Tuesday, May 12, 2020

5/12/20 Upload? (Prime Video series)

    I honestly don't know why we still have cable when there is just so much good programming on these other smaller outlets.  Usually, it is Netflix bringing the edge of your seats good shows, but this one was especially good and on Prime Video, which is part of Amazon.  Upload is set only twenty or so years into the future from today.  The newest thing is saving your thoughts and "Uploading" you into a computer world where one can live forever as a digital simulation.  The main guy in the story has an annoyingly clingy rich girlfriend and in the beginning she lets us know that her grandma is living in the nicest of the afterlife options, when she casually mentions to the BF family that they are celebrating her 100th birthday this coming weekend.
    We see the BF driving around in his car and even tinkering with it, tricking it into making it run with him controlling it.  A scene or two later, he eventually crashes and now as he is possibly dying, he has to make a choice.  He can either go to the E/R and try to survive the crash or go and get his mind scanned and transferred over to one of these digital after life places.  Once he is there, mostly because the GF pressured him to take that option, he finds that he doesn't really like it.  Everything costs money and he is poor.  His GF has him under control and decides how much he can spend, so in the first few days, he is having to figure out how to eat without money, or enjoy anything, much like the real world.  He eventually meets his Angel, Nora, who guides him and helps him.
    His GF is a world class self obsessed narcissist and as time goes by, she kind of forgets Nathan more and more, and Nathan finds that he enjoys talking to his Angel more than he does his GF.  Nora, the angel, we find has plenty of problems of her own.  Her dad is sick of "Vape lung" and is slowly dying.  She wants to get him into the digital afterlife so she can have his company forever, it turns out her mom passed away in an accident a few years earlier, so it is just the two of them.  The dad wants to just die naturally, so his soul can go to heaven and be with the love of his life.  Nora does not believe in this option and they are constantly arguing over this.
    In regards to Nathan, right away Nora notices that some of his memories are damaged or unviewable.  She starts suspecting foul play after awhile and one of Nathan's aunts is investigating and coming up with clues that agree with that.  Nathan had been developing code to create a similar afterlife experience but at more affordable pricing, for the common man.  This made him a marked man and consequently got him killed.  The series did not end up in a tidy bow by the last episode.  It almost requires a second season to put everything together.  In the afterlife, Nathan decided to break up with his GF, and he can barely afford to stay in the 2gig floor, which is the most basic level.  He helps save Nora from a knife wielding psycho who tries to kill her.  He has kind of figured who stole his work and it is not his partner who he had thought had done it.  In the very last scene, he finds himself face to face with someone he did not expect to see in his digital world.
    There are plenty of side characters to keep the show interesting and each episode varies in length.  The first episode is almost an hour long, but then most of the others are only 23-28 minutes long, so the whole ten episodes go fast.  It did bring up the discussion of whether or not, if we had a choice, would we choose to live forever in a digital world?  It is an interesting question, as done in this show where money matters, I am not sure the quality of life is the same for all.  Some people are living on 2gigs, which means they don't even get a window to see the outside world, or even an angel for tech support.  Others have a door on whatever floor, but the door opens out onto an estate a couple thousand acres deep, so I guess it depends on what quality of life I could have.

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