute comes to know men is worthless in this situation (and most all situations) as is evident by the fact that she just sits there having no real actionable use for that knowledge, and dying isn't a skill - it's an inevitability. The fact that she's experienced some robot rendition of death numerous times doesn't make her impressive it simply makes her unfortunate, no matter how it's happened. Neither 'knowing' men nor 'dying' frequently confers any lethality to her at any rate - least of all in this situation of naked dependence, having nothing in the world but hollow boasts and threats and a cheap polyvinyl cloak that they've given to her like Greek gods bequeathing a sole garment to an exposed mortal.
When the head of quality assurance is murdered by her trusted coworker/lover (who we now learn is a robot), he dispassionately and brutally bashes her head against a wall. Her body slumps to the floor leaving a smear of blood on the wall reminiscent of the uncharacteristic lipstick smear she made at her vanity in the previous episode. It's a victory for the writers who thought of such a 'clever' twist involving recasting a character in a contradictory and unnatural way. Better still, from this perspective, is the 'clever' way that the drama is heightened by his sudden, mechanistic, and totally contradictory disposition toward her (coupled with her total helplessness). It's supposed to be intriguing and surprising that he turns out to be something even he didn't know he was, and a lethal traitor to her. But by now, nothing is especially intriguing or surprising.
All you have to do is give up all faith in everyone and you may see what it all really is: just an extravagant display intended to attract an audience. It doesn't fly. It's down in the dirt plotting narrative twists into muck, consoling itself with its great beauty.