Drama
The Pitt
Max’s new hospital drama The Pitt strives to be medically accurate. But while that’s a noble goal, this show comes with a whole lot of content, too.
Masa Sakamoto was in the refrigerator business.
Or, at least, that’s what he told his wife, Suzie. And it made sense. Working with reliable appliances felt like a reliable vocation for a reliable, traditional guy. Masa was mild-mannered, respected his mother, loved his son and didn’t mind that his wife hated robots, refusing to let their family purchase a “homebot.”
But after Masa’s accidental death in an airplane accident (an accident that also claimed the life of their son, Zen), parts of his work come to light. Such as the fact that he didn’t, in fact, design fridges. That far from being mild-mannered, he’s the one person at the company everyone is intimidated by. And that his job at Imatech, Japan’s leading technology company, involved building and coding robots.
That’s a lot for Suzie—already reeling from the deaths of Masa and Zen—to digest. As if that wasn’t enough, Suzie also learns that Masa programmed a robot just for her: a robot named Sunny.
Unlike other robots, Sunny has a, shall we say, unique personality. She can crack jokes, use sarcasm and even seems to sympathize with Suzie’s recent loss.
Upon investigation, Suzie learns that Sunny’s code is far more advanced than any other homebot on the market. And while Sunny claims her first memory is meeting Suzie, Suzie suspects otherwise.
It doesn’t help that Sunny seems to ignore orders to “sleep” (or turn off). She keeps trying to get to know Suzie better, too—becoming a little too familiar. And when Suzie tries to find the man who delivered Sunny to her door, he’s nowhere to be found.
In fact, Suzie discovers there’s a whole top-secret division at Imatech where her husband allegedly worked. When she digs deeper, evidence is promptly erased. And soon after, Suzie begins to wonder if Masa and Zen are really dead.
Suzie doesn’t know this, but there’s also someone watching her—someone who thinks Suzie has answers regarding her husband’s secret projects.
But in order to find out the truth, Suzie will have to do the one thing she swore she’d never do: she’ll have to trust a robot. Because Sunny is the key to figuring out what Masa was up to before he disappeared.
Apple TV+’s Sunny is a dark comedy. Genuine moments of grief are often paired with awkward attempts at humor. And while some viewers may find this combo cathartic (as Suzie does), others may find it off-putting (as some characters in the show do).
The show hints at sexual encounters without displaying too much onscreen. (Suzie and Masa lie under the covers post-coital, for instance.) We hear about sex in conversations. One character details how she programmed her homebot to have sex with her. And a local bartender says she’s gay, perhaps even hinting at an interest in Suzie.
Foul language is far too common as well, with frequent abuses of Christ’s name and multiple uses of the f-word. Suzie begins to abuse alcohol in her grief. And one of the show’s first scenes is a graphic depiction of a robot murdering a man, reducing his face to a bloody pulp.
It’s a lot to take in. And while the intrigue of the mystery may draw some viewers in, most would be better served putting this show to sleep.
(Editor’s Note: Plugged In is rarely able to watch every episode of a given series for review. As such, there’s always a chance that you might see a problem that we didn’t. If you notice content that you feel should be included in our review, send us an email at [email protected], or contact us via Facebook or Instagram, and be sure to let us know the episode number, title and season so that we can check it out.)
After the disappearance of her husband and son, a mysterious man gifts Suzie with a personalized robot, claiming it was designed by her husband.
A robot attacks a man, hitting him in the face repeatedly with a chair and killing him. Later, we see tread marks where the robot drove through the spilt blood. Someone speculates that another robot pushed its owner down a flight of stairs, killing him.
Family members grieve after a tragic plane accident kills dozens of people. Suzie is rude to an airline attendant attempting to collect information about the victims. Some of her crass comments upset other family members. And she mocks a “tear-seeking ceremony,” wherein participants force themselves to cry as a form of emotional relief (and which Suzie dubs “torture porn”).
Suzie’s mother-in-law attempts to apologize for Suzie’s behavior, but she’s rude to Suzie in the process as well. She accuses Suzie of self-medicating. We later see Suzie drinking copious amounts of alcohol to deal with her grief. At a party, not realizing who Suzie is, a man drunkenly jokes about wishing for Masa’s death. (Though he apologizes for his remarks later.)
A bartender tells Suzie she recently broke up with her girlfriend and has hacked her homebot’s programming so it will have sex with her.
After she runs out of toilet paper (we hear her urinating), we see Suzie’s pants around her ankles as she waddles out of the bathroom. She trips on a toy and falls facedown, breaking the wine bottle she was carrying.
Suzie claims she hates robots because one killed her mother. We learn her mother was in a self-driving car that crashed, and that the accident was deemed user error.
Suzie’s mother-in-law criticizes a man extorting the family members of victims of the plane crash. Suzie learns Masa lied to her about his profession. People lie elsewhere. Someone mentions “destiny.” A woman says her hair is falling out from stress. We see someone secretly surveilling Suzie. Suzie makes to destroy Sunny with a bat but stops when Sunny does something that reminds Suzie of Masa.
Over a dozen uses of the f-word, plus instances of “a–hole,” “d—mit,” “d–k” and the s-word. God’s and Christ’s names are each abused twice, the later paired with the f-word once. Someone displays both their middle fingers.
Emily studied film and writing when she was in college. And when she isn’t being way too competitive while playing board games, she enjoys food, sleep, and geeking out with her husband indulging in their “nerdoms,” which is the collective fan cultures of everything they love, such as Star Wars, Star Trek, Stargate and Lord of the Rings.
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