“Episode #3.5” is episode five of season three of Humans.
In the previous episode, “3.4”, the Dryden Commission’s visit to the Railyard had gone very well. Even though Agnes went to attack them with a knife, Anatole stopped her before any of the humans noticed. Agnes knew attacking the commission would result in all the Synths in the Railyard being wiped out, but thought that would encourage other Synths to rise up. Possibly she hadn’t truly thought things through. In retaliation for this, Max locked her in a cupboard – which would seem to have been a deliberately cruel thing to do, for Agnes would appear to be scared of such, as she had told him at the beginning of the episode.
Niska had found the Synth – and it was a Synth – responsible for the bombing on “3.1” and killed him. She was able to override external commands to keep her subdued somehow. The Synth was not the leader of the organisation, and he didn’t even know who it is (so they could still be human). He also wasn’t the one supposed to carry out the attack, but the one who was went off looking for the Synth that sleeps (could this be V?). Which he considered to be a fable, but Niska said that it was a fable that led her directly to him.
Personal matters seemed to be going well. Laura had got with Neil after the Commission’s visit and Joe had a pleasant day out with Karen and Sam. However, afterwards Neil was rather standoffish towards Laura and things have gone badly for Karen. Sam had hurt himself, revealing his Synth blood in public, but Karen directed everyone’s attention to her, making out that she was the one the blood was from. So she got attacked and Joe found her beaten to death. Mia and Ed had made up, but she refused to go with him, as what she was doing wasn’t yet complete.
The episode opens with the Dryden Commission sitting at night. They are going to have a vote on whether to have a £300 fine for attacking a green-eyed Synth. The vote passes 8 to 5. Mia is in her flat when some post is delivered and she gets a message from Laura about the new fine. One of the pieces of post has been delivered to her by accident; it should have gone to a Professor Iris Tillson.
When Laura arrives home, she finds Joe and Sam there. Laura wants to know why she didn’t known about Sam until now. Joe says that the don’t update each other on every little thing; Laura does not feel that a Synth child is really little. Laura says that Sam can’t stay there, but Joe says there’s nowhere else for him to go. So they both stay.
At the Railyard, Max makes the decision to open the gates again. Anatole clearly doesn’t think this is a good idea; just how clearly becomes more obvious later on.
Mia takes the miss delivered post to her neighbour, and gets invited in. The neighbour has another green-eye living with her in secret, Dorian. There are apparently many Synths secretly living with Synths around the country. Mia is not alone, and there are others who support her.
Joe says that it’s a shame that the fine for attacking a Synth didn’t go into place prior to the attack on Karen. Sophie, who proves more adept at treating Synths like people, asks Sam what he does for fun. Sam says that Karen was teaching him how to have fun, so Sophie decides to take over his training. The concept of death comes up more than a few times, as both Sam and Joe deal with Karen’s demise. Neil turns up at Laura’s whilst Joe is there. Which proves awkward. Neil has come to apologise for his behaviour; it’s related to how his infant son died on Day Zero because of the Synth nanny becoming conscious.
Mia tells Laura, after speaking to Dorian, that the fine isn’t enough. They can’t stop there. Mia wants a seat at the table, and Laura agrees. With the fine in place, Mia can simply walk to the Dryden Commission and ask to be heard.
In the previous episode, Mattie and Leo uploading some code that exonerated the boy who had been arrested for Day Zero. It does point back to London though. It also doesn’t seem like a coincidence when a new woman at Mattie’s university on her course starts talking to her.
Leo is still struggling to come to terms with his new condition, there are further plots afoot and much talk about death. Nothing from Niska this episode.