Summary
Upload’s mystery deepens after an eye-opening reveal, along with a humorous plot point that highlights Kevin Bigley and Zainab Johnson’s comedic chemistry.
This recap of Amazon’s Upload season 2, episode 5, “Mind Frisk” contains spoilers.
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Upload season 2, episode 5 recap
Nathan (Robbie Amell) is woken up by the A.I. Guy’s (Owen Daniels) fire alarm system. When he tries to wake Ingrid, she is either the deepest sleeper in the world or has a wicked case of African sleep sickness. Oh, wait, we forgot. She is out of the sex suit and eating ice cream watching late-night television.
The brand of the LUDDS staying in New York City is having a meeting and the rift between Upload’s least favorite couple. Nora (Andy Allo) and Matteo (Paulo Costanzo) disagree on if Lake View should be destroyed or not. She makes him sleep in the hall, and another version of the Roomba sex bot voices their displeasure.
Ivan is the Ingrid in this equation, and the sexually charged vacuum is Nathan.
Meanwhile, after Ingrid (Allegra Edwards) doesn’t get what she wants from Lucy (Andrea Rosen) by screaming like a child growing up on Full House, she talks of her virtual goggles and heads to a Horizon meeting. There, they introduce Mind Frisk. A potentially dangerous technological advance that will scan and listen to uploads thoughts a LUDDS defense to cyber-attacks against Horizon’s greatest asset. If they find something, it will be deleted.
Also, there is a storyline where Luke has a case of digital insomnia because he skips sleeping. After all, Horizon is stealing his dreams. He tells Aleesha, who thinks he is paranoid, but Lucy confirms it. All Upload’s dreams are proactive property of Horizon. The best ones can be sold to Hollywood to make a film. The smaller ones are streamed online and sold as binge content.
When Lucy begins to take pictures of a shirtless Luke, he hears it and screams for them to get out of his head. Lucy makes Aleesha power him down, so he sleeps. If not, he will have a system-wide crash. Of course, when she tries, he escapes out of Lake View. Of course, we all know Luke is constantly on the prowl for physical gratification.
We didn’t know that he was constantly having sexual fantasies of Aleesha as he slept. She finds this out when someone shows her a porn video online of Aleesha and Luke, sold and licensed, of course, by the good people of Horizon. All are available on Dream Hub, where Lucy takes a peek and admires how Luke is quite the drill sergeant.
Let’s go to the 10,054th floor, shall we? Ingrid has digital baby fever, the first of its kind since Ally McBeal. She finds the entire experience of being given a baby satisfying because she gets what she wants. However, she finds the whole process tedious. And of course, if she wants to feed or bathe them, they are charged a fee for the experience. Every couple of hours, the child grows, and we see he is the A.I. Guy at different stages of physical development, from beginning to end.
Later, Nathan and Nora attempt to hack her boss Craig’s computer to put Mind Frisk out of its selfish misery. When they crack it, Nathan accidentally thinks passionate thoughts about Nora that she can now hear. Nora, when Nathan wants to search for who is thinking about him with the Mind Frisk technology, says, “There’s the narcissist I know and love,” quickly realizing what she just said.
The ending
Nathan acknowledges it, but before pursuing anything, the search ends and produces one match. Mr. Choak is thinking about Nathan. That can’t read his thoughts because he purchased the highest security level. They manage to bypass it, listening to his conversation and thoughts. He is talking to the assassin who tried to kill Andy. He is now uploaded, and he wants a spot at Lake View, or he will speak. Choak has his goons taken away because he is no threat since Nathan has no memories left, so nothing to tie him to anything.
Nathan and Nora now know Mr. Choak was behind the attacks.
But why?
Nathan finds out why. He saw Ingrid’s father and Mr. Choak walking down a hallway when reviewing his stored memories. He hears Choak say he saw him. So, he will need to get rid of him.
The show ends where Nathan stumbles upon the memory of calling Nora to tell her he loves her but decides not to forward it to her. They also rig Mind Frisk to audio Choak’s thoughts so that everyone can hear them. This forces Horizon to shut down the program.
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