Category: Directed by Dee Rees

Upload (2020) s02e01 – Welcome Back, Mr. Brown

“Upload” starts its second season making some immediate changes from the previous season cliffhanger. One’s a reveal at the end of the episode and a good twist. The other’s Andy Allo’s not great real-life love interest Matt Ward getting axed in the first scene. They’re on the run in upstate New York, and Allo ditches him at a bed and breakfast to run off with dad Chris Williams to the off-griders.

With lead Robbie Amell still stuck in the reduced data area of the digital afterlife, Allo’s adventures with the “Luds” (as in Luddites) takes up the first half of the episode. Despite being a tech junkie in her regular life, Allo takes to the Lud colony, where she’s soon teaching the orientation classes and flirting with community leader Paulo Costanzo.

Besides growing their own vegetables and not having any wifi, the Luds also have a fundamentalist Christian terrorist thing going on under the leadership of pastor Peter Bryant. Allo and Costanzo bond over being charming, attractive, and not extreme like Bryant. And gardening.

Meanwhile, back at Allo’s job, her absence has coworker and bestie Zainab Johnson getting a lot more responsibility and a promotion. She and boss Andrea Rosen get to be better pals with Allo gone too; they’ve got to suffer a particularly obnoxious new upload (a dead person’s consciousness uploaded into a virtual afterlife paradise)—Amell’s fiancée Allegra Edwards.

Edwards waits a few weeks to wake Amell up from his data cap, wanting to make changes to his existing apartment. Amell’s immediately worried about Allo, who was almost killed in the previous season’s finale because she and Amell found out he’d been murdered (by Edwards’s dad), and runs off to check up on her.

Except she’s entirely off-line, so he can’t find any information or get in touch. All his calls go to voicemail, including the one where he finally tells her he loves her too.

There’s some bro buffoonery with Amell’s neighbor and dead bestie Kevin Bigley (who’s semi-dating, i.e., getting horizontal, with Edwards’s dead grandma, Vic Michaelis, which continues to be hilarious). And Mackenzie Cardwell joins the cast as the temp Johnson hires to cover for missing Allo.

There’s also cybercrimes detective Hiro Kanagawa, who seems like he’s going to have something to do with the season—the whole Amell hacking the real world to save Allo last season.

It’s an okay season starter; Allo’s extremely likable, Johnson’s excellent, and Bigley’s broadly funny. Edwards is very intense as the de facto villain. Amell’s kind of got nothing to do except cyberstalk, which is a bummer. Allo’s his only human connection on the show, and they’re not talking.

Space Force (2020)

Unloved and Misunderstood

“Space Force” | Season one, 10 episodes | Netflix, 2020

While comedic sitcoms usually take a while to find their footing on the way to a successful vehicle, the creators of “Space Force” seem to be striding the fence here in their pursuit of a balance between comedy and darker social satire. Steve Carnell and Greg Daniels have literally packed each 30 min episode with enough material to stretch it to an hour, but that would effect the flow too much, so “Space Force” conforms to the half hour format in hopes of finding an audience with the average limited attention span for comedies these days.

Carnell plays the general in charge of Space Force, Trump’s latest invention to keep his simple take on reality and romantic notion of what armed forces should be now. Now I should state that Trump is never mentioned by name, nor are really any references here specific, but alert sycophants should pick it up they’re talking about here and now. While some of these jokes are simple and obvious, “Space Force” is loaded with quieter, subtler, textural elements that belie more than just your typical half hour sitcom.

First, casting John Malkovich as his civilian counterpart, is a perfect compliment/foil for Carell’s by the numbers, stiff, obedient military character. They really don’t plow against one another in the typical protagonist/antagonist relationship, but rather compliment each other in their cooperation and clashes, bringing for a genuinely unique approach to what one would be expecting from such a relationship. The setting of “Space Force,” with its pseudo sci-fi action genre, makes the most of the thirty minute drive toward a conclusion with lots of tidbits that you have to look for to appreciate totally. It’s not necessarily about the absurd reality of its situation, but the reactions and motivations of its characters here that keep you interested. The nuances of their relationships, coinciding with the genuinely human dictates of what they’re about drive your interest.

It has plenty of humor, but no laugh tracks here, you either are paying attention and getting the jibes, or you’re not, which is ok. The serious manner depicting its characters gives it a feel of caring and understanding, not two dimensional characters in service of the unusual two plot story carried to a neat conclusion, but gives it an outlier feel.

Also present in this dramedy are some solid use of bit casting, giving its humor weight and double take seriousness for a two edged sword type of approach. While it’s finding its way, Space Force never goes the easy route in its ten episodes (except for perhaps the one featuring a competition between two warring military factions to control Space Force). Also wildly unusual are Carell’s relationships with his wife (Lisa Kudrow, of all actors, who was thrown in jail for life after the first episode for a reason we still don’t know), his complicated, uncomfortable yet very funny scenes with a female head contractor at the base, and his abrasive, yet acceptable ones with his rival heads of the other branches of the armed services of whom Space Force is consuming larger monetary budgets than theirs. Jimmy Yang, quietly and carefully understated as Malkovich’s head assistant, and Tawny Hewsome, as Carell’s aide de camp in a spectrum of roles, are fleshed out nicely, and add greatly to overall recipe. Perhaps Diana Silvers, as his put upon daughter, is still in its developmental infancy stage, is the least satisfying, but since she plays it straight and isn’t out of place I’ll forgive this.

The stories of “Space Force” aren’t just about the ridiculousness of the current world and of the current Washington administration, or even the semi fantasy world the characters live in. While it’s finding its feet in its first ten episodes while trying something different, it succeeds more often than not, and I genuinely hope to see a second to witness whether they succeed. A personal experiment for Carell and Daniels, one that deserves to find an audience and reach its conclusion.

Space Force (2020) s01

Unloved and Misunderstood

“Space Force” | Season one, 10 episodes | Netflix, 2020

While comedic sitcoms usually take a while to find their footing on the way to a successful vehicle, the creators of “Space Force” seem to be striding the fence here in their pursuit of a balance between comedy and darker social satire. Steve Carnell and Greg Daniels have literally packed each 30 min episode with enough material to stretch it to an hour, but that would effect the flow too much, so “Space Force” conforms to the half hour format in hopes of finding an audience with the average limited attention span for comedies these days.

Carnell plays the general in charge of Space Force, Trump’s latest invention to keep his simple take on reality and romantic notion of what armed forces should be now. Now I should state that Trump is never mentioned by name, nor are really any references here specific, but alert sycophants should pick it up they’re talking about here and now. While some of these jokes are simple and obvious, “Space Force” is loaded with quieter, subtler, textural elements that belie more than just your typical half hour sitcom.

First, casting John Malkovich as his civilian counterpart, is a perfect compliment/foil for Carell’s by the numbers, stiff, obedient military character. They really don’t plow against one another in the typical protagonist/antagonist relationship, but rather compliment each other in their cooperation and clashes, bringing for a genuinely unique approach to what one would be expecting from such a relationship. The setting of “Space Force,” with its pseudo sci-fi action genre, makes the most of the thirty minute drive toward a conclusion with lots of tidbits that you have to look for to appreciate totally. It’s not necessarily about the absurd reality of its situation, but the reactions and motivations of its characters here that keep you interested. The nuances of their relationships, coinciding with the genuinely human dictates of what they’re about drive your interest.

It has plenty of humor, but no laugh tracks here, you either are paying attention and getting the jibes, or you’re not, which is ok. The serious manner depicting its characters gives it a feel of caring and understanding, not two dimensional characters in service of the unusual two plot story carried to a neat conclusion, but gives it an outlier feel.

Also present in this dramedy are some solid use of bit casting, giving its humor weight and double take seriousness for a two edged sword type of approach. While it’s finding its way, Space Force never goes the easy route in its ten episodes (except for perhaps the one featuring a competition between two warring military factions to control Space Force). Also wildly unusual are Carell’s relationships with his wife (Lisa Kudrow, of all actors, who was thrown in jail for life after the first episode for a reason we still don’t know), his complicated, uncomfortable yet very funny scenes with a female head contractor at the base, and his abrasive, yet acceptable ones with his rival heads of the other branches of the armed services of whom Space Force is consuming larger monetary budgets than theirs. Jimmy Yang, quietly and carefully understated as Malkovich’s head assistant, and Tawny Hewsome, as Carell’s aide de camp in a spectrum of roles, are fleshed out nicely, and add greatly to overall recipe. Perhaps Diana Silvers, as his put upon daughter, is still in its developmental infancy stage, is the least satisfying, but since she plays it straight and isn’t out of place I’ll forgive this.

The stories of “Space Force” aren’t just about the ridiculousness of the current world and of the current Washington administration, or even the semi fantasy world the characters live in. While it’s finding its feet in its first ten episodes while trying something different, it succeeds more often than not, and I genuinely hope to see a second to witness whether they succeed. A personal experiment for Carell and Daniels, one that deserves to find an audience and reach its conclusion.