Statistically, you aren’t watching AppleTV+ — earlier this yr, Matthew Belloni’s e-newsletter Puck reported that viewership on the platform is simply 0.29 p.c, in line with Nielsen — so after I inform you its sitcoms are endemically friction-free, I understand you form of should take my phrase for it.
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Having honed this opinion by way of immersion in, amongst others, The Fully Made-Up Adventures of Dick Turpin, Palm Royale, Loot and The Huge Door Prize (linked above), enduring 10 episodes of Apple’s new “darkish comedy” Sunny wasn’t precisely how I needed to kick off my summer season. I suppose I can’t say it pleasantly shocked me, however I undoubtedly was not anticipating that (a) one of many world’s greatest pc firms has introduced us such a prickly, unsettling imaginative and prescient of our potential future residing with A.I., and (b) that Apple has made a brand new comedy that isn’t allergic to battle.
In Sunny — tailored from Colin O’Sullivan’s 2018 novel The Darkish Handbook — Suzie (Rashida Jones, additionally an govt producer) is an American lady residing in Kyoto. Because the collection begins, her husband Masa (Hidetoshi Nishijima) and son have simply disappeared, the aircraft they have been touring on having crashed. Suzie’s solely help is Noriko (Judy Ongg), Masa’s mom, however their relationship isn’t very hot. Returning residence after a session with the airline’s grief counselor, Suzie finds Yuki Tanaka (Jun Kunimura) ready for her: He labored with Masa, and has introduced her a homebot Masa developed, as a result of Masa didn’t work in his firm’s fridge division, as he’s at all times given Suzie to imagine; he was a roboticist.
Suzie thinks robots are creepy and doesn’t need to stay with one, however Yuki convinces Suzie to maintain Sunny by saying robots are an expression of their creators, in order that Sunny is, in her manner, an extant piece of Masa. As Suzie spends extra time with Sunny, she finds out that Masa was maintaining different secrets and techniques from her, and begins to suspect that perhaps the official story of his aircraft crash isn’t the entire reality. Sunny and Suzie’s investigation — which additionally attracts in Mixxy (annie the clumsy), a staffer at Suzie’s favourite cocktail bar — is each lethal severe and marked by comedian hijinks all over the place from Kyoto’s red-light district to a public tub to Masa’s mysterious former lab.
Suzie has lived in Japan for years, however it’s established within the collection premiere that she hasn’t discovered Japanese as a result of she has dyslexia. It’s additionally established that she hates robots as a result of her mom was killed by one — particularly, by a self-driving automotive, however it nonetheless explains why Suzie hasn’t been swept up within the homebot revolution regardless of their seeming ubiquity and public acceptance. It additionally explains why Masa wouldn’t inform her what he was truly engaged on.
These are comparatively tiny story factors, however they’re important to the present’s legibility for an viewers not fluent in Japanese: Suzie’s necessities by way of Japanese translations or classes within the finer factors of Japanese tradition have been the identical as mine, making the expertise of watching seamlessly immersive. Equally, Suzie’s anti-homebot stance — out of the norm for the present’s near-future setting — necessitates that Sunny win her over; a viewer who doesn’t stay with an android housekeeper is satisfied of Sunny’s usefulness on the identical tempo Suzie is.
Sunny’s cuteness, then again, is fairly self-evident instantly:
As voiced by Joanna Sotomura, Sunny is bubbly, enthusiastic and intensely keen to meet the future Masa made her for: to be Suzie’s good friend. Everybody who interacts with Sunny notes how completely different her habits is from that of different homebots — she has a definite character, and it’s fairly sassy. However simply as Suzie’s dyslexia helps easy over what would in any other case be cumbersome exposition, Sunny’s sweetly goofy discovery of the world drives lots of the comedic moments in a present that in any other case revolves round Suzie, mired in profound melancholy and loneliness.
If we didn’t know what Sunny’s usually like — her method suggests a perky kindergarten instructor, with flashes of sarcasm — it wouldn’t be as humorous when, for example, Sunny has to speak herself right into a public tub after it’s closed by appearing as boring as an everyday homebot.
One can’t assist questioning, although, if the stealth purpose for Sunny’s — and Sunny’s — existence is to melt us all up for our imminent robotic dystopia. The proliferation of A.I. was a serious level of competition for the actors and writers whose unions struck final yr, and whereas they’re again at work now, we nonetheless usually see proof that A.I. is making the world worse, with none obvious moral guardrails. However would we really feel in another way about A.I. if it appeared like Sunny? In keeping with a report in April, Apple is working by itself homebot line, so I’d like to know if any of these engineers consulted on the design of Sunny, whose white cupboard and gently rounded joints evoke an AirPod case — that’s, if an AirPod case have been the scale of a sixth-grader and had a globe head with a cute glass face.
With out spoiling key plot factors within the story Suzie’s attempting to piece collectively, Sunny will get rather a lot much less pro-Sunny because the season goes on. We begin to see how nefarious this expertise truly may very well be, what functions dangerous actors may put it to, and even what accountability of stewardship — perhaps even parenthood! — people owe the non-organic members of our households and society. After The Huge Door Prize, I by no means would have guessed anybody at Apple was serious about programming that raised advanced questions and noticed them by their disturbing but absurd problems, however right here we’re.
Watch Sunny. Simply don’t let your telephone hear whilst you do; you possibly can give it concepts.
