The following recap contains spoilers for Sunny S1E5, “Joey Sakamoto” (written by Julissa Castillo and directed by Dearbhla Walsh)
After finding Suzie’s house ransacked in last week’s episode, Suzie (Rashida Jones), Mixxy (Annie the Clumsy), and Sunny (Joanna Sotomura) are heading to Mixxy’s family farm to hide out. Unfortunately, when they reach a train station in the country, Mixxy reads a schedule and informs her companions that the shuttle that used to run to the farm is no longer in service. Her family would surely pick them up, but they can’t get any phone service in order to contact them.
Meanwhile, a man bumps into Suzie on the train platform, and though he then walks away from the group, this makes them paranoid that he’s after them. Mixxy suggests they walk to her family’s farm, saying it will take a couple of hours, so the three set off on foot (or, in Sunny’s case, tire treads).

Sunny expresses suspicion about Mixxy even before the group gets lost in the woods, and I do wonder in retrospect whether she was correct to do so, even if I thought she was just being paranoid throughout because I like Mixxy. (N.B. I believe S1E5 is the first time anyone has used a gendered pronoun with regard to Sunny, but if Suzie is using she/her pronouns, I will, too.)
Regardless, our trio gets lost in the woods into the night. Sunny finds an abandoned baby bird and decides to call the bird Joey. Suzie says to put it back where Sunny found it, but Mixxy tells Sunny there’s an incubator at the farm, encouraging Sunny to keep it. So Sunny stashes the little bird in her stomach compartment.
After seeing the man from the train station in the woods, the three find an abandoned house to take shelter in for the night. Then, they think they hear him outside of the house, but it turns out to be a bear instead. Mixxy and Suzie get the bear to go away by singing an out-of-key rendition of “I Will Always Love You,” and the next day, they seem to quickly find Mixxy’s family farm.

Joey the bird dies, and they hold a funeral service. Sunny tells Suzie that she wanted to learn what it was like to be a mother, and I guess this gets to the point of the whole Joey plotline. In many ways, Sunny seems to be more of a person than a machine, and that’s a central question the series is interrogating.
Throughout the episode, Suzie remembers events that occurred between herself and Masa (Hidetoshi Nishijima) that gave her warning signs that she ignored. He showed up drunk at Zen’s school play, for instance, blaming problems at work. He disappeared in the middle of the night with a suitcase and just told her not to worry about it when he returned, etc.

Towards the end of S1E5, Sunny also has a memory of Masa and tells Suzie that there are clearly more memories that Sunny can’t figure out how to access. The one she does is of Masa unzipping the bag he presumably put Sunny in after she killed a guy. The location appears to be the same as when Noriko (Judy Ongg) calls “Do Not Answer” earlier in the episode but doesn’t get through because the man she’s trying to call is in the shower.
My guess would be that this is Masa’s biological father, Hiromasa Matsumoto. In Sunny’s memory, Masa is asking the man for help, but we don’t see his face in that scene, either. Will it be someone we’ve gotten to know otherwise?

As “Joey Sakamoto” comes to an end, Suzie wakes up at the family farm to find that Sunny is missing. No one else seems to be around either, but there is a note on her bed. If anyone reads Japanese, feel free to let me know in the comments what you can make out. I’m inferring the note is from Hime (You) because Suzie finds her smushed pinkie prosthetic between its folds.
All of this raises a few questions. I’m not surprised that Hime would want to steal Sunny, but she did have an opportunity in last week’s episode that she passed on. Still, presuming that this is what has happened, we have to wonder if Mixxy was in on the plan. The intimidating man from the train platform is, of course, an even more appealing suspect, but the fact that he hangs back the way he does makes me think that perhaps he and Mixxy were in on things together—lure Suzie out to the middle of nowhere and then take her robot, as opposed to taking it with a lot of people around.

Yet, it doesn’t quite make sense to me to think that Mixxy was a part of the plan. That may be because I like the character, but it also feels like a pretty convoluted scheme if getting lost in the woods was a part of it. I suppose there could be some thought of wearing Suzie out so that her defenses would be well and truly down, but I’m not convinced. Though, again, maybe I just want Mixxy to be innocent.
We’ll find out soon enough!
See you next week.