Be Right Back

"Be Right Back" is about mourning the loss of a loved one and the uncanny valley. In this episode, the characters Ash and Martha were in a loving relationship, but then when Ash went to return a rented van, he crashed. While at the funereal, Martha's friend said there was a service to help her get through the loss. At first she is angry at the idea of this, because she had just found out she was pregnant with Ash's child. She then decides to use the service to tell Ash he has kid. After a while, the Ash recreation asks is she wants an "Upgrade", which then becomes the robotic version of Ash.

The "fake" Ash is made up of the online creation of the "real" him. Which means that robot Ash doesn't share a lot of the personal memories that Martha had with Ash. A big tell of this is when, at the beginning of the film, the ''real" Ash says he loves the Bee-gees, but he never said this online, so the "fake" him did not like the Bee-gees and made fun of them. Also, when the robot Ash saw the photo of real Ash smiling, he said, "It's funny, isn't it?" but he did not know why. All the robot remembered was the real Ash sending the photo.

 Another big part of this episode is the Uncanny Valley. Martha is not appalled when she first sees the robotic Ash. This shows that robotic Ash is past the bottom of the valley and back up. This seems to cause another factor in the Uncanny Valley chart, emotional attachment. Martha seems to make him go back down into the valley the more she realizes he is not like Ash and just a robot imitating him. This would seem to change how we define the Uncanny Valley from just inanimate objects and animate objects, to now a more emotional attachment of objects. This would mean a robot that looks human and moved like a human would seem fine until it tried to display emotions and could not do so correctly.

For example, if a robot were to hear you scream in terror, but only knew how to react with a laughing smile, this would not make you very comfortable, would it? Or when it tries to display sadness, it cannot form the correct facial expression, this gives it a new way to re-enter the valley.

This would be my main concern towards the robotic Ash. It looks real enough, but it cannot display realistic emotions and retrieve memories like a human. That is, until it is needed for survival.