Left to right: Dorian, Detective John Kennex, and I’m really sorry but after thirteen episodes I still don’t know her name.

Tonight was the season finale of Almost Human, the science fiction series created by Fringe showrunner J. H. Wyman about a grumpy future detective (Karl Urban, a.k.a. Spock or Eomer), his emotional robot partner (Michael Ealy, previously on TV’s FlashForward), and their buddy-cop adventures in a world where all the tech advances seem to benefit the outlaws more than the citizens. Thirteen episodes later, the show’s fate rests in the hands of Nielsen commoners and Fox executives, left to decide whether or not the show deserves a second chance to address any of the questions viewers have had since episode one.

I’ve followed the show weekly since its November premiere, in hopes that it might become the next Fringe, except with sci-fi future freaks-of-the-week instead of quasi-paranormal science freaks-of-the-week. Most weeks, though, I’ve found myself resenting its insistence on sticking to the same formula for every episode. Each evening proceeds through the following dutiful checklist:

1. Mind-bending crime in the prologue, just like Fringe and probably most average cop shows out there. I don’t watch those anymore, so I wouldn’t know.

2. Kennex and Dorian bicker like Oscar and Felix from The Odd Couple. This is frequently funny and insightful and therefore my favorite part of every episode.

3. Fifty minutes of standard police work. Despite the show’s setting in The Future, the job looks exactly the same — lots of staring at screens, waiting on test results, driving to go interview uncooperative persons of interest, more staring at screens, more testing, more interviewing, staring, testing, staring, testing, staring, testing, repeat until the right number of commercial breaks have passed. During this chunk of the episode, I catch up on my reading.

4. One gratuitous action scene is okay, as long as the real perpetrator isn’t caught.

5. Rudy the crime scientist (MacKenzie Crook — Gareth from The Office, and the one-eyed Pirate of the Caribbean) is allowed one punchline and one contribution to solving the case. A couple of times he’s been allowed to work alongside Kennex and Dorian as a third wheel. This produced mixed results that have kept him from being promoted to equal screen-time partner. Too often his jokes hurt more than they help.

6. All other supporting actors are allowed a scene to show us their character trait. Captain Maldonado (Lili Taylor) yells an order; Minka Kelly’s character, whatever her name and rank are, contributes something helpful she found on the computer; hothead Detective Paul (Michael Irby from The Unit) says something to annoy Kennex; and the current-model MX police androids (played by more than one actor) stand around and prove they’re a waste of taxpayer money.

7. Something something action scene, Dorian does something unexpected and/or cool, and the day is saved.

8. Either Kennex or Dorian learns a very important lesson about what it means to grow more human by the day. So far Dorian has matured into the better human of the two, but Kennex isn’t a lost cause yet.

Small amounts of CG and practical gadget props are sprinkled throughout, but it’s otherwise a formulaic police procedural that’s about as radical and offbeat as Hawaii Five-O. At least the latter can boast beautiful oceanic cinematography.

I’ve kept coming back each week for three reasons:

(a) Kennex and Dorian are entertaining to watch when they’re needling each other in guys-will-be-guys mode. They have more chemistry than any hundred test tubes in Rudy’s lab.

(b) I’m eager to see the entire cast cohere into a functioning ensemble instead of disconnected, featureless satellites orbiting around the two leads.

(c) I keep waiting for its mythology to move forward, or to be remembered at all more than once per month. In the pilot we saw Kennex lose his partner and right leg in a mysterious showdown against goons from the villainous Insyndicate, whose ranks included his backstabbing girlfriend. This enigmatic trauma, of which Kennex can only remember snippets of images, has been referenced a couple of times during the season, but not in any way that satisfies or reminds us that it’s even worth remembering.

So far I’ve found two favorite episodes that showed us some potential for what the series could accomplish. One was a blatant Die Hard homage involving hostages in a high-rise, fraught with cat-‘n’-mouse suspense that gave Our Heroes a chance to shine in the field. The other episode introduced us to genetically modified citizens (nicknamed “chromes”), now a common part of society set apart at birth by the families who can afford DNA tampering for their precious offspring. Not only was Minka Kelly’s character finally given a backstory to distinguish herself from her colleagues, but we also saw a whole new upscale underbelly to life in the year 2048, where classism takes on a new form and ordinary overachievers struggle to keep up in a rat race that’s much more competitive thanks to mad science.

As of yet Fox hasn’t announced if Almost Human will be renewed for a second season, or head to the Fox Sci-Fi Graveyard with so many other predecessors. (R.I.P Firefly, The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Dollhouse, Terra Nova…) The show may not have been engaging enough to convince me to write about it here on a weekly basis, but the components are there to assemble a better, stronger, more efficient science-fiction machine with some light rethinking and reconfiguring. It seems a shame to waste those rare, expensive parts on just another replica of this year’s models.