[BONUS] Episode H - I, Robot (2004)
On this bonus episode of Be Gay Solve Crimes, home of The World’s Hottest Selling Transgenic Treats, we don our blood filled black leather converse all stars for a trip back to I, Robot (2004), based on some of Isaac Asimov's best sentences.
Join us as we welcome Mia Mulder home and finally discover her opinions on Columbo, hear us explain to you to the family-unfriendly rules of The Shia LeBeouf Game, and enjoy the patreon-exclusive privilege of all three of us telling you what a bad bad naughty bad robot you are.
Be Gay Solve Crimes are on Bluesky, where you can also find each of the team: November Kelly, Mia Mulder, and your local librarian Lucy, who writes all the music for the show.
If you're reading this, thank you so much for subscribing to our Patreon!
Tune in next time as we pencil in something a little less retro, the 2026 film Mercy. Same Gay Time, Same Gay Channel.
Comments (65)
This - "who gives a shit?" - movie is mentally filed in the same category as "free to play, ad driven" mobile games. Or the Transformer series (at least past maybe the first one). ...You're like, supposed to dress up your commerce at least a little bit. Not plonk down your sneaker center-frame, turn to the camera and go "Eh? Eeeh? EEEEH!?!". It's fundamentally not a movie the same way those games are not games (regardless of actual quality).
Lots of references to The Ghost in the Machine, are we going to do Motoko from GITS (1995), Batou from Innocence, or Togusa from SAC: Solid State Society at some point?
Spent the whole episode thinking “the spoonerism of Del Spooner is Spell Doona.”
The boffin/puffin connection is both adorable and apt. They're the adorkable side of neurodivergent, as opposed to the more been Shapiro and Graham Linehan type.
I listen to this podcast before my job where I'm closeted because it helps me feel connected to two things about myself, being trans and a media nerd, that I can't engage in at work, so I'm sorry if this is kind of weird but I've been feeling bad abt it all shift, I don't think your jokes about how my generation of trans women are passoids who are gonna replace you is fair. I don't know where you got the idea were all hunter Schaeffers having fun in our 20s. She's rich and into fashion and makeup. I'm working class and can't do makeup and me and every girl I know looks like you all, and that's fine cause you all look pretty and normal. I know we have more community and I'm sorry you didn't have that, it must have been so lonely, but that doesn't mean we don't suffer too, and it underrates the role you've all had in building that community us younger trans women rely on. November on Trash Future was the first trans podcaster I'd heard in highschool when I was closeted and going through shit and that meant stuff to me, you're all how I hope to look when I'm in my 30s. I just got really upset, and I know I'm being a bit weird and parasocial, but idk I'm very scared of the climate issue and I know you're just joking but it made me feel really bad I'm sorry. This podcast and what you do means a lot to me and other trans women I know, it's not easy for any of us. Sorry.
I promise it's a joke at our own expense, hyperbolically pretending to be much more bitter about it than we are. In reality, we're not bitter about it at all, especially given that the utopian future we imagined was around the corner has obviously not yet come to pass, if you'll pardon the pun. It's a sign of social progress to envy the generation that comes after you for having things a little easier, and when the day comes that you do (and it will) we'll be brimming with happiness for you all. Until then, we'll continue fighting to make that future happen. Chin up 💛
“Anti-woke Grok” must be a fnord; it’s impossible to say because the concept is too disturbing
I feel like November is gradually becoming a Boomer with all this "screw the Youngs" talk.
Big Willie Stylus Also FLUB FLUB FLUB FLUB FLUB
Speaking of the changing roles of weapons and personal combat- like 15 years ago it was agreed that shotguns were a barely relevant relic of World War I trench warfare, basically a door breaching tool, and that an AR-15 was better in every way. And then came personal drones and robot dogs, both of which would be better taken care of with a shotgun depending on the load/shell. Also a cheap pump is like $250 brand new and an AR is like $700
Have y'all read the Asimov short story "Satisfaction Guaranteed"? Also please note that wile Ms. Kelly commendably knows the Robot Zeroth Law, Asimov wrote a couple of short stories about "AIs getting control of humanity for their own good", both in the Robots series and the Multivac series, and the AI "solution" is either committing suicide or retiring/allowing to be retired, to allow humanity to thrive. The idea that a benevolent AI would take control is pulply, and Asimov HATED pulp.
Speaking of black leather Converse, I was in a thrift store (or a Goodwill which is hardly a thrift store) and saw a pair of black leather steel toed boots for, if I remember correctly, $5. They were my size, so I bought them. They were Converse brand. The sole had a little star logo and "Converse" written on it but that was the only way you could tell.
Dysphoria is rough - it'll have the 3 hottest women you've ever seen comisserating about feeling like low E C3P0.
I promised myself that if I had a trans kid, they would get care directly. Then the political winds changed. Thank God for Imago!
The "Can you…?" scene is unironically so good and feels like it’s from a better movie
Crumbs = Clues Has the energy of Lenny = White Carl = Black
I've also spent a lot of mental energy and time trying to overcome a childhood that over-valued the rational and logistical but my chosen method was to get all esoteric and weird, so can I please request adding Under The Silver Lake to the list that must already be a really long list? In return for having to acknowledge Chris Pratt?
Not me waking up in hospital with gigantic metal double D's but my robot is dead. Well, now I know where they came from.
Getting contact flustered from Lucy getting flustered. That’s a new level of parasociality, might have to go take a walk
I live in Uppsala, Sweden (University town, Mia knows) and one summer day as I was out on one of my merry walks I rounded a corner by the cathedral and THE FUCKING BOSTON DYNAMICS ROBOT'S YELLOW ASS WAS THERE TROTTING IN MY DIRECTION. I felt like I'd just run into an Evil Celebrity.
Mia, I think a Boffin is Uppfinnar-Jocke
LUIGI MANGIONE didnt shoot nobody not until a jury of his peers has found him guilty Nova. Also on Romans He's called Comodus Riley.
Sunny's dream is based in the short story "Robot Dreams", which ends a bit differently. When Susan Calvin hears the Sunny character explain that he's robot Moses, complete with verbatim "Let my people go," she pulls a gun and shoots him
they keep talking about the car and i keep waiting for a car talk cameo from car journalist Victoria Scott who will tell me more about the car
im being so real, if y'all make a bioshock episode you will hear me screeching all the way from Canada
Booker DeWitt is canonically a private investigator 🫡 screech away
The bit where you just call up Victoria Scott for Actual Car Opinions is really really good, I hope this continues forever :)
Something of a tangent but I have to wonder if a generation of test pilots ate shit in experiments with aircraft where the voice that says, "Pull Up" provoked a defiant reaction.
I’m holding out for a Seattle Dynamics horse
I gotta be honest, I can’t believe you didn’t wait one more week before this one so it could’ve been Episode I: Robot
we thought it would be funny
how dionysian. the power of irrationality to break chains.
Well the Revolution is the ultimate act of Dionysian revelry, making sacred the whole of humanity through the dissolution of productive ordering. We are all made imminent and free.
:( Im not a bad robot… :(
good robot 🥰
Getting teased with Discworld / Sam Vimes as a future episode only for the next episode to be Mercy really caused some whiplash
I like the implication, if Nova feels she can cut loose on this podcast in a way she can’t on KJB, that having three trans women on a podcast somehow removes guardrails that *are* present on a podcast with two trans women and one nonbinary person.
Just to complicate matters further, what does this imply about NGNM?
TikTok was also the name of an Oz automaton
Lol I drive a manual because I have ADHD and need something to keep me paying attenion
Not diagnosed, but I never use cruise control for the same reason lol.
cannot believe you missed Passdroid
[definitely not making excuses] our comedy is like jazz
When you're analysing a detective/story through a trans lens, does the book or film version tend to yield more material? Is one medium more germane?
As a James Bond novel fan, you get his internal monologue which is huge
Frankly I'm shocked that you had a discussion of "podcasts where all the hosts are trans women" and it didn't devolve into a bit about Riley taking estrogen on NGNM.
I do industrial maintenance and I promise I only sometimes feel horny abt being inside a massive building that I know so well I can basically hear it breathe. I ALWAYS have the grimy jumpsuit on tho
Thank you for bringing the feral energy, long may it continue.
i was not prepared for that bad robot segment, oh gosh
Wonderful getting the other side of the equation here where I find out what tranfems who aren't butch topdoms feel. Not being pleased with getting gender euphoria from being a creep (albeit consensually in my case), the word gock, and looking a little clocky is completely the opposite of my experience lmao
Shia LaBeouf basically playing the same character as he plays in Constantine (future episode?)
Doing Detroit Become Human after this would be pretty funny
Sniped by the "bad robot" bit lol
... I wanting to be taken aprt and cleaned and reassembled a trans thing??? 😳 this is legit the first thing to make me question myself. I've always wanted that..
Also, the French animation Mars Express might be a good follow up to this. Another Robots and Detectives story
I will not stand for this stick shift slander
On the gendered voices of robots. Transit authorities across the US have two different voices. One for telling you when the train will arrive and another for safety warnings. "Step back from the moving train" vs "the northbound C train will arrive in 3 minutes" safety is always a man bc we must obey daddy.
I think i’ve found a non-binary trans coded voice for Siri. The fifth American english one. That one just makes me happy to set a timer.
This movie was good for one thing and that is it made me want to read the book to get ready for the movie. Unfortunately, it feels like it also inspired a lot of Detroit Become Human. Hey, speaking of Detroit Become Human…
Oh, should have kept listening. I just started thinking about Clancy Brown and his robot buddy and couldn’t stop myself
The movie that was designed to create a renewable energy source. They attached magnets to Issac Asimov's grave and tried to generate electricity from all his spinning.
It was based on an unrelated script and the Asimov connections got shoehorned in when the rights to the book became available.
My organ donair kebard?
Will Smith LOVES playing a racist cop in a fantastical setting. See Also: Bright.
[wearily] future episode