![]() ![]() ![]() Money someone in the outside world is responsible for if you don't have enough money in your own account. Once Nathan arrives at Lakeview - which, as my wife liked to remind me every time an exterior shot appeared, is set at Mohonk Mountain House in New York - he quickly realizes that most of the amenities offered there, from non-cafeteria food to clothes to basically anything, costs money. Shots of Nathan riding to dinner in his fancy self-driving car are cut closely with shots of Nora taking over-crowded public transit to work.īut this class distinction carries over to the afterlife, even one that looks idyllic on the surface. On advice from his doctors that may or may not have trustworthy and despite his instincts, he opts for the upload to Lakeview, something he wouldn't be able to afford if not for Ingrid (Allegra Edwards).Īllegra Edwards as Ingrid Kannerman in Season 1 of “Upload.”Īt the same time Nathan is meeting his demise, we're also introduced to the show's other main character: Nora (Andy Allo), a disillusioned young tech support employee at Horizen, who is decidedly one of the "have nots" in this story. having your consciousness scanned and turned into what amounts to a server - only works while a person is still alive, a still-shallow Nathan (played by Robbie Amell) must decide whether or not he wants to go to the operating room, where there's a chance he dies on the table, or the upload room, where he can guarantee he'll spend eternity with his uber-rich girlfriend, Ingrid (once she arrives, of course). He's rushed to the hospital where we see the scene from the trailer play out.īecause being "uploaded" - a.k.a. But on the way home from dinner, Nathan's self-driving car malfunctions and slams into a parked truck. ![]() We soon find out during a Thanksgiving dinner that Nathan, a coder, and his business partner/best friend Jamie were working on a free version of this digital afterlife that would make it accessible to everyone, not just those rich enough to afford it. In the opening shots of the show, we're given a glimpse of what that virtual afterlife looks like for the "haves" as a commercial airs showing one of the top properties (called Lakeview) offered by Horizen, one of the leaders in digital afterlife service. And there are several ways this plays out. And, right from the start, we're hit with one of the big driving forces of this show: class division, something that apparently has made the leap from real life to the afterlife. While the technology of the future and the lure of a world where death in its current form has been all but eliminated are two pillars of the show, there are much deeper and more nuanced themes at work. However in some cases, like that of main character Nathan Brown, all that technology can be used against you. The series takes place in 2033, and opens on a world in which you can have sex in a bed in the back seat of your self-driving car, police are actually just iPads attached to drones, every major corporation is a conglomerate (like Panera-Facebook and Oscar Mayer-Intel), and most importantly to the plot, the afterlife is digital and guaranteed - if you can afford it. So even as I pressed play on the first episode, I still wasn't entirely sure what I was getting into. The immediate comparisons to The Good Place and "San Junipero" are interesting, given that the former was created by Daniels' Parks and Rec co-creator Michael Schur and just wrapped up its final season earlier this year, and the latter is from a much darker anthology series that seems quite unlike anything Daniels has done in the past. And given Daniels' past ability to develop characters without using big-name actors, I decided to dive in. I had no idea who Manny Jacinto was until The Good Place introduced me to Jason Mendoza, and I'm better for it. I didn't recognize most of the actors, but that's just fine. What I found was something of a cross between two of my favorite pieces of pop culture of the last decade: NBC's The Good Place and the "San Junipero" episode of Black Mirror. ![]()
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