The new Apple TV Plus sci-fi show introduces us to a world in which the world is full of handy robot assistants... but there might be more to them than meets the eye. This show is Sunny which premiered on Wednesday, July 10.
Sunny episode 1, entitled "He's in Refrigerators", arrived alongside the second episode on that date, and it sets up the world of the show as well as our main character.
Judging by Sunny episode 1, this show could prove to be full of twists and turns as well as some dark humor. After only one half-hour episode, we've met some deceitful characters and some potential problems down the road.
So to ensure you didn't miss a beat or a detail, this Sunny episode 1 recap will remind you of everything that happened throughout "He's in Refrigerators". Spoilers ensue.
The disappearance of Flight 405
We begin by briefing seeing a robot assistant attacking people and killing one person, before the voice of someone else says that they'll have to cover it up.
After the introductory credits, we're with Suzie Sakamoto (Rashida Jones) in a hotel conference room. She has flashbacks to saying goodbye to her husband Masa (Hidetoshi Nishijima) and son, before the two get on a flight... which the flashbacks also reveal has disappeared.
Suzie is in the conference room alongside her mother-in-law Noriko (Judy Ongg) and someone taking information about what Masa was wearing before the flight. The room is full of other families doing the same, for the people missing on Flight 405. Suzie has to use an in-ear translation device to communicate, and she barely remembers what her husband was wearing. We learn that Masa worked for a robotics company in the refrigerators department.
The hotel hosts a tear ceremony, in which the survivors' families call the phones of their disappeared loved ones and cry to the answering message voice. When Suzie calls Masa, though, the phone keeps ringing... so his phone isn't turned off.
Around the conference center, Suzie keeps noticing a strange old man. Noriko says that he works for the Yakuza, and they reach out in times of grief... but they'll always want something in return later.
When Suzie returns home that night, one of Masa's colleagues called Yuki (Jun Junimura) is waiting for her with a "gift". It's a robot called Sunny which was created by Masa specifically for Suzie — he didn't actually work in refrigerators after all. Suzie doesn't want it, as her mother was killed by a self-driving car, but she reluctantly accepts it when Yuki teaches her how to turn it off. As soon as Yuki departs, she does just that and shoves it in a closet with cleaning supplies.
Suzie has some wine and calls her husband again, and like before the call doesn't go to the answering message. However, when Suzie returns to the living room, Sunny has somehow woken up and escaped the closet. She immediately puts it back to sleep.
Sometime later Suzie trips over her son's toys and, once again, Sunny has turned itself back on. Suzie refuses to let the robot clean up the toys, and it doesn't touch the wine she spilled on her tumble.
A new friend
Suzie goes to the company to find Yuki, and it's having a Christmas party. She gets taken to a different Yuki by mistake, and he drunkenly says that Masa was a tough boss, before getting apologetic. Instead of finding the right Yuki, Suzie finds an open door and wanders into the company's basement.
There, in the "incubator" section, she finds various rooms that look like normal places but with viewing panels. She enters one of them which has some puppies in it... and notices blood tracks on the carpet and splatters on the walls — this seems to be where the first scene took place. She hurriedly leaves.
Suzie goes to the bar that her and her husband used to frequent where a new bartender, Mixxy (annie the clumsy) is trying to learn the cocktails (and botching the job). They get talking but Suzie tells Mixxy that her and her husband just broke up. Mixxy tells her that it takes 21 days to adapt to change, and it's only been a week.
Later, still talking, Mixxy tells Suzie that her hair is falling out from stress, and also that her and her girlfriend recently broke up. Mixxy elaborates that she now "gets intimate" with her own personal robot, because it's possible to hack the programming to unlock new tasks. In fact, a recent accidental death of a politician was apparently actually the result of one such hack.
Mixxy implies that there's a cover-up of people being killed by the robots, and that she turns hers fully off instead of putting it in sleep mode (which is how Suzie was leaving Sunny). In a panic, Suzie hurriedly departs. As she returns home, someone is watching footage of her, and sends it to another mystery party with the message "we're on her".
When Suzie returns home, there are red tracks on her carpet... but it's just from Sunny tracking the spilled wine about. Suzie wastes no time in putting Sunny in a bag and taking it to a river, however when she tries to toss it in, the robot is too heavy. So she just abandons it there instead.
In bed, Suzie researches her husband and also the politician who was killed, noticing red track stains in his carpet like she's seen twice already today.
The next morning Suzie awakens, and Sunny has somehow found its way home once again. Suzie prepares to attack it with a baseball bat, but Sunny does a hand gesture that reminds Suzie of the one that Masa made before getting on the plane.
