Love Death + Robots Season 2 Episodes, Ranked

Our Love Death + Robots rewatch continues with season two (here’s a link to the official season 1 list, if you missed it)!

8. Episode 6 – “All Through the House”

“All Through the House”, Love Death + Robots‘ attempt at a Christmas episode, is the strangest entry of the anthology’s second volume, asking the question we’ve all wanted an answer to: “what if Santa Claus was an aborted fetus from an Alien movie?”

The answer is a rather pointless, four-minute stop-motion excursion into a world I’d rather never return to (one where Santa is a massive four-legged creature, with small human hands that sit over its gaping, sharp-toothed mouth). There is an amusing parable, I suppose, baked into the premise of “All Through the House”; but the maximalist vision of the fear Santa places into children to be on their best behavior never coalesces into anything, just a schlocky, wet monster whose vibe isn’t funny, scary, or engaging. Neither evocative or thoughtful, “All Through the House” is one of season two’s biggest misfires.

7. Episode 1 – “Automated Customer Service”

Absurdist capitalist reflection makes its return to Love Death + Robots in its opening episode of season two, “Automated Customer Service”. One’s mileage with Jon Scalzi adaptations will vary (as you can see in my season 1 rankings of “When the Yogurt Took Over” and “Alternate Histories”); of the three, “Automated Customer Service” is definitely the worst, garishly animated and nonsensical, especially when it makes its emotional pitch for the Love portion of the anthology in the episode’s final minutes.

“Automated Customer Service” posits a world of manufactured crisis, where a woman and her dog are simultaneously terrorized by an extremely well-equipped Roomba and the company’s sinister automated customer service system. The premise is simple, but between the off-putting art and the flat delivery of the episode’s jokes, “Automated Customer Service” relies heavily on its extended action sequence to carry the weight.

Clearly influenced by works like Wall-E, Jurassic Park, and numerous episodes of Black Mirror, “Automated Customer Service” would’ve benefited from a complete visual overhaul; but it still wouldn’t be a great Love, Death, Robots episode, failing to posit interesting questions about the relationship between organic and artificial intelligence, nor about the unsettling possibilities of technology interested in its own self-preservation. “Automated Customer Service” simply offers up tired tropes of human gullibility (and willingness to lend themselves as beta testers, arguably the most grounded observation of the short) and hopes its slapstick bits of humor will carry it to its underwhelming ending.

6. Episode 7 – “Life Hutch”

There’s a nugget of an interesting idea in “Life Hutch” (or “The One with Michael B. Jordan”, as most will remember it), observing a life-and-death showdown between two imperfect, malfunctioning creations fighting for survival. But it is not a particularly interesting episode, too short to be emotionally effective, and too superficial to leave a meaningful impact – partially because of how its story is delivered, flashing back and forth to the moments before his character’s ship crashes on an asteroid. An episode that feels heavily weighed towards being a tech demo than an effective piece of fiction, “Life Hutch” isn’t bad; it’s just not much of anything at all (also – it’s extremely similar to “Automated Customer Service”, making for an underwhelming pair of “robot rebellion” stories).

5. Episode 5 – “The Tall Grass”

There’s nothing particularly wrong with “The Tall Grass”; it is haunting and evocative, a small-scale monster story told with a restraint not offered most Love Death + Robots entries. But the third Joe Lansdale adaptation (and the only one in volume two) is definitely the most muted, almost to its own detriment; though more interesting and deliberate than season one’s “The Dump”, it also is nowhere nearly as psychedelic and existential as “Fish Night”, my favorite entry from LDR‘s first batch of shorts. “The Tall Grass” is just fine; gorgeously animated by Axis Animation and tightly directed by Simon Otto, it just lacks the narrative and emotional oomph one to carry it through its brief 9-minute running time. Interesting, but ever so slightly undercooked.

4. Episode 4 – “Snow in the Desert”

If Mad Max met up with The Terminator (the original, which is much hornier than subsequent films), “Snow in the Desert” would be their little violent sci-fi love child. Animated by Unit Image, the team behind one of season one’s most technically impressive entries (the unsettling “Beyond the Aquila Rift”), “Snow in the Desert” follows a day in the life of Snow, a centuries-old Sad Guy whose immortality – which is apparently powered by his magic balls – is a hot commodity. Putting aside the uncomfortable tropes of albino people having “special abilities”, “Snow in the Desert” is a lot like Unit Images’ first season entry: horny as fuck, beautiful as hell, and a little too eager to build a world we won’t ever explore.

That being said, “Snow in the Desert” is one of volume two’s more hopeful entries, positing that maybe all we need for humanity and machines to eventually co-exist, is for a few of them to start fucking in space deserts. Like all great storytelling, science fiction should be a little hot around the collar; “Snow in the Desert” fills that void, while still engaging with the obligatory strangeness and occasional bursts of violence that slot it neatly next to other Love Death + Robots fare. The tale of Snow and Hirald is brief, but touching, especially when it isn’t focused on head explosions and technical lighting displays (which, even four years later, remain impressive).

3. Episode 2 – “Ice”

Some of Love Death + Robots‘ best entries are less about technology than what life is life when it is stripped away. “Ice”, which brings back Passion Animation Studios and director Robert Valley from their season one collaboration “Zima Blue” for a story about an angsty teenager trying to find his place on a cold, unwelcome mining planet full of biologically enhanced teenagers (including his own brother). Set on a night where Sedgwick joins his brother’s clique on a dangerous adventure to see a ‘frost whale’, “Ice” is like “Zima Blue” in that its story is about finding meaning and beauty in our existence, of enjoying our limitations and flaws and the appreciation for life they bring us. These themes are a bit more subtly laden this time around – and though its impact is slighter, it’s just as dynamic and enjoyable as its season one counterpart. In the span of 12 minutes, “Ice” alternates between Samurai Jack-esque visual panache and almost Linklater-like reverence for the dynamics of teenage friendship. The science fiction of “Ice” may be light (save for, you know, space travel and kaiju-like whales flying through the air) and its story rather straightforward, but it is definitely one of the more affecting entries in LDR‘s second season.

2. Episode 3 – “Pop Squad”

“Pop Squad” is among the darkest entries in Love Death + Robots catalog, set in world where immortality is within human reach. Naturally, this leads to a world built upon new, more selfish norms than our own, one where the police killing of children is not only routine, but expected, part of society’s efforts to cull overpopulation. But in a world where “rejoo” treatments (aka anti-aging treatments that keep you alive forever) are the norm for upper class society, what happens to the rest of the world? What happens to humanity, when we’ve traded fertility and connection, for immortality?

As one might predict, it leads to a world that has fallen into absolute moral ruin: and that is where we meet Briggs (Nolan North), the protagonist of Paolo Bacigalupi’s adapted short story. He’s a classic detective living in a different world; always with a top hat and cigarette, the kind of guy that rain follows around, even when the sun is shining. Briggs’ moral crisis forms the heart of “Pop Squad”, as he contends with his career choice of willfully murdering children for the whims and desires of the upper social class (including his girlfriend, a 200-year old opera singer). As the rain falls (cough Blade Runner cough) Briggs finds himself disillusioned with a world that’s traded selfish aesthetics and self-preservation over the beauty of humanity and death, a grimness Briggs spends the 18-minute short trying to shake.

Backed by tight worldbuilding and (mostly) effective visuals from Blur Studios (behind many of the photo-realistic works of LDR‘s first season), what “Pop Squad” lacks in nuance it makes up for with atmosphere and character. There are numerous hints Briggs has already given up his immortality treatments as he contends with the horrible world he’s complicit in (not that the episode ever forgives him for his shitty choices, thankfully), and the episode culminates in a sequence that reaches towards the heart of Love Death + Robots, examining the line where humanity allows itself to be consumed by technology, and what is lost when we cross that threshold. “Pop Squad” is as twisted and unsubtle as they come; and yet, its emotionally resonant conclusion earns its rep as a highlight of LDR‘s sophomore effort.

1. Episode 8 – “The Drowned Giant”

After a rough back half to an abbreviated second volume, Life, Death + Robots goes out on a high note with “The Drowned Giant”, based on the 1964 J.G. Ballard story about a small fishing town that wakes up one morning with a giant, dead human washed up on shore. Following a narrator who becomes fascinated with the giant’s presence, and the town’s response to it, “The Drowned Giant” is an allegory for human experience, the biological systems of Earth… and most importantly, about preservation, about how humankind disregards the beauty and mystery of the world, in order to dominate it, strip it down for parts, and sell it off to the highest bidder.

Though written nearly 60 years ago, “The Drowned Giant” has a lot to say about American exceptionalism, environmental change, and the culture of takers that the gorilla Ishmael talked about. Seen through the lens of a man with a fascination for the giant corpse, “The Drowned Giant” reaches towards the larger questions of humanity, through the lens of the supernatural; though many might argue this doesn’t quite look or feel like a Love Death + Robots episode, it is exactly the kind of fiction the anthology often excels at. It just isn’t as loud or flashy as LDR is typically known to be; in many ways, its contemplative, quiet nature feels more like an excerpt from a Tales from the Loop episode, rather than amongst David Fincher and Tim Miller’s eclectic collection of short films. Nonetheless, it’s a perfect capper to the intriguing, though often underwhelming second season.