Upload (2020) s02e06 – The Outing

This episode very much does not feel like the penultimate episode of the season. Most of the episode is character development and relationship arcs, with Andy Allo and Zainab Johnson taking Robbie Amell and Kevin Bigley on a field trip to New York City. Despite it being the near future and there being human-to-AI conversion software—not to mention actual cloning—Allo and Johnson are still stuck with iPads hung around their necks with Amell and Bigley looking out.

The procedure makes little sense given the show’s technology—seriously, no one brings back Google Glass?—but it’s clearly just a way to keep Amell and Bigley present in scenes. It’s also nonsensical Allo—now a star bug hunter in the programming department—would be allowed to be Amell’s guide.

Those hurdles aside, it’s a pretty darn good episode. Allo and Johnson haven’t gotten to hang out much this season—most of their scenes are talking about boys no less—and their trip will bring some building issues to the fore. Johnson’s gotten multiple promotions and is shining in the company. She sees a future not requiring her to work two full-time jobs for a crappy studio apartment. Her experiences aren’t corresponding with Allo’s, who might not be a full-blown Lud revolutionary, but she and Amell are trying to rock the foundation of the digital afterlife thanks to the latest development in their murder investigation.

In the previous episode, Amell and Allo found out his odious rich guy neighbor (William B. Davis) had him killed for potentially witnessing something related to the freeware version of the digital afterlife. Suddenly, this freeware afterlife is opening in five days, meaning Amell and Allo have to rush to figure it out. Davis is downloading into a robot to go to a meeting in New York; Allo finds out, hence the field trip.

Meanwhile, Allegra Edwards has her post-virtual baby evaluation to see if she and Amell can have a “real” virtual baby, not the NPC version. But first, Edwards has to get through the evaluation with Josh Banday, Mackenzie Cardwell, and Owen Daniels. There are some great lines about Banday the incel. It’ll be another strangely touching arc for Edwards and entirely unreal AI guy Owen Daniels, one of the season’s most consistently successful subplots.

In the real world, Edwards also gets a visit from mom Teryl Rothery and brother Lucas Wyka, who are mean to her, but there’s a decent punchline to the whole season. Also, potentially some actual character development for Edwards. Though much like the iPad technology in the A-plot, Edwards needing to be evaluated for a paid software add-on seems a little unlikely.

Then again, when Allo and Amell discover Davis’s evil plan… it’s entirely based on current-to-2021 events. Though I suppose if “Upload” were more thoughtful about its future, the show wouldn’t rely so wholly on Amell and Allo’s charm together.

Good acting from Allo, Edwards, and Johnson. All of Amell’s scenes (until the end) are basically video calls, so he doesn’t have much to do. Ditto Bigley, who’s entirely support, though he gets some funny stuff and a decent, sincere moment for once.

And then the cliffhanger reveal’s a genuine shocker.

Upload (2020) s02e02 – Dinner Party

Both Robbie Amell and Andy Allo spend this episode getting used to their new normals (without each other), with Allo having a much better time of it. She gets to hang out with new beau Paulo Costanzo, which means a bunch of flirting, but also finding out some of the Luds anti-digital afterlife plans.

Amell’s just got to suffer through fiancée Allegra Edwards throwing a dinner party; the audience now knows Edwards is lying to him about being dead. She’s just in a VR suit in her bathtub 24/7. She invites the worst people she can find around the place, letting Amell invite his poor friend Phoebe Miu for some contrast. Kevin Bigley’s there too, but he’d either be an Amell invite or as Vic Michaelis’s plus one. Michaelis is Edwards’s grandma, who spends her digital afterlife drunk and knocking boots with Bigley.

Michaelis also gets a conversation with fellow rich guest William B. Davis (as a Koch brother analog) about how much fun it is to be racist and how women getting the vote caused the Great Depression. Davis has some unlikely, seemingly empathetic ideas about the poors receiving a digital afterlife, too, surprising Amell and horrifying Edwards. Bigley gets it in his head there’s something to Davis’s interest concerning the big conspiracy against Amell (Amell having programmed a free digital afterlife and apparently murdered for it), but Amell’s too busy with the dinner party. Specifically the help.

In addition to Allo’s adventures with the Luds, the episode’s also got Zainab Johnson and her new sidekick, Mackenzie Cardwell, trying to keep up with Edwards’s demands for the dinner party. Edwards is just too much of a Karen for the AI to keep up with her; there are some great scenes for Owen Daniels, who plays all the in-world AI characters. When Cardwell enters the digital afterlife, she uses Allo’s existing avatar, sending Amell into conniptions.

While there are some funny faux pas moments for Amell and Cardwell Allo, it’s also some jarringly unlikable Amell for a while. Once he gets the identities sorted out, he gets really short–a complete reverse from when he doesn’t know and is falling over himself to pay attention to Cardwell Allo in front of Edwards. Although Amell told Edwards he’d had a digital afterlife fling last episode, it’s unclear if she knows it’s Allo.

Anyway.

They use Amell’s brief foray into unlikable as a character development arc, as well as a way to further establish Cardwell. Johnson’s got a great line about Amell being a “human bowl of oatmeal” who drives the other girls wild.

Meanwhile, the real Allo ends the episode getting even more involved with the Luds, specifically their plans for hacking the digital afterlife and leveraging her experience (and job) to do it.

Upload (2020) s01e04 – The Sex Suit

Watching “Upload” do sexy is… uncomfortable. And not just because Allegra Edwards is loathsome and the episode frequently promises she’ll not be around then keeps bringing her back around. She and lead Robbie Amell are in therapy now. They still haven’t had sex because Edwards thinks the suit is gross.

So at some point between last episode and this episode, they had that talk. Maybe it was cut for time. I doubt it but maybe.

Anyway, the big sexy moment in the episode is when Andy Allo has to assist Edwards and Amell when they’re getting jiggy. Turns out part of customer service means giving the Upload digital people… digital arousal assistance.

Do Allo and Amell really have a moment or is she just playing him or is it just part of her job… Eh. Allo and Amell are so obviously destined for romantic collision, even if the show just denies that development it’s still just playing a trope so it’s hard to get particularly invested in any of the episodic roadblocks.

So even though the episode’s often better than usual—script by Aasia LaShay Bullock—there’s no way to get really invested in Amell and Edwards’s therapy exercises or Amell telling Allo he doesn’t really love Edwards anymore and he wishes she wouldn’t have sex with him and on and on. It’s just runtime fodder. “Upload” is full of it.

There are some decent jokes and less Kevin Bigley, which is good, and more Josh Banday (as the night shift assistant), which is also good. Though Banday’s just there. He’s got nothing to do. Banday meanwhile gets material and is mediocre at it. I liked Bigley in the pilot episode too… he’s just pointless. “Upload” can’t even pretend its supporting cast and subplots are actually important, not even when they figure into murder plots.

The show’s a great example of streaming’s very low bar to clear acceptable.

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.