Review

Season 1

Dunno why I've again put myself in a situation where I'm watching a show that is not finished. I simply must stop. It never ever ends well. Either it gets fucking canceled or I have to wait years and goddamn years for it to be over. Sigh.

In either case, a good start to the show. I got flashes of The Good Place with regards to the general humor. Unsure if we're also gonna get some Good Place energy in terms of willfully upending its script and making it impossible to guess where it will go with (good) reveals. At the moment, a lot of the absurd things happening on the severed floor just seemed like deliberate tests to see how far you can push people to do things that make no sense. Rather than there being some actual reason or purpose behind them. My presumption is that the main purpose behind it all is testing the memory technology. But that's just my read on it thus far. And that also feels kind of obvious to me, so not sure what level we're operating on yet. What the fuck was that waffle party?

The one thing that did annoy me was the last episode of the season. I get that the innies have never been on the outside. I get it. But it did make me roll my eyes when we all went over the plan and every single one of them proceeded to totally ignore it the moment they got out and instead started investigating their outside lives. These people were real confident that the plan would last more than long enough that they could piss about doing whatever. I'm just saying, my literal only thought would be set whatever the hell is going on around you aside. Get a paper and pen and immediately put as much knowledge down as you possibly can. Not a single one of these bastards did that. I'm frankly impressed with Dylan. Think about the actual logistics of what he was doing. The idea of physically straining both of your arms outward to hold these dials in place. And the that he was able to hold that for something on the order of 20 or so minutes is wild. My arms woulda been on fire! People really dropped the ball there and I found that annoying. I could feel the artificiality of the tv show needing to express certain dramatic gestures getting a little in the way of things actually feeling correct.

If I had to list another negative, I would also say that I kind of feel like I've seen this already. I struggle to think of where we might go that would actually be unexpected. It just feels like a bit of an Office Space/Truman Show/1984 hybrid and I've seen all of those. As well as seen many things inspired by those. So there is a bit of a sense of futility even if I do like the execution thus far.

Patricia Arquette is a treasure. Highlight of the season. Also Milchick can fucking get it, god damn.

Season 2

()