This scene is shown with the opening titles, so we’ve seen it before plenty of times and have been waiting for it to happen. Beautifully silhouetted and backlit, Shin III stops the car! It’s similar to our favorite stunt in You Who Came From The Stars. Come along and see how it fits into the story. We WILL HAVE SPOILERS for these two episodes.

Robots vs. Humans

Director Seo’s minion tricks So Bong into going to the M-car lab in the PK building. Of course the snake guy captures her. I was a little disappointed in her for not being a better fighter, but after a second viewing, I noticed that he kicked her bad leg. Ouch. Plus, he had a gun. Anyway, it sure is lucky for our side that they chose this place because the M-car wakes up and scans them. It registers them both in red squares for a minute and then recategorizes So Bong in a green square. Ok, it knows she’s a friend. Then Snake throws her into the trunk and the M-car chases them around the parking garage. That’s when Shin III shows up and we get that awesome scene of stopping the car.

Snake has the presence of mind to take the black box from his car and run, but Shin III follows him. You won’t believe it when I tell you that Snake runs out into a busy street and a Minivan of Doom gets him. Yes, really. I didn’t think we could get rid of him that easily. And Shin III gets the black box back. Our score: Robots 1, Humans 0.

The Games People Play

Even though we are getting into serious drama time here, we still get some cuteness from our two leads. They play Wheelchair Race in the garden of the hospital where So Bong is being treated for her leg injury. (I’m worried that it’s not a very good hospital though; nobody seems to go there.) And then we get the Elevator Game where you repeatedly open the door and ask questions before it can shut again. Our score: Robots 1, Humans 1.

David has been playing games with us. What a surprise! We thought he was just a peripheral character. He walks into a deserted section of the basement in the PK building and enters a room filled with computers and servers. And who is waiting for him? Chairman Nam! They have been playing Mom the whole time, David designing more of the robot than we knew, and the Chairman secretly funding it all. And why not? He’s into AI. He has a robotic car, why not a robot? In the first episode, I wondered why the Chairman didn’t hire Mom to develop his robotic car, because she was a known expert. It now transpires that he did, but she didn’t realize it. Our score: Robots 0, Humans 1.

A Bad Scientist or a Bad Mother?

Mom is never pleasant, but she is increasingly irritable the longer Coma Shin is unconscious. She feels guilty for having left him when he was a child. Shin III sets her off when he sides with Seo at a business meeting, and she wants to control him even more. Then she hears that So Bong told him to think for himself, and she orders her to turn him back. She makes a new battery-watch for Shin III that is a remote control, but he takes it off. He asks her, “Am I not your son if I don’t act like Shin?”

When So Bong returns as Shin III’s bodyguard, Mom grouches her way past them in the foyer. So Bong takes her aside, saying, “He still calls you Mom. Please act like one. You can’t kill your own son.” Mom is flummoxed that she knows about the kill switch. David might be the only person who could influence her, but she treats him as only an assistant. When he sees her with the kill switch apparatus he exclaims, “Are you crazy? Are you afraid he’ll harm your son? Ridiculous. He’s just growing. You’re not even a scientist. You’re just a bad mother.” He might be right. Robots 1, Humans 0.

Shin III’s Deep Neural Net

Shin III gets a small glitch. He keeps seeing So Bong when she isn’t there, and he doesn’t know why. He doesn’t have emotions. At Ye Na’s party, he explodes all the cell phones in the room when he perceives one of the greasier guys as a threat to So Bong. But he doesn’t have emotions. When So Bong takes him out to talk him into being a servant again, he says, “Tell me. I don’t have emotions; I won’t get hurt.” Do we believe that? She tells him from across the street.

How much does he communicate with his cyber pals? Did he program the M-car to protect So Bong or was he there controlling it himself? He gives her that little marshmallow man robot in the hospital. Is it just for fun? She tells it about the kill switch and right then he calls her on the phone. He doesn’t seem upset at the time, but when she tells Marshmallow Man that she’s glad Shin’s a robot, it shakes its head. Is that its own opinion or Shin’s?

A few minutes later we see him sitting sadly by the pool telling the vacuum-puppy about it, and it’s nowhere around. Fortunately, Secretary Ji comes to keep him company. That deep neural net has some analyzing to do. If it looks like a duck and it quacks like a duck, can you treat it as a duck? Robots 0, Humans 1.

What were they thinking?

In the last few minutes of Episode 10, we see Coma Shin move his fingers. Ahh, he is waking up! What will change, and what will be revealed? Why did he run away to find Mom and not confide in Secretary Ji, if they were such good friends? Is he really lazy or has he been rebelling against the Chairman and against working in that company? How will he get along with Mom, now she is scheming for his position there? What did he think about Ye Na? How will he react to Shin III? This week’s score of Robots vs. Humans comes out pretty even. Here’s hoping we can hold our own in the episodes coming up next!

Telzeytalks

Dramas with a Side of Kimchi