S01.E07: The Dark Backward

[ohjoy]

Quote

Close to freedom, Chase must first navigate prison politics, face a devious warden and endure rude awakenings.

[Lebanna]

Having watched the whole thing now, I quite enjoyed this, but I think it could have been a 2 hour movie. 

The twist in this episode was quite obvious - that prison clearly wasn’t happening in 2019. 2044? I could buy it.

Also, I was slightly annoyed at how easy it was to take down the warden and how Chase basically did nothing for Cooper in the end - for good or ill, she just gave up and moved on, which seemed like a pretty powerless move.

The only surprise was that Prison 2044 didn’t turn out to be another simulation inside a simulation at the end. 

I do quite like the idea that an entire generation of nerds grew up watching ‘Lost’ and thought ‘Sure, that’s definitely a reasonable answer to all our intricate societal problems’. Yeah, why not. But they forgot the magic ingredient that really made everyone on that island better people... Hurley-hugs.

[WAnglais1]

I watched it all last night and was really meh on the whole thing. The one bit which made me happy was having all the questions answered. When I saw the synopsis for this, I thought, "Oh, LOST wasn't bad enough? Now there's the NEW!LOST!"

I also thought the crimes of the ten were way too real for me to honestly not have a huge emotional reaction to...the Susan Smith-esque woman who drowned her kids? That happened right up the road from where I live. The mall shooter? Too close. I almost tuned out during that. 

[peachmangosteen]

I never watch a show in one shot but I watched this whole thing today. And honestly I think it was because I was fascinated by how bad it was. I literally thought maybe it was some kind of joke or something lol. I think it may have been the worst show I have ever watched and I've watched some bad shit!

Apart from a few of the characters, I thought the acting was so very bad. In some cases, like with the Warden, Chase's mom, Bonnie and Clyde, and the jury or whatever, it was kind of a fun bad. I was embarrassed watching Kate Bosworth though. So cringey.

9 hours ago, WAnglais1 said:

I also thought the crimes of the ten were way too real for me to honestly not have a huge emotional reaction to...the Susan Smith-esque woman who drowned her kids? That happened right up the road from where I live. The mall shooter? Too close. I almost tuned out during that. 

Also this. Those two were too much for me and honestly out of place compared to most of the others imo.

[Racj82]

15 hours ago, peachmangosteen said:

I never watch a show in one shot but I watched this whole thing today. And honestly I think it was because I was fascinated by how bad it was. I literally thought maybe it was some kind of joke or something lol. I think it may have been the worst show I have ever watched and I've watched some bad shit!

Apart from a few of the characters, I thought the acting was so very bad. In some cases, like with the Warden, Chase's mom, Bonnie and Clyde, and the jury or whatever, it was kind of a fun bad. I was embarrassed watching Kate Bosworth though. So cringey.

Also this. Those two were too much for me and honestly out of place compared to most of the others imo.

None of it was too much for me. But I also don't have barriers like that. For example, I don't watch a movie about a murderer and if that murderer kills a kid I'm like that's too far! I'm turning this off. Kids get killed too. I never want it to happen. I never want anyone to get murdered too. But, that's reality. 

At least some of the crimes had to be really up there to justified this sort of punishment. 

I also don't think it was the worst show I've ever seen. I've probably seen thousands of shows by this point. I'm not super old. I just love tv.

I thought it was fun enough. Not great but I wanted to see how it played out. 

I'm so beyond people shitting on Lost. Most TV shows wish they could be a sliver as good as Lost. Yay, this show gave you all the exact answers they set up. It also doesn't have a tenth of the emotion, scale, world building or character development that Lost did and that's why I loved the show. That's what more people should take note of when they do shows like this and not just the concept.

[peachmangosteen]

6 hours ago, Racj82 said:

I'm so beyond people shitting on Lost. Most TV shows wish they could be a sliver as good as Lost. Yay, this show gave you all the exact answers they set up. It also doesn't have a tenth of the emotion, scale, world building or character development that Lost did and that's why I loved the show. That's what more people should take note of when they do shows like this and not just the concept.

+1

That was the biggest problem with this show; the characters were utter shit lol. And the acting was just so bad so there was nothing making up for how bad the writing was.

Mostly it just made me wish The Crossing hadn't been canceled.

[zibnchy]

I just finished this. It was not great but it was far from the worst. I couldn't even watch Another Life and I love Katee Sackhoff.

It was completely obvious to me from the beginning that this was a prison simulation of some sort because I watched a movie sometime in the last year which had a very similar plotline (prisoners given the chance to redeem themselves in a simulation).

I thought this looked interesting. What I didn't anticipate was the bad acting, asshole characters, poorly drawn characters, and just straight up stupid stuff. Not interesting stupid, like Lost, just stupid.

What I liked was Natalie Martinez. She's no great actress but I like her. I also enjoyed watching Kate Bosworth "act" or whatever that was. I guess I liked the idea of the show much better than the execution.

I briefly entertained the idea that the final twist would be that they were all in a simulation run by aliens. Asshole aliens. I wish it had been.

[shockermolar]

On 9/12/2019 at 11:10 AM, Lebanna said:

Chase basically did nothing for Cooper in the end - for good or ill, she just gave up and moved on, which seemed like a pretty powerless move.

At first this bugged me too. And then I realized that for TWENTY FIVE YEARS he did nothing to exonerate her KNOWING that he was the one that was ultimately responsible for her mom getting shot and dying (yeah, manslaughter or whatever) and then staging the crime scene. And even with some kind of Innocence Project type lawyers, he kept his mouth shut  FOR TWENTY FIVE YEARS when he could have, at any time, fessed up so that at the least the wife he was trying to take care of and protect was released. But he didn't. TWENTY FIVE YEARS.

So yeah, fuck you Cooper. I'd have walked away too.

[Enero]

On 9/14/2019 at 5:49 PM, peachmangosteen said:

+1

That was the biggest problem with this show; the characters were utter shit lol. And the acting was just so bad so there was nothing making up for how bad the writing was.

Mostly it just made me wish The Crossing hadn't been canceled.

Agreed. I just finished watching this. Almost turned it off halfway through the season but kept going out of curiosity when Chase got out of the simulation. Anyway, all of these characters were horrible people, but not only that, dumb. Save for Chase who did have a brain cell or two. 

I honestly didn’t care about any of their fates. What I found most ridiculous was that the supposed reason for the experiment was due to so many people being criminals that the experiment was an attempt to redeem said criminals and thus save the human race. Well if that’s what humans had been reduced to in 2044, a bunch of murdering, robbing, raping assholes then maybe we don’t deserve to be saved. Just let Darwinism work it’s magic. 

[peachmangosteen]

20 hours ago, shockermolar said:

At first this bugged me too. And then I realized that for TWENTY FIVE YEARS he did nothing to exonerate her KNOWING that he was the one that was ultimately responsible for her mom getting shot and dying (yeah, manslaughter or whatever) and then staging the crime scene. And even with some kind of Innocence Project type lawyers, he kept his mouth shut  FOR TWENTY FIVE YEARS when he could have, at any time, fessed up so that at the least the wife he was trying to take care of and protect was released. But he didn't. TWENTY FIVE YEARS.

So yeah, fuck you Cooper. I'd have walked away too.

This reminded me: did we find out why exactly Cooper was in prison?

[shockermolar]

On 9/19/2019 at 8:10 AM, peachmangosteen said:

This reminded me: did we find out why exactly Cooper was in prison?

They were convicted together - that they'd both committed the crime.

[Lady Calypso]

On 9/18/2019 at 10:15 PM, Enero said:

Agreed. I just finished watching this. Almost turned it off halfway through the season but kept going out of curiosity when Chase got out of the simulation. Anyway, all of these characters were horrible people, but not only that, dumb. Save for Chase who did have a brain cell or two. 

I mean, I kind of cared about the character of Blair, the "Angel of Death" nurse because it seems like she thought she was doing good and she didn't seem like a complete idiot either. 

But I did genuinely hate every other person, including Chase, even though I ended up hating Chase a little less than everyone else.

But man, even though I'm glad Chase got free and got to walk away, especially from Cooper....that world she was walking in to looked awful. It's almost as if she'd be better off working in the prison since the rest of the world looked like it was on fire. I tuned out the explanation to what happened. Something about the water or whatever.