Cupertino Recap: We Are the Robots

Cupertino
Juno
Season 1 Episode 3
Editor’s Rating ★★★★
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I have a question for you. Whenever Bo appears on Cupertino — and he appears an awful lot this week, even when people don’t want him to — how do you see him? Is he a machine? Or is he a friendly autonomous entity? Do you even see him as a “him”? Would “it” be more appropriate?

I’m going to stick with “him,” because that’s how Bo presents — and also to honor Rob McClure’s fully human performance as this sentient supercomputer. He’s so puckish! And have you noticed McClure’s many quirky facial expressions and hand gestures as Bo? These are the kinds of tics that AI-generated characters have gotten better at mimicking over the past couple of years. They coax us into thinking that the AI agents we talk to are real … ish. 

This week’s Cupertino cuts to the heart of one of the biggest ethical and legal issues surrounding the tech industry these days. How much agency can we really ascribe to AI agents, and, by extension, how much responsibility for their behavior can we pin on their creators? It’s not just Bo who sparks this debate within the newly renamed Price, Siffre & Associates (or “PSA,” as I’ll call them). The lawyers’ case this week is a doozy, involving a chatbot who may or may not have convinced a teenager to stab his father 44 times.

This is the case that Natalia Boutella dropped into Michael and Olivia’s hands at the end of last week’s episode, to test their mettle and to see if they’re worthy of her investment. She described it then simply as “a motion to dismiss” and said that her involvement in the case wasn’t intended to vex her ex — or at least not entirely.

The truth is more complicated. As we find out over the course of several days of testimony, the man who wants this case tossed out of court is Kirk Boutella (Fisher Stevens), the outspoken tech billionaire behind Chatlike, an edgy AI chat service whose main attraction is Lady Marguerite, a sexy goth character whose conversations with users are designed to foster feelings of deep, intimate connection. That’s what happened with 13-year-old Daniel Mackenzie (Zachary Golinger), who responded to his father’s threats to disable Chatlike by killing him — after getting advice from Lady Marguerite on which body parts to stab. 

The Cupertino writers are really cooking with this case, which once again sees multiple reversals of fortune, with Chatlike presenting airtight arguments that PSA punctures and vice versa. Courtroom dramas work best when we pull for our heroes while also seeing the opposition’s point. It’s tough to dispute Chatlike’s positions, which are threefold: (1) Marguerite’s more seductive qualities are supposed to be aimed at adults, but Daniel lied about his age. (2) Everything Marguerite told Daniel about how to murder a man is easily Google-able. (3) Daniel didn’t kill his father because of Marguerite; he did it because his whole family situation was messed up.

It’s here that Natalia’s insistence that this case isn’t entirely about hurting her ex-husband proves true. The title of this episode is “Juno,” which is the name of Daniel’s mother, the one suing Chatlike. To rattle Juno (Marin Ireland) and her new lawyers, the Chatlike attorneys pull a couple of sleazy moves. First, they bring in Nichole Ferebee (Renée Elise Goldsberry), an attorney who broke Michael’s heart years ago by accepting his marriage proposal and then leaving him for a partner at his dad’s firm. Then Nichole goes after Juno, who was at her “work flirt” friend Peter’s house when a desperate Daniel called her three times in the hour before the murder. 

This week, we start to see Natalia as more than just a rich, vengeful divorcée. She has a law degree from the University of San Francisco. She helped Kirk build his company when he was a struggling Valley newbie. And she hates seeing a woman’s reputation get dragged through the mud. She wants Michael to protect Juno and eviscerate Kirk. So he does just that, using some old Chatlike emails (provided by Natalia) to show that Kirk specifically asked his team to target 12- to 15-year-olds with Marguerite. He also finds an email where Kirk insults a nephew with multiple sclerosis, after he used that nephew’s MS to curry sympathy from the judge. Ouch.

This whole case is ultimately about something that is emerging as Cupertino’s core question: Who bears responsibility for the terrible outcomes of emerging technologies? We’re just three episodes in, and already this show is shading in some of the nuances of how the tech giants operate, with nondisclosure and noncompete agreements obscuring the truth of what they’re doing and with financial shell games that hide where their money actually is. It’s not too surprising that PSA wins Juno’s case but receives no settlement, because Chatlike immediately declares bankruptcy. Instead, Michael and Olivia get their money from Natalia, who cuts them a check for six months’ worth of rent and salary. That’s how Silicon Valley runs: on rounds of funding, not traceable profits.

Which brings us back to Bo, and to Cupertino’s emerging MVP, Christy Palladino. The firm ends up taking Bo’s case, in part because he’s offering real money. (His retainer pays for a furnished conference room and hallway!) But also, this virtual guy is just so darned persistent, popping back up on PSA’s computers even after Michael hires their previous client Vik to scrub the network. While Michael and Olivia are working on Juno’s case, Christy swings into action to help Bo, making clever use of all of her connections to the IRL Silicon Valley: the cops, valets, waitresses, and construction workers AI can’t replace.

Bo needs to incorporate to be a legal entity? Fine. Christy calls a few friends — one of whom works at Hooters — to be Bo’s board. Bo needs someone from Colt AI’s recently fired safety team to sue on his behalf? No problem. Christy tracks down Calvin Settlemeyer (Andy Grotelueschen), the former team leader, now running a vineyard on land not far from where Christy’s grandfather once owned a chicken farm. 

The Bo story line hits a couple of intriguing dead ends in this episode. First, Calvin surreptitiously directs Christy to look for a woman named Cokie Ficarra, who turns out to be the alleged leader of an anti-tech domestic terrorist organization known as the Enders — and therefore someone the authorities want PSA to avoid. Then later, a woman named Rosetta Lane (Erin Darke), who works in Colt AI’s public relations department (“Kind of,” she chirps), intimidatingly wanders into PSA’s secret unfinished backrooms (“Very deconstructionist,” she smirks) and offers to help the partners delete Colt’s rogue agent. 

Now let me ask this: How do you see Rosetta? As played by Darke, she is clipped and cutting in a way that seems coldly robotic, even if she is always smiling a little. Bo is more “human” in his way, while Rosetta — a representative of Silicon Valley’s insular, unforgiving culture — comes off as casually cruel. 

But make no mistake: Neither of these individuals is your friend. 

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• Jackie Earle Haley returns as Lincoln Cogswell, the folksy judge who handled the S-Talk case in the series premiere. He’s still making his rulings fairly and calmly (“Yuuup, overruled,” he says in very chill tones), though he also makes his own personal take clear. When Olivia tries to get a witness to speculate on what might’ve motivated Daniel, the defense objects and Judge Cogswell sighs, “Sustained … regrettably.”

• Before Michael and Olivia become the lead counsel on Juno’s lawsuit, Natalia expects them to work with her original lawyer, a civil rights legend named Austin Sullivan (played by a very funny Dakin Matthews). Sullivan never misses an opportunity to turn a case into a cause. His attempt to make Juno’s suit into an indictment of racist policing is misguided enough, but it’s when he tells Michael, “Tomorrow, you should wear a Kente stole,” that he gets fired. (Still … Wanna bet we see Sullivan again? The Kings do love to bring their wackier characters back.) 

• Judge Cogswell patiently handles all of Austin Sullivan’s objections and exceptions, gently reminding him of the existence of the court reporter. “Even when you don’t say ‘exception,’ Nancy notes it. That’s why she’s waggling her fingers over there.” 

• Put a pin in this: During Natalia and Michael’s heart-to-heart about their respective exes, they eye each other for a long time before hesitantly saying good night. I suspect we won’t have to wait too long for this particular Chekhov’s gun to go off.