![]() The backdrop to all of this is a mystery: Nora and Nathan discover that a few key memories have gone missing from Nathan's upload files, and nobody can figure out why.ĭaniels, like his "Parks and Recreation" co-creator Mike Schur, is a maestro at playing our heartstrings, and the chemistry born of casting Amell and Allo opposite one another is proof of this. Ingrid, meanwhile, constantly reminds Nathan that he now exists for her pleasure – literally – making his blossoming feelings for Nora even more problematic. This is a terrible development, one placing Nora in violation of company policy and on even worse footing with her ridiculous boss. Nora and her best friend Aleesha ( Zainab Johnson) are each struggling to navigate the unyielding corporate demands of their office, but as Nora spends more time with Nathan the two start falling for one another. Everything seems to be golden in Nathan's life until one night when the self-driving car in which he's heading home suddenly malfunctions and crashes, leaving him in critical condition.Īs he lingers on death's door, Ingrid persuades Nathan to upload into Lakeview, a sort of crossroads between " The Good Place" and "San Junipero." This WASP's version of paradise, brought to you by the Horizen corporation, is filled with artificially intelligent servants catering to every whim, therapy animals that provide actual therapy, and personalized service from the real world by way of assistants called "Angels."Īmong the Angels assigned to Nathan is Nora, who is hoping to earn enough money to secure a place in Lakeview for her terminally ill father Dave (Chris Williams). This is where we get to know Nathan Brown (Robbie Amell), although we meet him when he's alive and a standard-issue, self-involved tech bro with a wealthy, similarly selfish girlfriend named Ingrid (Allegra Edwards), whom he basically tolerates. In Daniels' future, you see, humans who have the means can choose to have their minds uploaded to a simulated environment before they die and to live out eternity in a digital nirvana like Lakeview, where every need is seen to and every desire sated. ![]() If anything, Daniels' take bears a closer resemblance to a future akin to the ones viewed in " Black Mirror," a world run by multinational conglomerates and enslaved by big data, where apartment dwellers grow vegetable stashes out of sacks hanging out of their windows and the environment is so poor that only the wealthy can afford to cook actual vegetables and meat the rest print their meals.ĭating and mating are even more gamified processes than they are now, which makes life that much harder for romantics like "Upload" heroine Nora (Andy Allo), a single and struggling customer service worker bee for Horizen, a data company that offers an afterlife service in addition to its other tech products. It also goes without saying that the surveillance state is a fait accompli, the wealthy rule the world, and the average worker is left fighting over scraps. Now the data is actually just in our hand. To its credit "Upload" doesn't stylistically mimic the bleak vision of the future seen in the likes of " Blade Runner" or Netflix's " Altered Carbon." The main difference is that technology has rendered handheld devices obsolete. ![]() Amazingly Daniels says he's been working on "Upload" since 2008, but its themes are very much of the moment – its most central having showed up in a number of films and series, including a few on other streaming services. ![]() "Upload," Daniels' new Amazon series, lets a bit of helium out of his aspirational notions, presenting a near-future vision that looks completely plausible even down to the elements that are, for now, pure science fiction. Goodness wins out, because goodness is what binds us in any common cause. Lessons imparted by Daniels and his writing staffs via "The Office" and "Parks and Recreation" are straightforward in their sweetness, each leading with the notion that when all is said and done, human beings matter more than any structure. Throughout the best known works of his career in television, Greg Daniels has been quietly teaching us about social systems, the hierarchies within them, and what it takes to navigate their obstacles and make them work. ![]()
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