I am unreasonably fond of the expression ‘our people’. As in, ‘she’s our people’. Once I was really nervous about joining a particular group, and after a couple of people one of the guys there said he’d told someone else about me that, “she’s our people”. As in, she gets it. She has our same outlook on the world. I glowed, and I’ve loved it ever after.
Since Friday night, I’ve been searching for ‘my people’ where Amazon’s new show Upload is concerned, and um… they’re harder to find than I expected.
If you’ve read anything about Upload you know that it explores the idea of the afterlife – specifically, your consciousness, not your body, living endlessly inside a digital, semi-theoretical afterlife complete with in-app purchases. And if you know that, you know it was created by prolific comedy writer Greg Daniels (The Office (US), King Of The Hill, Parks & Recreation). Kind of ironically, there a lot of other shows dealing with various aspects of this concept right now – Forever, Westworld, Miracle Workers, Good Omens, Russian Doll – and most famously and notably, The Good Place.
Ironic in this case because not only is The Good Place beloved and critically acclaimed, but because it was created by Michael Schur. Daniels’ colleague on The Office and co-creator on Parks & Recreation. There’s been a lot made of the fact that Daniels was shocked to find out what The Good Place was about, because he’d been working on the idea for Upload for years, but that happens. Similar people have similar ideas, and appetites for them appear at similar times. Execution is where the differences come in, and also where the irony comes in.
Because, you see, Upload is terrible.
To be clear, the concept is cool. Even though it’s been explored before, there are amazing visual design elements, including the self-driving cars we’ve all been promised, the idea of what the near-to-mid future might look like, and also – a clearly pointed racial division between people living in a world that looks like the ‘Future’ (all white) and one that looks more like one we recognize today (all people of colour). Clearly there are some points trying to be made, but the key word there is ‘trying’.
Because you know how Westworld is accused of being opaque sometimes? Or how people would analyze a particular line of dialogue from, like, Breaking Bad or Game Of Thrones for days, trying to figure out what it meant? That’s… not a concern on this show. Everyone shows up onscreen and says exactly what they think, with absolutely no provocation or preamble. The two leads are supposed to be interested in one another, except they may as well be acting their scenes with CPR dummies from the amount of chemistry visible onscreen. Am I… the only one seeing this?
It gets worse. The ‘evil’ people in this world are straight-up monsters, openly mercenary or cruel, gloating about their status, and shoving food into their mouths so we know they’re bad.
There are dozens of logic bumps: the main character, Nathan (whose name I had to look up because nobody seems to use it) lives in a kind of mid-tier afterlife in a hotel-type setup, and one day runs into ‘David Choak’, a stand in for one of the Koch brothers, who appears to live in the same complex. When he opens his ‘door’, we see that he actually lives in a palatial estate – but they share the same dingy, ugly-carpeted hallway? Okay…
The dialogue, desperately on-the-nose as it is, might work if this were a comedy – but the show is long and draggy, the music cues seem like they’re from a Hallmark Christmas movie, and somehow there’s also a secret murder subplot? I ran to the web, expecting people would delight in excoriating this show, or at least wonder what went wrong…
But… people seem to like it? At least, there are plenty of reviews, from viewers and critics, calling it ‘fun’ or ‘compelling’, and I can’t tell if they… didn’t watch it? Or figured that since it was created by such a comedy legend that they must be the ones missing something? A couple of reviews are gentle about how it doesn’t land – The AV Club says it ‘lacks heart’, and Variety goes so far as to refer to Nathan’s girlfriend as “a first draft of a character” but they’re few and far between, and I feel like the kid in The Emperor’s New Clothes here. At one point two characters sing ALL of “Uptown Funk” to each other, without musical accompaniment or a punchline at the end. Is nobody seeing this? Did Bruno Mars consent to this travesty?
I can’t tell what happened. Did Greg Daniels let Amazon produce first drafts of a show that, by his own admission, he’s been kicking around for the last 30 years? Did Amazon ask him to flesh out what might have once been a comedy concept, to distinguish it from The Good Place, and this is what happened? Does someone in casting have serious dirt on Daniels? Because otherwise I cannot conceive of how the two blaaaand leads in this show beat out all the other hopefuls who might actually be able to confer qualities of real people. Or, is it not their fault at all, because maybe they were directed to perform as though they were sad, sentient gingerbread men?
I am still looking for my people. If you love this show, I need to know why. What am I missing? I kept waiting for a piece of sci-fi to drop, “something in the future means people can only say exactly what they think with no nuance” or to feel some ironic humour nod to past productions – or failing that, for someone to hold up a surreptitious sign to the camera: “Help. We’re being held against our will.”
To me, the show is like if you asked a bunch of tenth graders to produce a show that would be shown to fifth graders and would be docked marks every time they laughed. I must be missing something, right?
Either that or we’ve learned something revealing, and quite unsettling, about one of the greatest comedy creators of our time. You can see why I’m hoping so fervently for the former.
