Pop Squad

**Pop Squad (👁️🎩🦖)** is the third episode for the second volume, and the overall twenty-first episode of LOVE DEATH + ROBOTS.

3 Symbols:

1. Eye
2. Hat
3. Dinosaur Toy

## Episode Synopsis

A cop charged with fighting the scourge of overpopulation is haunted by the human toll of his work.

## Plot

A detective, an officer, and two armored policemen have breached a run-down looking apartment. It is filled with cockroaches, dishes have been in the sink for months, and the adults have made bassinets out of drawers. The detective takes a long, deep drag of his cigarette as the officer shows him the photos of the family taken for the prosecutor.

“Resourceful” is what Detective Briggs tells his partner, Officer Pentle. The two armored policemen, Mantus and Soran, are interrogating the mother, Maria. The police drag Maria away and Pentle ushers two young boys into a room.

Maria pleads with Briggs as she is escorted out, saying that the children still need to have breakfast.

Once the mother has left the room, Briggs walks up to the two young boy and pulls out his gun. One of the boys holds up a stuffed dinosaur, and Briggs says “Sorry, kids.” then shoots the both of them. In his air-travelling car, Briggs hears the police radio give out the report of what had happened, and states that the two children were aged eight and ten.

Briggs leaves the scummy streets of the bottom of the city and heads up to a series of skyscrapers, where upon his vehicle circles the tallest of the bunch. Later, he watches as his girlfriend Alice sings a solo in front of a crowd of the elite. After her performance, Alice and Briggs talk and Briggs says that if they weren't going to live forever, he would marry her. She responds by saying if they weren't going to live forever she'd let him get her pregnant, to which Briggs is shocked that she would say such a thing. She tells him to not be so serious, then heads off back into the crowd, led by her friend Ruth.

It turns out, this world is controlled by the rich. The detective leads the Pop Squad, a gang of goons that hunts down breeders. The rich control the resources and forbid anyone from having unregistered offspring. The rule exists so that people can live forever as long as they keep the population down.

Briggs begins to have a crisis of conscience, especially after his Alice shows off a stuffed animal, similar to the dead child's, received as a joke gift commemorating her conquering the "dinosaur's" vocal solo (in reference to the composer).

The next day, he goes with Alice to get her rejoo treatment: the liquid that is the key to living forever, and also makes people infertile. On the ride home, she wants to have sex with him, but Briggs, in a state of mental distraught, refuses. Alice calls him "Such a bore."

Unfortunately, Briggs can’t keep his mind off what he has done, so much so that on his next job, he lets another breeder, a father who says "You child killer... murderer... coward... you fucking monster!" nearly kill him with a pistol he had stolen from one of the policemen. The father gets shot in the head, but Briggs just stands there distraught, the bullet having grazed his cheek.

As he has a panic attack in his car, he looks over at Alice's stuffed animal and discovers its seller. He visits the store where the toy was bought, Ipswitch Collectibles. In the process, he spots a young woman who buys a box full of toys and follows her home. She lives in an old shack in the woods, and he finds her inside the house playing with her daughter. He asks her to sit. She then breastfeeds her child in front of him, while answering his questions about why she had a child. Her daughter, Melanie, she explains, makes life worth living instead of just being in love with yourself.

The mother, Eve, reveals how she is 218 years old, and the child makes the world seem bright for her. Everything Melanie witnesses is something new, and Eve gets to see the world through her bright eyes. Melanie states this is the opposite of Briggs' own cold, dead eyes.

Briggs smiles at the child, and Melanie states that he feels something, to which Briggs just looks down, trying to deny any empathy he might have. He feels a little bit of joy as the child asks to play with his hat. As he hands the hat to her, the mother lunges for the gun, but is unable to pry it away from Briggs’ grasp. The cop pushes her to the table, points the gun at the toddler Melanie, and the mother begs him to take her life instead of her daughter’s.

Briggs hesitates and looks at his pistol in horror. In the end, he walks away, leaving the mother and daughter alone. Upon leaving the house, as he steps onto the porch, he sees Pentle at the entrance of the front garden, directly in front of him, having apparently tracked him down. As their gazes meet, Melanie can be heard crying loudly inside the house. After a tense moment of silence, both draw their guns, and in the very same instant, fire upon each other. Briggs’ bullet goes through Pentle's throat. Pentle’s blast is lodged into Briggs’ chest. As he staggers down the garden path and passes Pentle, who gives her last breath before dying, he notices the rain, and looks up, feeling the raindrops hitting his face. There is a tiny bit of life in his eyes, after having done something good. Breathing a sigh of relief, he closes his eyes. After a brief moment of respite, happy with the choice he made, and enjoying the feeling of rain hitting his face, he suddenly succumbs to his injuries and collapses onto the ground.

## Cast

* Nolan North at the Internet Movie Database as Detective Briggs
* Michelle C. Bonilla at the Internet Movie Database as Officer Pentle
* Ike Amadi at the Internet Movie Database as Officer Mantus
* Noshir Dalal at the Internet Movie Database as Officer Soran
* Elodie Young at the Internet Movie Database as Alice
* Emily O'Brien at the Internet Movie Database as Eve
* Debra Cordona at the Internet Movie Database as Maria
* Andrew Hawks at the Internet Movie Database as Father
* Jennifer Hale at the Internet Movie Database as Propietor
* Piotr Michael at the Internet Movie Database as Police Radio
* Dendrie Taylor at the Internet Movie Database as Ruth

## Trivia

* The toy store Ipswitch Collectibles later reappears in the episode *The Drowned Giant*, possibly hinting at a shared continuity between the two episodes.
* The life shown in one's eyes is a key theme in the episode, with Briggs' eyes being shown countless times throughout the episode and them always holding an absence of life. Melanie's eyes are bright and full of life as she is experiencing things for the first time, and Briggs' eyes have some life in them right before he dies as he is happy with finally making the right choice.

## References

* https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10468230/
* https://geekycraze.com/love-death-robots-season-2-cast-guide-for-every-episode/
* https://www.polygon.com/22436649/love-death-and-robots-netflix-review-shorts-breakdown