LOVE, DEATH & ROBOTS: POP SQUAD (2021)

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Philip Gelatt has outdone himself in writing what is unbelievably (or very believably) the dumbest fucking thing I've ever seen animated. It's difficult to put into words just how absurdly stupid every single spinning cog in the braindead machine of LOVE, DEATH & ROBOTS turns, but POP SQUAD in particular needs seeing to be believed. But let's give this a try anyway.

The world is apparently overpopulated--this is barely hinted at and completely relegated to dialogue while the animation visually affirms the opposite, that the world could not be any more barren. No, seriously, the majority of these scenes have maybe two, three people in one area at any given time aside from a gala. The protagonist and their not-wife sit in a large, empty room by themselves. The protagonist and his cop buddies stand out in a rainy street completely deserted. the mother and her child at the end live in a cottage by themselves in a ridiculously massive tract of land. And on top of all this, society in the future has accomplished living in the skies which outright doubles, triples, or even quadruples the amount of usable living space for humanity. But no, the world is overpopulated, so pregnancy is outlawed.

And i love that aspect, too--that pregnancy is illegal. It's not regulated, it's not suppressed... it's just outright against the law to have a baby. When the not-wife was having her blue Gatorade hospital treatment, I assumed that this was some sort of embyro suppressant being pumped into her, but it turns out to just be fruit flavored live-forever serum. so, what the hell's exactly going on, then? Are there government mandated birth control packages being sent out? Does President Bbama VII mail Trojans monthly? I guess people are just left to their own devices to have sex and face the consequences, and the consequences are some government agent walks in and caps your kids.

You know how parents etch the height of their growing children on the doorframe? I had to etch a new height for my eyebrows when POP SQUAD revealed that the "POP" in the title refers to toddler brainmatter. That's fucking awesome. The government enlists regular ass human beings to go blast away children and expects them psychologically fit and good to kill fifty more before retirement. Where is the government even finding these people, insane asylums? Prisons? What kind of psycho applies for this? Does INFANT EXECUTOR look THAT good on a resume? I mean Jesus Christ, how did this concept actually get off the writing room table? Did Philip Gelatt even realize what he was pitching?

"Yeah so there's these cops right, and they kill kids."

"Why do they kill kids--to protect the adults' immortality or something?"

"Huh? Oh, sure, whatever. Hey let's write another REDDIT robot episode."

And then there's the mom at the very end, the centerpiece jewel of this Trent Reznor dubbed crown of shit. Mom goes into town to buy children toys from a toy shop which I guess the kid killer squad have just never considered honeypotting--or have they? She hikes it back to her cottage in the middle of nowhere. She's tracked by our protagonist who opens with "It's okay, sit. i just want to ask you some questions" with his GUN drawn. Mom immediately breastfeeds because fuck it need to get one last titty suck in for the child before she bites it. In the middle of their conversation, she makes a positive comment about the child killer smiling, and then in the next breath follows it with a negative comment about the apparent dead light in his eyes. I don't know, she just dumps motherly philosophical sludge right out of her mouth. Protagonist leaves, blasts his companion who i guess tracked him here for whatever reason too, and then dies. The police no doubt arrive on scene later to blast the mom and her kid to solve overpopulation. I'm sure if the story hadn't forgotten about not-wife they would've blasted her away too.

Anyway, take all of this incompetent storytelling, pair it with your usual cinematic score slop + cinematic video game cutscene slop, and you've got yourself not just the single worst episode of LOVE, DEATH & ROBOTS but likely one of the worst episodes of anything ever. In the hands of a competent, perhaps there is something to be said in the contrast of a society that ostensibly need not solve overpopulation but does so anyway. But at the same time--okay? So what? Like what's the point for comparison here, China? Yeah, China's what I think of when I think deserted fucking cities. What a complete unapologetic piece of shit.