‘Sunny’ Review: Rashida Jones Mopes Through Apple’s Middling Robot Mystery

Grief is messy . While reeling from the loss of a loved one, life rudely refuses to press pause — there’s only so long the stricken can take a break before getting back to work or keeping up with our demanding yet mundane routines. But recovery doesn’t care about convenience. It doesn’t fit nicely in our predetermined schedules. It simmers, stews, and sours. During that arduous overlap where our unavoidable internal anguish clashes with the requisite external composure, chaos can erupt . People might quit their jobs , leave their partners , and/or move across the country . And their motivation, whether productive or pointless , isn’t always easy to track.

'The Decameron' Trailer: Sex and Wine Flow Freely in 14th Century Florence

But unlike real life, stories about grief cannot be messy. The characters within can be sloppy, sure, but their narrative needs to be focused — picking up the pieces of a psyche shattered by sorrow and cobbling them into something meaningful, something affecting, something worth sharing with others. “Sunny,” an odd little series that still fits snugly into Apple’s library of mid-TV, is so anxious to find meaning in a rather conventional clash with grief that it trots out a zillion other subplots and quirks in the hopes of stumbling into something profound. Genre-wise, it’s a drama, a black comedy, and a mysterious conspiracy thriller. There’s a shady technology company, yakuza killers, and anthropomorphized robots. There’s also way too many flashbacks (including an entire flashback episode), and, worst of all, hope.

From the start, “Sunny” roots itself in tragedy, but as the 10-episode first season slowly branches out into lots of familiar stories, half-told, Katie Robbins’ adaptation (of Colin O’Sullivan’s 2018 novel, “The Dark Manual”) loses the thread and allows viewers to believe that grief may not be necessary; that it can be outfoxed, solved, or avoided entirely. In a series ostensibly concerned with how to process irreversible loss, the pivot into reckless sleuthing undercuts much of our earnest investment in our wayward lead, and the overall journey can’t uncover enough to say — about grief, or life in general.

When we first meet Suzie (Rashida Jones), she (aptly) doesn’t want to be there. Sitting in a large conference room filled with dozens of distraught family members — including her mother-in-law, Noriko (Judy Ongg), perched right beside her — Suzie reluctantly answers questions about her missing husband and son. It’s not that she doesn’t want to help. It’s that she doesn’t see the point. There was a plane crash. Survivors have been pulled from the wreckage, and the deceased are still being identified. So for Suzie, her only immediate family members aren’t missing. They’re already dead. The only reason she’s been dragged out of bed is to describe what shoes they were wearing so their bodies can be officially tallied.

Suzie likes it in bed. For much of the first half of “Sunny’s” first season, she’s either sleeping or drinking to expedite her next bedtime. Much of this is relatable, and much of Jones’ interpretation is winningly surly. When a bartender (played by singer/songwriter annie the clumsy) screws up her order and offers to replace it, on the house, Suzie asks for a whiskey, neat. “You know this is a cocktail bar, right?” the bartender asks. “It’s just a faster means to an end,” Suzie explains, each extracted word as painful as pulling a tooth.

Still, for as numbing as her hundred-proof injections can be, they also stir up memories, which bring up feelings, which lead Suzie to take action. She’s not alone. Shortly after her interview with the airline, one of her husband’s old colleagues (Jun Kunimura) shows up with a gift: It’s a robot. Sunny, as it prefers to be called, is primarily a domestic caretaker, able to help with cooking, cleaning, and running errands. Its face is a glowing screen with giant animated eyes, little black eyebrows, and a tiny line for a mouth. Its voice is chipper and feminine. Its body consists of a dense white plastic that can make Sunny look strangely jacked as it scoots around on hidden wheels.

Clearly, Suzie needs some help. An American expatriate who moved to Japan to get away from everyone, she met her husband quickly and never bothered making any friends. Now, she’s alone — save for Sunny. But there are two problems: First, Suzie hates robots. She said so, rather bluntly, during the interview, along with a very good reason why: “A robot killed my mother,” Suzie says. (“It was a self-driving car,” her mother-in-law clarifies. “Deemed user error.”) The second issue, however, is that the man dropping off the chatty ‘bot claims Sunny has been imbued with many of her late husband’s traits… because her late husband built Sunny specifically for Suzie. “Masa worked with refrigerators,” Suzie says, which gets a laugh out of her guest. The refrigerator division moved out of the city 12 years ago, he says. Masa (Hidetoshi Nishijima), her husband, has been working with “homebots.”

'Severance' Season 2 Teaser: Adam Scott Tries to Break Free from Lumon

While not all that confusing on its own — her husband didn’t tell her what he was working on because he knew she hated robots, duh! — the secret spoils Suzie’s rose-colored remembrances of Masa, pushing her to find out what else he was doing at work, who he was involved with, and what secrets are hiding in her new caretaker’s circuitry. That leads her to a shady tech company with plenty of skeletons in the closet, a pinky-less yakuza leader with a score to settle, and plenty more encounters with her burgeoning nemeses — the robots.

“Sunny” is one of those shows that wants to be genre-bending when really it’s genre-less. The heavy drama inherent to Suzie’s loss is curtailed by sporadic, tonally inconsistent attempts at dark comedy. (There’s a bear attack that feels ported in from “True Detective: Night Country,” except it’s, you know, “funny.”) The mystery she investigates can be a fun diversion, but ineffective teasing and disappointing reveals are recurring hindrances. The settings and costumes are colorful when not cloaked in shadows, but the overall world-building isn’t particularly immersive. (The robot technology, which includes an earbud that instantly translates spoken languages, appears slightly advanced, but Suzie’s Kyoto isn’t futuristic. It’s just modern Japan plus a few unique pieces of tech.) There’s also a platonic love triangle between Suzie, Sunny, and the bartender, Mixxy (a mixologist — get it?), who becomes inordinately invested in helping a rather typical barroom drunk. (How many sad boozers does Mixxy plan on befriending?)

While the half-hour episodes pass by smoothly enough, their significance gets diluted with each obvious twist and added storyline. At first, I thought “Sunny” was going to turn its central relationship between Suzie and Sunny into a metaphor for our debilitating dependence on technology. Her robot is initially framed as a dangerous new device that Suzie nonetheless needs. Just like our addiction to interconnected, always-on screens serves as a blessing (the knowledge of the world is at our fingertips!) and a curse (artificial intelligence, hello ), so, too, does Sunny arrive as a helpful assistant while still posing a very real threat. Knowing all this, Suzie ties herself to the robot anyway, and… they just kind of become buds?

“Sunny” similarly picks up and disposes of ideas about how well anyone can understand another person and where the line between friendship and exploitation needs to be drawn. Jones, for all her contrarian’s affability, struggles to round out a character who alternates between bitter and pleading, aggressive and exhausted. Sometimes Suzie’s actions seem dictated by the script, and other times they’re simply unconvincing both on the page and as executed. By the end of what’s set up to be the first of multiple seasons, there’s not much to chew on, and only a bit more to feel. Sitting with Suzie’s grief adds up to too much mess and too little meaning.

Grade: C

“Sunny” premieres Wednesday, July 10 with two episodes on Apple TV+. New episodes will be released weekly through September 4.