I dug the tone and setup so far. Cool to see Josh Holloway again.
After the first 10 minutes, I pictured it as an allegory showing what a Trump-America might be like—Yooooge walls cordoning off classes of people and banning entry into the 1%, the Collaborators wearing [del]Trump Helmets[/del] Red Hats, the Collaborator’s belief that it’s all only temporary, widespread fear, xenophobia and a “terrorist cell” known as the Resistance.
Hrmm… I typed the above tongue-in-cheek, but now… I’m not so sure…
Like everybody seems to be both. It wouldn’t surprise me at this point if the leader of the resistance is the “big suck-up” guy who recruited Sawyer in the first place.
I’m really enjoying this show. I had such low expectations on see the previews, so it is nice to be surprised. After watching an episode, I always wish that next week’s episode could be on right away.
I like it so far. Still a lot of unanswered questions. We still haven’t seen, or met anyone who has seen, the “aliens”. Still no explanation of what “The Factory” is and what goes on there. I’m hoping some of this stuff gets revealed pretty soon.
I caught the first episode late and just caught up this morning. I’ve been playing X-Com 2 lately as well, and this almost feels like a companion piece to that game; this must be what’s going on in the ADVENT-run cities while X-Com is off fighting the aliens.
The driving theme of the series seems to be about how adversity can bring out the worst in humanity. The Nazi imagery of the occupation government is a bit on-the-nose (and the governor being a big-nosed Jew even more so), but the government has a lot in common with the resistance, in that they’re all only doing what’s best for themselves in the short term, and acting out of fear and wanting to protect themselves and their families rather than any greater good.
The timeline doesn’t make sense to me. Dialog has said that the aliens arrived only 340ish days ago. Somehow, a Vichy-style government was created, Red Hats recruited and trained, and a tremendous amount of buy-in from both collaborators and resistance fighters. Aliens arriving would be such a traumatic event for us that it would take much more than a year for us to settle into our new reality. If the setting for the program were something like ten years post arrival, I could understand it more.
The two teenagers sneak under the wall and go into what is obviously a Sam’s Club or Costco sort of warehouse store. But, the boy says “What is this place?” and the girl says, “I don’t know. Some sort of food distribution center.” It hasn’t even been a year since the walls went up. These kids should remember such common shopping places.
The people just seem too domesticated and tranquil for having this incredible event happen so recently. People should still be struggling with adjusting to this new situation.
How long do you think it took for Vichy to create a Vichy-style government? It definitely didn’t take ten years.
I’m assuming that the Homeland Security forces are a mishmash of former police, military, and National Guard types, with a mix of people who (like Will) are willing to do whatever it takes to protect themselves and their family. The people running the occupation government are presumably just the people who managed to put themselves in the right place at the right time (Snyder feels more like a used car salesman or a PR guy than a politician) and were savvy enough to make a deal with the Hosts.
The only things that really seem out of place to me are how the walls got built so fast (alien tech, I presume) and why they use the pseudo-Nazi flags instead of using the American flag. There seems to be a connection between the bird on the flag and the people referring to the aliens as “Raps” (as in “raptors”), but it doesn’t really seem like the aliens would care what flag the government is using as long as they keep the humans on the reservation and behaving themselves.
I do wonder where they’re getting their (admittedly thin) supply of fresh food from - west LA doesn’t exactly have a lot of arable land, and there’s no indication that they’ve turned Griffith Park into farms and henhouses or anything. Are there agricultural blocs that are supplying food to the cities?
I think the aliens are just a means to an end as far as the story they want to tell. This is just an excuse to put Americans in the position of being occupied by an outside force to look at the morality and conflicts that occur. It reminds me a lot of that one season of Battlestar Galactica on New Caprica.
:mad: Crap, anybody know where I can watch the pilot episode? Hulu only has from episode 2 on, and my cable provider isn’t one of the options on USA Network’s site.
I’m amazed that the aliens allow humans to be in these positions of power. Look at Josh Holloway’s character, for example. He’s in charge of investigations with what seems like free reign over the area, and he hates them.
I also agree that the short time line doesn’t seem realistic. People are satisfied going about their day with these totalitarian controls. Their attitudes seem like life as we know it was a far distant memory instead of less than one year prior.
