Almost Human S1E9 - "Unbound" Recap

A group of school children is on a field trip to the station. Dorian wants to show them educational things but Kennex would rather show them things that are exciting. The kids prefer the excitement until Kennex shows them a gruesome photo and one child even throws up.

A woman purchases some flowers and afterwards is robbed at gunpoint for her purse and the culprit shoots her dead. The culprit is surrounded by law enforcement that fire when he refuses to surrender. They discover that it is a service bot reprogrammed to commit a felony. They take the bot back to the evidence locker and it eventually reanimates itself before taking the head of an XRN and putting it on its own body. She steals ammunition, weapons, and escapes. This XRN had been in storage for over two years and the woman's death was done solely for the bot to be brought back and access the XRN. Kennex fills Dorian in on what happened with the XRN. The XRN had ended up in a stand-off with police officers lasting three days, killing many of them in the process. Dorian was unable to find information about it because the incident was such an embarrassment that all mention of it had been redacted from the records. Kennex suggests that the Syndicate is responsible for this plot and that their previous raid on the evidence locker was all done in an attempt to find her.

This XRN also goes by the name Danica visits her maker's lab to obtain a new body as the one that obtained her head was only temporary. As it turns out, Dr. Vaughn is also Dorian's maker. The two have a reunion when law enforcement visits his lab after Danica injures him to use his lab. Dr. Vaughn shares the difficulties he had with being known as the creator of killer robots and Dorian offers him comforting words. Feeling invigorated, Dr. Vaughn offers up help to track Danica's location.

Danika infiltrates a facility and cuts out a man's eye. She uses it to infiltrate a lab and shoots another man. She exhibits no hesitation when killing, a true robot assassin.

Kennex, Dorian, and Dr. Vaughn revisit his old lab, which is now Rudy's lab and Rudy fangirls upon getting to meet Dr. Vaughn. They track down a silver box, which holds "synthetic souls." Both Dorian and Danica were given these synthetic souls, worrying Dorian as to whether or not he'll go crazy too. Dr. Vaughn reassures him that he and Danica are not the same. Kennex gets a call that Danica stole some ZNA processing cores and they deduce that someone is building androids.

The investigation continues and we see a rather interesting moment when Danica is prepared to shoot a mother and daughter that enter her cab - clearly driving it was part of some scheme - but smiles slightly and lets them live and leave when the daughter genuinely calls her pretty.

Danica attacks a campaign event of John Hart and ends up in a ferociously entertaining brawl with Kennex and Dorian. But eventually we learn that the entire scheme was organised by Dr. Vaughn. He set up the bot and Danica's breakout to obtain the ZNA processing cores. Then his apparent attack from her was a means for him to insert himself into the investigation and get the synthetic souls.

Hart was the one who pushed for the decommissioning of DRNs and had MXs replace them. The attack on his campaign was a distraction for Dr. Vaughn to get the souls and processors. Danica was aware of the fact that she would be sacrificed but fought to the end - grenade by Kennex. It's quite an ending as Kennex uses his synthetic leg to kick her, sending her flying into an elevator so the explosion would happen at a safe distance from him and Dorian.

The officers realise that with these supplies, Dr. Vaughn now has the means to create a whole army of killing machines.

Almost Human airs on Mondays on FOX at 8/7c.