Review: Upload, Season One

Like many people these days, I'm binging shows on Netflix and Amazon. Unlike most people, this has little to do with the Coronavirus lockdown, and more to do with inheriting a smart TV from my sister-in-law. I'm finally getting to see things like El Camino and Jessica Jones, plus a ridiculous number of superhero shows.

When I saw the ads for Upload, I knew I had to watch at least the first episode. The premise: if you have the money, you can have your mind uploaded to an Internet Heaven when you die. I used to spend a lot of spare time in Second Life, and I was getting that vibe from the ads. It was a great idea, and it was up to Greg Daniels to either succeed with it or screw up. 

The show did not disappoint me. Upload is a lot of fun, and I plowed through the season in a matter of days. The longest episode was the first, where the main characters and Lake View (a very tony Internet Heaven) are introduced, and it only lasts forty-five minutes. The rest of the episodes are about twenty-four minutes each. Bing, bing, bing!

Nathan Brown is a computer programmer engaged to Ingrid, a very wealthy and self-absorbed girl. When Nathan is seriously injured in an accident with his self-driving car, Ingrid pushes for him to become an upload to Lake View, where her family plans to spend their afterlives. Nathan accepts.
Lake View is visually based off the grand hotels of the early twentieth century, with virtual bellhops and large rooms where the dead meet and make new friends. The exterior shots taken for the place are from the Mohonk Mountain House, which I'm adding to the list of hotels I'd like to stay in (the Chateau Frontenac and the Grove Park Inn are on the same list). 

Every resident of Lake View has an Angel, someone available 24-7 to answer questions and serve the needs of the well-heeled residents. Nathan's Angel is named Nora, and it's hard not to like her. She and the other Angels work cheek to jowl in a large room with rows of computer screens, and they aren't paid very well. Nora's father is dying of vape lung, and she wants to borrow enough money to get him into Lake View. Unfortunately, Nora's ratings aren't high enough at work (or in the bedroom, which is another story) and her boss is a petty bitch. Her father also wants to go to 'regular' Heaven to be with her mother, which means when he's gone, he's gone. Nora's emotions bleed over into her job, and Nathan, hungry for real interaction, is supportive. She begins to bond with him.
Meanwhile, Nathan has his own problems. Since Ingrid is paying for everything, his existence is dependent on her happiness and whims. She dresses him in kneepants for his own funeral (perhaps she likes calves?) and considers 'pausing' him when she's too busy with other things. He also has some damaged and missing memories, which isn't supposed to happen with the elite service Ingrid is paying for.
Nathan begins puzzling about it, sharing his concerns with the other uploads. I goggled when they introduced his neighbor across the hall - William B. Davis, best known for playing the Cigarette Smoking Man on the X-Files. The character, David Choak (Koch backwards, I presume), is fabulously wealthy and takes an interest in Nathan. He doesn't believe Nathan died in a freak accident; he believes Nathan was murdered. And if CSM says that, you can take it to the bank.
Nora joins Nathan in his quest for the missing memories, risking her approval ratings and even her job. Before the end of the first season, she's also risking her life.
Upload is a great dystopian sci-fi comedy, with hilarious situations and a handle on cultural developments down the road. One of Nathan's new friends is a kid who's been dead for at least a decade, but is still stuck in a child avatar. They sneak off to the virtual black market and the kid buys a puberty upgrade - which doesn't work out the way he planned. When Nora's dad takes a tour of Lake View, technical problems turn Nathan and the horses they're riding on into block figures. Corporate branding is everywhere, including on the leaves of the trees. Pop-up ads appear regularly in public rooms and paths, just like they do on Second Life. Angels promote virtual products, and receive bonuses if their clients buy.  And everyone is given rating stars for their performance in everything, including the bedroom.
I recommend watching the show. It's full of entertainment and a lot faster than reading this review.

Vampire Awareness Month: Carl Kolchak

This post is part of Vampire Awareness Month, the cooperative effort of many vampire fans. This post is X-posted at Amy Mah's blog. Amy is kindly hosting the VAM posts as well! Below is a subject near and dear to my heart: 

Carl Kolchak: the Night Stalker

In 1972, a TV movie grabbed my imagination and wouldn't let go. Its name: The Night Stalker. The main character, Carl Kolchak, is a reporter covering a series of murders in Las Vegas. During the investigation, he discovers clues that the suspected killer is a vampire. He is skeptical at first, but becomes a True Believer by the conclusion of the film and takes the vampire down alone, at great risk to himself.

Kolchak was inconveniently thrown out of Las Vegas in the first film, so the second TV movie starring this unusual hero was set in Seattle. No vampire this time, but the second film was so successful that a television series was born. In the series, Kolchak set up house in Chicago with his editor, Tony Vincenzo. Vincenzo was his editor in the films, too, which makes you wonder how good Kolchak was when he wasn't chasing monsters - or if something else was going on there.

Kolchak: the Night Stalker was my "absolutefavoritegottasee" show during its run from 1974-75. Kolchak, with his often-damaged tape recorder, never-ready camera, and dumb-looking straw hat was the perfect hero for a girl who wanted to go to Duke for a degree in parapsychology. Carl (given name Karel as per the Jeff Rice book) wanted to explore the paranormal - and offer proof to everyone else. Alas, the latter was always denied. I loved Darren McGavin's voiceovers, giving us the story of each monster - and each victim. They were always so much more convincing than the schemes he used to wangle his way into crime scenes and out of trouble with Vincenzo.

The vampires, like the other creatures in the Night Stalker series, were not like the werewolves, witches or vampires in today's popular fiction. They were true monsters, inhuman creatures with human form. They preyed on their victims without remorse or angst. About the only thing they have in common with modern paranormal heroes is that many of them were good-looking. 

I dearly loved the show, but my major beef with it was Kolchak's tendency to go after the monsters he chased during their time of greatest power. Usually, this meant after dark, during the full moon, etc. Didn't he realize that this was a great way to get killed? After spending some years writing, though, I've realized that stopping the monster was not his first objective - getting the story was. Stopping the creature was a bonus, but often connected to self-preservation. Just like a reporter...

The series lived for only one season, but the legend of Kolchak continues. Copies of Jeff Rice's book and the videos of the two TV movies can be had, but at an exorbitant price. An anthology was released a few years back with various authors' versions of Kolchak stories. The Night Stalker is cited as one of the inspirations for the X-Files television series, and this was acknowledged in 1998 when Darren McGavin came on the show as FBI Special Agent Arthur Dales, the first agent to investigate what became the "X-Files". In 2005, ABC tried airing a new Night Stalker series, but it was an enormous flop. It just wasn't the same without McGavin. I hear that a film version with Johnny Depp may be in the works, but people think Johnny Depp is going to play everything.

Its legacy for this author? I didn't get a degree in parapsychology, but I did get one in journalism. The major focus of my writing has been the occult and paranormal, including vampires. I call it fiction, but you never know...

---

TV Detectives in Days of Yore

We picked up a few back issues of Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine and Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine at our Sisters in Crime chapter meeting yesterday. One of them, AHMM June 2005, has an interview with William Link (of Levinson & Link fame). The focus of the interview was on the television series Murder, She Wrote, then fresh out on DVD. Near the end of the article, Link bemoans the ageism that plagues the TV industry. He claimed even people in their forties were having problems (I'm riding the ragged edge of disaster in that case!) getting networks to look at their stuff. He also talked about hit shows like Columbo no longer being possible because of the focus on forensics.

Naturally, I went into the other room to discuss this with my spouse, who is even less qualified to write for television than I am, despite her superior writing credits. Only the inexperienced need apply, I suppose.

I proposed that one could do a series similar to, say, the old Ellery Queen: one old detective, one young detective. Perhaps the older detective would be the old-school detective, some grizzled police detective, and the young detective could be the forensics person. If Link were younger and had started writing in a different era, he might have had a Columbo that was savvier to high-tech. Certainly my favorite detective paid strict attention to details, and the show's villains came up with some clever, frequently technologically based, alibis.

Gwen proposed that the TV character closest to J.B. Fletcher now was Richard Castle. Very true! He has the same 'worldwide fame' and a talent for solving crimes. Fortunately, he's in a bigger town than Cabot Cove. I said that it would be a great team-up to bring J.B. Fletcher to the Castle show. The only disadvantage is the difference in networks. ABC would need to get permission from CBS to use the character.

"What they ought to do," Gwen said, "is put her at the table with the other writers during one of his poker sessions. She could do a cameo." She also felt that Jessica should have all the chips in front of her during the scene.

They wouldn't even have to identify her character. TV mystery buffs would KNOW. Anyone got an 'in' with Angela Lansbury or ABC?