Welcome everyone to another (final) week of the Big O! Sorry, lost track of time. This week we meet another robot, rocks fall from the sky, and Rosewater finally takes center stage as our main villain. Are there any good ones? Does Dorothy do cute things like the robot girl? And can Roger punch anything? The answer to all of that is found within! However, here’s a hint: The answer is yes. And apologies in advance if this post is a bit more rambling than usual, it’s been a very busy week and I haven’t had time to proofread it. Will be back to normal next week.
First we have episode 15, “Bargaining with the Dead.” This episode Big O begins to expand his horizons a bit, bringing in the politics of Paradigm City and hinting more at its dark secrets. Remember R. Dorothy, the red hood from Part 1? Apparently the people she was killing had memories of the past, memories that belonged to the former Senators of Paradigm City, the same Senators who were also killed in the terrorist attack. She kills them to try and get rid of those memories, get rid of anyone who has them. However, this episode we meet a still alive Senator, Roscoe Fitzgerald, who asks Roger to investigate this assassin for him. The chase? Roscoe still has all his memories, he doesn’t have an alter ego, a normal person inherits or finds his memories. Why? Simple. Because he’s an android.
This twist is really interesting to me, as I believe Roscoe is the first android we meet from the pre-amnesia days. Does this mean that robots don’t lose their memories the same way humans do, that they are immune to it? Or did he somehow find his own memories? Regardless, he was savvy enough to know exactly what he was doing when he called Roger and asked him to investigate. He deliberately sets things up in this episode, hoping Roger will do a good job and make his way to the Wayneright mansion, where he will activate some security protocol and some kind of alert. Why don’t we know yet, maybe he’s trying to contact the outside world? Make them interfere with Paradigm City? Or was it just an accident and he really thought they would find/stop RD I really can’t decide.
In any case, the Wayneright mansion has some cool stuff with some related implications. Inside, they find not only the laboratory where Dorothy was created/awakened, but also a series of rooms lined with copper and lead. Why? Are they some kind of remote cage, or perhaps used to stop someone from spying through walls or something? The presence of another wild android, which appears to be Dorothy’s prototype body, may suggest that they are meant to contain something. On top of that, the mansion’s security protocols also trigger Megadeus to awaken in town. This is a strange one, it looks significantly more complex than anything we’ve seen before and is easily the most agile, able to do somersaults etc. It’s just different different in design or is it really more modern than the others? There’s also the question of who/what, if anyone, is testing it. Simply put, the Wayneright mansion raises a new set of questions for the Big O to answer.
Speaking of mysteries, this episode also opens up a bit about Angel’s. For the longest time, she appeared to be an employee of Rosewater, one of his many spies. But this episode Big O reveals that, if anything, she’s been stalking him. Apparently Angel not only knows about foreign elements sneaking into/attacking the city, but she’s also in direct contact with them. Send them messages, help, spy on them. For what purpose? Is she looking for a specific memory to send back, something that will help them take over Paradigm City? Or is she part of some protest movement like the woman in Dastun’s episode? Whatever she’s doing, judging by her reaction to the assassin Gabriel, she’s clearly not on Rosewaters’ side. That doesn’t mean she’s on Roger’s side, but I think it’s a step in the right direction.
Finally I want to talk about some of the smaller details of the episode. Specifically, I want to talk about Roscoe and his wife. Even though we didn’t get much from them, I think meeting them would have been important for Dorothy. This is our first on-screen case of a human being who loves Androids, fully aware of what they are. Not only that, Roscoe also seems to love his wife again. It showed us and Dorothy that it was possible. That exists and ends for her and Roger. Will it end in tragedy like the Roscoes? Perhaps, that would be a pretty bold move for Big O. However, personally, Big O is one of those stories where I want some sort of happy ending. Maybe it’s just because I admire Dorothy, but I wanted to see them meet at the end.
This brings me to episode 16, “Days of Advent.” This is when Rosewater really starts to come into her own as a villain, taking center stage with a sinister plot to kill hundreds of people outside the dome. And that plot is… Sit around and do nothing while the satellite hits because he doesn’t care. Not the most positive plot, true. And certainly, we still don’t know why he wants the satellite, I suspect it’s because of the old technology it contains although we don’t know for sure. But the fact remains that, using Roscoe’s memories, Rosewater was able to predict where and when a satellite would fall from space and was perfectly fine with a bunch of innocent people being wiped out by the impact. . And Roger? He did not do so, hence the conflict.
That said, there is one person who might know what Rosewater wants: Angel. I talked about it a bit in episode 15, but Angel seems suspiciously knowledgeable about all of this. Even in this episode, she learned about the orbits, the satellites, the preferred way of reading/interpreting the terminal that Rosewater used. Maybe I’m reading this too much, maybe she’s smart and realizes that or not all of this information is lost due to dementia. In the end, books still exist. But when combined with her apparent involvement with the foreigner, the messages, and the summoning of the foreign Megadeus, it seems like she knows more than she’s letting on. Well…more than I think she knew before, which she also didn’t let on. Angel is in the strange position of knowing a lot of things, and I can’t determine exactly how much.
Aside from Rosewater causing the entire neighborhood to die, nothing much happens in this episode. Roger does some investigating, finds people in wetsuits collecting crashed Megadeus (Perhaps hired by Rosewater), and we meet a kid who can’t go out in the sun. The only one of these I felt attached to was the kid, and even that was only because Dorothy was involved and they had that whole “Someone who looks like me” thing about enjoying the little things in life. living, such as going out. Besides, most of this episode seems intended to push Rosewater to the forefront and have Roger directly involve him in a confrontational fashion. It essentially serves as Rosewater’s grand debut as a main villain. And it did that.
Yeah, overall these are good episodes. I can’t say they’re my favorites, I’m not surprised or particularly invested in them. Partly perhaps it’s because the last few weeks have been so great that any subsequent setback feels a little less exciting. Still, they’re a lot of fun, the action so far is a huge improvement over Part 1, and I’m looking forward to Big O starting to explore more and more of the mysterious setting it gives us. We start to really dive into the aliens, Rosewater’s plans, and exactly what happened 40 years ago. Is it possible to get answers to all of that by the end of the series? I’ll be happy.