Main cast: Gwyneth Paltrow (Daphne), Reid Scott (Will Caswell), Annie Hamilton (Sarah Miller), Christopher Fitzgerald (Tom Levitt), and Maury Ginsberg (The Detective)
Director: Elegance Bratton
Seven years after the you-know-what, the world is heading into a lock down again. No, it’s not because there is an election incoming, but rather, some unspecified disease that we can’t mention probably because Pfizer-backed governments would urge social media to ban anyone that dares to mention it in a manner that is not approved by Big Pharma and friends.
This is the set-up for Will Caswell, an art gallery and auction house manager, to be stuck at his marvelous home with only Goop Paltrow Daphne, a prototype virtual assistant, for company. A gift from a client, Daphne can do anything and everything, even imitate his voice to answer his annoying mother’s calls on his behalf. She also blackmails and threatens people, using his voice, while committing all kinds of digital larceny and more to make good things happen for him.
Naturally, having an AI that has taken over his entire life without much effort can only lead to unhappy circumstances once an increasingly Daphne decides that she’s the boss of him and his life. He is not allowed to have anyone else! Never!
There is one scene with Will Caswell showering, shot from the top of the head. I’m ashamed to say that I can’t resist the bait thrown out by the show to watch the scene several times to see if there are dangling bits visible. Spoiler: I can’t spot any, damn, but I do feel like a lowliest perv ever. I hope this show is proud of itself.
Later, there is a scene of Will wanking off and making a most hideous O-face ever, the hand and money shot discreetly off camera of course as this is a wholesome show, and sod this. I hope the show is freaking proud of itself. Assholes!
Daphne takes on an old, old trope and doesn’t do much to make things feel fresh or new. A few decades ago, it’d be about a horny and jealous female robot, then later we graduated to hardware with a lady’s voice that is equally horny and deranged, and now, it’s all about horny AIs with female voices, but the story is the same.
It’s not helping much that this episode decides to set it against a lockdown and then have a wealthy, spoiled brat and his equally wealthy and privileged peers all whining and moaning about life is hard because they can’t now engage in their usual debauchery. With Will being such an unsympathetic and even unlikable protagonist, I have a hard time caring about what happens to him.
Worse, it’s so predictable, what his eventual fate would be. This episode has all the subtlety of a truck ramming into a china shop, as it practically beats down the foreshadowing moments onto the viewers’ heads with a figurative baseball bat.
One thing I do like is the possibility that Daphne is all in Will’s head, but again, the episode rams that possibility down my throat because it doesn’t trust me to come to that possibility on my own.
It’s not like things had to be this way. The show could have made small tweaks to make things not so faithful to previous takes on the horny berserk lady fembot trope.
Some things I can think of: make the protagonist a woman, have Daphne just not speak and communicate through the devices in the house, or have the protagonist face working class issues during a lockdown instead of the pampered inconveniences of the upper class.
Instead, this show chooses to expose how out of touch it is to the realities of a lockdown and spins a tale against a backdrop that has scarred the lives of many people, all just for a mediocre, forgettable episode.
If they have the testicular fortitude to take on the horrors of a lockdown, they could have at least do so in a way that is relatable, thought-provoking, or both. This is just a sad misfire.
