“Children, I’ve got a surprise for you.” Come on then, who guessed Karen was the mother of all conscious synths? Now revealed as the synth embodiment of Leo’s mum, her persona has been played out so cunningly as she gradually seeped towards centre stage over the last couple of weeks.
‘It’s not safe out there’
Tucked up safely in Laura and Joe’s kitchen, Mia is worried about where Leo is. “I was made to love him,” she says. You can see Laura’s mind ticking over when she asks Mia about being trapped inside Anita. Is she a conscious being who had sex with another woman’s husband, or just a being who was unfortunate enough to be in the wrong place when Joe switched Anita to “Adult Mode”? Whatever, Joe’s the one to blame. And now he’s wheedled his way back into the house, shaking Mia’s hand awkwardly with a shifty “We’ve met before”.
‘You were the woman he loved’
Karen has had enough of consciousness and she’s on a mission, barging her way into Dr Millican’s house to see Niska. So Karen was Beatrice, David Elster’s late wife? “I was never her,” she says, defiantly.
“You were the woman he loved,” says Dr Millican. “Reincarnated.” David wrote a block in Karen’s route code so she couldn’t commit suicide like Beatrice, but she can see no point in living because “consciousness can only bring us suffering”. Can she persuade Niska to kill her? “Four shots. Two in each hemisphere, then burn my body.”
But it’s not Karen who gets shot. First there’s Vera, taking a bullet through the hand that alerts the emergency services. Then comes one of the saddest scenes yet as she shoots Dr Millican. “I wish I could save you,” says Niska, after he urges her to leave. The most poignant moment comes with Odi bending over him, whispering comforting words about Mary in the next room, waiting for him. Let’s hope she is.
‘You started to hate yourself’
It’s not just the tension of having to load their own dishwasher that’s grating on Laura and Joe. Mia’s far too nice, caring personality is emerging and it isn’t helping. “Laura, I don’t want to be the reason why your marriage fails,” she says. But in Laura’s mind it was Anita who had sex with her husband.
Later, Mia approaches Joe about the incident. “I was there the whole time,” she reveals, somewhat disturbingly. “You started to hate yourself before we even finished.” We? The two or the three of them? This gets freakier.
‘It’s OK, it’s my sister’
It’s amazing how the curtain-twitchers of suburbia haven’t bothered Laura and Joe yet as their house becomes a haven for conscious synths on the run. And it’s a safe place for Leo and Fred to take Max as they drag him from the riverbank. Even Niska appears outside the patio doors.
Sadly, Max has had a power drain and has lost too much fluid, so Niska’s going to be a synthetic blood donor. With Mattie working Max’s code, Joe topping up his tank and Toby holding his hand, the family are united around his bedside, willing him to live, but even a 13-hour charge won’t bring him back. The two families are united, for now at least.
‘Scrap it’
Dr Millican’s house is now a crime scene and Odi’s demise is as sad as his master’s. “See if it saw anything and scrap it,” orders Hobb as he reveals that he and Millican knew each other “just a little, a long time ago”. Enough to win an award for robotic engineering, that is.
Still on her mission to be destroyed, Karen offers to help Hobb stop the conscious synths as long as he gets rid of her once they’re done.
‘It’s dangerous in here’
Can Joe prove he’s useful by answering the door when the police turn up? Not when everyone overhears it’s a follow-up on that call he made last night about “a suspicious man and his synth”. Oh, Joe, you’ve blown it.
Still, it’s quite unfortunate that Laura and Joe catch footage of Niska going crazy at the smash club on the news just as she’s giving Sophie a cuddle. Laura orders them to leave. “But it’s dangerous out there for them,” argues Mattie.
“It’s dangerous in here for us,” says Joe. Leo gathers his belongings when he comes face to face with Beatrice/Karen in the kitchen. He succumbs as she feigns the mother role, leading him to safety like a little boy.
Then comes the disturbing climax as Hobb leads a synth bust. The sight of armed police bursting in is horrific – while Sophie stands at the top of the stairs in her pyjamas, Max smiles innocently down the barrel of a gun and Leo cries out for help.
A brilliant end-of-series cliffhanger? No, there’s still one episode to go. So how do you think Humans will end?
Notes and queries
This episode had the sharpest lines of the series, which even surpassed Pete’s “Stick it up your bollocks”. Joe, who can’t do anything right, asked if a synth had crashed. “Crashed?” replied Toby. “You’re so ’90s.”
Sophie teaching Niska to play with dolls was beautifully done. “Has your hair always been like that?” asked Sophie. “Has your face always been like that?” came Niska’s retort.
The finality of Odi’s “You have died, George” was uttered without emotion, but provoked plenty.
Laura’s motherly “Put that down” put Niska right in her place when she picked up a vase as a weapon.
Sadly, no “I’m sorry, Laura, I don’t understand the question” this week, but Mia did shock her with an attempt at humour. “Why are they so scared of you?” asked Laura. “They think it’s our plan to conquer the planet and make humanity our slaves,” deadpanned Mia. “Sorry, that was a joke.”
