Freedom Day

It's rare that a film or a series adaptation of a book you love meets your expectations. When it finally hits the screen you usually have to prepare yourself for compromise. There will be something that they didn't get right because you saw it differently when the author planted the vision in your head. The main characters are off or maybe you'd rather had seen someone else in the role. The sets don't fit the story as you'd imagined it. The progression of the scenes don't align with the book as you remember how it unfolded. Silo hits the ball out of the park and its a credit to Hugh Howey's talent as a story teller. Everybody in the production was on the same page. Very well done. Can't wait for more.

Watching the first episode of Silo on my mind all i have were mixed feelings. I would give it 8 out of 10 stars. Its an interesting first episode and it does sets up the story and characters very well.

But i have to say that there were some performances that did not meet my expectations at all. Some of the actors were not able to fully convey the depth and emotion of their characters and the story itself, which made their scenes feel a bit emotionless and some what cringe.

Despite this, I still think that the first episode is worth watching for its greet storyline.

Couldnt help but notice the similarities with George Orwell 1984 novel, hope it be as good!

What is this? Is this supposed to be a show or a joke? This has to be the worst first 10 minutes of any show I've ever seen. Not only is the editing and production style reminiscent of something made by a modern day first year college student, but the acting is phenomenally bad. Like next level bad acting. So far I feel like I'm watching a bad fusion of Fallout and Stranger Things, two of the worst shows of all time. But it's so much worse than that because so far this is turning out to be a complete and total cliche book. They clearly had no original ideas of any kind so they just copy the same dialogue you hear in every other poorly written, unoriginal trash you see on Netflix and Apple TV and Amazon and every other streaming site.

Silo is generally a very good show, and I recommend it. In alot of ways, it's your standard dystopian post-apocalyptic sci-fi where you spend alot of time trying to figure out how we got here, and what the authorities are hiding/doing. Is the threat they claim to be protecting everyone from real, or just an excuse for authoritarianism? Or both? I lean towards both, but the show's not over as I write this after the end of the 2nd season.

We've seen all this before. But Silo does it again, and does it quite well for the most part. The Russian nesting doll of mysteries feels a little JJ Abrams at times, but you always feel that unlike an Abrams show, the mysteries have solutions that were conceived of in advance, not made up later. After the initial episode or two, there is always one or more plot threads creating a constant engaging tension.

That said...I have some nits to pick. Again, I don't want to distract from the fact that I do like the show. I'm not a generous grader, so that 7/10 I put on this is actually a pretty good grade. I'd probably give it 7.5 if I could, but I feel like 8 is too high. Because of the nits.

Let's start with acting. For the most part, the acting in this is solid. I wouldn't say spectacular. Few characters really jump out and grab you as amazingly compelling. But I really think Tim Robbins and Common let us down as our antagonists.

Robbins' Bernard character seems like he's supposed to be a reluctant villain. One who does villainous things but without villainous intent. Always forced by circumstance. But at multiple points, he behaves like a sociopath for almost no reason. He seems to have scenes where we're supposed to believe he regrets what he was forced to do...but Robbins fails to deliver the mail in these scenes. Bernard feels more sociopath and less reluctant than I think the show wants him to be. And if he is supposed to be a menacing sociopath, I don't feel the menace from him.

Common's Sims character almost has the opposite problem. I think Common is trying to deliver a 'quietly menacing' performance here...but fails completely. It comes off as more monotone line recitation than 'quietly menacing'. His character's actions sell him as a menacing villain to some extent, but Common's performance doesn't enhance that at all. There's even a moment or two that called for him to stretch his acting to show Sims conflicted or upset and ... more monotone. To be fair, I don't think Common's performance is so bad as to damage the show, but he's certainly not enhancing it.

My second nit is the role coincidence and luck play in the events of the show. By no means is this an 'always and everywhere', but far too much of the plot drives forward by luck and coincidence. Things like a particular bit of evidence being exactly where you need it to be for what feels like insufficient justification. Or someone revealing a secret to the worst possible person to tell when it was barely even relevant to the conversation that was going on.

There's too much of that. To be certain alot of events do happen through character agency. There's alot of things that happen in this show, and I feel like happenstance plays too large a role. I saw an interview where a writer said his show had a rule 'no more than one coincidence per episode'. Even that feels high to me, but that show was episodic, and it feels more acceptable in a show like that than a show like Silo where episode structures are only there to divide things into edible chunks.

Another is the worldbuilding. Now, look, alot of sci-fi is about coming up with a premise for a world and then exploring what that would look like. The backfilling of details is of secondary importance. I get that. But it's one of my favorite things about sci-fi, and it irks me when the pieces don't fit right.

For example, we're supposed to believe that this silo has been here for 350 years, has a population of 10k, most of whom lack education beyond basic literacy and how to perform their specific job...and yet there is this economy that is able to support the level of technology and comfort and cleanliness we see in the upper echelons of IT and Judicial? The engineers are shown fairly early on having at best VERY vague understandings of how their own machines work...and we're supposed to believe that computing power and drugs and other things we see are all in perfect working order 350 years later and after multiple rebellions? Come on. Pick a lane.

Another one is the layers of secrets and lies often feels very arbitrary. Like the rule against mechanical lifting devices. Really? That just means even more of your unrealistically small workforce is doing porter work. I don't want to reveal the end of season 1 reveal, but when you get there, ask yourself 'why' and 'how'. How are these people pulling off such an epic deceit...but also why. I've seen through the end of season 2 and I don't feel like there's any gain there, and it would require alot of effort and skill and would be a consumed finite resource.

It's stuff like that which keeps popping up and sort of breaks me from immersion in the plot while I wonder "Wait what? Why? How?" and then I have to rewind to catch what I missed while I was distracted by these little incongruities that litter the landscape.

I feel like I have an idea where the show's answer to those kinds of questions lay, but I kind of hope I'm wrong because I won't find it satisfying if that's what it is. It will be too much of a 'we can justify anything with this!'

Anyway. Good show. You should watch it. But it's not perfect. Most things aren't.

This episode does what a pilot episode should: lay out the premise and do enough worldbuilding to convince you that this is an intriguing setup and worth sticking around to find more.

It's not the world's most original premise: a dystopian society where people are stuck living inside a silo because they believe the propaganda they've been fed from birth, that the outside world is dangerous and will kill them within minutes. Or is it just propaganda? Would you stake your life on it?

I particularly liked Rashida Jones as Allison. Her intrepid nature sets the stage for the rest of the season. I'm in.