I haven’t read the book so bear with me here. I don’t understand why anyone is rebelling. The proles thing the folk in charge are lying to them, and that it’s safe to go outside? The folk in charge seem terrified about a rebellion where the proles will force open the airlock, thereby killing everyone.
But the proles don’t need a rebellion to go outside. They just have to say “I wanna go outside!” and the folk in charge say “There’s the door, don’t let it hit you in the ass on your way out”, and out they go.
In fact, all the folk who think the administrators are lying. “The display is a lie” and all that. Anyone is free to go see for themselves. If they feel so strongly why not just go?
A mass evacuation (or any kind of mass action that threatens the Pact) risks upsetting the Silo’s equilibrium. And (major spoiler, though it’s been alluded to the people really in charge (Silo 1) can wipe out the entire population (and they have on more than one occasion).
I get that but if there has always been this safety valve available I find it hard to believe that the situation would reach the point where a mass or forced evacuation became viable. Folk who wanted to leave would have just left. The entire first episode focused around this point.
I thought I was losing my eyesight watching this season even with the brightness cranked up. I get the “there is very little power in the silo” but I can suspend my disbelief if I can see the characters move on the screen instead of a lighter blob on a dark background.
Overall, the season was good, but not great. A bit more consistent than S1, which started out and ended up strong, but lagged in the middle.
The best parts of S2 for me were Bernard (largely due to Tim Robbins) and Solo (largely due to Steve Zahn). The rest was a bit hit and miss. The worldbuilding and general production design of the show is SO good, and the actors are generally so committed, that it’s easy to overlook how nonsensical so much of what happens is.
I have not read the books, I only just finished binging the season. I assumed what he told Bernard was that the decision had been made, the Silo was done for, and nothing he did mattered at this point. Which is why his key fop was not even blinking as it usually does in an emergency, it was now out of his hands entirely.
Having just finished the season I think my biggest issue is now back to the original premise. What happened in Solo’s silo would be my first guess as to what would happen the moment someone got out to clean and saw the fake video. They would write LIES on the monitor instead of cleaning. If cleaning is so gosh darned important that they have to have this comboluted system to trick outcasts and doubters into doing it you could have just done it the right way from the start and have volunteers who are allowed back in do it once in a while. Just have one person who’s only job in the silo is to go out for 30 seconds every 10 years using the good tape and cleaning the damn camera.