Executive produced by JJ Abrams, and set in the year 2048, Almost Human is, at its core, a story about a futuristic odd couple – human and robot. John Kennex (Karl Urban) is a detective who has just woken from a coma when the show opens to find himself partnered with a Ken Doll of robots, an MX.
It’s a fairly predictable premise – grouchy human cop gets in touch with his human side thanks to his almost human partner (oh, that pun wrote itself). It’s saved though by the sheer force of the chemistry of the two leads, Urban and Ealy.
Kennex is a grouch, to put it mildly, in large part due to a raid that went horribly wrong and resulted in his 17 month coma. How wrong? Let me count the ways: he tried to save his human partner during the raid, but the android officer with them refused to help calculating that his partner was too severely injured to survive. A little too I, Robot for me (the Will Smith movie, that is), but Kennex needed some angst.
The raid on the gang’s, Insyndicate, hideout also managed to out his girlfriend as a major player in the gang and the criminal underworld in the show. See, very solid reasons for being the grouch he is. The gang and the raid started as a season-long arc, but perhaps the writers are too used to writing for a 22 episode season rather than a 13 episode run, because it hasn’t been as nearly a consistent part of the season as it should be.
With only 13 episodes in its run, Almost Human has a lot to do in a very short time. Its focus thus far, eight episodes in as far I’ve watched, is the relationships in the show: Dorian and John and them and everyone else. The first eight episodes are very procedural based, with only a few forays (ok, one maybe) into John’s search for answers about the aftermath of that fateful raid – he has some holes in his memory.
Admittedly, there’s a certain air of predictability about it, but the chemistry between John and Dorian certainly saves most of the episodes from falling into clichéd territory. Unfortunately, the same can’t be said of John and Valerie Stahl (Minka Kelly). The show isn’t at all subtle when it comes to their romance, shall we say.
The cast is rounded out by Captain Maldonado (Lili Taylor), Detective Paul (Michael Irby) and technician Rudy (Mackenzie Crook) – all of which are written much better than Stahl is, which means the way that character has been treated makes no sense.
However, I’ll allow that perhaps the disconnect is in part due to the fact that episodes are airing in a different order to when they were filmed. Stahl and John’s relationship suffers the worst from this different order, with Dorian and John’s coming a close second. There are episodes at the beginning of the season where Dorian and John are far too used to each other and later episodes where they’re far too wary of each other.
In the end, the show is fun, snarky and the tech is just insanely good – let your imagination run wild, odds are it’ll come up in the show. Sleepy Hollow, another Fox show, has proven that 13 episodes is more than enough to do a gripping, tightly written show. Here’s hoping Almost Human gets a season 2 to show it can do that too.