I love Michael Ealy and I love Karl Urban. They are very different actors and I like them for different reasons but when I heard that they were going to be staring in a T.V. show together, I knew I had to watch. The show premiered on Sunday November 17th, 2013  or at least the first night of the two night première did on the Fox Network. The second part of the première took place the next night on Monday November 18th, 2013.

We start in 2048 with a robotic type voice giving us an introduction about the state of today’s society that basically says the police now partner with robots. We immediately switch to gunfire and we see Karl Urban’s character (not yet introduced by name) getting a call that someone is down. Oh, his name is Detective John Kennex. It turns out the guy who is wounded is his partner and the robot tells John to leave his partner because there are people who have more chance of living/surviving. The robot was able to run this diagnostic test which I think is cool. Then there is an explosion and John drifts off to la la land where he is in bed with a pretty woman.

 

Then we switch to a chamber where it seems that someone (or robot) is trying to extract memories from him about the incident. He has been in a coma for 17 months and is working with a black market doctor from sub Asia (his words, not mine) to figure out what happened. We learn that he can’t let the incident go and that the memories of the girl where of an old girlfriend. Oooh, his nose starts bleeding. That is always an ominous sign. When he leaves the doctor he gets into a car and there is a necklace with the initial “A” hanging from his rearview mirror. A robot stops and gets mouthy with him about not having his robot with him even though he is off duty and we learn that “someone came over the wall’ whatever that means.

John is back in his apartment using some iron man type technology to watch an old message from his girlfriend. She mentions his father—I wonder if we learn something about that later. A call comes through from I am assuming his boss Captain Sandra Maldonado (Lilli Taylor) telling him he needs to get back to work and tells him there was a robbery linked to the syndicate. We then infer that the syndicate is probably who ambushed him and killed his partner. He has a synthetic fake leg that appears to be acting up. You will hear “Synthetic Failed-Calibration Required” for another 20 times throughout the episode.

We meet Detective Valarie Stahl (Minka Kelly) who is speaking with two other detectives (Vogel & Paul)  and we learn that the other cops blame John for getting the team killed and think he it is suspect he survived but no one else did. There was a leak that gave away the location which lead to the ambush and his partner getting killed. We meet John’s robot and John does not look thrilled. They go to talk to Sandra and she says that the robots are mandatory. John tries to argue but she pulls out the big guns and says that John was actually deemed ineligible to come back to work and that he especially needed the robot. Of course like every T.V. show, they let the crazy unstable cop go back to work. The boss debriefs him on the robbery and they draw parallels between his earlier ambush and the robbery. He orders his robot to “Come!” which made me laugh. The robot and John head over the robbery we find Det. Stahl and find out that some programmable DNA and some acid was stolen. While he is hearing the details, about the new case he gets flashbacks of his ambush and Det. Stahl has to snap him back. The suspects are limited because of some Cambodian new year which means a certain gangs wouldn’t attack. I love that this was a line of logic and my new alibi for any crime.

The robot thinks that John had a seizure for when he has his flashback and they banter about reporting it to the headquarters. I like this robot. He calls him out about visiting the black market doctor from sub Asia and John replies he just went to eat noodles and then the robot says there were no noodles on his breath so he knew he was lying and speculates he went there for a black market doctor. John then pushes the robot out of the car. He immediately gets hit and smashed by a car. He goes to a facility that supplies the robots (apparently they are called M.X.’s) and  a squirrely fellow named Rudy tells John there is only one robot available and he gets assigned this robot called Dorain or DRN that apparently went crazy because of some bugs. They created the DRN to be like humans so it was emotional like a human.  A little too emotional because Dorian had an emotional breaking point which I find funny. Like shit must have gotten real for a robot to break down. They bring the Dorian to life and we find out he was out for 4 years and three months. Dorian is played by Michael Ealy. Him and John bond for a bit and we find out he has outdated files–not yet knowing about John’s accident.

We then see two men talking in a warehouse or some type of computer room (it kinds reminded me of the makeshift headquarters at Alcatraz that Ed Harris made in the movie The Rock) about “he” being on the move. I cannot tell their mood, if this is good or bad, but they move out after that.

After a commercial we see Dorian and John driving and Dorian is playing with lips. Dorian was supposed to be sent to NASA and he seems “happy” to be here and not with NASA. Dorian and John go back and forth about the necklace (a St. Christopher) and who it belongs to. John keeps calling Dorian Synthetic which Dorian isn’t thrilled about and tells him to be quiet. Of course, John’s leg acts up at that exact moment. Just calibrate the damn thing already!

We cut to a gentleman ( It is Det. Vogel from the earlier scene with Det. Stahl) getting ambushed and his synthetic getting in a car wreck that made me him mauled. Kind of creepy Terminator 2 like. We later see from a security camera that the abductors are the same men from the warehouse who also were a part of the robbery from the earlier scene.

While this is going on John and Dorian go to the police station and Dorian sees the M.X.s that replace him. He tells John that he was built and programmed differently than them. John and Dorian then go to interrogate a suspect. The suspect is being difficult which causes John to be aggressive. Dorian doesn’t like the way John is interrogating. Johns leg starts acting up again leaving Dorian with the perfect opportunity to jump in and call BS on the suspects story allowing him to get the details on the missing cop. I think I missed a part where we find out where the suspect is from and when they found out Det. Vogel was missing but I think it happened when John and Dorian were at the police station. The suspect gave Dorian and John a location for where Det. Vogel might be and they head of in John’s car where they argue again. Great, another show with “carguements”. The suspect seems to be lying though because on the way to his safe house he uses the bathroom in the police station to plant something in the bathroom. We catch up with John and Dorian and the other cops as they are swarming the location where Vogel is being held and they think they find a bomb. Dorian goes ahead and discovers it is not a bomb but there is a trip wire. Even the other M.X.s are tired of Dorian’s shit because of much protocol he was breaking. They follow the trip wire and find Det. Vogel inside of some chamber connected to the trip wire. John yells that “This is a set up!” and Vogel is blasted with something that I can only describe as being some type of biological weapon. I am loving his little one line yells. At this point I am wondering if Vogel is a part of what is going on.

After the commercial we watch the footage from the abduction scene and we see what went on.  Dorian is able to download information from the detective body and they go back to the office and find out some of Vogel’s files are missing and he was complaining he couldn’t get access to files this morning. Dorian picks up on the fact that John thinks that someone specific (the syndicate) is responsible for this and calls him out on his shit. He says John has a problem (yes–we’ve been through this) and that he knows John blames the robots for his partner’s death but that John is just as much to blame. John says that Dorian is malfunctioning that makes me laugh. Dorian reminds him for like the 3^rd time that he is not built like the M.X.s who are logic based, that he is built to be like a human so he can pick up on queues.  A phone call comes through and we find out that the inoculation Vogel had is part of the programmable DNA and they are targeting cops. John goes back to his black market doctor from sub Asia and demands he help him. I love how he is both degrading the doctor but acknowledges he is the only one who can help him with his memories.

John gets hooked back up to the chamber and we see similar flashbacks to what we saw before except this time we see some faces from the syndicate and they end up being his ex-girlfriend. Dorian shows up and takes him out of the machine. Apparently, John has a locator chip and Dorian was not afraid to use it. They go eat outside in the pouring rain which again made me chuckle and John tells Dorian what he saw but also says he doesn’t know if it was real. He says it was his ex-girlfriend in the flashback who had disappeared when he came out of his coma.  And the metaphorical crutch of the show, his damn leg, starts acting up. Dorian tells him to put olive oil on the joint. John and Dorian bond about Dorian saving his life and being different from the others. Dorian AGAIN explains he is different from the M.X.s. This actually serves a purpose because John remembers Vogel’s mauled MX and how Dorian maybe able to get information from the MX. He then yells “Check please!”. Oh man, they keep cracking me up. There was also a little bonding moment in this scene where John’s leg starts acting up and Dorian tells him to put olive oil to calibrate it. I could be wrong (I am a lot) but I don’t think that you can calibrate something by adding olive oil.

Apparently Dorian can help recall connections from the mauled MX. He pulls them up on the iron man technology and finds we are able to see the scene from Vogel’s abduction and the warehouse/robbery men are telling Vogel something about a piece of evidence that he had checked in. The number of the evidence matches the missing case files and John realizes that they are going to attack the police station itself.

While this was going on, the syndicate or whoever they are, accesses the chip that the suspect had planted earlier and it seems like it shorts out the power in the police station.

The police station is frantic because whatever was shorted affects all the MXs. Of course it doesn’t affect Dorian because sometimes older technology is better. The men from the warehouse/robbery swarm the police station and Valerie and John with the help of Dorian are able to stop them. It was one of those scenes where it was dark and a lot of guns were going off but basically there was gunfire and fighting but Dorian basically comes in and kicks ass.

Dorian, John and the Boss are going through all the evidence trying to find the piece from the missing file and the piece that the syndicate wanted. We do an overhead shot of the evidence locker which reminds me of a modern-day Indiana Jones warehouse and we see a head with a symbol light up in a see through box. We then see a funny scene of Rudy waking up the MXs and I am not sure if they meant this scene to be funny but it was. John looks back on his little message from his girlfriend and mopes. Sandra and John have a moment and we find out it was her who put the request for John to be with the Dorian. His New Zealand accent came out a bit in that scene when he pronounces her name like SAWN-DRA. The first hour ended with John and Dorian in the car talking about whether Dorian should be quiet and John finally lightens up and they bond with John calling Dorian by his name and not synthetic and telling Dorian that he can call him John instead of Detective.

Oh—we see a preview for the next episode that has sex bots.

(Pictures are from www.fox.com)