4 out of 5

Created by: J.H. Wyman

Covers season 1

Is ‘Almost Human’ a great show?  (pause)  …Well, I can’t unequivocally answer yes, but after a ramp-up of a few episodes, the show settles into a wonderful stride with just enough of a forward tilt with its ‘tomorrow’ setting to twist the buddy-cop procedural into something with a bit of spice, and leads Karl Urban and Michael Ealy have such awesome chemistry that you look forward to spending time with them week to week.  Smartly, after over-mythifying Fringe, creator Wyman dosed ‘Almost Human’ with some conspiracy pieces to see if those took off, but then – at least for this 13-episode season which hopefully won’t be the only one… – kept things mostly focused on a week-to-week case structure, giving us time to warm to our leads and understand the limitations of the ‘Almost Human’ world.  In fact, the most trying times are those that try to dig into this more ‘serious’ backstory – Karl Urban’s ladyfriend turns on fellow troops during a bullet- and explosion-riddled sequence that opens the show, resulting in a the recently reinstated Urban – sans one leg and some memories – who has to overcome his history as the dude who brought the traitor in.  Thankfully, boss Lili Taylor suspects that the best thing for reintegrating the hard-edged Urban will be pairing him with a unique partner.  …And season one tends to convince us she was right.

Michael Ealy is the partner, ‘Dorian’, but he’s not just unique because he’s a robot.  The basic gist of ‘Almost Human’ is that all officers are now partnered with a robot, thanks to too many technological advances on behalf of the perps and not enough resources on the side of the just.  The current model is an ‘MX’ – dry, logical robots who act and talk like our sci-fi ‘bots of yore (i.e. ‘how may I serve you, master?’).  The DRN model – Dorian – was an attempt to humanize the partners, giving them ‘real’ emotions; however, the model was generally considered unstable.  So, yes, classic ‘each partner completes the other’ pairing, good call, and Dorian’s instant access to police data gives us smooth sailing for a lot of clutter that we might otherwise have had over-explained in each episode.

And then there are the little world-building gifts that come in during the season: that there’s some type of ‘wall’ that divides the haves and have-nots; that there’s a class of genetically-specified humans called ‘chromes’ – one of which is on the force.  There’s such a rash of shows that want to give you all the questions up front and then not answer them for ninety years – especially as an Abrams production, it was refreshing to be able to mostly just focus on the show and then to be rewarded by these more subtle plot inclusions, which you don’t have to write down and decode in order to understand what’s happening in the episode.

Which, again, mostly comes back to just a buddy-cop show.  But a fun one.  A really fun one with great characters and solid production design, solid chemistry all-around – even Taylor’s dryness as the boss becomes appreciably direct for delivering plot points – and enjoyable subplots (Urban’s failed flirtation attempts; tech Rudy’s wishful life as a spy).  Perhaps it was kept simple because no one knew if it would go beyond one season, but that same value is what made it a stand out.  Sci-fi doesn’t have to be super soapy or geeky to qualify for the genre.  It’d be nice to have something of this reliable of caliber in a prime-time rotation, especially now that its tonal precursor – Person of Interest – has split its time between more mythology-fueled episodes.