Laura is still far from convinced that there isn’t more than meets the eye when it comes to their new Synth, now suspecting she has been corrupted by some sort of illegal modification. Were this the case then, in theory, Anita should feel pain. Watching her walk away from being run over isn’t quite enough for Laura it seems, who wants to double check by jabbing her hand with a cocktail stick. Anita raises the stakes and instead passively stabs herself in the eye to prove she feels no pain and hasn’t been tampered with. But Laura is right, something is truly amiss with Anita. When Mattie hacks into her, this time getting further than her last abortive attempt, Anita suddenly grabs her wrist and emotionally cries “help me!” with a look of panic in her eyes, before quickly resetting back to her normal Synth mode. Seeking answers, Mattie uploads the code that caused this to the Head Cracker website in the hope that someone will be able to tell her what’s going on. At their safe house, the code is picked up by Leo and Max. Now he’ll finally be able to track Anita/Mia down, it seems. Questions are: Is there enough of “Mia” coming through for “Anita” to remember who she used to be? Or is the whole Anita thing an act anyway, as hinted at by her mind games with Laura? Will Joe and Toby even let her go.
Leo earlier rendezvoused with Niska, but they went their separate ways because of Niska’s actions last week, namely killing a human. Drummond and Voss are investigating this crime, but before they can make any headway, they are told to drop the case by their Senior Officer, and to report it instead as an accident. When it is clear that the police are answering to the shady Hobbs, Drummond remonstrates about the cover up, and ends up by getting himself suspended from work. When he gets home, their “beefcake” of a Synth is helping his wife to knead bread in the style of the pottery wheel scene in Ghost. It’s no wonder Drummond is puffing on his e-cig so much today. Niska, meanwhile, is convincingly passing for human, even going so far as to pick up a guy in a bar. When she thinks he might be lying to her about being single though, she grabs a huge kitchen knife with which to stab him, but ultimately she doesn’t go through with it when she realises he was telling the truth. Instead she makes a quick exit.
Tiring of Vera (and who wouldn’t be?), George locks her in his study, and takes Odi out for a drive instead. But Odi’s increasingly frequent glitches cause the car to swerve dangerously off road and crash into a tree stump. George walks away from the accident, but before help arrives he orders Odi to hide in the woods. He’s frightened that is anyone discovers him, he will be melted down and recycled. Back at home, Vera escapes from the office by pulling the door handle, with robotic strength, until it breaks off. George is going to be in big trouble for this.
VIEWING NOTES AND OBSERVATIONS
I have a mad theory: What if the Synths are actually modified dead humans? Perhaps Leo escaped half-way through this process, which would explain why he feels pain, needs food and said to Max “I’m particularly the same as you”. Maybe he liberated the others too. Are his flashbacks to being trapped underwater memories of when he and Mia died? This would also explain why there is such a big cover up. Will Drummond be the unlikely hero to expose it all? To push it further, was Odi the real son of George? Probably not, but could Niska have been murdered by an abusive man, hence her desire to kill those who mistreat or lie to her? Not sure how Vera would fit into all this, perhaps she is just a severe NHS Synth.
Anita discovers an old photo album in the back of the wardrobe with photos of Tommy in it. Who is Tommy, and why does Laura not want to talk about him? Joe doesn’t seem to know either.
Was it really necessary for Joe to perform a full epidermis check on Anita “for insurance purposes”, or is she playing mind games with him as well as Laura? If so, what’s in it for her? It’s implied that Anita is actually a victim in this story, so perhaps it’s more likely that those little slips which are unsettling Laura are actually a more human-like personality trying to break through. Anita laments (as much as a Synth can) that while she is practically speaking a more efficient mother to the children than Laura, she is unable to love them as she does. Laura notes that Anita has unusually high empathy for a Synth.
Did Niska refrain from stabbing Gareth because he wasn’t lying, or because he had a child? Could there be some connection to children? We still don’t know why Anita carried Sophie off in the middle of the night.