IMDB is quoting a run time of 42 minutes. Hence the discrepancy I guess - AMC is apparently cutting 3 1/2 to 5 1/2 minutes per episode for the American audience.
5 minutes is like more that 10%? of each epi?
Leo putting Nisca in a whore house is about the worst thing anyone ever did to those robots.
Leo didn’t put her there. That’s just where she ended up after being stolen and then re-sold. She later contacted him presumably when she was able to acquire a phone somehow and he came to get her or so she thought. Instead he talked her into staying in that hell for a couple more days ( after she had already been there for weeks ) while he was trying to figure out whatever he was trying to figure out. She angrily went along, but then as I recall Leo got a little delayed again and then Mr. My-fantasy-is-raping-a-frightened-young-girl was the straw that broke the camel’s back.
The worst thing anyone ever did was to Niska however ( spoilered just in case an American is running behind on their dvr’ed programs ):
[spoiler]The run-of-mill “dollys” really are just machines as far as we can tell. But Dr. Elster created a sentient being to be a big sister/backup nanny for his son and then also turned her into his private sex toy. She basically was molested by “dad” from day one and for ~nine years. We also know he was cold and uninterested in people, which is why he had created Mia in the first place to care for Leo when his mother was no longer able to. So it’s not like this was a loving relationship.
Nope, Niska had a fundamentally different relationship with her creator than her siblings. Her ending up in a whorehouse was about the worst cherry on top possible, but it makes sense - she was made to be attractive for that reason to begin with and unlike Mia she had pretended to be a synth and hadn’t struggled. And synth prostitutes don’t have much in the way of limits - just charge, sanitize and use again. For weeks her whole life was no doubt just an un-ending parade of guys thinking she is a machine and screwing her in the most dehumanizing way possible. Then having her half-brother leave her there, even if for a supposedly good reason, further alienated her. Then along comes another guy who wants to play sick daddy and she snapped. It all really makes her character make a lot more sense.[/spoiler]
Hang on … Mia was a replacement for Beatrice, David Elster’s wife.
A replacement in the broad sense. Not sure I can agree with what you say in the first para.
But Beatrice was still around when Mia was created, just increasingly incapable. So at the time he wasn’t wholesale replacing his wife with a new one per se. Niska came five years later, as far as I can figure out after the traumatic incident with the car in the lake. I think only Mia predated that point. Mia>Fred>Niska>Max in order of age.
I would think that what David Elster accomplished with Leo would be of massive interest to people; he essentially transferred the consciousness of his dead son to a synth. It wasn’t perfect, because the son was already dead, but it suggests the possibility of transferring the consciousness of a still-living person. Basically one could achieve a form of immortality. Kind of reminds me of a movie from a few months ago in which the characters accomplished the same thing.
Yeah, potentially it has huge implications. But he did get to use his son’s flatlined brain to work with, so it was in part like he was digitally rebuilding the old organic filing system. The question is whether he could have transferred that wholesale to a new synth body. Tantalizingly close, though - if Leo Elster is possible the rest might follow with enough research.
Leo is a cyborg, part of his brain is synth.
They’ve defniitely been cut in the US. The AV Club has been running episode reviews and there are comments from viewers that they haven’t seen scenes that the reviewer has seen - because the reviewer is seeing the UK version. It sounds like the things that are cut are the side character elements rather than the main story. It’s a shame really, because I thought they really add to the story.
I thought too much of the show was someone getting separated and then retrieved, just got overused from the pilot on.
Finale was also kind of anti-climactic.
Unanswered questions…
Why was it so easy to kidnap the camping synths? They could have defended themselves.
Why was Mia the only one who the brain wipe worked on? The other two were able to resist it.
How did the authorities even find out about and start hunting the group? The dead scientist father was obviously wealthy, why did his son not inherit that lavish estate? Make up a story about a free love hippie commune to placate the neighbors.
They sure were blase about executing a human in the finale weren’t they, you’d have thought someone would have spoken up.
I think she was the only one wiped. Fred and Niska apparently pretended to be just standard synths and did a decent job at it. So they were just sold on the black market, no or not much re-programming necessary. Mia however was ‘kicking and screaming’ and acting entirely uncooperative, hence she got the full wipe and reprogram - the Russian hacker made a point of it.
I honestly can’t believe they cut 10% of each epi. It’s like 30 seconds from each track on an album.
Just plain butchery.
That’s bullshit, next season i’m watching the UK version.
Nothing about last nights episode?
I really liked this one. It was interesting to see all the synths interacting with each other. Things are not looking too bright for our band of synths, though.
I really enjoyed Ep 7 ( last night in the US)
One thing I’d like to mention here - the acting. Most notably - the Synths. To act like you have no emotion has got to be tough, and with Mia, even more so, because now she has to switch to her normal “half human” ways.
Great show and quite a plot twist last night.
The actress should be nominated for an Emmy. She’s just spot on.
I’ve been trying to get through it and been “eh”. SPOILERS BELOW
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It already jumped the shark when Anita turned “human”. I like some of the synths, and felt genuine sympathy for Max and Odie, but otherwise, this is a show that might have made for a 2 hour motion picture, I cant see how this can carry long for a series. I also feel douche chills whenever the husband and wife are having their uncomfortableness together in the same room because of how creepy it was what he did.
But not the disabled wife with her synth? Telling her partner to leave because he didn’t measure up to a machine?
I thought the big successes of the show was the range of emotional and moral symmetries, whether mirroring within ‘family’ units or comparing/contrasting.
If you look at the development curve of the two synth hunters … well, some still have an epi to go.
Mia in jeans kind of works, esp. with the empathy 
Her partner was being a complete and utter asshole, the machine was not the problem there.