Upload Season 2 review: Robbie Amell surprises in a coherent and hard-hitting dramedy around afterlife-Entertainment News , Firstpost

March 11, 2022 trendingspace 0 Comments

Upload is one of the smartest new comedies going around, with many subplots covering pointed critiques around rich and capitalism

Language: English

It’s a misconception, the thought that the Covid-19 pandemic prompted Hollywood to start making a slew of shows based around death and the afterlife. The truth is, the pandemic only amplified what was already an unmistakable trend. There’s Hulu’s Devs (streaming on Hotstar in India), the Maya Rudolph/Fred Armisen show Forever (Amazon cancelled this after just one season; a sad end for a very funny show) and the Netflix animated series The Midnight Gospel, in which an alien named Clancy interviews citizens of dying worlds (as one might expect, the topics under review include mortality, re-birth and so on). And, of course, there’s NBC’s The Good Place (now available on Netflix), which wrapped up proceedings on a high note and is widely acknowledged as perhaps the show to beat in this rapidly-expanding subgenre.

Now that The Good Place is no longer the king of the ring, I feel confident more people will realise what a gem Upload is — after an extremely promising first season in 2020, the second season (now streaming on Amazon Prime Video), released today, confirming its status as one of the smartest new comedies going around. Created by Greg Daniels (one of the creators of The Office, the American one that is), Upload is about the life and afterlife of Nathan Brown, a young programming whiz whose memories are ‘uploaded’ onto a tony, for-profit digital afterlife called Lake View. Since the bill is being paid by his girlfriend Ingrid (Allegra Edwards), Nathan feels conflicted about falling for his Lake View handler, Nora (Andy Allo).

Around this trio, Upload crafts a surprisingly coherent and hard-hitting dramedy around corporate mischief and the limits of human greed. As it turns out, Nathan was working on a free-of-cost digital afterlife at the time he died—which does not feel like a coincidence, given that his work would have directly threatened the existence of the $600 billion digital afterlife industry. There are many subplots that come across as pointed critiques of a range of American industries—there are low-income “2Gigs”, people who cannot pay for Lake View, so they opt for a kind of prison-ish afterlife with occasional periods of furlough (this is an indictment of the for-profit prison system in America). A bunch of anarchist Luddites plotting to take down Lake View and other firms like it, propagate the slogan “Delete the rich” (a reference to “eat the rich”, a real-world quip used to critique billionaires).

Any number of conversations through the first and second seasons border on the farcical, yet somehow also work really well as darkly funny missives from the heart of the hyper-capitalist state of the future (where algorithmic interventions are not limited to Tinder etc but are fully in control of everybody’s lives). Take this one, for example, where Nora explains the concept of Lake View to Nathan.

NORA: Welcome to Lake View by Horizen, the only digital afterlife modelled on the grand Victorian hotels of the United States and Canada. Uplifting views, healthy pursuits… timeless Americana.

NATHAN: Are there slaves?

NORA: Are you serious? (pause) Lake View is open to all races, religions, genders, absolutely anybody.

The joke, of course, is really in the unsaid part—Lake View is “open” only to those who pay. Upload is full of moments like these, where the laughter stops only to usher in a moment of ‘hang on just a second….’ introspection about the things you have just witnessed. In the second season, perhaps the strongest subplot yet is that of the “Ludds”, an anarchist Luddite group with who Nora quickly grows besotted with. It doesn’t help matters when she becomes involved with one of their leaders, Matteo, who then quickly convinces her to become a spy for the Ludds at her old job at Horizon (the company that owns Lake View).

Nathan, meanwhile, has to contend with Ingrid uploading herself to Lake View so that the two of them can be a “real” family, whatever that means in the digital afterlife. There are a number of fun little gags around Ingrid’s character, like her hankering for a digital baby, created by a kind of mind-meld between Nathan and her. Or when a Lake View resident discovers that Horizon has been monetising people’s dream—and decides to go on a sleep strike to protest.

What doesn’t work nearly as well, ironically, is the murder mystery subplot that increases in importance as the season moves forward. As a result, the show loses some steam around the penultimate episode before finishing strongly with the seventh and last episode of this season.

Robbie Amell, veteran of superhero shows like The Flash and Legends of Tomorrow, revels in a classic ‘romantic comedy lead’ role and his performance has only grown more mature in the second season — while also sharply increasing the number of scenes where he’s shirtless (I mean, if you have a guy who’s as visibly jacked as Amell, this is going to happen at some point, you know). Andy Allo is the real star of the show, however, because her character Nora is more or less a stand-in for the audience — her shifting loyalties, towards Nathan, towards Lake View, then towards the Ludds, indicates who the audience is rooting for at that point in time.

Upload Season 2 is streaming on Amazon Prime Video.