I owe Murderbot an apology. I really wasn’t familiar with its game. For all that it’s a big goofy violent sci-fi mystery adventure in space, it’s also mining a surprising amount of pathos out of its towering protagonist’s relationship with…its arch-enemy, who teaches it what love is?

No, for real! This episode largely hinges on the relationship between Murderbot and Gurathin, the augmented human who’s been a voice against the rogue SecUnit robot since the start. Since before the start, even, dating back to before the mission, when he expressed his concerns that any such robot would be a threat to the team. Those doubts have only deepened since he learned this SecUnit had hacked its own programming and unshackled itself from the need to obey human commands. The fact that their mission has been a colossal shitshow that has nearly killed everyone involved multiple times is, for Gurathin, all but confirmation of his suspicions. (Never mind the fact that Murderbot has been as much a victim as anyone, and has saved everyone’s life multiple times too.) 

Even so, Gurathin has to depend on the SecUnit if he wants to survive. For one thing, Gurathin and the rest of the team need the robot to scan their abandoned habitat for hostiles — who they learn in a video sent by their leader are part of an organization called GrayCris — if they’re to return and get Gurathin back in the med bay to save his life.

But most intriguingly, both Gurathin and Murderbot realize more or less simultaneously that the robot can be of even more help. A recovering addict who was enslaved by the Company when they exploited his dependency on proprietary drugs, Gurathin adamantly refuses any painkillers. But if Murderbot accesses his computer implants, it can switch off the man’s pain receptors and allow the necessary surgery to take place. 

What happens next is doubly unexpected. Rooting around Gurathin’s brain more or less out of spite, Murderbot finds organic memory banks to be a sort of psychedelic organic goop, easy to get lost in. He’s drawn right to Gurathin’s vision of Dr. Mensah, and hears the man’s inner monologue about the love he feels for the scientist. “You, I love as my equal, as my better,” he says. “Why can’t you love me back?”

“Why can’t you love me back?” Murderbot echoes, over and over, out loud, with real emotion in its voice. It’s the first time it seems to actually understand the icky human feelings it’s constantly running down, even as it watches thousands of hours of extremely emotional sci-fi soap operas within his brain. Before long even Gurathin realizes what’s going on — but everyone kind of politely decides to ignore it. 

But just when you think it’s safe to sympathize with Gurathin, he pulls a fast one. While Murderbot was rooting around in his brain, he was rooting around in Murderbot’s. He’s finally accessed the suppressed data: Murderbot killed 57 miners who were its clients prior to its reprogramming. And oh yeah, it calls itself “Murderbot.” Murderbot insists the two phenomena are unrelated, but this cuts unsurprisingly little ice with the humans.

You never seem more human than when you’re making excuses, and that’s as true of Murderbot as it is of anyone else. Maybe that memory was implanted. Maybe it was forced to turn on those people, the way the evil black SecUnit almost forced him to turn on the Preservation Alliance team a few episodes back. 

“Maybe you’re just defective,” Gurathin snarls. “A defective unit that’s just one thought away from killing everyone around you.”

After a pause, Murderbot manages to say “Yes, maybe,” before marching out of the habitat, and their lives.

Psych! It comes back after a few minutes of walkin’ around time, during which it debates taking control of its life by abandoning the humans like a true rogue SecUnit. Perhaps it opts to return because it’s starting to care about them, even though it feels they’re stupid and crazy and gross. Perhaps it’s just the residual strength of its training as a Security Unit. Hell, maybe it learned an actual lesson from Sanctuary Moon, the latest episode of which features a rogue reprogrammed android killing its entire crew; it seems legitimately concerned about the safety of Jack McBrayer’s character, after all. 

(It’s worth noting here that the show’s android claims learning to feel love, which it describes as a “disease,” is what drove it insane. File that away for later, Murderbot!)

Whatever the case, they’re not rid of Murderbot yet, and it’s a good thing too. Putting their (canonically very intelligent, if not street-smart) heads together, the humans put together a working theory of what’s going on. The Company, they realize, isn’t responsible for their woes — “massacres are bad for business,” as Gurathin puts it. However, they might be willing to accept a bribe large enough to offset the costs in order to look the other way and not warn the team about a rival, dangerous expedition on the planet. 

And what would such an expedition be hunting for? Why would they be willing to kill an entire outpost? Why have they so far spared the Preservation Alliance, all of whom that last black SecUnit could have easily slaughtered in seconds? Simple: They want the alien artifact Mensah stumbled across, and they need the team alive so they can get information on its whereabouts. After that? Adios, muchachos.

Entertainingly, the prospect of impending death gives the throuple one last excuse to awkwardly try to acknowledge each other’s feelings and whatnot. The problem is that Ratthi is falling in love with Pin-Lee, while oblivious to the fact that Arada is falling in love with him. I’m not sure how Pin-Lee feels about anyone, though I wouldn’t be surprised to see them hook up with Bharadwaj before it’s all over. (Consider Bharadwaj’s story last episode about her unrequited feelings for Pin-Lee a sort of Chekhov’s Crush.)

What I’m wondering is whether a similar triangle is emerging, or has emerged already. Gurathin’s love for Mensah was already plain enough prior to Murderbot reading his mind, but Murderbot did more than read it, it truly felt the power of the emotion that mind contained. Will that remain as embedded in its data processors as various experimental medical techniques from the outer-space equivalents of House or The Pitt that it’s been watching?

However it goes down, I’m impressed by how much mileage Murderbot has gotten out of its simple premise, small cast, and brief runtime. More would-be sci-fi mindbenders could stand to install a Keep It Simple, Stupid module.

Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) writes about TV for Rolling Stone, Vulture, The New York Times, and anyplace that will have him, really. He and his family live on Long Island.