Upload (2020) s02e07 – Download

Either “Upload” decided to be just another 2022 show and play chicken with its renewal post-reduced Covid-19 lockdown season, or they ran out of time to shoot the whole season. As a result, this episode feels like a great mid-season breakpoint, not a season finale. It’s got three massive cliffhangers, one semi-resolution to an outstanding arc, one big whiff instead of a resolution, and one natural character development moment.

It’s a slightly longer episode than usual—closer to forty minutes than thirty—because there’s just so much to do, starting with Robbie Amell and Andy Allo coming up with a plan to foil the bad guys’ plan. That plan involves shifting the voting demographics in swing states, which is entirely shoehorned into the show; it’s a contrived crisis, starting last episode.

Anyway.

They need to get Amell’s retina scan to save the United States, basically. Except Amell’s dead and his avatar in the digital afterlife uses templates when you zoom into the eyes close enough. Though there’s a great scene with Allo gazing into Amell’s eyes, and who cares if the plot’s contrived.

Luckily, as the audience found out at the very end of the previous episode, Allegra Edwards has cloned Amell so she can reinsert his personality into the brain. Of course, Amell knows nothing about it, but Edwards is going to reward him with the information once he signs on the dotted line for having a creepy virtual baby with her.

Except, of course, the process for reinserting personalities into clones results in the subject’s head exploding. This subplot also seems a little rushed, like if they’d had a couple more episodes to the season, it wouldn’t feel so abrupt. They’ve been testing the procedure on pigeons, which leads to some funny (but, you know, not nice to pigeon) scenes.

But in addition to Edwards’s cooperation, they’re also going to need help from the Luds. Allo has to convince the Christian fundamentalist terrorist pastor Peter Bryant, and she’s not getting much help from now ex-boyfriend Paulo Costanzo. But she does get an unlikely supporter in fellow double agent Josh Banday, who thinks Allo’s really cool, actually.

There’s also some danger for Amell’s mom, Jessica Tuck, who’s going to have herself uploaded into the forthcoming freeware afterlife so she can hang out with him. Also, because she’s so poor, it makes more sense to stop existing. Amell doesn’t know anything about it, but it’s the first life-or-death stake in the episode. It’s not the last, which is kind of a big swing for a sitcom, only they did the same thing last season and then spent most of this one ignoring that shift.

The only people with regular arcs are Zainab Johnson and Kevin Bigley. Johnson’s boss, Andrea Rosen, wants to promote her one more time, which means bigger bucks and a much better living situation. It also means Johnson will have to commit to the very likely (but still nebulously) evil company.

And then Bigley’s just excited for Edwards to ruin things with Amell so they can bro out.

It’s a tense, dramatic, occasionally wonderful season finale. With three big cliffhangers and no resolutions if they don’t get a renewal.

There are some great scenes for Allo and Amell, some funny ones for Costanzo, and a lackluster finish for Edwards, who deserved more after the season she’s had.

Even with the limited opportunity for Allo and Amell charm this season, the actors still manage to deliver and up the charm. They’re delightful together. Also, “Upload”’s got a solid supporting cast who deserves to finish some character arcs.

I really hope Amazon renews it.

Upload (2020) s02e05 – Mind Frisk

After last episode teasing the return of Nathan and Nora (Robbie Amell and Andy Allo, respectively) chemistry, this episode delivers. The episode also works to disentangle them from their ill-suited love interests, with Allo having a potentially relationship-ending argument with her boyfriend, Paulo Costanzo. Costanzo’s thrilled at the success of their cyber-terror attack on the digital afterlife, and Allo’s not sure about deleting sentient data.

During their argument—which has some more great material with Josh Banday’s sex robot crushing on Costanzo—they have no idea what else their attack has wrought; as a direct result of the hack, the U.S. government (off-screen) has changed the law to allow the digital afterlife company to read the thoughts of its customers. And to put them up online if they’re spicy enough.

Spicy enough meaning Kevin Bigley’s sex dreams about Zainab Johnson are going to make her a real-world celebrity whether she likes it or not. The company’s thrilled with these changes to privacy laws, including Andrea Rosen, which makes her a lot less likable. Her cyber-peeping on Bigley has been one of the show’s running gags, but now she gets to more forcibly intrude on him (when she screen caps his showers now, he hears the snapping sound). It’s gross and ghoulish. “Upload” sometimes doesn’t seem to realize how unlikable it makes its regulars.

Once Allo finds out about the mind-reading upgrade, she realizes the bad guys will soon be able to discover Amell got his memories back. It’s particularly problematic since he was murdered for corporate espionage reasons, so they’ve got to work together to stop the mind-reading software from going live. Along the way, they’re going to flirt, be adorable together, and uncover another clue in his murder.

Amell has time to hang out with Allo all episode because girlfriend Allegra Edwards is busy raising one of the virtual babies. She hasn’t told Amell she’s doing it, and Karens her way through the interview process with Rosen. Throughout the episode, the virtual baby ages, always with some variation of AI guy Owen Daniels’s face. It’s creepy but amusingly.

It’s kind of a busywork plot for Edwards, but it’s amusing and eventually somewhat touching. The subplot also allows Vic Michaelis to do something besides being drunk and horny; Michaelis is Edwards’s (dead) grandma, living in the virtual afterlife too, and they have a scene talking about parenting.

This episode’s the first time Amell’s gotten to really do any character development in season two, which is nice—it’s a tad late (there are only two episodes left after this one), but it works out. Amell’s got so much more potential, as a character, with Allo around; with Edwards, the joke is he’s suffering her obnoxious behavior (and profound deceit), and—despite last episode apparently introducing depth to Bigley—there’s no character development with him around either.

With Allo, however, Amell gets to do some development. And it makes all the difference.

Upload (2020) s02e03 – Robin Hood

It’s an excellent episode for Allegra Edwards. She gets to play out of character—in the real world, Edwards’s talking toilet has been chastising her for too much time in VR, so she’s going to take a break. To ensure Robbie Amell doesn’t ask any questions, Edwards hires a “job gerbil”—for an Amazon show, “Upload”’s real comfortable showing what a Bezos-led dystopia would look like. The job gerbil, a phenomenal Paloma Nuñez, has to pretend to be Edwards in the virtual afterlife.

Except Nuñez isn’t terrible, so Amell and buddy Kevin Bigley will think Edwards is just being awesome all of a sudden. The episode opens with them discovering they can siphon data off the rich guys and give it to the poor people on limited data plans. You pause until next month when you run out of data in the virtual afterlife. Amell’s got a code editor device (from last season) to do the hacking.

He and Bigley take it upon themselves to play, you guessed it, Robin Hood.

They have a great suspense comedy plot with Edwards. It’s casino night (or afternoon) in the afterlife, and they’re going to win big against the richies, thanks to a complicated cheating system. Suspense factors in once real-world boss Andrea Rosen catches the code hacker in use, so she and debugger Ryan Beil try to find the culprit.

Their investigation coincides with Andy Allo’s job interview with Beil; while she’s usually in customer service, the Luds want her to drop some physical items around the programming floor, so she’s got to do a job interview. She’s ostensibly unqualified, but the show established from the start she’s really good at the programming side when she gets to do it.

Since she can’t go back to her apartment, she’s rooming with fellow Lud and fellow virtual afterlife customer service rep Josh Banday. It ends up being an excuse to show off Banday’s profoundly gross and funny lifestyle and get some laughs.

Allo also reunites with Zainab Johnson and meets her not-exactly-replacement Mackenzie Cardwell. No reuniting for Allo and Amell just yet, though she does check in on him once she’s back.

Rosen gets a lot this episode; cop Hiro Kanagawa is investigating—which freaks out Rosen because she spies on Bigley in the shower and then Beil for an indeterminate reason—so Rosen enlists Johnson’s help hiding evidence. It all will tie together with Allo’s arc by the end.

It’s a good episode for Allo too. It’s a decent character development arc amid her saboteur stuff and then the silliness in the virtual world.

But Edwards gets the best material by far; just a splendid showcase.

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.

Upload (2020) s01e03 – The Funeral

This episode opens with a Rupert “Tilford” (cough, cough, Murdoch)—played by Creed from “The Office”—paying to get his Upload mind put into a clone body. And he dies. More than any episode so far, this episode of “Upload” felt a little like they were trying for Robocop humor.

It’s better than Robocop 3 at least.

But we also find out Robbie Amell and Allegra Edwards were counting on that process—called, obviously, Download—to get Amell resurrected.

Someone should really work out how “Upload,” “Westworld,” and “Devs” exist in the same universe.

So the Rupert stuff comes up again later on in the episode, which is set at Amell’s funeral, where we find out he doesn’t have the friends he thought he had but his college girlfriends all come out to see him because he was the only MIT bro with any play.

The girlfriends aren’t there for Amell, rather his virtual assistant, Andy Allo. Well, wait, she’s his actual assistant, just for his virtual life. She goes to his funeral because she’s started to crush on him. And gets to see fiancée Edwards threaten to delete Amell from existence because she owns his account after all.

We get to check in with some of Amell’s family, but not really. The funeral scene is about Edwards being terrible and being terrible to Amell and Allo seeing it all. “Upload” has some pretty basic plotting.

Though, given that basic plotting, it’s surprising when the episode forgets to resolve the subplot about Edwards getting a sex suit so she and Amell can have some private time after his funeral. It’s not ghoulish, it’s hip.

But she thinks the suits are gross and didn’t get one but never tells Amell. Or never tells him in front of the cameras so it just seems like a plot hole.

The best thing in the episode is probably Elizabeth Bowen, as Amell’s cousin who’s investigating his death. She’s weird and funny about it, whereas the other weirdness goes without much comment.

I mean, the episode is all Edwards shrieking. There’s only so much it could ever do.

Upload (2020) s01e02 – Five Stars

The best part about “Upload” this episode is Cigarette Smoking Man William B. Davis as one of the “Choak” brothers, who has died and is now living his reward after ruining American society for decades. Because Davis is good. No qualifications, no asterisks, he’s just good.

Everything else in “Upload” comes with a caveat. Even, sort of, Allegra Edwards.

Edwards is lead Robbie Amell’s girlfriend. He’s dead and in “Upload”—you have your mind put on computer and then you exist forever in an app but capitalism so everything costs money–she’s his evil rich White woman fiancée. Basically Edwards needs to be Portia de Rossi in “Arrested Development” in 2003 for it to work and it’s not 2003 and Edwards isn’t de Rossi. And “Upload” isn’t “Arrested Development.”

So while Edwards is bad, the part is thin. So a caveat. Would Edwards be good if the part were good? Doesn’t seem like it. She’s a charisma vacuum.

As opposed to Andy Allo, who plays Amell’s “angel,” the customer service rep who waits on him hand and foot—digitally—and tries to sell him virtual goods as he goes through the iAfterlife. Allo’s full of charisma. Even more than Amell, which is something since the whole show is sold on the idea he’s charming.

He’s just a little much of a tech frat bro. To the point episode writer and director and show creator Greg Daniels gives Amell’s character thin backstory but taking up the amount of time real backstory would’ve taken. Is it intentionally shallow?

Maybe?

The stuff with Allo’s dating life, which is entirely sexual encounter and app-based—complete with a rating system (the episode title refers to Allo’s pursuit of better ratings as a customer service rep from her virtual charges)—is apparently the only way the not White people can have human connection while White people like Amell and Edwards live in a CW nighttime soap opera. It’s not entirely class and wealth-based—Amell’s supposed to have working class origins so as to clash with Edwards because “Upload” is often very lazy—but it does seem to be race-related. At least in the optics.

But whatever.

It’s also not worth thinking about too hard. No one else did. You’re just supposed to stan Allo and Amell and Allo and Amell make it easy to comply.

Upload (2020) s01e01 – Welcome to Upload

“Upload” takes place in a mundane future dystopia where Bloomingdales runs liquor stores and Panera Bread was able to acquire Facebook. The most oddly prescient bit has a bunch of people on the packed commuter train wearing masks. Worker drones take the train it seems like. The middle class and above have self-driving cars, which are apparently super safe.

Or at least after Robbie Amell dies in a self-driving car accident, everyone is surprised because they’re supposed to be so safe.

Amell’s not dead dead, however, because in this future you get to live as long as the company who provides your digital afterlife can keep the servers running. Amell and pal Jordan Johnson-Hinds are trying to design a freeware version and they’re almost done but then he oddly and tragically dies.

Also wouldn’t you know he’s dating a woman who’s an heiress to the biggest in-app purchase version of the afterlife? So much intrigue.

The show doesn’t do well with the intrigue. It does a lot better with Amell bonding with his handler, Andy Allo; Allo’s job is to make sure Amell doesn’t reject his new reality and go jump into a giant data stream and incinerate himself or something. It also doesn’t make sense why they couldn’t re-upload him; though that one is so obvious they’re going to have to address it.

This first episode is overlong—it’s going to be a half hour or so but they stretch the pilot out to forty minutes, which seems like a perfectly good half hour pilot bulked out with the suspicious girlfriend (Allegra Edwards’s obnoxious) and the intrigue.

There are some good laughs—a lot of them considering the protagonist is dead—and pretty much everyone but Edwards is fine. Allo’s better than Amell but they’re both more likable than good. Kevin Bigley’s solid as Amell’s first fellow dead guy friend (Bigley killed himself after losing his legs in the Iran War, so “Upload”’s full of optimism for American Imperialism).

It’ll be interesting to see if the show can maintain so much product placement—you can buy all the soda brands and all the fast food in the afterlife. But not Amell because Edwards controls his in-app purchases and stalks him from the real world.

There are some weird jokes—Amell asking Allo if there’s slavery in Heaven, which writer, director, and show creator Greg Daniels doesn’t seem to know how to execute (or does and it just doesn’t fly)—but the bit about men in the afterlife being able to pee in the urinal from across the room in a steady, infinite stream is… accurate. You know the dude programmers would add that feature.

I’m far from sold on the first one but hopefully the issues are just pilot flitters.