S02.E01: Be Right Back

[David T. Cole]

This is the "how much of you is on the net" episode.

[xander874]

This was interesting. I thought the sex stuff was funny as he had been programmed via porn videos. The ending was odd by keeping him in the attic as a playtoy for the daughter. 

 

Makes me wonder if I would ever go this route. Can't say I wouldn't consider it if it was an option.

[benteen]

I must be losing my mind.  It took me the end of the episode to realize that was Domhnell Gleeson and I didn't know that was Haley Atwell till I read a review afterwards.  Terrific acting though I agree the show has had better episodes.

[romantic idiot]

 The ending was odd by keeping him in the attic as a playtoy for the daughter. 

 

That's what I thought was going to happen when she started talking in the beginning and I was glad it ended that way. This way she got to have a life and the daughter could know her father a little better. 

 

I also wonder if this wasn't a little pregnancy hormones episode - especially if they wouldn't have had that ending in mind.

[NutMeg]

See, the sad think is that she didn't really get to have a life. By stopping the grieving process she found herself stuck with a pretend Ash, that she didn't want to keep but also could not get herself to get rid of.

 

I absolutely loved that "net Ash" was both a more perfect version of the real Ash and at the same time a very bland, boring version, with none of the flaws and quirks that probably made him endearing to her.

[Automne]

This is one of those things somebody creates because it sounds like a great idea on paper, but it's a godawful terrible idea in practice. It renders a person unable to process their grief and live life with the new normal without their loved one. It's them, but it's not them. All the things that were unsaid will remain unsaid because it won't be them that actually hears it. Best to deal with it and move on.

 

Or if something like this becomes available, there would need to be strict time limits on how long the service could be used to avoid exactly what happened in this episode. 

 

What exactly is she going to tell her daughter in the future? "Oh, that's the AI facsimile of your dead father who died before he even knew I was pregnant with you."

[ToxicUnicorn]

This episode was the weakest one for me, by far.  I didn't find any of it compelling.

 

Still a fan of the show - it certainly commits to a premise.

[Willowy]

I don't know which came first, but here's a real life version. I'm sure the tech is probably headed that way, and I do think it's kind of cool.

http://www.theverge.com/a/luka-artificial-intelligence-memorial-roman-mazurenko-bot

[PatternRec]

I 

On 12/15/2014 at 10:08 AM, xander874 said:

Makes me wonder if I would ever go this route. Can't say I wouldn't consider it if it was an option.

I"d do it, but by the point I got to the android version I'd have had him jump over the cliff.

[marcee]

On 12/27/2015 at 9:50 PM, Automne said:

What exactly is she going to tell her daughter in the future? "Oh, that's the AI facsimile of your dead father who died before he even knew I was pregnant with you."

I don't see why not. It's better than her assuming a real person has been locked in her attic for years. And since it's obviously a world in which tech is this advanced, it wouldn't seem that crazy to her to have an ?android? as a "pet". He knows who he is and how he came to be and as an advanced "device", why shouldn't the daughter be okay with it? It's just a more advanced version of her reading his diary or old letters - or watching old movies of him - just a way to try to get to know her father better.

[AncientSand]

I think the technology on this show is the closest to what will become reality that I've ever seen in sci fi.  Such creative (but horrible for this episode) ideas.  Seems like if the world had the ability to create androids that learned sex from porn videos, a lot of people would be skipping the find love/lose love/build love part.

[Dobian]

I found this episode to veer from the highly plausible to the much more implausible.  A software app that can review information about a person online including things they have written and mimic them is highly plausible.  Listening to their recorded speech and recreating it, even building up a full vocabulary is also highly plausible.  But then the episode goes Westworld and she's ordering the android in a box that's a perfect replica of her husband.  Now this might be realistic down the road, I know this technology will probably be there before the end of this century, but the software app is something I could envision in the next decade, which is kind of the implied time period of this episode.  Lifelike androids are much further down the road.  But I can suspend disbelief a little bit except for the fact of, where did she get the money for this?  Downloading a software app, sure, but an android?  She wasn't exactly portrayed as being super wealthy but who knows.

I thought the story did a good job of showing how it's one thing to mimic what someone might say in a text or even a phone chat, but recreating their actual personality is completely different.  Once the cracks in the facade start showing, you are faced with the reality that you are perpetuating a fantasy of what used to be and can never move on with your life.  Keeping Ash in the attic seemed to be a kind of metaphor for filing him away to a part of her mind.  He's still there, just out of the way except for those times she wants to revisit him.  On a more macro level the story poses the question, how much of us is truly real on the internet?  Not as much as we think, it seems.

[TaylorTalk]

I just watched this episode and the ending was it the same dude as the beginning or a 'photoshop' double.

 

He really looked like the original dude, but not quite the same.  My roommate says it's the lighting and the angles, but remember the part where he grew a mole?  Also the part when he was vacusealed he didn't look like anything the dude did alive.

 

So it may have been the original actor, but they photo shopped him to look slighly creepy?
 

[methodwriter85]

On 4/15/2017 at 5:41 AM, qqererer said:

I just watched this episode and the ending was it the same dude as the beginning or a 'photoshop' double.

 

He really looked like the original dude, but not quite the same.  My roommate says it's the lighting and the angles, but remember the part where he grew a mole?  Also the part when he was vacusealed he didn't look like anything the dude did alive.

 

So it may have been the original actor, but they photo shopped him to look slighly creepy?
 

I'm assuming they either gave Domhall Gleeson a really good body make-up job, or they had him wear a green bodysuit to alter his look just enough to make him look fake.

I really thought this was going to end with the android turning against Hayley, or Hayley committing suicide. Then when we got the end I really thought she was going to push him off the cliff. I don't know how I feel about him being kept as a pet android.

[LittleIggy]

Maybe she used the life insurance money to buy the android.

In any case, she won't need to buy a vibrator. ;-) Keeping him in the attic probably hinders her ability to move on to another permanent relationship.

[DrSpaceman73]

Really enjoyed this episode. 

You could see where it was headed a few steps ahead the whole time and the viewers could see how this was not going to end well, but she just had not come to that realization.

This reminded me quite a bit of the Season one episode 3 one with the implants that record all the memories.  In both cases it technology that on the surface seems useful, cool and extraordinary, but in the end just ends up causing people to live in the past rather than getting on with their lives and focusing on the future

Although in a way, it did help her.  He died suddenly and she was having problems processing her grief.  It was a painful process but in a way it gave her time to come to the realization he really is gone and not coming back.  All she has is the memories and she needs to move on.  Buying a lifelike android of him is an odd way to get there, but in a strange way it did help her come to the final realization that she had to move on. 

And I actually found it kind of funny she just leaves him in the attic, like all the odd stuff we initially love but outgrow.  it does bring up the question of why she kept him in the first place and I think its the same as everything else that ends up in an attic.  We like the memory of those things and just can't completely let go. 

[NutMeg]

Your post just made me think that having the android means that her memory of him will likely end up crystallising on the android features, kind of like the difference in how we remember holidays we took no picture of vs. those that progressively become remembered mostly with the pictures we have of them. 

Edited November 6, 2017 by NutMeg
to add one word

[DrSpaceman73]

8 hours ago, NutMeg said:

Your post just made me think that having the android means that her memory of him will likely end up crystallising on the android features, kind of like the difference in how we remember holidays we took no picture of vs. those that progressively become remembered mostly with the pictures we have of them. 

Sadly that is true.

Similar to how when someone gets sick at the end of life with cancer or dementia is clouds all other happier memories of them, for a period of time, at least

[NutMeg]

Thinking about the episode further, it seems to depict something which has become prevalent in our society, the need to lessen any painful emotion (here, those involved in the grieving process), but dulling the pain is counterproductive, and it's only when you allow yourself to really feel a loss that you can absorb it in a way that later allows you to really live your life rather than carrying on with life.  

[CigarDoug]

On 11/4/2017 at 11:45 AM, DrSpaceman73 said:

And I actually found it kind of funny she just leaves him in the attic, like all the odd stuff we initially love but outgrow.  it does bring up the question of why she kept him in the first place and I think its the same as everything else that ends up in an attic.  We like the memory of those things and just can't completely let go. 

I realized after watching the episode that his girlfriend did exactly what his parents did, with the photos of his brother, and then of his father: At some point, all memories of them are moved up to the attic, and you don't see them anymore. I am sure that's the reason he mentioned it at the beginning of the story, foreshadowing of what happened to his doppleganger.

[Superpole2000]

On 6/14/2015 at 8:42 AM, NutMeg said:

I absolutely loved that "net Ash" was both a more perfect version of the real Ash and at the same time a very bland, boring version, with none of the flaws and quirks that probably made him endearing to her.

This is the main reason I enjoyed this episode...the other being the lead actress. I thought she was excellent here.

I think a lot of people would sign up for an android companion/friend/lover to satisfy any basal needs and supplement their other relationships...if the price was right. I can't imagine the price ever being affordable, though.

[Chas411]

I loved this episode but I just couldn't fathom why she didn't let him send him back to where she got him from...

On 4 November 2017 at 3:45 PM, DrSpaceman73 said:

Although in a way, it did help her.  He died suddenly and she was having problems processing her grief.  It was a painful process but in a way it gave her time to come to the realization he really is gone and not coming back.  All she has is the memories and she needs to move on.  Buying a lifelike android of him is an odd way to get there, but in a strange way it did help her come to the final realization that she had to move on. 

 

I didn't feel she did move on though. She kept him in the attic and introduced her daughter to him. How could she possibly move on with him up there.. How awkward would it be for her to meet someone new and bring him home. 

[NutMeg]

On 1/25/2018 at 9:57 AM, Chas411 said:

I loved this episode but I just couldn't fathom why she didn't let him send him back to where she got him from...

I didn't feel she did move on though. She kept him in the attic and introduced her daughter to him. How could she possibly move on with him up there.. How awkward would it be for her to meet someone new and bring him home. 

I agree with you that she didn't move on, couldn't really get on with her life because of this interrupted grieving process.

In the same way, her daughter will probably never hear fun stories about her dad, because of the perfectly bland model living in the attic.

The most terrifying part is that anyone who's ever had a loved one die can relate to her behaviour at the beginning. It's so normal to want the person back. And if technology makes it possible, so tempting. But ultimately so damaging in so many ways. Not only because it's impossible to move on, but because the "thing" will make you forget all that was unique and that made you love the person in the first place and later on. And you'll be left with resentment and maybe bitterness. I imagine. 

My brother died suddenly in an accident when he was 26. That was before facebook. I am pretty sure that if he had been on it, his girlfriend would have become obsessed with everything he had ever seen, said and smiled at on facebook. (She had quite the obsessive personality...) And then, ultimately, new discoveries would/could have replaced real memories of him. So, basically, these technologies aiming at extending memories ultimately end up erasing what is most unique/personal/human, and not captured by the technology because it is what what the person made them loved. I'm just "talking out" ideas here, but indeed this episode is one of those that have stayed with me the most. I tend to prefer the episodes happening in a world at first look identical to ours, and where some technology we already know has become so powerful as to dramatically change life as we know it.   

[Yeah No]

This episode brought up a subject for me.  Like no matter how much of you a computer could contain and reproduce, and no matter how uncanny and accurate it was, that representation of you would still not be you even if it got every fragment of DNA identical to yours and downloaded every single thought you ever had.  Which proves to me that people really are more than the sum total of their parts.

[Kel Varnsen]

On 3/31/2017 at 10:57 PM, Dobian said:

I found this episode to veer from the highly plausible to the much more implausible.  A software app that can review information about a person online including things they have written and mimic them is highly plausible.  Listening to their recorded speech and recreating it, even building up a full vocabulary is also highly plausible.  But then the episode goes Westworld and she's ordering the android in a box that's a perfect replica of her husband.  Now this might be realistic down the road, I know this technology will probably be there before the end of this century, but the software app is something I could envision in the next decade, which is kind of the implied time period of this episode.  Lifelike androids are much further down the road.  But I can suspend disbelief a little bit except for the fact of, where did she get the money for this?  Downloading a software app, sure, but an android?  She wasn't exactly portrayed as being super wealthy but who knows.

I thought the story did a good job of showing how it's one thing to mimic what someone might say in a text or even a phone chat, but recreating their actual personality is completely different.  Once the cracks in the facade start showing, you are faced with the reality that you are perpetuating a fantasy of what used to be and can never move on with your life.  Keeping Ash in the attic seemed to be a kind of metaphor for filing him away to a part of her mind.  He's still there, just out of the way except for those times she wants to revisit him.  On a more macro level the story poses the question, how much of us is truly real on the internet?  Not as much as we think, it seems.

I was sort of the same, really liking the episode until the robot showed up. At that point I just kept thinking about how if technology had advanced to the point where if super lifelike robots are available on a consumer level like that, I am pretty sure one of the last things they would be used for would. helping people handle their grief over a dead loved one. The memory implant episode did a better job of showing multiple ways technology would change things, and with this one I couldn't stop thinking about how much more society would be advanced if we get to the point where we have robots like that.

[Which Tyler]

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/jul/18/ai-chatbots-grief-chatgpt

 

People are turning to chatbot impersonations of lost loved ones to help them grieve. Will AI help us live after we’re dead?

Edited July 18, 2023 by Which Tyler