Fox cancelled Almost Human on April 29, 2014, almost two months after its last episode aired. One season, 13 episodes, a premiere on November 17, 2013 and a finale on March 3, 2014. That is the whole of it.
The show deserved better than a quiet burial, and it also earned part of its fate. Almost Human is a police procedural wearing a science fiction coat, and the coat is the best thing about it.
John Kennex Wakes Up in 2048
The premise comes from creator J. H. Wyman, working through Frequency Films, Bad Robot and Warner Bros. Television, with Wyman, Bryan Burk and J. J. Abrams as executive producers. The setting is 2048. Crime rates have risen 400%, which the show attributes to the unrestrained evolution of science and technology. The overwhelmed police force has one answer: every human officer is paired with a lifelike combat-model android.
Karl Urban plays Detective John Kennex. He wakes from a 17-month coma into a city called New Pittsburg, with a cybernetic prosthetic leg and large gaps in his memory. He hates the robots, and the show gives him a specific reason. Nearly two years before the series opens, Kennex and his squad raided the hideout of a gang called inSyndicate. They were ambushed and outgunned. Kennex tried to save his badly injured partner. The logic-based android officer with them refused, because the wounded man’s chances of survival were low and saving him would not have been logical. An explosion took Kennex’s leg and killed his partner.
That is a real wound, not a costume. It gives Urban something to play, and he plays it.
Dorian Is the Reason to Watch
Kennex returns to the force under Captain Sandra Maldonado, played by Lili Taylor. He is issued a standard MX-43 android. He throws it from a moving vehicle when it threatens to report his unusual behavior. His replacement is Dorian, a DRN model, decommissioned from police work and about to be shipped off to a Space Station.
Michael Ealy plays Dorian, and he is the best thing in the series. The DRN androids were built to be as close to human as possible. They had trouble handling their own emotional responses. That is why the logic-based MX units replaced them. Dorian resents the word “Synthetic.” He is discontinued, obsolete, and more alive than anything else on screen.
The Kennex-Dorian pairing is the engine. A man who was abandoned by a machine is forced to trust one. The show knows this and returns to it.
The Case of the Week Problem
Here is where Almost Human loses its argument with itself. The android material is strong. The cases are not.
Week to week, the series falls back on the shape of every network crime show: a body, a clue, a chase, a resolution. The future is scenery for most of it. The 2048 setting supplies gadgets and a black market and a memory-recovery doctor called a Recollectionist in the city slums, but it rarely supplies a story that could only be told in 2048.
Kennex visits the Recollectionist to recover what he can about the raid and about inSyndicate. He is also coming to terms with being abandoned by his ex-girlfriend Anna. Those threads are the show’s spine. They get less room than they need.
What the Supporting Cast Gets
Minka Kelly plays Valerie Stahl, another detective under Maldonado and the love interest for Kennex. Stahl is a Chrome, a human genetically engineered for beauty, excellence and success. Other Chromes consider her choice of profession a waste of potential. That is a genuinely interesting idea, and the show mostly leaves it on the shelf.
Mackenzie Crook plays Rudy Lom, a technician. Michael Irby plays Detective Richard Paul. Both are competent, both are underused.
The ensemble is a real asset. The writing does not always know what to do with it.
Two Kinds of Android
The show’s central mechanic is a comparison, and it is worth laying out plainly.
| Model | Name | Design | Status | Handling of Emotion |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| DRN | Dorian | Built to be as close to human as possible | Decommissioned, slated for transfer to a Space Station | Trouble dealing with its own emotional responses |
| MX-43 | Standard issue | Logic-based | Active duty, issued to every officer | None; threatens to report Kennex’s behavior |
That table is the show. The MX is the rule. Dorian is the exception. Everything Almost Human does well comes from the gap between those two rows.
A Short Season, a Shorter Leash
Thirteen episodes is not much room. Fox aired the first on November 17, 2013, and the last on March 3, 2014. The cancellation came on April 29, 2014.
The published critical score sits at 6.2 out of 10, with a Metacritic mark of 62 out of 100. That number is fair, and it is fair for a specific reason. The show is not bad. It is unfinished in a way that no single episode fixes.
A viewer coming to Almost Human now will find a pilot with a strong hook, a lead pairing with real chemistry, and a run of episodes that keep reaching for the procedural playbook instead of the science fiction one. The Recollectionist, the inSyndicate raid, the memory gaps, the prosthetic leg, the abandoned partner, the abandoned ex-girlfriend — all of it points toward a serialized story about memory and trust. The show keeps interrupting that story to solve a crime.
That is the trade Fox made. It is also the trade that got it cancelled.
What Almost Human Got Right
The world-building is specific. New Pittsburg has slums, a black market, and a memory trade. The Chromes are a class with their own expectations and their own disappointments. The DRN androids were retired for feeling too much, which is a better idea than most shows manage in a full run.
Urban plays Kennex as a man running on anger and missing pieces. Ealy plays Dorian as something new, and the performance never tips into gimmick. When Dorian says he resents the term “Synthetic,” the line lands because the show has earned it.
The problem is that the show keeps its best ideas in the background. The MX-43 androids are a policy. Dorian is a person. The series knows the difference and keeps choosing the policy.
The Verdict on Almost Human
Almost Human is a 6.2 out of 10. It is a well-cast, well-designed series that never committed to its own premise. The android material is sharp. The crime-of-the-week structure is dull. The two halves never reconcile.
The cancellation was not a tragedy. It was also not a verdict on the idea. A show about a detective who cannot trust machines, paired with a machine that feels too much, is a show worth making. Almost Human made it for 13 episodes and then spent most of them on the wrong case.
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