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exist “sunny,” The series, which premiered on Apple TV+ on Wednesday, stars Rashida Jones as Suzy Sakamoto, an American living in a near-future Kyoto whose Japanese husband and 8-year-old son are killed in a civilian airliner crash — though the possibility that this might not be the case was raised early in the season. As with most mysteries, a lot is not as it seems.
Devastated but refusing to express her grief openly, Suzy finds herself the unwilling recipient of Sunny (Joanna Sotomura), an apple-white household robot whose cute, SanrioA face like that of a man with a broken heart is displayed on the video screen. This, she is told, should make her feel less alone. (“I love hugs,” Sunny says, much to Suzy’s horror. “Bring it in.”) She has no real friends.
At this time, Suzie learned that Masa (played by Nishijima Hidetoshi, “Drive my car”Suzy’s husband is not a refrigerator engineer (although Suzy has always believed him to be one throughout their decade-long relationship) but a major figure in cutting-edge robotics. Suzy programmed Sunny the robot herself, and I can only guess that he may have had a premonition that he would eventually leave. In any case, nothing else makes sense.
(I’m going to call Sunny “she” because in Colin O’Sullivan’s original novel, Manual of Darkness , the robot is pronounced female, and was later renamed Sunny to fit in with the series. And because all the other protagonists, including the main villain, are female. It’s no accident that we’re in their world.)
She initially tries to get rid of Sonny because she wants to understand who her husband really is; she’ll sneak around and find out, even if it’s incomplete, unpleasant.Drowning her sorrows in a bar she and Martha frequent, Suzy meets the bubbly, messy-haired new bartender, Mixie (A Clumsy Anne), who tells her about the Dark Manual, an illegal, underground guide to hacking home robots that might allow her to shut down Suzy completely, rather than just putting her to sleep unreliably.
Apparently, it has less gentle applications too, and every step draws her further into the overly convoluted plot; dangerous situations ensue, with Suzy and Sonny playing bickering, bantering police partners, and Mixie tagging along out of interest – or is it self-interest? We also see early on that Suzy is being spied on – by whom? For what? Gangs are eventually woven into the story, which is frankly a bit disappointing; even the fantastical organized crime is ultimately bland.
At first, it’s easy to resist Sunny because that’s how Suzie is, especially since it’s hard to tell if she’ll hurt her owner. The show’s opening hints that household robots can be dangerous, and Suzie remains suspicious of Sunny, even as she slowly begins to accept and rely on him. But people eventually warm up to the robot, and in fact, my biggest concern throughout the season was whether it would treat her well.
Like animals in plays or social media videos, conscious machines inspire our empathy. As soon as you give a robot a face or a voice, or even a vocabulary of beeps, clicks, and whirrs, they become emotionally indistinguishable from human characters, no matter how many times someone asserts, “It’s just a machine.” If anything, they are more empathetic to us than to them. Astro Boy.Data.C-3P0. cloneHAL 9000’s death is a heartbreaking scene in 2001: A Space Odyssey. With her big eyes and soft voice, her hopeful-yet-apprehensive attitude, her ability to dream and her obsession with visual feedback loops, Sunny is as much a protagonist as Suzy. (The series is named after her, after all.)
Among her many secrets, one assumes Suzy is hiding something else – when Masa asks her in a lengthy flashback about the “real reason” for moving to Japan, she refuses to answer. Her desire to disappear leads to the concept of Zhe XiaosenIt’s an extreme form of social avoidance in which people shut themselves away in their rooms, sometimes for years at a time—Massa is one of them. (“This isn’t a meditation retreat,” he said when Suzy expressed interest. “It makes me sad when people look at me.”)
Some plot points feel mechanical, like Rube Goldberg To ring the bell, there needs to be an interaction of a boiling teapot, a popping balloon, a frightened cat, and a falling bowling ball, when the logical thing to do is just to take a stick and hit it; it’s a lot of extra energy to get from A to B – I wouldn’t say “wasteful”, but you need to accept a certain level of absurdity.
Created by Katie Robbins, the series has more success focusing on personal relationships — I certainly count Sunny among them — than on suspense and conspiracy elements, which are no more compelling than the villain’s scheme in your average Bond film, or even the point of the journey. The human mysteries are always more interesting. The thorny relationship between Suzy and her difficult, passive mother-in-law Noriko (actress, singer, woodcut artist Judy Onge, excellent) is deliberately frustrating and beautifully played.
There are detours in the final stretch that lead to plot twists or cliffhangers, depending on whether there’s a second season. (There certainly seems to be more to discuss.) The penultimate episode — following a now-common strategy among streaming series of diving back into the past before returning to the present — gives West Island’s Massa plenty of screen time; the following episode takes a surreal dive into Sonny’s inner world, providing more backstory and context, while Jones is almost entirely off screen.
Wayward plots aside, the show is a joy to watch — well-made, beautifully designed and filmed, with a cast of supporting characters and strong performances from the main characters. Jones, best known for The Office, Parks and Recreation and Angie Tribeca, is a powerful character despite being depressed for much of the show. There’s not a lot of vanity in her performance, and less comedy than usual. (There’s a certain amount of comic relief, starting with the bright, Saul Bass-style opening titles, but it’s rarely funny.)
In the end, she becomes a slow-moving hero—think Doris Day in “Someone who knows too much. ” The creators might have.
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