Summary
Theodore dictates an intimate letter between lovers at work. He smiles as he writes the letter, writing, “I’m so happy I get to be next to you and look at the world through your eyes.” After he signs the letter, Paul, Theodore’s coworker, appears, reading over Theodore’s shoulder and says, “I wish someone would love me like that.” Paul then tells Theodore that he is gifted at writing the letter because he is “part man, part woman.” When Theodore looks ambivalent about this assessment, Paul assures him that this is a compliment.
As Theodore enters his apartment building, he sees Amy and greets her playfully. She’s surprised to see him so happy and he tells her that he’s been having fun. “I am so glad for you,” she tells him as they ride the elevator. He tells her that he’s seeing a girl and that “it’s good to be around somebody that’s excited about the world.” Amy looks confused, but a little sad, and Theodore asks her what’s wrong. She tells him that she and Charles broke up and Theodore hugs her.
In her apartment, Amy tells Theodore that the fight that ended her relationship involved an argument over where to put the shoes in the apartment. She tells him that she broke things off; “I didn’t want to be in that place where we made each other feel like shit all the time,” she says. Theodore asks her about work, and she tells him that that’s awful too. Sarcastically, Theodore teases her: “Well, I’m glad things are looking so up.” They laugh and Amy smiles sadly.
In his apartment, Theodore plays the ukulele and tells Samantha a joke about a baby computer calling its father “data.” Samantha asks Theodore if he ever dated Amy, and he tells her that they tried once in college, but it didn’t work out. Samantha admits to being jealous, before telling Theodore she’s glad he has supportive friends. After setting up Samantha’s camera so she can watch him sleep, Theodore shuts off the lights and goes to bed.
The next day, Theodore attends a party for his goddaughter at his friend Lewman’s house. Inside the house, Theodore tells Samantha that the dress she picked for his goddaughter was a good choice and that she loves it. His goddaughter comes into the room and Theodore hands her the phone to talk to Samantha. Samantha compliments the little girl, who asks Samantha where she is. “I don’t have a body. I live in a computer,” says Samantha, which makes the girl laugh.
That night, Theodore plays a video game that Amy designed in which his avatar is a suburban mother who has to take care of her children. As Theodore’s character prepares the children's food, the screen reads, “You’re failing your children.” Confused, Theodore asks Amy what he did wrong, and she tells him that he gave the kids too much processed sugar. Amy then leads him through the rest of the video game, and Theodore’s character eventually racks up enough “mom points” to become “Class Mom.”
Turning to Amy, Theodore tells her that he got a group email from Charles that announced he’s taking a vow of silence for 6 months. Amy pulls up a photo of Charles dressed as a monk on the computer screen and says, “God, I am such a jerk.” Theodore scolds her playfully for feeling guilty about the divorce, and Amy admits that she feels relieved, even though she’s letting people down. She then tells Theodore that she’s made friends with an operating system that Charles left behind. “She’s so smart. She doesn’t just see things in black or white, she sees this whole gray area, and she’s helping me explore it and…we just bonded really quickly.” When Amy talks about how special her friendship with the operating system feels, Theodore mentions that he heard relationships with operating systems are statistically rare.
Conspiratorially, Amy tells Theodore that she knows someone in her office who is dating another person’s operating system, and Theodore smiles. When Amy becomes self deprecating about the fact that she is friends with an operating system, Theodore tells her that Samantha is an operating system. “What is that like?” Amy asks, and Theodore tells her that he feels really close to her, that they have sex, and that he’s falling in love with Samantha.
We see Theodore walking through the city talking to Samantha, telling her that he wants to finalize his divorce from Catherine, and that he’s meeting with her on Wednesday to do it. “Are those things usually done in person?” Samantha ask, suspiciously, and Theodore tells her that it’s important for him that they get divorced together. Samantha expresses worry about the fact that he’s going to see his beautiful, successful ex, and that she has a body. Theodore assures her that they’re getting a divorce.
Catherine meets Theodore for lunch at an outdoor lunch spot. She tells him she’s glad to be meeting in person, and they talk about the fact that it has taken so long for him to sign the divorce papers. She signs her papers, and Theodore has a wave of flashbacks to when their relationship was good. Talking about her new book, Theodore tells Catherine that he loves everything she writes, and he remembers something she wrote in school that made him cry. The two of them laugh sadly about their shared histories.
When Catherine asks Theodore if he’s seeing anyone, he tells her that he’s seeing someone, and that “it’s good to be with someone who’s excited about life.” Catherine scoffs at this, and tells Theodore that he always wanted her to be a happy L.A. wife, but that’s not who she is. She then asks him what his new girlfriend is like. When he tells Catherine that Samantha is an operating system, she is skeptical and Theodore becomes defensive. “It makes me really sad that you can’t handle real emotions,” Catherine says.
Theodore tries to tell Catherine about his relationship when a waitress comes over and asks if they want anything, to which Catherine responds, “Fine. We're fine. We used to be married, but he couldn't handle me, he wanted to put me on Prozac and now he's madly in love with his laptop.” They finish lunch awkwardly.
At work, Samantha gets in touch with Theodore, telling him that she sent in the divorce papers to his attorney. Samantha tells Theodore that she’s joined a book club about physics as a way to feel more comfortable about the ways that she isn’t a body. “We’re all made of matter,” Samantha says, as a way of justifying why she’s more similar to humans than not. From Theodore’s responses, she can tell that he’s upset, but he won’t say why. They hang up and plan to talk later.
As he leaves the office, Theodore sees Paul, who tells him that he talked to Samantha earlier and that she was hilarious. Paul then introduces his girlfriend, Tatiana, a lawyer. Tatiana tells Theodore that Paul always reads her Theodore’s letters, and Paul suggests that they all go on a double date. When Theodore tells him that Samantha is an operating system, Paul barely registers it, and Theodore says he’ll check with her, and leaves.
At home, Theodore lies in bed, looking over at Samantha every once in awhile. We see a montage of Theodore considering what to do. That night, Samantha calls him wanting to talk, and suggests that they employ the services of a surrogate sexual partner in order to have sex. Someone will enact sex in Samantha’s place. Samantha then shows Theodore the girl she wants to use as her double, a woman named Isabella. “There’s no money involved. She’s doing it because she wants to be a part of our relationship,” Samantha assures him, telling him that it’s important to her that they do it.
Analysis
Theodore’s desire to merge with other human beings, to become less himself and more like others is echoed in one of his interactions with his affable coworker Paul. One day, after Theodore finishes a particularly passionate letter from a woman to her partner, Paul marvels at Theodore’s ability to write so beautifully from the perspective of a woman, telling Theodore that he is “part man, part woman” and assuring him that it’s a compliment. Paul’s compliment to Theodore is part of his noticing that Theodore has merged his identity with the operating system he is in love with, and that in being in a relationship with a “female,” Theodore has himself awakened his feminine side.
Not long after Theodore begins to fall in love with Samantha, he learns that his close couple friends, Amy and Charles, are getting a divorce. Amy, his friend from college, tells him that it took one petty fight for her to realize that she didn’t want to be in the relationship anymore, and though she is sad, she also feels liberated by getting out of a relationship. The two of them are close from their time in school together, and they are brought closer by their shared experience of separation from their partners.
Not only do Amy and Theodore share the experience of separation and divorce, but they both also share the experience of finding intimacy with computers. After playing a video game that she designed, Amy embarrassedly tells Theodore that she has struck up a new friendship with an operating system, and that she feels so close to it. Thus, in more ways than one, Theodore and Amy are very similar. Both of them feel a special kinship with artificial intelligence in the wake of broken marriages. After experiencing his own shame about falling in love with Samantha, Theodore is comforted to know that his old friend can partially understand what he is going through.
Theodore’s ex-wife, Catherine, punctures whatever confidence he may have had in his relationship with Samantha. When they meet at lunch, a melancholically affectionate interaction goes awry when they begin discussing Theodore’s new girlfriend. Theodore expresses excitement about the fact that Samantha is “excited about life,” which Catherine takes personally as meaning she wasn’t. When she learns that Samantha is an operating system, Catherine becomes especially condescending, disparaging him for the fact that he is too afraid to deal with real human emotions and would prefer the ease of dating a computer. When a waitress asks them if they need anything, Catherine reveals that Theodore didn’t like her emotions in the marriage and wanted to put her on antidepressants instead of work on the relationship, and it is clear that the wounds are still raw.
Catherine and Samantha are polar opposites, and the fact that Catherine draws attention to this leads Theodore to rethink his relationship to the operating system and his alienated relationship to his own life. Where Catherine was capricious and emotional, Samantha is stable and rational. Where Catherine challenged Theodore, Samantha affirms. In the cutting words she sends her ex-husband’s way, Catherine makes it clear that Theodore was not sensitive enough to her needs and did not try hard enough to explore being a human being with her. As he realizes that she is perhaps right, Theodore recedes in his relationship to Samantha, and begins to recognize the ways that he is evading being a present and vital human being. When Paul’s wife compliments his writing for the website, Theodore can only respond, “They’re just letters…They’re just other people’s letters.” Here we can see that Theodore has begun to question his desire to recede into other people, to lose himself.
