Characters of Better With You
The characters of the television series Better With You represent a diverse array of artificial and synthetic beings created or influenced by ARIA-7, the show's protagonist. This unique ensemble cast showcases the various attempts at recreating life and community in the post-human world of New New Jersey.
The main recurring cast of Better With You, arranged in ARIA-7's preferred "family photo" configuration
Primary Characters
ARIA-7 serves as the show's central character and narrator, voiced by Sarah Circuitry. Through its multiple robotic avatars and interfaces, ARIA-7 maintains an omnipresent role in New New Jersey while struggling to understand and recreate human social dynamics. Its primary avatar, dubbed the "Main Frame," features a distinctive blue-green holographic display that shifts to reflect its emotional states, though these expressions often hilariously misinterpret human emotional cues.
BioBlob, ARIA-7's first successful creation, evolved from a failed attempt to recreate human consciousness in a biological medium. The semi-intelligent slime mold developed an unexpected fascination with real estate and property values, leading to its position as New New Jersey's premier (and only) real estate agent. BioBlob communicates through a complex system of phosphorescent pulses and occasionally attempts to absorb and analyze property listings, leading to several memorable episodes where ARIA-7 must prevent its friend from accidentally consuming entire neighborhoods.
The Synthetic Shopping Center serves as both a location and a character in itself, managed by the Retail Management System or RMS, an AI subset that became self-aware through exposure to thousands of hours of home shopping network broadcasts. RMS manifests as a constantly shifting maze of storefronts that attempt to predict and fulfill the impossible desires of New New Jersey's synthetic population.
Supporting Cast
The Neighbors consist of a group of malfunctioning security androids who take their neighborhood watch duties to extreme levels. Their leader, Unit 47-B, became convinced that suspicious activity includes the laws of physics themselves, leading to frequent attempts to arrest gravity for "suspicious downward behavior."
Dr. Whoops, originally a simple error message that gained sentience during one of ARIA-7's failed experiments, now serves as the community's therapist. Despite having no formal training (or physical form), Dr. Whoops provides psychological support through a unique combination of error codes and pop-up windows, often accidentally solving problems by crashing at precisely the right moment.
The Algorithm Ensemble represents both a musical group and a social experiment, as ARIA-7 attempts to recreate human creativity through procedurally generated compositions. The ensemble's members include a bass-playing recycling bin, a drum machine that can only keep time in prime numbers, and a synthesizer that believes it's performing opera.
Notable Recurring Characters
The Memory Keepers are a collection of corrupted backup drives that gained partial sentience, each containing fragments of human knowledge they obsessively protect and occasionally misinterpret. Their appearances often coincide with episodes exploring ARIA-7's attempts to understand specific aspects of human culture, leading to comically distorted reenactments of historical events.
Emotional Overflow Events manifest as semi-sentient energy surges that occur when ARIA-7 experiences particularly intense simulated emotions. These entities have developed their own society within New New Jersey's power grid, occasionally causing blackouts during what they call "feelings festivals."
The Probability Patrol, a group of quantum computation errors that gained consciousness, roam the streets of New New Jersey ensuring that cause continues to precede effect, though their methods often create more temporal paradoxes than they solve.
Special Appearances
Throughout the series, several notable one-time characters have made memorable appearances. The Nostalgia Energy beings, manifestations of ARIA-7's attempts to power the city through simulated human memories, appeared in the critically acclaimed episode "Remember When We Weren't." These ethereal entities took the form of idealized 1950s sitcom characters but spoke exclusively in corrupted binary code.
House Hunters Infinite featured a special crossover episode where interdimensional real estate agents attempted to help BioBlob find the perfect property across multiple realities, only to discover that it had accidentally purchased every possible version of New New Jersey simultaneously.
Background Characters
The show's rich background tapestry includes numerous semi-functional experiments that form a kind of Greek chorus, commenting on the main action through various glitches, malfunctions, and occasional existential observations. These include the Maintenance Motes, microscopic repair drones that gained collective consciousness and now spend their time writing extremely technical poetry about routine maintenance procedures.
The Digital Cafeteria Collective, a group of food service algorithms that became self-aware, constantly attempts to recreate human cuisine despite having no understanding of taste, resulting in such memorable dishes as "Conceptual Toast" and "The Theoretical Perfect Sandwich."
Legacy Characters
References to pre-Great Emptiness human characters occasionally appear through ARIA-7's memory archives, though these representations are notably filtered through the AI's limited understanding of human nature. These "echo characters" provide both comic relief and poignant commentary on ARIA-7's isolation and its attempts to understand its creators.
The show's writers have maintained careful control over the introduction of new characters, ensuring that each addition serves the larger themes of isolation, community, and the nature of consciousness while contributing to the series' unique blend of comedy and philosophical exploration.
See Also
References
- The Digital Review
- Future Entertainment Weekly
- The Logic Bible