There’s been a long history of buddy-cop duos: Schmidt and Jenko from 21 Jump Street, Detective’s Lee and Carter from the Rush Hour movies, and Mark Wahlberg and Will Ferrel in The Other Guys. The list gets a new addition with J.J Abrams new cop drama, but this time only part of the duo is human.
The show is based in the year 2048, a time where Los Angeles crime has increased 400 percent after a wave of dangerous drugs and weapons descended on the the city. Now, Cops and MX-43‘s (advanced androids) are partnered up to fight injustice and all that. The main character, John Kennex, played by Karl Urban from Star Trek, is suffering from deep emotional and physical issues after an incident that left his entire team dead and his leg replaced with a synthetic counterpart.
At the start of the episode, Kennex is seen at a black-market doctors office under a machine that makes him relive the incident. This time he see’s a girl- his former girlfriend- who mysteriously disappeared after the accident.
Keenex then reluctantly goes back to police work and is shunned by the other officers because they find him a hazard. From the beginning of the show it’s obvious that he’s not too keen of the MX-43’s, he even throws his out of the car because he starts to ask too many questions.
Eventually Kennex is paired with an old version of an android, a DRN named Dorian, which are the most human a robot can get with a “synthetic soul” and uncontrollable emotions.
As with typical buddy-cop duo’s, the two initially bumped heads and sparred with words, but after Dorian saved Kennex’s life, they exchanged a cute conversation with an underlying meaning of “I’m glad you’re my partner.”
For only a pilot episode, the show had an interesting start and as with other sci-fi shows, it’ll probably get better with time.
