The Liquidators
Episode 2 of Better Than Us offers up our first glimpse of rebel group The Liquidators, who spray-paint the eyes of a synthetic walking with her companion before shouting that humans rule. This extra dimension to the show helps fuel the human VS android narrative which Better Than Us doubles down on during its most recent episode. Cutting back to Georgy, our estranged Father tries to adapt to life looking after the kids, receiving a particularly frosty reception from Egor in the morning. A call from a Detective interrupts him while looking into Egor’s social media profile, asking to see Sergey’s body. Meanwhile, Sonya hides Arisa in her closet and, with her Father wrapped up in work, talks with Arisa who imitates voices before her Aunt arrives. Putting these abilities to good use, Arisa imitates her Father’s voice, reassuring her Aunt that she’s not left alone, before leaving the house. It’s here that Sonya explains her dysfunctional family dynamic to the android. Meanwhile, Cronos scramble to find the lost AI while Gorla continues her search for answers surrounding Sergey’s death. Igor continues to search for answers too but gets nowherea. Neither GPS trackers are responsive which causes hot-headed Viktor to lose patience with him, demanding answers sooner rather than later. It’s here we see him speaking with Garla regarding Sergey, reassuring her about his death, paying off her mortgage completely and essentially sweeping the scandal under the rug in a bid to quiet her suspicions. With Garla paid off for now, Igor finds a solution, coming up with a code to track down Arisa. With the red GPS lights blinking, Viktor tells them to assemble a team to bring her back. Out playing hide-and-seek with Sonya, Arisa figures out what Cronos are doing ahead of time and discards her tracker in a truck nearby. At work, Georgy refuses to let the Detective see Sergey’s body without a proper warrant request. Visibily annoyed, the Detective instead turns his questions to Georgy himself, asking whether he likes androids. He’s indifferent, as it happens, unlike the Detective who admits his specific disdain for the robots, given how hard they are to read. As he leaves, Georgy questions the driver about the body while Detective Varlamov heads back home, contemplating whether Cronos may be behind Sergey’s death and it’s being covered up. As they head home, Egor returns after outrunning his bullies and meets Arisa, who grants him second-level user status. Sonya tells him to keep her identity a secret and that their Father has no knowledge that she’s hiding out there. While Egor agrees, Georgy, however, runs into problems of his own as he meets with Gleb, telling him the company need to pay for what they’ve done. He smiles back coolly, warning him to lay low otherwise his kids may meet an unpleasant fate. While Cronos stop the truck and search fruitlessly in the back for Arisa, Georgy heads home and embraces Sonya while Egor sneaks out with his friend. It’s here we see him head to a club, intent on finding Jeanna, the girl who helped him out earlier in the day. She takes him inside to the grimy, underground club and tells the barman he’s her brother. Leaving him to his drink, the bullies follow him in and beat him down. However, the barman arrives and knocks the three boys to the ground before helping Egor up. It turns out he’s part of a group called Bot-Net. With blood oozing from his nose, Jeanna cleans him up before he heads home, where he’s immediately questioned by Georgy. Unfortunately, the bully arrives as well with his Father and immediately threatens Egor. Twisting his arm, Georgy knocks him to the ground and tells him to leave, before turning his attention to his son and asking exactly what happened. CCD call soon after, telling Georgy to release the body of Sergey, prompting him to immediately worry, given he lied to the police originally. Painting the wall with Liquidator spray-paint and short circuiting the robot, he stages a break-in at the morgue to make it look like the Liquidators have broken in, covering his own tracks over Sergey’s injuries. The episode then ends with Arisa watching over Sonya as she sleeps before authorising Georgy as her main-user. Better Than Us introduces the anti-bot group The Liquidators in its second episode, with the growing narratives around the Detective’s hunt for Sergey’s killer and Cronos’ search for Arisa unfortunately causing Georgy’s family to be caught in the middle of these two conflicts. It’s almost certainly going to lead to some pretty interesting plot developments going forward. It’s worth noting too that this episode has some nice world building too, with the missing people screens at the police station and various neon-lit areas standing out as particular highlights here. Better Than Us is shaping up to be an interesting sci-fi series, with a nice blend of crime drama and espionage thrills helping to give this series some depth. Whether it has enough to stand out next to so many others in this genre, remains to be seen.
