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shallownessElectric Dreams:
Human Is
This was almost very good, but I had some issues, some of which are minor nitpicks, some more substantial. I was a little surprised that it was both written and directed by a woman – although I was sure the director had worked in ads/videos because it looked gorgeous. Set and production design played a blinder (it probably helped with the money for the SFX for the holographs etc that the main mover behind the series, as I understand it, AKA always and forever Malcolm’s Dad, was starring in this episode), I loved the geometric shapes, the curves of their home, the mix of recognisable clothes and furniture with things that were not, and the planetariums, emphasising that Terra was no longer a fertile place where life could flourish
But the switch of gaze really threw me, and I don’t think the whole bathing scene (as directed) added much. Before that, I felt that we were seeing things from Vera’s point of view, and they should have just stuck with it. The way they played the visit to the sex club was better than is usual, with her playing viewer and then subject. Although in what was basically a nighty under a take-off of the Scottish Widow cloak, she was the most vanilla dressed person there. The whole point being that she was starved of touch and affection.
And you knew where it was going in terms of Silas a. surviving and b. his personality being transformed.
Still, we started off with a complicated woman and ended up with realisation of individual love and loyalty versus state, and how very controlling that state was only gradually emerged.
I didn’t think they were using ‘metamorph’ as I understood it to explain the aliens.
On the casting, Essie Davies was new to me, but is remarkably pretty. I thought Liam Cunningham was good casting as a man who could stand up to Silas, but it was deeply weird that everyone bar Cranston was English, and mostly white given that the idea was that these were the last few humans. It was nice to see Karen from Humans, though.
It was fun to scold the lawyer in the trial for not prepping her witness and leaving her a huge loophole to stroll through.
There was no way the line ‘you couldn’t pronounce my real name’ wasn’t going to be funny. It undercut the drama of the past few scenes.
I watched Real Life, which aired before, afterwards on catch-up. I think I might have got into it more if I’d been watching it live on my TV set. As it was, I didn’t connect much to it beyond puzzling about which life was real. but I thought things were fairly balanced between both. Maybe I was overthinking it, but I discounted the fact that we’d started with Sarah, and wasn’t convinced until Lara Pulver’s character talked about Sarah being a lesbian, which I don’t recall George had told her. Before that, well, yes, it was more credible that the dream world would be a future with flying cars, being a supercop and having a wife, but Sarah had survived a massacre, and although George was very sad about his dead wife, he had built his own company and lived in a snazzy flat and did vigelanteism (it took me a while to understand that that’s what he was up to).
What we can all learn? Don’t mess with VR. Don’t mess with experimental VR. (As an aside, I seriously don’t think the people who are experimenting and innovating in these areas read/watch enough science fiction, or they gloss over some of the questions it raises.) Also, you’d think that in the future, survivors of massacres would have access to some level of therapy beyond loved ones who seem to think that experimental VR is the answer to trauma.
Not a bad ep, although some of the exposition was clunky, and the near future was standard Dick future world if less dystopiann. Anna Paquin is looking more and more like Holly Hunter.
Human Is
This was almost very good, but I had some issues, some of which are minor nitpicks, some more substantial. I was a little surprised that it was both written and directed by a woman – although I was sure the director had worked in ads/videos because it looked gorgeous. Set and production design played a blinder (it probably helped with the money for the SFX for the holographs etc that the main mover behind the series, as I understand it, AKA always and forever Malcolm’s Dad, was starring in this episode), I loved the geometric shapes, the curves of their home, the mix of recognisable clothes and furniture with things that were not, and the planetariums, emphasising that Terra was no longer a fertile place where life could flourish
But the switch of gaze really threw me, and I don’t think the whole bathing scene (as directed) added much. Before that, I felt that we were seeing things from Vera’s point of view, and they should have just stuck with it. The way they played the visit to the sex club was better than is usual, with her playing viewer and then subject. Although in what was basically a nighty under a take-off of the Scottish Widow cloak, she was the most vanilla dressed person there. The whole point being that she was starved of touch and affection.
And you knew where it was going in terms of Silas a. surviving and b. his personality being transformed.
Still, we started off with a complicated woman and ended up with realisation of individual love and loyalty versus state, and how very controlling that state was only gradually emerged.
I didn’t think they were using ‘metamorph’ as I understood it to explain the aliens.
On the casting, Essie Davies was new to me, but is remarkably pretty. I thought Liam Cunningham was good casting as a man who could stand up to Silas, but it was deeply weird that everyone bar Cranston was English, and mostly white given that the idea was that these were the last few humans. It was nice to see Karen from Humans, though.
It was fun to scold the lawyer in the trial for not prepping her witness and leaving her a huge loophole to stroll through.
There was no way the line ‘you couldn’t pronounce my real name’ wasn’t going to be funny. It undercut the drama of the past few scenes.
I watched Real Life, which aired before, afterwards on catch-up. I think I might have got into it more if I’d been watching it live on my TV set. As it was, I didn’t connect much to it beyond puzzling about which life was real. but I thought things were fairly balanced between both. Maybe I was overthinking it, but I discounted the fact that we’d started with Sarah, and wasn’t convinced until Lara Pulver’s character talked about Sarah being a lesbian, which I don’t recall George had told her. Before that, well, yes, it was more credible that the dream world would be a future with flying cars, being a supercop and having a wife, but Sarah had survived a massacre, and although George was very sad about his dead wife, he had built his own company and lived in a snazzy flat and did vigelanteism (it took me a while to understand that that’s what he was up to).
What we can all learn? Don’t mess with VR. Don’t mess with experimental VR. (As an aside, I seriously don’t think the people who are experimenting and innovating in these areas read/watch enough science fiction, or they gloss over some of the questions it raises.) Also, you’d think that in the future, survivors of massacres would have access to some level of therapy beyond loved ones who seem to think that experimental VR is the answer to trauma.
Not a bad ep, although some of the exposition was clunky, and the near future was standard Dick future world if less dystopiann. Anna Paquin is looking more and more like Holly Hunter.
