TV Review: Almost Human Season One Episode Six "Arrhythmia"

Arrhythmia, like most Almost Human episodes, had two stories. The A story revolved around the case of the week, in this case the murder/death of a middle aged Asian man in a hospital.

The B story revolved around Dorian taking a fellow DRN (that looks exactly like Dorian) on the case with him and John.

The A story was complex and had the right amount of twists in it.

The cold open consisted of the Asian man taking people hostage, demanding he have heart surgery all while claiming he's going to have a heart attack.

It turns out he was right, as he mutters "they killed me" just before the heart attack happens and he dies.

After some investigating, Dorian and John find out more strange things. The man had congestive heart failure two years ago, and a biometric heart was put in. He also said his time of death in Chinese before he died.

Through examination of that heart Rudy informs them that they have been modified to need a reset every 30 days, or they expire. Jon and Dorian crack open the case - it's a black market extortion ring - where those who don't pay are killed by the modified hearts, and burned in the crematorium to destroy any evidence.

The show had one of my more favorite action sequences that helped show off Dorian's skills.

Of course, I'm talking about Dorian using his thermal imaging to wait for the crematorium guy to be running on the other side of the wall before ramming through the wall and clothes-lining him.

The emotional story this week revolved around Dorian bringing the DRN (and Dorian doppleganger) who was re-purposed as a janitor on the ride. You could tell Dorian was trying to help him after the DRN tackled an armed robbery suspect causing a huge accident. Only Dorian didn't realize the files he gave back to the DRN were out of date, and the man wasn't a suspect anymore.

Dorian explained to John that he (and other DRN's) just want to be cops. When they were decommissioned, he kept hoping someone would wake him up - and that was John.

Dorian explaining to John that he wanted to do that for this DRN, was enough for John not to get so mad at him.

We also learn that originally the powers that be were going to use a certain test to weed out "unstable DRN's", but instead elected to just decommission all of them, which was hurtful for the DRN's.

Giving the DRN his old case files not only gave him open (or so he thought) cases, but access to old ones. The DRN recalling saving the little boy from a murderer and getting a hug from him after, was enough to warm even a robot Mx's nonexistent heart. The show continued a similar trend by having Dorian give something to a character who was missing something in his or her life.

This week, it was the DRN who was the recipient. When he took back the case files, Dorian left in the memory of getting hugged by the little boy.

Dorian's endearing heart is great to watch, especially in contrast to the cold heart of John (who is actually human).

Also on the upside, Valerie and John didn't get much interaction this episode aside from some smiles that they solved the case. I am glad they are taking that relationship extra slow.

Having to have a DRN that looked like a copy of Dorian meant Michael Ealy had to do double duty this week. And he delivered.

They didn't go out to make them polar opposites. Instead, Michael was quite subtle in making them different - speech patterns, delivery, tone of voice, etc.

All in all, a great episode. With the final episode of the season approaching soon I'm curious what they'll do to make it "special".

They have the girlfriend turned traitor as John's back story, so they have some things to work with. It'll be a good reason to pull some genuine emotion out of him.

Photo Credit: Seriable