English Dub Review: Blade Runner – Black Lotus “The Human Condition”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Elle wakes up at Joseph’s place, where he gives her the Voight-Kampff test to check if she’s a replicant. It seems to indicate she’s not, in addition to lacking the special marking beneath her right eye, but Elle uncovers footage of her being hunted with other replicants by Senator Bannister and others. Meanwhile, Bannister’s death causes stirs for the Wallaces, and Officer Davis investigates Elle’s fight with the thugs.

OUR TAKE

Okay, we are REALLY going to need to pick up the pace here going forward, because this was a very slow episode for no reason. There’s this thing called the “three episode rule” some people use if they’re unsure if a series is worth watching by watching the first three episodes and then making a judgement call from there, and I would honestly not blame anyone if they dropped this show right here. There wasn’t really a whole lot going on last week with the first two, but you could at least excuse some of that by taking in how well this series seems to replicating (no pun intended) the ambience and atmosphere of both Blade Runner films. But the most climactic thing that happened is that Elle killed a scummy senator who turned out to have hunted her and a bunch of other replicants out in some sick Most Dangerous Game thing. The main thrust of the show so far seems to be looking for Elle’s missing memories so she can understand who she is, but they haven’t really done a whole lot to make that feel like a compelling objective.

Frankly, Elle is kinda dull as a character so far, and while corrupt using replicants programmed to be submissive is a pretty awful thing to see, it doesn’t seem to be hinting at anything bigger that’s worth having mystery around, at least right now. Also, seems kind of weird to have a character outright deny that she’s a replicant, but then show that she was definitely in a group of replicants being hunted. I mean, implanted memories and constructed identities are a recurring theme of both movies, but what difference does it make if she doesn’t have an eye marking if she can definitely do things only Replicants can do anyway? And I have little doubt that the key memories she does have are implanted from someone else, including the guy who gave her the tattoo, but based on what we’re given so far…who cares? I certainly want to, but after Fena turned out to be a dud, my patience is quickly running thin for Black Lotus. Not made much better by the fact that, since this takes place between the two movies, the events here have to be so inconsequential that they’re never mentioned in 2049. But hey, there’s still a lot more to go, maybe they’ll get a bit more interesting. At the very lest, show me Wallace Jr. killing his dad and looking more like Jared Leto by the end.