TV Review: Almost Human Season One Episode Seven "Simon Says"

The episode of Almost Human this week opened up with some unique bureaucratic issues within the squad. After a solar flare knocked out the power, the Mx androids were given priority charge over Dorian's DRN models.

This gave Dorian the opportunity for only a half charge. This altered his personality and made him a little cranky.

It provided for the bulk of the humor, but also helped to add another layer of tension during the climatic scenes of the episode. More on that later.

The villain this episode was fairly high-tech. He would spray a chemical in a victim's face, strap a timed bomb to their neck, and then put a bunch of cameras in their car so he could broadcast it online.

He forced the first victim, a loan officer, to rob his own bank. John and Dorian intercept the guy, but realize they'll never get the bomb off his neck in time.

The next few scenes were pretty shocking for network TV. John and Dorian deployed a pop up dome device, which absorbed the blast as they guy got blown up and essentially evaporated.

Letting the team fail once was a strong choice to bring the tension up, and also ground the episode in some reality.

I knew eventually we were going to get a lot of cut the wire at the last second before someone blows up scenes, so it was nice to get this first.

The villain was bold enough to tip off Dorian and John about who his next target was - Jeannie, a flower delivery woman. The expected snip the wire just before the bomb scene eventually takes place in a park. However, she gives John and Dorian some helpful hints about who the villain is. His name is Simon, and he's a super creepy guy from a dating website.

That was enough for the team to find out Simon trained with the bomb squad. They eventually locate his address.

Among the chaos of having to remote detonate Simon's rigged trailer, John is taken hostage by Simon after he's sprayed in the face with the same chemical.

This causes John to wake up later on a bench. This time Simon upped the stakes: he had a remote detonator, and was going to push it if cops got anywhere near, or if John called for help.

This allowed for some banter and exposition. Simon was upset that both he and John got bad psych evaluations, but only John was allowed a second chance. While this went on, the cops on the outside tried to figure out a plan. This is where the Mx charge priority came back into play and cranked the tension up even higher.

Dorian devised a plan to scale the clock tower Simon was perched on and shock him with an electric charge to freeze his muscles and keep his finger on the detonator. The only problem is, because of the cop who hates John and Dorian, Dorian's previous half charge was now under twenty percent.

It made watching Dorian scale the wall stressful because of the heights and also the possibility of Dorian's charge running out.

Obviously there is no show without John or Dorian, so Dorian made it just in time to shock Simon and save John. It was done well.

I particularly enjoyed the end gag with John finally granting Dorian's request to be moved out of the charging station with the Mx's, and much to Dorian's chagrin, in with Rudy instead.

I can't wait to see how that will play out.

Simon Says had the most cop procedural cliches out of any episode so far. Hopefully the show does a better job of using the near future technology to put unique spins on situations, like with the hostage episode a few weeks ago.

I'm letting it slide for now, and will chalk it up to just a young bump in the road.

It wasn't all bad - when it was good, it was as good as it normally is. I'm still looking forward to more back story with John's ex.

Photo Credit: Comicbook.com