After a three-year hiatus, Love Death + Robots‘ fourth season is a bit of an underwhelming return for Netflix’s science fiction anthology series; but even though it is a season without a true top-tier entry (and a whole lot of middling ones, especially in season four’s first five shorts), there’s still plenty to discuss – and more importantly, rank. Without further ado, my rankings (and individual reviews) of each Love Death + Robots season four episode (and if you missed them, here’s season one, season two, and season three):
10. Episode 1 – “Can’t Stop”
Love Death + Robots is a science fiction series about many things – and sometimes, those things are just impressive tech demos with a pointless story slapped on top for posterity. “Can’t Stop”, the season-opening, David Fincher-directed entry, can’t even claim that as its reason for existence; I’ve watched plenty of bad Love Death + Robots episode, but I can’t think of anything more utterly pointless than a 2003 Slade Castle performance of Red Hot Chili Peppers’ “Don’t Stop”, re-animated as some of the ugliest fucking CGI marionettes I’ve ever seen.
What is the point of this? Is it a commercial for a rock band that looks past their prime, even when created from scratch in hideous CGI? Is it an art piece, wherein Fincher reflects on the perverted relationships the RHCP singer has been known to have throughout his adulthood? Is it a satire on a supposedly iconic event? Or even a creative, science-fiction flavored reimagining of the song? Nope, it’s just horrible CGI with no discernable goddamn reason for being the season’s opening episode, except purely as an indulgence – the fact it is directed by Fincher, who directed one of my favorite episodes of season three, sets an incredibly dour tone for the nine shorts to follow it. I have but one question: why???
9. Episode 2 – “Close Encounters of the Mini Kind”
Though I didn’t really enjoy season 3’s “Night of the Mini Dead”, I was at least able to appreciate the technical craft put into animating studio Buck’s adaptation of zombie movie cliches. Buck returns this season with another ‘original’ story from Robert Bisi & Andy Lyon, this time homaging the alien invasion genre with another sped-up, high-pitched five minutes of empty, pointless nonsense – only with more dick jokes this time?
If you want tired bits about anal probes, farmers fucking their animals, and an extremely brief reflection on the resilience of the human race in spite of itself, “Close Encounters of the Mini Kind” might be the episode for you – unfortunately, its parody is simply imitation, a short film without a coherent original thought until its final punchline… which is the exact same unfunny ending as “Night of the Mini Dead”, further reinforcing the feeling of emptiness Buck’s second Love Death + Robots offering carries throughout its brief running time.
8. Episode 7 – “The Screaming of the Tyrannosaur”
Blur’s third episode of season four falls somewhere between the worst episode of the series (“Can’t Stop”) and one of season four’s middling entries (“Spider Rose”), a short film about dinosaurs and humans fighting to the death in futuristic gladiatorial games – like a combination of season one’s “Sonnie’s Edge” and “Shape-Shifters”, in its own way. Unfortunately, this episode is saddled with its attempts to be meta, casting MrBeast in the role of the game announcer; it is unsurprisingly terrible, a monotone performance that only further illustrates how much of season four feel like a collection of rejected concepts for better episodes in earlier seasons. Sure, “The Screaming of the Tyrannosaur” is one of the season’s more visually appealing episodes – but good dinosaur CGI can only go so far, hardly enough to elevate “The Screaming of the Tyrannosaur” beyond its inherent mediocrity.
7. Episode 9 – “Smart Appliances, Stupid Owners”
Scalzi giveth, and Scalzi taketh away; after delivering one of the season’s more enjoyable episodes (“The Other Large Thing”), the star-studded “Smart Appliances, Stupid Owners” is another mindless offering from the show’s most prolific scribe. While I appreciate the premise – smart household appliances are interviewed mockumentary-style – there’s no ingenuity to its execution; there’s an abandoned waffle maker, an underused toothbrush, a vibrator, and a showerhead used as a vibrator, each brief scene more predictable than its predecessor, until it ends with a human toilet/litter box combo. With its big cast – Ronny Chieng, Amy Sedaris, Nat Faxon, Brett Goldstein, Niecy Nash-Betts, Josh Brener, Melissa Villaseñor, and Kevin Hart (?!) – one would expect more from “Smart Appliances” – it has no interest in that, however, jumping from scene to scene with rapid disdain, earning its title as one of the more unsurprising disappointments of season four with some incredibly disinterested, lifeless storytelling.
6. Episode 3 – “Spider Rose”
Bruce Sterling’s Schismatrix universe returns with “Spider Rose”, following season three’s unsettling standout episode “Swarm”, returning the weird, mouthy quadrapod Investor race, this time as they negotiate with a lonely, heartbroken woman left to her own devices in the void of space – and how her outlook on life changes once she bonds with the ‘pet’ they give her for a 96-day trial period.
At 15 minutes, “Spider Rose” is the longest entry of season four; unfortunately, neither its length nor its narrative are ever justified in its running time, as the episode slowly devolves into a series of uninspired metaphors about love, purpose, and death, told in a series of vignette-like scenes laced with flashbacks of the titular character’s memories. At first, it feels like a riff on both “Swarm” and season one’s phenomenal “Beyond the Aquila Rift” – but that feeling doesn’t last long, eventually becoming a collection of extremely high-resolution images that ultimately, only offer a bunch of boring logical questions about its central mysteries (like if she was abandoned in space, how did she turn half of herself into a robot?) rather than philosophical ones – especially in its final minutes, when the short changes the ending of its original short story, in a way that mostly renders everything preceding it as pointless. A watchable entry, but more for the oddities of its delivery than for the effectiveness of its narrative and visuals.
5. Episode 6 – “Golgortha”
“Golgortha”, the first live-action episode since season one’s “Ice Age”, is another fun episode about the interactions between creatures and their deities, from first-time contributor Luma Pictures. Starring Rhys Darby as a clumsy priest who may or may not have lied about the resurrection of a very important ocean deity, “Golgortha” is the rare episode of Love Death + Robots that begs for a longer running time, a short that just feels like it is getting its feet underneath it when its ending comes out of nowhere, rendering the episode as a very slight, absurdist take on Arrival, as if it was written as a premise to a Futurama episode. The execution of its simple idea ultimately works, but its rather workman-like approach to scripting and visuals limit its ability to be a more meaningful, impactful episode of the anthology series.
4. Episode 4 – “400 Boys”
Without an entry from “Zima Blue” and “Ice Age” animators Passion Animation Studios, season three of Love, Death + Robots always felt it was missing something; thankfully, the group return for season four with an adaptation of “400 Boys”, a short story from Marc Laidlaw (before his days at Valve working on the Half-Life series) about a group of telekinesis-powered futuristic gangs, teaming up for a final fight against the titular rival gang – who happen to be a bunch of giant, powerful creatures that look like babies.
Though “400 Boys” is certainly the lightest entry in Passion’s exceptional trilogy of Love Death + Robots episode, much more focused on kinetic, violent action than existential ponderings, it’s still an entertaining post-apocalyptic entry – and a much-needed palette cleanser after the underwhelming trio of entries preceding it (doesn’t hurt it also has a fantastic voice cast, including John Boyega, Rahul Kohli, Ed Skrein, and Amar Chadha-Patel). Admittedly, I prefer the first half of the entry to the second; though I thoroughly enjoy how Passion depicts action sequences, particularly agile movement, the action-packed second half lacks a bit of umph (partly due to how the 400 Boys are animated, which is… a choice), and finishes with an abrupt ending that begs for another two or three minutes of running time. Regardless, “400 Boys” is a welcome return for one of Love Death + Robot‘s best creative teams.
3. Episode 5 – “The Other Large Thing”
The concept of humanity not deserving its own existence is one that runs deep in the vein of all science fiction; in “The Other Large Thing”, it seemingly marries itself loosely to the Three Robots stories of season one and three (it helps it was also written by John Scalzi) with a dash of “Mason’s Rats”, offering up a stylistically similar, quasi-origin story of a cat not named Sanchez, and the alliance he forms with his owner’s first home robot.
I’ve always been mixed on Scalzi’s work on Love Death + Robots (especially anything after his first two entries of season one, “Three Robots” and “When the Yogurt Took Over”) and its nihilistic themes of humanity’s idiocy, “The Other Large Thing” is a much more effective distillation of ideas from his previous entries – even if I think its depictions of humans is a shade too caricature-ish for the simplistic points it is expressing. Led by Chris Parnell and John Oliver’s voice work as the aforementioned cat and robot, “The Other Large Thing” (animated by AGBO, in their Love Death + Robots debut) leans into its light touch for a lightly humorous, charming little story of what could happen if robots and non-humans were able to figure out how to communicate – and decided humans were no longer worth the trouble.
2. Episode 10 – “For He Can Creep”
If I could choose one of season four’s talking cat-related entries, “For He Can Creep” is the clear winner – not only because it is divorced from the Three Robots chronology, but because it is a more pure expression of felines and their holy place in the Love Death + Robots symbolic pantheon. Set in 1757 London as a poet fights off the influence of Satan himself, “For He Can Creep” follows a ragtag band of cats who communicate telepathically as they try to save the poet who could destroy the world. Though told with perhaps too light a touch, “For He Can Sleep” is still a quality entry in the anthology, a succinct, satisfying story of cats vs. the devil told against the backdrop of Georgian London, utilizing one of the season’s most engaging visual palettes to end season four on an unexpected high note.
1. Episode 8 – “How Zeke Got Religion”
“How Zeke Got Religion” fits neatly into a vein with season three’s “Kill Team Kill” (also animated by Titmouse) and season one’s “Sucker of Souls”, completing the trilogy of religious-tinged 80’s action movie homages on a definitive high note. Featuring a group of Allied flyboys fighting a demon summoned by crazed Nazis, “How Zeke Got Religion” is a tight, terrifying 14 minutes of unsettling, graphic violence and an incredible sense of tension, derived from its smartly sparse dialogue, backed by perhaps the best marriage of visual and audio design of any season four entry. Though “How Zeke Got Religion” is another episode full of ideas and themes already explored in Love Death + Robots, few execute them as cleanly (and beautifully) as this J.T Petty-penned John McNichol adaptation.
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