Television LOVE DEATH + ROBOTS (Season 4 Premieres May 15, 2025)

Pick 5 of your favorite episodes in season one [multiple votes allowed]

  • Total voters
    61
aunshi189 said:
I agree completely on 3.1 being preachy. While I suspect I agree with the politics behind the preaching more than you do I can't stand attempts at 'satire' which lack all subtly. I also didn't like how 2022 it was in its references, for me, Sci-fi should look at a bigger picture of the human experience than some cheap rednecks are bad and lol Elon Musk jokes. I quite liked the animation of it though.
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I regard global warming as the greatest threat facing humanity, and my top political preoccupation. The episode deliberately conflates that with pulp progressive gobbledygook about the wealth gap in the most obnoxious, hamfisted tone imaginable. It's a sermon. Someone needs to tell Hollywood to save that shit for Sunday school.
3.2 actually highlights for me while my enjoyment of the series is decreasing over time. It was a good episode but it felt a little formulaic. I think I would have loved it if it was part of S1 but the very realistic animation style combined with a grim story of gory death and the depths of human character. I suppose it didn't feel very innovative to me.
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Who cares about "innovative"? A story doesn't have to be innovative to be great. It was High Noon on the high seas. It was the story of a stoic hero of staunch moral conviction employing cleverness to overcome seemingly impossible adversity when out-muscled, out-numbered, and generally beset from all sides. There is no tale more timeless than this.
I agree that 3.6 probably deserves higher than I gave it in my initial ranking. I wanted more time seeing the swarm than exploring the human love interest. It did showcase how to have a potentially 'preachy' message that humans are greedy but doing it as much more of a subtle undertone.
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That episode isn't preaching, and I think that's why many are looking past it.

Greed isn't suggested to be man's downfall. On the contrary, the doctor refuses the proposal to be absorbed into the Swarm to preserve humanity as a caste, and earlier, as the doctor cogently argues to his partner, leveraging the industriousness of the Swarm would be no more evil than running an apiary. No, the episode takes a much wider view of the unflinching, amoral character of mother nature, and what drives evolutionary success. It is a meditation on the unforeseen, but unavoidable dangers of manipulating nature to enhance our species' quality of life.

Science isn't without risk.
 
I found this by mistake just yesterday. Cut it on for my kid thinking it was a cartoon lol
 
Fork said:
Thoughts on each episode:
Episode 1 (The Three Robots: Exit Strategies): Good follow up to the other three robots episode(s?). I think the ending felt like a little bit of a letdown, but these are good comedic episodes. These humorous episodes are generally not what I’m watching this series for, but they have their place.

Episode 2 (Bad Travelling): Thought this episode was really great. The visual style was amazing, and a nice blend of realism but also style. Very nice worldbuilding too. With these kinds of episodes there has to be something more than just the straightforward “text” of the episode, and I do think there’s more subtext here but I’m not sure exactly what it was.

Episode 3 (The Very Pulse of the Machine): Now we’re getting to what this series can do when it’s at its best. This one definitely reminded me of Fish Night which is one of my favorite episodes. The visuals are amazing, and again I have to sit with this one more to get the subtext, but I’ll be very happy to rewatch this.

Episode 4 (Night of the Mini Dead): Another very good comedic episode. The visual style was cool, and the comedy landed fairly well. Too short though, and not much more to the episode than what’s on screen.

Episode 5 (Kill Team Kill): Pretty poor. The animation seemed pretty bad and cheap at times, and a lot of the humor fell flat for me. I felt like it was trying to have its cake and eat it too by being both satirical, but also simply being what it was trying to satirize.

Episode 6 (Swarm): Another great episode. Again, the visuals and worldbuilding were absolutely amazing. The story was great, but felt like it ended abruptly and I want much more.

Episode 7 (Mason’s Rats): Pretty good episode. Tone felt a bit all over the place, but very good stylish visuals and a fairly fun, if predictable, story.

Episode 8 (In Vaulted Halls Entombed): Another pretty great episode. Blah blah blah, amazing visuals, yeah yeah yeah…. This kind of realism does sort of fall apart in the characters’ faces, but it’s still amazing. Fun story that is obviously a Cthulu story in all but name. As with Swarm, I want more.

Episode 9 (Jibaro): Here we go again, like Episode 3 this is Love Death and Robots at its absolute best, and also very reminiscent of the director’s episode The Witness, another one of my favorites from season 1. Visually absolutely amazing. I don’t know how this isn’t whatever the modern version of rotoscoping is, but from what I understand it’s not and that’s almost literally unbelievable. The colors are great, the energy in some of the close shots is amazing, but the episode also knows when to cut to wide shots as well. This episode was a fantastic way to end a great season.

Overall this season was fantastic, and maybe even better than the first. Jubaro might be the best episode of the series, and Bad Travelling, The Very Pulse of the Machine, and Swarm were also standouts. Kill Team Kill felt like the only stumble.
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You're right in analogizing The Very Pulse of the Machine to Fish Night, but the latter is tremendous while the former is hollow. An astronaut would never drag her comrade, it's too impractical, and "If you're going to die, might as well die high" is how junkies think, not the kind of extraordinary humans who become astronauts. It didn't earn any of its pointless, shallow, schoolgirl philosophical ramblings, and because of that, achieved no emotional resonance. I was cheering for the protagonist to die just to get it over with.
 
Jibaro was awful.

Fucking awful. Someone sat down and actually wrote that, and then had received a budget to animate that and waste the time of hundreds of thousands, or maybe even millions.

They should just have these every few years when theyve got something interesting to animate. The stories are so wrote, so devoid of any real substance and lack subtlety when theyre trying to be politcal.

Season 1 was awesome. And sure I loved some of the episodes, episode 2 was damn amazing and guess who directed it? David Fincher.

Episode 3 had some beautiful shots, but otherwise was generic as hell.

I did enjoy all of the military ones, but the CGI was definitely better in the past seasons [outside of episode 2].

Swarm was good, but it was so obvious, I was just waiting on the quick escalation to sex and then abrupt killing of the characters, luckily the latter didnt happen. Decently written imo but still felt so wrote and derivative.

The rat one had great art direction but awful writing. What a whiplash of an ending and the damn logic made no sense.
 
Jibaro was one of the most visually captivating things I’ve seen on a long time. Really enjoyed the twist on a siren (freshwater at that) and her becoming obsessed with the deaf guy.
 
revoltub said:
So is this show any good? Is it like black mirror?
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It has some similarities. Dark anthology series, although Love Death and Robots episodes are generally pretty short.

It's essentially a series of short films from different writers and directors using different animation styles. First season was pretty great. Second season was a bit disappointing IMO. Third season was hit or miss.

The whole thing is hit or miss actually. Some of the shorts are absolutely incredible, especially first season. Some of them are pretty bad.

Overall it's definitely worth a watch. A whole season is only a couple of hours.
 
Ares Black said:
It has some similarities. Dark anthology series, although Love Death and Robots episodes are generally pretty short.

It's essentially a series of short films from different writers and directors using different animation styles. First season was pretty great. Second season was a bit disappointing IMO. Third season was hit or miss.

The whole thing is hit or miss actually. Some of the shorts are absolutely incredible, especially first season. Some of them are pretty bad.

Overall it's definitely worth a watch. A whole season is only a couple of hours.
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I'll check it out
 
Just watched the first episode, maybe I missed something essential because I fast forwarded after a few minutes, but that's got to be the worst episode of all the seasons so far. It's basically the Red Hot Chilli Peppers playing songs at a concert....in full cgi and everyone is a wooden puppet. No twists or a storyline, or really anything to do with sci fi.
 
MidgardSerpent said:
Just watched the first episode, maybe I missed something essential because I fast forwarded after a few minutes, but that's got to be the worst episode of all the seasons so far. It's basically the Red Hot Chilli Peppers playing songs at a concert....in full cgi and everyone is a wooden puppet. No twists or a storyline, or really anything to do with sci fi.
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That sounds lame as shit.
 
Then previous seasons were entertaining. I'll definitely watch these!
 
MidgardSerpent said:
Just watched the first episode, maybe I missed something essential because I fast forwarded after a few minutes, but that's got to be the worst episode of all the seasons so far. It's basically the Red Hot Chilli Peppers playing songs at a concert....in full cgi and everyone is a wooden puppet. No twists or a storyline, or really anything to do with sci fi.
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Well.. I can’t stand that band so I’ll be skipping that shit fa sho
 
MidgardSerpent said:
Just watched the first episode, maybe I missed something essential because I fast forwarded after a few minutes, but that's got to be the worst episode of all the seasons so far. It's basically the Red Hot Chilli Peppers playing songs at a concert....in full cgi and everyone is a wooden puppet. No twists or a storyline, or really anything to do with sci fi.
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Yeah, on the trailer I saw had a clip from that one and I said hard pass.
 
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