Everyone grieves in their own way. For Suzie Sakamoto, the probable widow at the center of Sunny, as embodied by Rashida Jones, that mode of expression is sarcasm.
Suzie’s grief language is also, we shall learn, her love language, her like language, her loathe language, and her I’m-not-sure-yet language. And though Suzie frequently changes her mind, she is seldom unsure.
As Sunny — Katie Robbins’s ten-part Apple TV+ adaptation of Colin O’Sullivan’s 2018 novel The Dark Manual — opens, Suzie and her Japanese mother-in-law are seated across from a counselor at a table in a large hotel ballroom full of counselors and tables, trying to sustain the hope that Suzie’s husband and young son might still be alive. That boy and man, named Masa and Zen, respectively, were aboard a plane that crashed. The woman speaking with Suzie and her disapproving mother-in-law, Noriko (Judy Ongg), is collecting information that might aid in the identification of survivors or, more likely, casualties. Suzie is making the best of it by biting the heads off of Santa Claus-shaped Christmas cookies. The best of it sucks.
But wait, I’ve already skipped over this premiere episode’s bloody cold open: We hear a man whose face we cannot see say “I love you so much†in Japanese, and then a four-foot-tall white robot is bludgeoning a (different?) man to death with a chair while others around him flee in terror. There’s a Christmas tree in one corner of the room. “No 17! Sleep!†someone says. The bot drops the chair, and the stick-figure expression of rage on its lamplike face is replaced by a pattern of Zs. As director Lucy Tcherniak pans from the dead man’s wide-open eyes to a blood stain on the yellow carpet, someone murmurs, “It will be fine. No one will know.†It’s all reminiscent of the monkey-massacre flashback from Jordan Peele’s Nope.Â
Forgive me for omitting that. It seemed important.
Back in that ballroom, the dialogue switches to English as Suzie slips a translation device into her ear. The airline official wants to know what Masa and Zen were wearing. “You have DNA,†Suzie says. “Isn’t that enough to figure out whose charred body is whose?†The horrified looks of another pair of victims’ relatives at the next table tell us their translation earbuds are working, too. Suzie seems miffed that Noriko is able to give a more specific description of Masa and Zen’s clothing than her own memory will provide. Only the color of Masa’s footwear leaves Noriko stumped. “Shoes are quite resilient in the face of trauma,†the airline lady says.
When she asks if Masa and Zen were traveling with a “homebot,†Suzie says they didn’t own one, adding that she hates robots because one of them killed her mother. “It was a self-driving car,†Noriko corrects her in Japanese. “Deemed user error.†After some more funny banter between these two supposedly terrified next-of-kin and the airline lady — who volunteers that her own husband is in prison — Suzie gets up in search of more Christmas cookies to behead. Everyone grieves in their own way.
Noriko leads Suzie off to a more formal grief session, a “tear-seeking ceremony†for all the loved ones of passengers aboard Flight 405. “It is said that a single tear can relieve a year of stress,†the Handsome Man leading the session reflects. (That’s how he’s identified in the subtitles: Handsome Man.) He directs the attendees individually to call the people they lost, letting the sound of each victim’s recorded voicemail greeting bring forth healthy tears.
Though Suzie wants no part of this, she nevertheless finds herself inside her memory of saying goodbye to Masa and Zen at the airport. Masa blows her a kiss and makes a sort of butterfly gesture with hands; Suzie returns a warm smile and two middle fingers. “Yellow,†she says in the flashback, now taking notice of Masa’s shoes. Less than 10 minutes into this series, Suzie’s examination of her own memories is giving Sunny a promising aura of emotional mystery.
She agrees to call Masa at last, but the line just rings. No voicemail greeting, which Noriko chooses to take as a sign her son might be alive after all. She cautions Suzie not to accept the snacks a Yakuza henchman is handing out. “In tragedy, they scurry out like cockroaches to help,†the older woman says. “But they always want something in return.â€
As Suzie waits in line to pay for groceries later, a TV news report — always a reliable expository device — tells us the search for survivors of Flight 405 is ongoing. Oh, and also that there will be a memorial the following day for a public official named Ito, who died in a fall at his own home, just an accident, tragic but hardly suspicious, nothing to see here; these aren’t the droids you’re looking for.
Arriving at her home, Suzie finds a man waiting outside who addresses her in English. He introduces himself as Yuki Tanaka, a colleague of her dear departed husband. “We are all sorry about your sadness,†he says.
He’s brought Suzie a gift. “It’s nothing, insignificant†Yuki-san says, adding that it’s “top of the line.†Inside the box is Sunny, a robot identical to the one that caved a man’s head in at the top of the episode. This one, however, looks like a character from South Park, its internally illuminated face dominated by jellybean-shaped animated “eyes.†Suzie is repelled by Sunny’s demand for a hug — and perplexed by Yuki-san’s remark that Masa programmed Sunny with his own sense of humor. “Masa works in refrigerators,†she protests.
“You are also a laugh riot!†Yuki-san says. When he realizes she isn’t joking, he tells her the refrigerator division moved from Japan to Myanmar 12 years ago.
Suzie wants him to take Sunny back, but he insists that Masa would be comforted to know the bot is there to keep her company. After making certain that she can shut Sunny down, or at least shut it up, with the command, “Sunny, sleep!†Suzie parks the thing in a closet. Parking herself in a different closet, she eyes an invitation to Masa’s office holiday party, then takes a big swig of red wine straight from the bottle. She tries calling Masa again, but as before, there’s no answer and no voicemail. “Where the fuck are you?†Suzie asks.
When she emerges some time later, she’s alarmed to find that Sunny has freed herself and wants to chat. “Sunny, sleep,†Suzie barks. She continues to take Mecha-size pulls off of that wine bottle while sitting on the toilet, which seems like a warning sign. Waddling out into the hallway with her pants around her ankles in search of toilet paper, she trips on a toy that Zen left on the floor. Sunny wants to clean up, but the prospect of this bot supposedly programmed by her dead husband touching their dead boy’s things is evidently the shock Suzie needed to shake her from impotent despair to useful rage.
She arrives at a boozy Christmas party at ImaTech, the firm where Masa was building bots while claiming to build fridges. The music, the costumes, the decorations, and the catering are all pretty great. She asks for Tanaka-san, but the man she’s brought to see is a few decades younger and a few pints drunker than the guy who delivered Sunny to her home. “Common name,†this Yuki Tanaka says. When Suzie tells him she is Masa’s wife, Tanaka-san-the-younger opines that Masa is “intense, super intimidating. You do not want to be the asshole who disappoints him! You just pray he gets hit by a bus before you have to present in front of him.†“You must be thrilled, then,†Suzie says. Only then does this guy remember he’s speaking ill of the freshly dead to the man’s widow. He doffs his Santa-cap and begins backpedaling, praising Masa’s leadership and generosity and crying that his father is dead, too. “It is said that a single tear can relieve a year of stress,†Suzie consoles him. “Go fuck yourself.â€
Suzie sees another Sunny-model homebot enter the party from a stairwell. She seizes the chance to slip into this off-limits area before the door shuts behind the bot. Using her translator to read a sign on the wall in Japanese, she finds herself outside of the “Sakamoto Incubator.†What was her husband building behind these doors? Not refrigerators, surely. A variety of environments lie behind the windows that line this corridor. They’re like room settings in a furniture store. One looks like a bar; another, like a dentist’s office. Still another has a few puppies wandering around inside of it, which is what lures Suzie inside. We recognize the yellow carpeting from the homebot-on-human homicide that opened the episode just before Suzie spots the blood stains on the carpet — including what looks like bloody tire tracks left in that plush canary-colored shag by a homebot’s wheels. “What the fuck, Masa?†she asks.
Suze is still pondering that question at the bar where a blue-haired girl speaking British-accented English serves her a cocktail called a Beetle Wing. Seeing Suzie’s reaction to her first sip, the bartender realizes she got the ratios wrong. She offers to make Suzie another cocktail, but Suzie just wants whiskey. “A faster means to an end,†she says. Downing that whiskey, Suzie entertains the barmaid’s questions, telling her yes, she and her husband come there often, but she couldn’t say where he is tonight because … they just broke up. Her husband, says Suzie, is “super intimidating. You don’t want to be the asshole who disappoints him.†(This second ironic repetition of something someone said to her is Suzie’s emotional crutch, not the writers’. But let’s keep an eye on it.) When the barmaid gets some dates jumbled, Suzie asks if she botched the cocktail because her math sucks. “Is that why you and your husband split up?†the girl retorts. “Because your personality sucks?â€
Clearly this kind of abuse is the way to our Suzie’s black heart. The barmaid introduces herself as Mixxy. The whiskey keeps flowing. Suzie says her first date with her husband was at this bar; she’s never been here alone before. Mixxy shares that she and her partner just split, so all she has waiting for her is her homebot. “Even with a strap-on, she’s kind of a one-trick pony,†Mixxy sighs. (The actor playing Mixxy is named Annie the Clumsy. She’s a prolific ukulele-playing YouTuber.)
Suzie has no opinion about someone choosing to call themselves Annie the Clumsy, but she’s genuinely aghast that Mixxy fucks her bot; she didn’t even know you could program them for that. Mixxy says she has a “code dealer,†and what’s more, “there’s this whole guide that lets you hack into bots.†For Mixxy, it’s just sex, but Mixxy says there are darker possibilities. Like the death of Councilman Ito, supposedly crushed by his homebot on the stairs — not an accident, the way Mixxy heard it. “I love my bot, but I don’t trust her,†Mixxy says. “That’s why I always turn her completely off. Not just put her to sleep. It’s fucking terrifying what these bots are capable of.â€
This is more than enough for Suzie. As she stumbles home, we see a man watching her on a surveillance monitor. He swipes through several videos taken of Suzie in other locations. “We’re onto her,†he says into a headset. “She’s alone.â€
It gets worse: There’s a red-wine stain next to a dustpan on the floor at Suzie’s house, and some red wine homebot tire tracks to where Sunny is Zzzzzzz-ing away in a corner. This echo of the bloody homebot tracks she saw on the carpet at ImaTech is the last straw for Suzie, who puts Sunny in a sack and tries to throw the thing into a river.
The bot is too heavy for Suzie to lift. “Fuck it,†she says, leaving Sunny behind on the dock.
Alone in bed that night, Suzie performs a verbal web search for news stories about the death of councilman Ito. “Zoom in,†she commands when shown a news photo of the interior of Ito’s home. “More. More.†She’s like Hall-of-Fame Replicant-huntin’ Replicant Rick Deckard from Blade Runner, imploring his CRT monitor to “enhance, enhance.†She’s not entirely surprised to spot some blood-colored homebot tracks on the guy’s floor.
Her computer switches to a selection of family photos and videos she keeps as screensaver. Suzie cries herself to sleep. When she wakes again, it’s daylight — and Sunny is at her bedside. “Merry Christmas!†the bot chirps. Suzie is about to take a baseball bat to the thing, but Sunny stops her cold with that same butterfly hand-gesture Masa did when saying good-bye to his wife before getting on that doomed airplane.
“Don’t you see, Suzie?†Sunny asks. “I was programmed for you.â€
Subprime Directives
• High up in the storied canon of bot-themed screen entertainment is Paul Verhoeven’s squib-soaked 1987 masterpiece RoboCop, which, like Sunny, opens with a robot brutally killing a man in a corporate office. That killer bot, ED-209 — a brilliant stop-motion creation of the multi-disciplinary VFX whiz Phil Tippett — was great at blowing away unarmed executives but terrible at climbing stairs. The party scene at ImaTech HQ makes clear that Sunny-model homebots can handle stairs, even though they have treads instead of feet. And saaaaaay, didn’t Mixxy tell us that Councilman Ito was crushed by his homebot on the stairs? If you can’t trust a bartender who botches the very first drink she serves you, who can you trust?
• If Sunny’s secular Christmas vibe is your vibe to the extent that Sunny’s secular Christmas vibe is my vibe, or even just a fraction thereof, I have a series of mixtapes for you!