Loveday Writing

Short Film:

The short film establishes Lucy and DiC’s relationship. While it’s not stated if the story is set in the present day or the future, it’s implied that digital companions like DiC are the norm. The short film shows that Lucy and DiC have known each other for a long time and she seems a little socially awkward. He helps her get ready for a date through his “idiot-proof six-step system to fix this hot mess and make you more likeable”.

DiC lists the steps, which according to him, Lucy can’t follow, as she gets ready for her date. At the end of the film, Lucy is ready and looking gorgeous. Her date (also known by DiC as “fancy man friend”) is clearly nervous and has his own, newer companion guiding him. DiC floats in front of them and tells them to go away, slamming the door in the date’s face. As the credits roll, Lucy asks DiC why he did that and according to him, both her date and his companion are dick heads. He tells her that they’ll watch Game of Thrones and she agrees.

I honestly loved the short film, I hadn’t seen anything like it before, and I appreciated that DiC was a swearing, Aussie companion, smart but not too-smart like the cliché AI that has been portrayed in many movies before.

Season 1, Chapter 1 (How to Be Better)

The first chapter kicks off with Lucy digging a hole to bury something, telling DiC that this isn’t how she thought she would spend her 30th birthday. DiC replies that the day did take a turn. We don’t know find out what happens, but we go back three months.

Lucy is walking home alone after work, during the walk we see her looking depressed and other types of robots flying across the city. When she walks into her apartment, a cork hits her on the head. The cork came from the bottle of champagne DiC opened to celebrate New Year’s Eve.

Lucy and DiC then watch the news, making fun of the human presenter, Jane, and the robot co-presenter, Geoff. Both Lucy and DiC hate Jane and Geoff, but watching them leads to DiC suggesting to Lucy that she make a list of New Years’ resolutions or rather, wins, as Lucy’s mother texts her suggesting she replace DiC with a newer model.

When Lucy looks at the list of last year’s resolutions on her whiteboard, she realises that she didn’t achieve or hit a single goal. When DiC reminds her that she is turning 30 this year, she denies it, until he asks her what year she was born. She then asks him why he didn’t tell her and he responds that she made him sign a contract to not remind her about her impending 30^th birthday, and that referring to the contract was his resolution from last year, and ticks it off.

Lucy spends the night setting achievable, easy wins for herself and writing them on her whiteboard, now her “mood board” until she falls asleep. When DiC wakes her up the next morning, he tells her that she didn’t set wins, she set goals. He set himself a ‘win’ of giving good sass and ticks it off.

Lucy then writes the win ‘write a list’ on the board and ticks it off. The chapter ends with Lucy and DiC sitting on the couch, DiC asks her if she wants to do anything else on the list and she says no.

Season 1, Chapter 2 (How to date IRL)

Chapter 2 has DiC encourage and then force Lucy to try dating in real life through speed dating.

DiC tells Lucy that the speed dating event offers a complementary gin and tonic, that he’s already picked out her outfit, prepared some small-talk topics and anecdotes for her, and called a taxi to pick her up. He also tells her that he’ll be coming, sitting a few feet away, and he gives her an ear piece as an out, with the safe word being ‘mango’.

When Lucy and DiC arrive at the pub, DiC disguises himself by wearing a hat and holding up a menu in front of him, and Lucy meets up with Matt, a software developer. The dates does not go well, with DiC constantly talking to Lucy through the ear piece, which Matt can clearly hear. Lucy and DiC end up meeting in the bathroom, with him telling her to leave, but she points out that he forced her to come and she’s not leaving until she gets her free gin and tonic.

When Lucy goes back to the table, Matt tells her that he can hear and see her talking, and that he can also see DiC. He asks her if DiC is antique, which DiC gets offended by, and he points out that she’s being rude. He gets so upset to the point that he makes a scene. DiC feels bad and tells Lucy to ask him about his hobbies, she ends up asking him if he likes nachos (her hobby/favourite food), he ends up crying as he already told her he likes squash. She then tells him she’s ovulating, but he runs out and leaves. Another creepy looking guy comes up to her and asks her about her ovulation, and Lucy ends up saying the safe word to DiC.

The chapter ends with Lucy and DiC back home, where DiC reveals Lucy managed to get three phone numbers, however she’s received 12 dick pics.

Season 1, Chapter 3 (How to get fit fast)

This chapter shows a different side to DiC when Lucy buys a FitBot.

DiC thinks Lucy won’t stick with the FitBot, and the chapter goes on to show the FitBot waking Lucy up every morning and encourage her to get healthier and fitter. Lucy and DiC go to the park, where they see other people being encouraged by their bots.

As DiC’s jealousy grows, he continually tries to sabotage Lucy and the FitBot’s efforts, like putting a bowl of potato chips together on the couch for her but this doesn’t work at first. Lucy continues, but struggles to maintain her fitness, culminating in DiC tempting Lucy with wine and cheese at home at the park when she’s in too much pain to run.

The chapter ends with Lucy giving DiC the FitBot to shove down the garbage disposal. DiC does so, evilly laughing as the FitBot is destroyed.

Season 1, Chapter 4 (How to go minimalist)

This chapter is pretty self-explanatory, being all about Lucy trying to go minimalist on DiC’s advice.

DiC makes the suggestion to Lucy after seeing her overspend on summer sales. Lucy adds “going minimalist” to the moodboard and starts by trying to go paperless, and getting rid of old magazines and brochures. DiC also encourages her by telling her to buy experiences not possessions, and takes her to a “wine tasting”, which in reality is her trying different wines at the pub.

When Lucy still struggles, DiC suggests that she gets rid of anything that has been of much use to her over the last three years. When she jokes about whether he has been useful, he is offended and suggests that she at least clean up the apartment. She opens up one of the boxes from her shopping spree, and she and DiC are in awe of what they find. It’s revealed that a Roomba was inside.

Lucy and DiC watch the Roomba clean the floor and name it Percy.

Season 1, Chapter 5 (How to boyfriend experience)

This chapter explores Lucy’s loneliness.

On her way home from work, Lucy gets a phone call from her mother, again encouraging her to upgrade DiC, as well as socialise more. DiC calls her as she’s talking to her mother. Lucy tells her she has another call, Paige correctly guesses it’s DiC, but Lucy lies to her. DiC asks her what she’s wearing as he has a surprise waiting for her when she gets home.

When Lucy does get home, she finds a mysterious man by the name of Jonathon, and dinner waiting for her. DiC tells her that she found him online after googling “private companion”. Lucy tells DiC that he’s an escort, he doesn’t believe it at first, until Jonathon himself confirms it.

While the date is awkward due to Lucy not expecting it and not wanting to have sex with Jonathon (which he keeps telling her he’s really good at), it ends up going well in the end as Jonathon gets Lucy to open up about her loneliness and anxiety of not feeling good enough for anyone. Jonathon encourages her by telling her not to judge herself.

Jonathon and Lucy end up spooning (a service that Jonathon says is one of his bestsellers), with DiC joining them as a “souvenir spoon”.

Season 1, Chapter 6 (How to not get fired)

This chapter shows us Lucy’s work life…before she gets fired.

We are shown Lucy’s work where other types of bots are floating around the office working alongside humans. Lucy’s boss, Christina, asks Lucy to come into her office. Christina has a folder on her desk and tells Lucy she’s fired. When Lucy asks why, Christina asks her where she was last Wednesday morning. Lucy gives her a brief, albeit slightly idealised, recollection of the events. Christina then gets her to open the folder, where it’s revealed that Lucy apparently sent explicit pictures to her coworker, Liam, through her company email address. When Lucy tells Christina she didn’t send them and Christina asks her who did, Lucy immediately figures out DiC must have and tells him (offscreen) to come into the office.

DiC arrives at Christina’s office and admits that he sent the pictures after finding out that Lucy was hooking up with her ex-boyfriend, Travis, who clearly mistreated her in their past. He also admits that the pictures he sent to Liam were ones that Lucy took for Travis.

Even though Christina is enthralled by the situation, she tells Lucy that she can’t get her job back. DiC tells Lucy to leave as he’ll act as her lawyer, only to engage in a “fuck you, no fuck you” fight with Christina. When it ends, Christina asks DiC what he’s up to later, DiC knocks a mug over and floats out of her office.

The chapter ends with Lucy and DiC going home, with DiC trying to cheer Lucy up, only for her to go to her bedroom and shut the door, leaving DiC floating alone in the kitchen.

Season 1, Chapter 7 (How to build a ReBrand)

This episode kicks off straight after Lucy gets fired, with DiC trying to wake her up the next morning to no avail.

After he fails to wake her up, he floats to the moodboard for inspiration and finds a post-it note with the word “rebrand” on it. Hours later, a random woman with a “Re-Brand” t-shirt on wakes Lucy up. This leads to Lucy walking into the lounge room and finding DiC talking to two other women with the same shirt on. When Lucy asks what’s going on, DiC tells her that he’s hired brand ambassadors to sell the “Re-Brand” t-shirts and that this is the inaugural Re-Brand creative retreat. DiC gets Lucy to make a daily vlog over the week.

Throughout the week, Lucy constantly points out to DiC that she’s the one paying for everything on her credit card, the three brand ambassadors sleep in Lucy’s bed with her, and each day focuses on a different theme. On day two, DiC asks Lucy and the other women who Re-Brand is for, on day four, Lucy struggles to do yoga with the other women, on day five, Lucy has an outburst and says that Re-Brand is useless, empty crap that stands for nothing. DiC and the other women applaud her, as DiC tells her that she’s worked out who they are, every brand is trying too hard to be something, whereas Re-Brand will stand for nothing.

The episode ends with Lucy and DiC sitting on the couch, with Lucy getting notifications of the T-shirt sales.

Season 1, Chapter 8 (How to move on)

This chapter is the season finale and the beginning shows the same scene we saw at the beginning of the first episode, Lucy and DiC digging a hole to bury something on her 30^th birthday. The only difference is that instead of going back three months, we go back to earlier that night.

Lucy and DiC go to her mother, Paige’s, house for birthday drinks. It’s made very clear that Paige doesn’t like DiC when he tells Lucy he wants Paige to like him, only for her to close the door on him once Lucy comes in.

Paige surprises Lucy with a new robot, which serves gin and tonic, and constantly advertises her new book with her own voice. Whilst Paige tries to convince her to replace DiC, telling her that he is a negative influence, Lucy refuses.

Whilst Lucy is in the bathroom, the new robot scares her and she ends up accidentally throwing her gin and tonic on it, destroying it. She asks for DiC’s help in getting it out of the house without Paige knowing. DiC manages to distract Paige, and her new boyfriend, Daniel, whilst Lucy drags the bot out in a towel in the background.

We then see the scene from the beginning playing out, with Lucy burying the bot. The chapter and season ends with Lucy and DiC sitting on the couch watching the news, where it’s revealed that the Re-Brand t-shirts are a success, and Jane loses it on air as Geoff keeps undermining her. DiC tells Lucy that it wasn’t such a bad birthday and points out that they’ve murdered two bots. He then asks her what’s next.

Overall I quite enjoyed this web series. I felt that casting Ethan Marrell (aka Ozzy Man) was a great move as he really brought DiC’s personality to life. I felt that the writing of the series was very tight as they were many callbacks to previous episodes as the season progressed. For example, the Re-Brand t-shirts were announced as a success on the news, and Paige’s boyfriend, Daniel, is seen wearing one of them. The scene shown in the opening moments of the season plays out in the season’s final moments.

I deeply appreciated the fact that there wasn’t really any futuristic elements, rather the existence of the robots in everyone’s lives in the context of the Lucy and DiC world is normal. I also loved the exploration of the relationship between Lucy and DiC, while it is a solid friendship, there were subtle questions on whether their friendship and Lucy’s dependence on him for company was really healthy. For example, DiC immediately felt threatened by the FitBot and went out of his way to sabotage Lucy’s efforts to improve her wellbeing, and even bond with other people and bots. Her mother is written as an antagonist by wanting Lucy to replace DiC and even doing it for her without asking in the final chapter, but she also wants her to socialise and be happy, so is this really a case of good intentions executed through bad methods? Interestingly DiC and Paige are briefly on the same page in Chapter 5 about Lucy needing to socialise more, and DiC also had good intentions with bad results by hiring Jonathon. However the difference is that Paige’s robot didn’t help Lucy, whilst Jonathon did help her feel good about herself.

Overall, this was an enjoyable, Australian-made web series, and I highly recommended it.

Stray Observations:

My ranking of each episode from my favourite to my least favourite as are follows:

• Chapter 2 (How to date IRL)
• Chapter 6 (How to not get fired)
• Chapter 5 (How to boyfriend experience)
• Chapter 3 (How to get fit fast)
• Chapter 1 (How to be better)
• Chapter 8 (How to move on)
• Chapter 4 (How to go minimalist)
• Chapter 7 (How to build a Re-Brand)

-DiC is referred to as both a robot and a drone, seemingly interchangeably, on many occasions.

-In the short film when Lucy is going on a date for the first time in a long time, she tells DiC that the last time she was on a date she spilt wine all over her favourite blouse.

-DiC’s six-step “idiot-proof system to fix this hot mess and make you more likeable” for Lucy is: giving a Duchenne smile with eye contact, show off your general knowledge, ask “fancy man friend” to perform a small task for you, smell nice, listen, and be yourself.

-Lucy’s goals from last New Year’s Eve written on her whiteboard included:

• Save the whales
• Less wine (less has been crossed out and more has been written underneath)
• Hot yoga (yoga has been written underneath but was crossed out at some point)
• Run a marathon (half-marathon, 1-mile, run, written underneath)
• Win a competition (win was crossed out and replaced with ‘enter’)
• Donate blood (there was an unticked box next to it)
• Eat organic (don’t eat sugar was written underneath, then crossed out with a post-it note next to it asking ‘why?’)
• Volunteer (crossed out)
• Work out
• Mindfulness
• Impress parents
• Watch a ‘Star War’
• Overcome peanut allergy

-Lucy’s list of “wins” for the New Year:

• Work out, get fitter
• Visit parents (not just for food/money)
• Work out what e-sport is
• Combine superannuation
• Yoga (not just watch hot people on YouTube)

-Some of the adjectives that DiC uses to describe the men in Lucy’s office as he scans them:

• Peanut
• Wanker
• Floofy hair, fuckwit, untucked shirt, unpowered prop (all applied to one man)
• Booty, grade-A dickhead (all applied to one man)
• Fuck it you’ll do (Liam)

-As DiC was scanning the men in Lucy’s office, he got a critical warning which alerted him to an internal process error and that immediate updates were required (18,762 updates pending). A subtle hint showing that DiC is an antique robot.

-Lucy’s favourite flavour of potato chips is sour cream and chives.

-According to DiC, Wednesday night is guest night.

-Apparently it’s in DiC’s terms and conditions that he only cleans up his own messes.

-In Chapter 8, Lucy’s surname is revealed to be Stratton.

-When Lucy is having birthday drinks with Paige, DiC is counting her drinks, she had at least six.

-Paige’s boyfriend, Daniel, is wearing a Re-Brand t-shirt.

-When Lucy “kills” the bot Paige bought to replace DiC, it leaks oil like it’s blood.

Best one liners and interactions:

• “He’s like a solid nine, almost at my level 10 out of 10, and you’re…4, 5, 6 on a good day, maybe.” (DiC to Lucy)
• “Do you want to spend the rest of eternity with nothing but cats and me for company!?” (DiC to Lucy)
• “What do you think?” “Yeah, I reckon 7 out of 10.” “Perfect!” (DiC-Lucy-DiC on how she looks for her date)
• “That took a fucking turn, didn’t it?” (DiC to Lucy on how her 30^th birthday turned out)
• “Okay, privacy, I don’t like it, but I respect it.” (DiC to Lucy when he tries to look at the messages on her phone)
• “Do these look like wins?” “No, those don’t look like wins, these are goals. I don’t think there are any steps for babies there, you fucked it! Meanwhile, back on my side of the board, ‘give good sass’, tick for DiC, gold star!” (Lucy-DiC on her list of “wins” on her whiteboard/mood board)
• “You lowered the bar beautifully there!” (DiC to Lucy on her New Years’ resolution)
• “My ovulation cycle is not small talk!” (Lucy to DiC)
• “He’s the one who looks like he’s holding in a fart.” (DiC to Lucy via an ear piece on what her speed date looks like)
• “Let the male know you’re fertile!” (DiC via ear piece to Lucy whilst she’s on her speed date)
• “I’m not going until I get my free G&T so get your shit together!” (Lucy to DiC whilst speed dating)
• “Guys can you do this somewhere else, I’m trying to poo.” “And we’re trying to get a root, we don’t care about your poo!” (Women in adjacent toilet cubicle-DiC in the pub bathroom during the speed dating event)
• “It’s not what you do, it’s how you look doing it that gets you the likes, comments, shares, friend requests.” (DiC to Lucy)
• “Fuck you FitBot, you may be winning the battle but you will not win the war!” (DiC)
• “Clean up this shitstorm of a garden!” (DiC to Lucy)
• “Is this minimalism or procrastination?” “Both?” (Lucy-DiC)
• “A normal companion wouldn’t do it, would it?” (Lucy to DiC on Jonathon, a male companion/escort)
• “Do you do pro-bono?” (DiC to Jonathon)
• “Fuck me!” “Lucy, office words in the office please! You know the rules, when you have a private office like mine you can say whatever you want. Like shit, cunt, wanker, fuckwit that never called you back, cockhead that said he liked you.” (Lucy-Christina at Lucy’s office)
• “Counter offer…fuck you!” (DiC to Christina)
• “Thanks for the drinks, the chat, the passive aggression.” (DiC to Paige)
• “When did you get a shovel?” (DiC to Lucy after she buries the robot her mother bought her, which she subsequently, but accidentally broke)
• “You know that’s the second robot we’ve murdered?” (DiC to Lucy on the robot she accidentally broke)
• “Do you need an even smaller spoon? Like a souvenir spoon?” (DiC to Lucy and Jonathon as they are spooning)