History Series / AlmostHuman

* NiceHat: Rudy [[RunningGag repeatedly tries to wear a fedora]] when he goes undercover, but the other police keep telling him no.

* BiggusDickus: Dorian possesses one, apparently, judging by John's reaction ({{subverted}} in that he hasn't "used it"). Bonus points in that he's modeled on a [[BlackIsBiggerInBed black male human]].

* FantasticSlurs: Dorian does not appreciate John calling him a "synthetic". But on the flip side, Dorian will use and/or emphasize 'man' when he is taking a jab at humans, though he'll use it in such a way as to sound like he's speaking casually.

* RealityEnsues: Chromes are genetically engineered to be superior to humans in both physical and mental performance. Most people also view them as superior. As a result, they feel alienated from general society because most people view them as fundamentally different, and elite schools are often overwhelmingly populated by Chromes. They are also under constant pressure to excel in everything. All this leads to Chromes developing mental health problems at a far higher rate than the general population.

* WireDilemma: After Dorian is hit in the head by a bullet in 1x03, John is forced to clip a tendon ''in Dorian's head'' to bypass the damaged area and keep him from shutting down. He has Dorian talking him through it and only needs to clip the magenta one...except they're all pretty close together in color.
--> '''Dorian:''' "I said ''magenta''; that was lavender."
--> '''John:''' "That was magenta--there's [[LamePun fifty shades]] [[Literature/FiftyShadesOfGrey of purple]] in there!"

** Put the main characters' names together and you get [[Series/{{Scrubs}} "John Dorian"]], another well-known white guy paired with a BlackBestFriend.

* SoftRobot:Dorian the DRN series detective has a almost humanlike anatomy, probably because he like most "androids" were built to be as human like as possible.

* WeWillSpendCreditsInTheFuture: [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin Bitcoin]], a RealLife "digital cash", has been shown to be a common form of currency in the future.

* AIIsACrapshoot: Averted, it isn't. Most of the androids encountered are actually very helpful. Most of them may be soulless automatons that aren't even strictly bound by the ThreeLawsOfRobotics, but nevertheless aren't actively malevolent or (unintentionally) hurtful. More like your average personal computer, but with somewhat of a brain. Even the 'criminal' android The Bishop uses is less actively malevolent and more an obedient partner much like the [=MXs=].

* TenPercentOfYourBrain: Referenced in the fifth episode where an alleged [[ISeeDeadPeople spirit medium]] says her powers are the result of the Cerebellax procedure, which enhances use of brain pathways.

*** And Kennex claims that somebody's drug possession will get them time in [[ComicBook/JudgeDredd the cubes]], which is also an ActorAllusion for KarlUrban

* HowsYourBritishAccent? : In episode 11, Kennex pretends to be a New Zealander during an undercover mission to locate a cyber criminal. Actor Creator/KarlUrban is from New Zealand.

** And then the XRN "Danica" was revealed. That said... [[spoiler: she was probably intentionally built to be malevolent, to an extent. And she was still only following orders from her creator, demonstrating less sentience than her 'brother' Dorian.]]

* DoAndroidsDream: A big reason for the [=DRNs=]' decommissioning from police work was that [=DRNs=] were programmed to be as close to human as possible. A large part of the show Dorian's struggle is to be recognised as a person by the people around him. Dorian obviously displays all human-like tendencies, like fearing death, wanting to working as police and so on. [[spoiler: It's revealed in "Unbound" that the reason the [=DRNs=] were decommissioned was because some of them couldn't cope with emotions and ended up taking their own lives.]]

** Note, too, that while the creator of Dorian and [[EvilCounterpart Danica]] uses gendered pronouns to refer to them, Kennex specifically uses "[[ItIsDehumanizing it]]" to refer to Danica. Not suprising, considering how many people it slaughtered. However, when he later goes to comfort Dorian, he switches to "she" for his sake.

* OutOfOrder: FOX's practice of airing fledgling shows out of order continues. The "second" episode, "Skin", is actually episode 5, according to [=IMDb=]. So far the effects are John going from being pretty hard nosed and unfunny to him actually being more relaxed with Dorian and socially awkward. The possibility of skipping the early episodes would likely have explained this as well as John's therapy sessions about the bad raid.
** After airing episodes five through eight in production order after the pilot, episodes two and three by production order aired as numbers eight and six, respectively, bookending episode ten. Episode nine was then aired as episode nine, followed by episode four, with eleven through thirteen airing in order.

* AIIsACrapshoot: Averted, it isn't. So far, no evil android has been introduced, and even if that is going to happen one day (which isn't that unlikely), the androids encountered so far are actually pretty helpful. Most of them may be soulless automatons that aren't even strictly bound by the ThreeLawsOfRobotics, but nevertheless aren't actively malevolent or (unintentionally) hurtful. More like your average personal computer, but with somewhat of a brain. Even the 'criminal' android The Bishop uses is less actively malevolent and more an obedient partner much like [=MXs=].

* BiggusDickus: Dorian possesses one, apparently, judging by John's reaction ({{subverted}} in that he hasn't "used it").

* DeceasedParentsAreTheBest: John's father was also a cop. In episode 3, John tells a story about him and his father going ice fishing. When John slipped through the ice is father, of course, saved him.

** One serial killer targets bankers and televises their blackmail & deaths via internet chatroom complete with comments very similar to what you'd find in an actual chat room, particularly one populated by Occupy supporters ("He deserves it!" "All bankers deserve to die!" "Wait for a crowd for more collateral damage!").
** Anonymous gets a lookalike in Disrupt, a protest group who performs the same InternetCounterattack protests that Anonymous performs. [[spoiler: Subverted in that the real killer is a lone hacker out for revenge for personal reasons, ''not'' the actual Disrupt group.]] The situation that sets them off also bears some resemblance to the Trayvon Martin shooting (a paranoid security system fatally guns down a probably-harmless teenager, leading to "Justice for Aaron" protests) [=invoked=]

** [[WholePlotReference For fans of the film the show could be]], ''Film/IRobot'' TheSeries.

*** First episode has him pushing one out of a moving vehicle.
*** In Episode 8, he shoots an MX point blank. His reason that it 'wouldn't shut up', though Dorian teases that he shot it because it insulted him[Dorian].
** Paul appears to have an issue with androids, however, the temperament towards his own is questionable.

** Bang Bots or Sex Machines as oppose to its more formal title of Intimate Robot Companions.

** The XRN robots were designed to be physically and tactically superior to the [=MXs=], posses the intuitive intelligence of the [=DRNs=] and not be crippled by the [=DRNs=] emotional and "conscience" issues. All those features worked perfectly but the prototype also developed a psychopathic personality and at the first opportunity went on an OneManArmy killing rampage.
* GoodCopBadCop: John is brutal with their captured criminal, and Dorian is the one that is worried about the guy's civil rights.

* HollywoodPsych: In the pilot episode Kennex's official psychological evaluation describes him as suffering from "depression, mental atrophy, trauma onset, OCD, PTSD and psychological rejection of his synthetic body parts". Some of those seem valid, others are nonsense. Granted, definitions and terminology have probably changed by 2048, but by modern psychology out of those "mental atrophy" is not a scientific term, "trauma onset" is not something a person suffers from directly but refers to the period of time when a trauma takes place, and finally, absolutely nothing about Kennex's behaviour indicates him having Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder.

* ITakeOffenseToThatLastOne: Inverted with Kennex' psych evaluation. He agrees with the last item on the list.

* MaybeMagicMaybeMundane: An odd example of this is in "Blood Brothers," when the witness the team is protecting claims to be a medium psychic, thanks to an experimental surgery she had that theoretically develops untapped parts of the brain. Whether or not she's crazy or if her operation actually gave her psychic powers is not determined (and it doesn't really have any bearing on the plot), but she's able to use her ability to learn something she wouldn't otherwise know twice over the course of the episode, and she seems pretty convinced she has actual powers

** [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin BitCoin]] is portrayed in multiple episodes as the preferred medium of exchange for black market deals (and depicted as Credit-card- or USB-drive-sized devices), while it has been used for that most crooks prefer cash or pre-paid gift cards as most merchants won't take BTC and the exchange rate is constantly fluctuating. While it's plausible that cash has been eliminated in this future it's hard to believe that no physical currency exists anymore.

* NinetyPercentOfYourBrain: In Episode ''Brain Brothers'', one trial witness mentions having undergone the "Cerebellix Procedure", and Dorian explains that it's an unproven method to increase the percentage of brain usage in human beings.

* TakeThat: To hacktivists and internet trolls everywhere: "Real protestors stand up for what they believe in, they don't hide behind a computer screen."

** However, it is revealed that Dorians are programmed with a variant on the First Law which requires them to prevent a human being from committing suicide.

* WireDilemma: After Dorian is hit in the head by a bullet in 1x03, John is forced to clip a tendon ''in Dorian's head'' to bypass the damaged area and keep him from shutting down. He has Dorian talking him through it and only needs to clip the magenta one...except they're all pretty close together in colour.
--> '''Dorian:''' "I said 'magenta'; that was lavender."
--> '''John:''' "That was magenta--There's [[LamePun fifty shades]] [[Literature/FiftyShadesOfGrey of purple]] in there!"

'''Almost Human''' is a [[ScienceFiction sci-fi]] [[PoliceProcedural procedural]] that aired on {{Fox}}.

* HollywoodPsych: In the pilot episode Kennex's official psychological evaluation describes him as suffering from "depression, mental atrophy, trauma onset, OCD, PTSD and psychological rejection of his synthetic body parts". Some of those seem valid, others are nonsense. Granted, definitions and terminology have probably changed by 2048, but by modern psychology out of those "mental atrophy" does not mean anything specific, "trauma onset" is not something a person suffers from directly but refers to the period of time when a trauma take place, and finally, absolutely nothing about Kennex's behaviour indicates him having Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder.

* HollywoodPsych: In the pilot episode Kennex's official psychological evaluation describes him as suffering from "depression, mental atrophy, trauma onset, OCD, PTSD and psychological rejection of his synthetic body parts". Some of those seem valid, others are nonsense. Granted, definitions and terminology have probably changed, but by modern psychology out of those "mental atrophy" does not mean anything specific, "trauma onset" is not something a person suffers from directly but refers to the period of time when a trauma take place, and finally, absolutely nothing about Kennex's behaviour indicates him having Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder.

** Within the fourth episode, Rudy keeps trying to add a fedora to the clothing he wears when undercover, and the others keep shooting that down.

* RunningGag: Every couple episodes a [=MX=] unit is destroyed or severely damaged in a humorous way.