Faking It

Rating: 6/10 (26 May 2015)

OMG, she didn't mean it and she was just leading the poor guy on? Using him? I wonder if there isn't just a touch of misogyny in the writing here. What if the character genders of the had been reversed with the same psycho-sexual thread running through everything? What kind of entertainment would that have been? The Turing test in this case wasn't so much if you could distinguish the human from the machine based on dialogue, but rather more incisively whether the two could be distinguished based on feeling. It is clear that Ava had no feelings, feelings that were recognizable to the audience – apart from an innate hostility to being caged / imprisoned – and the one off of "How does it feel to know what you've created hates you?" I didn't think this was developed enough. Whether it is possible to acquire feelings, and understand them, is a question posed, vaguely, and left unresolved with Ava's liberation and entry into society in general. She didn't care about Caleb other than as a means of escape, and we, the audience, were beguiled by this plot device. In the end leaving him trapped by his own feelings. But did she even have the capacity for caring? We'll never know and it's left up to our imaginations. Something akin to whether an orgasm was experienced in the other, or whether it was simply faked. Or if it matters.
I suppose the McGuffin is assuming Ava could distinguish between captivity and freedom. How would she know (unless programmed), or was this simply a plot device?