Love, Death, & Robots - Season 4, Part 1: Dark Violent Imaginative Anthology Series
- Justin Watson
- Jun 27
- 5 min read
Love, Death, & Robots is an interesting case for me—it’s a show I love, even though a majority of the episodes are actually a miss for me. Allow me to explain.
A creation of Tim Miller (Deadpool) and David Fincher (Seven, Gone Girl, Fight Club), L,D,&R was inspired by the old Heavy Metal magazine and animated movies. It’s an anthology series, which means each individual episode is (generally) disconnected from the rest. The genre and tone are nearly uniformly dark, ranging from black comedy to straight up horror. If you find ultra violence or explicit sex scenes a deal breaker, many of the show’s episodes will not be for you, though I will say, as the seasons have gone on, they’ve gone less and less for titillation for titillation’s sake, which is good.
What I appreciate is that, in this day and age of endless remakes and massive IP empires, most of them crumbling under the weight of corporate expectation and rushed, under-cooked scripts, Love, Death, & Robots gives us something new, several somethings new, actually. Not all the stories are great, and many of them aren’t to my personal taste, but at least it’s not just the Same Damn Thing again and again. This is, as the title says, a Dark violent imaginative anthology series
I’m halfway through season four, and this was getting long enough I figured I’d talk half the episodes here and get the other half in a second article later.
Can’t Stop—Is literally a marionette version of Can’t Stop live from Slane Castle. If you’re a Red Hot Chili Peppers fan and wondered what it would be like if they showed up in Team America: World Police, maybe it might be worth your time. Otherwise, not so much.
Close Encounters of the Mini-Kind— Similar in execution to the night of the mini-dead from last season only it’s an alien invasion instead of a zombie apocalypse. If it’s your kind of humor, it will work. Didn’t work for me. I chuckled a little bit when they zoom in on the action at a VFW, but that’s about it. Even at the tiny price tag in terms of time, I can’t really recommend this one.
Spider Rose—Lydia Martinez, a woman who is heavily cybernetically enhanced/repaired, suffers post-traumatic flashbacks from a starship boarding action in which her husband was murdered by Jade a clone soldier of the Shaper Council. That the Shaper Council mean nothing to me or you matters very little, the episode gets the idea, and the emotional impact, across well enough. This is, be it noted, set in the same universe as last season’s, "Swarm." Of the two, I think this is the stronger entry.
Taking up residence alone in the midst of an appropriately web-shaped asteroid field, Lydia assumes the eponymous nom de guerre Spider Rose and seeks a means of vengeance on her husband’s murderers, but instead winds up with the company of a deceptively cute and cuddly alien pet, who may be the key to her revenge after all, or perhaps her own doom.
This is a solid dark science fiction action short story with elements of body horror. The episode is adapted from a short story by Bruce Sterling, and the screenplay was penned by none other than Joe Abercrombie, Lord Grimdark, himself. I give this one a strong recommend for folks who don’t mind the blood, guts and a bit of bleak.
How Zeke Got Religion—A lone B-17 tasked with bombing a church in France before a Nazi occultist can complete a Satanic ritual. Not a bad premise but…
This one, man, this one hovers on the edge for me. I’ll go negative first and end on the high notes.
One of the things I appreciate, and strive for when I write fantasy, is to introduce fantastical elements but then play it straight otherwise. This isn’t necessarily a moral imperative or an objective necessity to “good” writing, but many readers/viewers get more immersed the more consistent the world around the fantasy feels.
"How Zeke Got Religion," isn’t super interested in that principal. And if you aren’t either, then the next paragraph or two will seem pretty nitpicky.
Some of it’s solid, the visual representation of the B-17 itself and the BF-109s that attack it are good, but that’s about it. First off, the idea that you can send a bomber to hit a target is really a conceit of modern weapons' accuracy. The Norton bomb sight made B-17s more accurate than before, but that’s not to say they were hit this specific building accurate.
To be fair, the movie Memphis Belle also had this flawed conceit as part of its story, with our heroes concerned that their bombs might hit a school across the street from the factory they were bombing if they didn’t fly precisely and drop precisely… which is ludicrous. That kind of precision is really only a thing once you get to laser and GPS guided munitions. A school across from a ball bearing factory we wanted flattened in 1944 was going to be gone.
Then there’s the fact that the eponymous character, Zeke, is a black man in a white crewed bomber. And Harry Truman didn’t issue EO 9981 desegregating the United States military until 1948. Three years after World War II.
Now, the author could just say, “this is an alternate universe where, for reasons beyond the scope of this particular story, FDR or Hoover before him decided to desegregate, also Nazi occultists summoning demons, why are you bitching?”
And that would be a valid way of looking at it, but I think it’s a missed opportunity.
If you want to tell a story of a black man fighting in WWII, why not base it on one of the actual black units that fought pretty damn well in WWII? Hell, does anyone NOT know about the 332nd Fighter Group (the Tuskegee Airmen)? They only earned about a hundred Distinguished Flying Crosses. If you wanted to depict ground warfare, the 761st Tank Battalion is right there, they’ve got a Medal of Honor and 11 Silver Star citations to inspire you. Red Tails wasn't a good movie, and to the best of my knowledge, we have no media regarding the 761st. Get to it.
And if you want it to be dark fantasy--I’ll take black American soldiers in Shermans versus Nazi-summoned frost giants—let’s fucking go.
Anyway, despite all that, the action is gritty and visceral, the characters done well in the small amount of time we get with them, the banter is all solid.
But the real treat, for me, is that the story is unabashedly pro-faith, and specifically pro-Christian. Can’t really get into it without spoilers, but I was actually pleasantly surprised by the resolution of the story.
I give this one a recommendation with the caveat that military history nerds like me are going to have to look past some nonsense. That being said, the story was interesting enough, I’m adding the short story’s author, John McNichol to my TBR.
The Other Large Thing—Is a Scalzi project with a hyper intelligent villainous cat at the center of it, and a domestic robot gone wrong. Serves as a prequel to the three robots pontificating on humanity’s extinction from previous seasons. Lots of scenes of a smug, self-important cat and his fat, stupid human owners. The humor fell flat for me, but if you enjoyed the previous three robots episodes, this will probably work for you.
Tune in next time for Part 2, where we have gladiatorial games versus a T-Rex, genocidal dolphins, and Satan versus alley cats to discuss...
Comentários