Better Than Us Season 1 Episode 8 Recap

Svetlana is practicing for the show. She pretends Boris is part of the audience as she reads her script. Victor comes to the room to thank Svetlana for her effort in getting the show script. He says even Alexei failed. Boris greets Victor, but Victor ignores him. Svetlana tells Boris that it doesn’t matter if Victor doesn’t love them because they don’t love him either. Soon, they will drive him away and make him suffer. 

Sergey’s friend, Yuri, who was with him when he died, saw Arisa in the commercial. He comes to the park near Georgy’s apartment and waits for Arisa. He looks sick and drunk. When Georgy sees him sleeping on the bench, he wakes him up and tells him to leave. Yuri says he can’t let Arisa kill another person. Georgy can’t believe what he’s hearing, so he confronts Yuri. In the middle of the confrontation, Georgy pushes Yuri, so he hits his head and loses consciousness.

Bars tells Zhanna that Gleb killed Kirill. Because of it, they will have their own events and plans. They will no longer rely on Gleb because he does horrible things without thinking about others. He tells Zhanna that even if Egor is a good kid, it won’t be safe to continue meeting him. 

Alla brings Arisa to Cronos to help pick new clothes for her. Victor sends them their show passes and says that Arisa’s pass must go under her skin. Arisa says she’s against modification, so Igor explains that the show needs special security measures — only bots with security chips are allowed to participate. Igor puts the chip behind Arisa’s neck and later hands the remote to Victor. Victor tells Igor that he notices Svetlana is trying her best, so he tells Igor to modify Boris to do things other than say, “Mommy, I love you.” Igor says he‘ll come over, but Victor says there‘s no need. He can just send the software, and Victor will do it himself.

After hearing the conversation between Bars and Zhanna, a member of the Liquidators, Stryga, meets up with Gleb. He tells him Bars’ new plans for the team and how he plans on leaving Gleb out. Gleb tells Stryga that Bot.Net needs a new owner and commander for their unit. He adds that Stryga shouldn’t worry about what will happen to Bars. 

Arisa tells Alla how much she helped her on their way home. Because Arisa already knows how to lie, she avoids trouble, stays by their side, and continues following her protocol of keeping the family safe. Alla is surprised that Arisa can tell a lie, so she asks her what she lied about. Arisa says he lied to Varlamov because she killed two people before. One was by accident, and the second was to protect the family. Alla gets scared. She tells Arisa to buy soap from the nearby mall while they park somewhere. Arisa doesn‘t notice that Alla plans to go home to run away from her. 

After getting a call from Georgy, Major Varlamov visits Yuri at the hospital. Yuri says he’d been working at Cronos for six years, and it‘s the first time he saw a robot harm a human. He says Victor brought Arisa. Major Varlamov thinks they know the truth; they only have to find Arisa to get the crime footage from her. Then they can finally use it to file a case against Victor. Georgy worries about Alla because although she’s part of the family, she’s not an authorized user of Arisa. He returns home and finds out that Alla left Arisa at a mall, so he, Major Varlamov, Irina, and Vlad look for Arisa. While they’re out, Arisa returns to the apartment and overhears Alla and Sonya’s conversation. Alla opens the door, not knowing it‘s Arisa on the other side. She takes the soap Arisa bought for her. Arisa says that what she did was a drastic measure needed to protect the family, but Alla tells her that she‘s broken, so she must leave.

Bars goes out to meet Gleb. Gleb pretends to get beer inside the house, but he turns around and shoots Bars in the back. Bars falls to the open pit in front of the house. Gleb tells Bars he likes him, but things will get out of control if he doesn’t replace him. Gleb leaves his machine and bot to do the job for him; they bury Bars alive. Back at the Bot.Net, Stryga moves at Zhanna and pushes her against the table. Zhanna tries to fight back, but Stryga is stronger than her. Bars walks in. He got out of being buried alive. He chases Stryga and stabs him multiple times until he’s dead. With blood still flowing down his face, he tells Zhanna to call Katya and says there‘s no one they can trust anymore. 

Victor comes home to modify Boris. He remembers what happened to Svetlana after their only son, Boris, died three years ago. She was so devastated by what happened that she lost her mind. They put her in an asylum and refused to talk to Victor or her father. To help her, Victor spoke to Igor and gave him a private order. He showed him a photo of his son and told him to make a child imitation with the remaining robot from their kindergarten. When the job was done, he showed Svetlana the child bot that looked like Boris. At first, Svetlana couldn’t believe what Victor did, but she learned to love the bot after some time. At present, Victor loads the media files of the child bot and sees everything he saw. Victor watches the footage of Svetlana talking to the bot and hears her say that they will drive him away and make him suffer. By the time Svetlana returns to the house, Victor already knows her plans. He confronts her about giving him a fake screenplay of the competition. Svetlana says she won’t be hosting the show anymore, and she won’t say anything to Victor. Victor picks up the child bot and tells Svetlana that she has to help him, or he will destroy the bot. 

Victor gets in his car not knowing that Arisa is waiting for him. Arisa tells him that her family doesn’t want her anymore because they discovered she had killed two people. She can no longer protect them because of that, so she decides to eliminate the main threat to the family, Victor. Victor has no chance of winning against Arisa when she attacks him, so he takes the remote Igor handed him and presses the button, shutting Arisa’s power down.

Our Thoughts

We know that Arisa is a super bot, and she’s designed to understand human emotions. But it seems like she got so attached to her family that sometimes we think she‘s also showing emotions through facial expressions. She likes Sonya the most and cares about what she thinks, but Alla obviously hates Arisa and wants her out of the house. We think that even before they discovered that Arisa killed two people, she always wanted Arisa out of their life.

It’s also quite surprising that the child bot was Victor’s idea. So he really wanted to help Svetlana get better. If so, why does he seem so full of hate? He looks like he hates his wife and the child bot. Everyone seems to hate him also, like everybody is against Victor. He doesn’t have anyone on his side except Igor, and he doesn’t even treat him right. We won’t be surprised if Maslovsky betrays him soon, but we think the betrayal won’t be because Victor doesn’t treat him right but because Victor doesn’t treat Svetlana right.