The Second Season of Cult British Science Fiction Comedy Red Dwarf Gets Off to a Grim But Inspired Start with "Kryten" and "Better Than Life"
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The second season of the cult British science-fiction comedy finds the show opening up its world. That’s not difficult considering that in its first season, the show consisted of four characters adrift in a vast, dispiriting dystopia.
“Kryten” teases the idea that hologram Arnold Rimmer (Chris Barrie), human Dave Lister (Craig Charles), computer Holly (Norman Lovett), and human-cat mutation Cat (Danny John-Jules) will find a temporary escape from their infernal loneliness when they encounter another ship.
Even more exciting for the men, they’re led to believe that the strangers that they’ll soon be meeting are women. Krysten, the android who gives the episode its title assures the occupants of the Red Dwarf that while the men onboard all died, the women survived.
This inspires feverish romantic competition between Dave and Arnold. The possibility of sex and romance turns the gents into preening peacocks. Dave uses black spray paint to fill in a giant hole in his least smelly pair of pants while Arnold puts on the sparkling white uniform he wears in a desperate, inevitably failed attempt to impress people.
Even Holly, a hyper-intelligent, wry computer, gets into the act. He may just be a head floating in the cosmos, but that doesn’t mean he can’t make an effort.
It turns out to be a massive fake-out. When our heroes meet the ladies, they are chagrined to discover that they are much less alive than Kryten had led them to believe. The men onboard the ship died. So, unfortunately, did the women.
Judging by the condition of their corpses, it’s been a long time since they numbered among the living. There is no meat or muscle on their corpses. They’re skeletons dressed up in fancy costumes by a deeply troubled android.
Kryten is a tragic figure. His sole purpose in life is to serve others. He is consequently distressed to discover that he cannot help his old masters because they are no longer alive and, consequently, beyond help.
Rimmer opportunistically takes advantage of the situation by having Kryten clean the ship and do his bidding. Kryten experiences an existential crisis. Dave tries to help him achieve autonomy in a world where he no longer has a boss and, by extension, a purpose, by exposing him to outlaw classics like The Wild One and Rebel Without a Cause.
There’s a lovely, unexpectedly dramatic moment when Kryten tells his new associates about his dream of starting and tending to a garden. It’s a poignantly banal aspiration for a robot that’s played straight as a genuine moment of connection between a human slacker and an android.
The episode begins with Arnold practicing his Esperanto with the help of a taped hologram helper. Arnold has the stuffy, superior, insufferable personality of someone who can afford to be arrogant because they are smart and accomplished without actually being smart or accomplished.
The Esperanto lines being taught are gloriously perverse, specific, and unlikely, not unlike the very first sketch on Saturday Night Live, which found Michael O’Donoghue teaching English like, “I would like to feed your fingertips to wolverines.”
We learn more about Dave and Arnold here. It’s established that, despite a screaming lack of ambition, he went to art college. Alas, his time at university began and ended at roughly the same time, as he was horrified by the prospect of having to go to classes first thing in the afternoon.
The juicy premise of “Better Than Life” is that the guys encounter an immersive virtual reality game of the same name, which affords them an opportunity to live out their fantasies in a glittering cyber utopia where everything is possible.
The luckless souls onboard the Red Dwarf live sad lives of endless drudgery. They generally get nothing that they want, particularly in terms of female companionship/sex. So it is quite a departure for them to get everything they want when they want and how they want.
The game of Better Than Life is an escape in every sense. It gives Dave, Arnold, and Cat an opportunity to leave the massive prison that is their ship and luxuriate on an idyllic beach paradise.
Better Than Life allows Dave, Arnold, and Cat to live like kings, to eat and drink whatever they want without consequences or cost.
Cat begins a romantic relationship with Marilyn Monroe, who has figured prominently in sexual fantasies for close to a century. Monroe is, arguably, the greatest sex symbol of all time. Her appeal transcends time, country, and trends. Even at the height of heroin chic, Monroe continued to loom large as a sexual ideal.
The second season of Red Dwarf engages with pop culture more than the first. It’s tricky because the pop culture of our time is millions of years old when the show takes place, but that doesn’t mean that they can’t feel intense nostalgic for it.
For Arnold, losing himself in Better Than Life provides a brief escape from the prison of self. He has sex a second time with a woman he’s nursed a massive crush on.
Unfortunately for Arnold, Dave, and Cat, Better than Life is plugged into the psyche and subconscious of the people playing it. At first, that is a very good thing, as the game knows exactly what the men want without them even having to ask for it.
Even in paradise, Arnold’s personality sabotages his chance at happiness. The woman he’s overjoyed to have known in biblical fashion pops out seven children seemingly overnight. In the process, she morphs from a sexy fantasy to a grim reality.
It goes beyond that. Arnold’s predilection for self-destruction turns the cyber-paradise into a living hell. Arnold doesn’t just ruin the game for himself; he also ruins it for Dave and Cat.
“Better Than Life” delves even deeper into Arnold’s tormented psyche and troubled history. “Kryten” and “Better Than Life” are exceedingly dark, even by the show’s very lenient standards. The drama complements the comedy and vice versa. We laugh with these characters, but we also feel for them, even Arnold, who is a miserable bastard in every conceivable and consequently way too relatable.
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