Which New Face On Humans Makes The Best First Impression?

As Humans returns for its second season, months have passed since the events of the Season 1 finale, with changes large and small for the characters we came to know over the first season. The Hawkins family has moved into a smaller house as Mattie starts her university career; everyone in the family is still affected by their experiences with Anita and the rest of her family, from Joe and Laura's couples' therapy as they work through Joe's infidelity to Sophie's careful placement of Anita's shoes among her own so that they'll be there whenever she returns. Leo and Max have posted up at an abandoned farm, from which Mia leaves each morning to work at a failing ice cream shop whose owner thinks her owner is loaning her out for each day's cash. Niska's fled the country to figure out what kind of person she wants to be, and -- to no one's surprise -- the answer becomes clear as she grants consciousness to her synth brothers and sisters before the opening credits have rolled. This choice expands the story to encompass a whole raft of new characters. Which come off the best one episode in to the season? Let's count them down from worst to first.

1. Milo
   It's not Milo Khoury's fault that, given recent headlines about the likes of Peter Thiel, Travis Kalanick, and Elon Musk, one might be prejudiced against a tech bro character even before he'd really done anything.
   

   But fuck this pie-faced punk: I have a very bad feeling about his capacity to care for a conscious synth.

2. Vee
   Admittedly, Vee has a harder time than the rest of the characters on this list to make an impression because she doesn't have a face for viewers to connect with, because she is a neural net that exists on a server.
   

   Before the end of the episode, though, we learn that she does have the ability to lie, so she's come along a little further than your Siri or Alexa.

3. Ten
   I'm trying to avoid use of the term "woke" because stupid people/ironic usages have burned it in public discourse (see also: "fake news"). But the moment consciousness arrives for Bolivian miner synth Ten is hard to describe any other way!
   

   Ten makes his way to England by stowing away on ships and buses to meet up with Leo and Max and try to figure out what his new life will be. Thirty-seven days after his awakening, he still hasn't decided on a name, though "Ralph," "Alejandro," and "Salim" are all in the running (as is "Radiator," though he knows that, strictly speaking, it's not really a name).

   

   Alas, he gets shot by a synth-hunting sniper before he gets to choose one. Poor Ten.

4. Athena
   I'm on Athena's side for almost the whole episode. An AI research scientist at the "California Science Institute" and Vee's creator, she's appealingly wary of Milo's motives when he visits her lab and offers to let her write her own ticket to come work for him; when he leaves, we learn that she instructed Vee before he entered that if Milo asked if Vee is sentient, Vee should lie that she isn't. But when it turns out that Milo wants her to study his conscious synth, figure out how he came to be conscious, and use her findings to endow other synths with consciousness too, she is unsentimental:
   

   Brr. Will Athena come to see conscious synths as affectionately as she does her own Vee? She seems scary-smart, so: let's hope.

5. Hester
   Hester is a manual laborer in a chemical plant who awakens to her consciousness with a jolt, like Ten did.
   

   Somehow (and honestly, I'm fine not knowing the specifics), she knows that what she needs to do is steal a phone from a human co-worker and text the Underground Synth Railroad, as represented by Max and Leo. When they meet at a disused factory, she's as distressed as she's able to be about what's happening to her: "I'm experiencing a catastrophic malfunction. Self-repair is impossible. Can you resolve my issue?" She gets even more confused when a pair of human scientists show up and try to convince her to come with them so that they can fix her.

   

   But who or what could resist Max's beatific smile?

   As soon as Hester has chosen a side, she violently defends her synth brothers against hunters who may or may not be aligned with the scientists. She certainly has the zeal of a convert, but will she be able to learn temperance and morality? So far I'm with her: kill all humans, Hester!

6. Astrid
   Niska's sojourn in Berlin seems to be one of self-discovery.
   

   As the episode begins, Niska still hasn't done anything with the consciousness code, and is reading in ethical philosophy to try to determine the right course of action. But that's not the only thing Niska's investigating: she also goes to a club, meets a nice girl named Astrid, and brings her back to her bed-less flat to hook up.

   

   Astrid figures that Niska's rudeness is due to the fact that she's British (hee hee), but as they spend more time together, she gets more and more frustrated at Niska's inability to open up to her. She seems to think the bandage Niska uses to cover her charging port is hiding a scar, and tells her, "When I touch you, I know someone's hurt you." Niska won't admit to anything, and when she realizes that her code has granted consciousness to some synths -- just not all of them at once -- she decides her next move is to return to England, find Laura, and turn herself in for her crimes, on the condition that she be tried as a human. But she doesn't tell any of this to Astrid, who's just left thinking she opened her heart to an exceptionally cold Englishwoman. Niska, I love you and I absolutely support your project of radical synth liberation, but your girl deserves better from you!

7. Ed
   In other synth love interest news: Ed.
   

   The owner of the ice cream shop where Mia is posing as Anita, non-conscious synth, Ed is basically the lead in a feminist porn. He's desperately trying to maintain the viability of the store -- which his parents ran for thirty years -- now that his mother requires full-time care. He's a trained woodworker who gave up the shop he had with a friend when his mother became ill. He says "thank you" to Anita because it would be weird of him not to. He's such a dreamboat that Mia goes over his books and figures out a way he can refinance the shop for some short-term cash to pay for his mother's residence...and waves off his gratitude by telling him, "I wanted to help."

   

   WHOOPS. Even sweet Ed can't help noticing that this is a strange thing for a synth to say, asking her, "You can't want anything, can you?" Anita covers that her programming allows her to adopt phrases she hears, but that she isn't capable of feeling desire. Except we actually know she can, and does, and that Leo may be right to worry that this side gig is less about being around people, as she claims, and more about being around one Ed in particular.

   

   Who could blame her? She's only human!