The Bingeworthy™ Breakdown is an occasional look at new TV shows. Over 500 scripted seasons of TV are expected to air in 2018, and to help you sort the wheat from the chaff, we’re going to give you the lowdown to help you work out whether it’s worth tuning in every week for them or waiting to binge later. Today we look at Amazon’s anthology series “Philip K. Dick’s Electric Dreams.”
Let’s talk about “Philip K. Dick’s Electric Dreams.”
I beg you, kind sir, please, please don’t make me spend another waking moment thinking about “Philip K. Dick’s Electric Dreams.”
[Deep breath]
“Philip K. Dick’s Electric Dreams” is, in a word, embarrassing. From the juvenile production values to the unabashed “Black Mirror” fanfic, the show is one of the worst high-profile television series I can recall. I feel bad for everyone involved.
Harsh barley, bro.
Harsh barley, indeed.
To backtrack just a tad, why don’t you go ahead and explain what precisely “Philip K. Dick’s Electric Dreams” is?
It’s an anthology series along the lines of “Black Mirror,” except instead of each episode being based on an original idea, every episode is based on an old Philip K. Dick story. And when I say that it’s “along the lines of ‘Black Mirror,’” what I mean is that it wants desperately to be seen as equal to — if not better than — “Black Mirror.”
And… it isn’t.
The difference in overall quality between the worst “Black Mirror” episode and the best ‘Electric Dreams’ is of a vastness approaching infinity. Take, for example, “The Waldo Moment,” widely considered to be the worst “Black Mirror” has to offer due to its half-baked concept and lazy construction. And on the other hand, let’s look at “The Commuter,” the Timothy Spall-starring standout episode of “Philip K. Dick’s Electric Dreams.”
“The Commuter” has Spall playing a train station employee whose teenage son is turning out to be a violent psychopath. One day, a woman shows up at the train station talking about, Macon Heights, a non-existent train stop. When Spall goes searching for Macon Heights, he finds a strangely idyllic town where nothing can go wrong. He returns home at the end of the day to discover that his troubled son… never existed.
And he takes it in stride. He barely reacts to his entire existence changing because of a magical train stop. Until the script needs him to react, that is, in the episode’s climactic showdown.
And this is the best episode of the series?
By a long shot. Even though it’s fuzzy on logic and character, “The Commuter” has a mildly interesting premise, is well-directed by British TV and Tom Harper, and, again, it stars Timothy Spall. And Timothy Spall is a good actor.
Tell me about the worst episode, then.
There are so many to choose from! Maybe the one that opens with Anna Paquin as a cop in a futuristic, extremely low-rent “Blade Runner” cityscape? Within the first minute or so of that episode, her partner slaps this bit of clunky-beyond-words exposition in our faces: “You know, Sarah, you’re not alone in this. The massacre affected the entire department. Three of the guys were in my class at the academy.”
Or maybe the one where Vera Farmiga plays a Donald Trump-analogue whose political motto is “Kill All Others?” Perhaps the one where Steve Buscemi—
Vera Farmiga? Steve Buscemi? Anna Paquin and Timothy Spall? You expect me to believe that a show with this cast isn’t the best thing on TV?
Dude, I know. It’s wild. I guess being on one episode of a new high-profile Amazon series that everyone is telling you will be the next “Black Mirror” seemed like a good proposition at the time. But there isn’t a single “good” episode in the bunch.
You were saying, about the episode with Steve Buscemi…
Oh yeah, it’s a bad one. It’s called “Crazy Diamond” and its premise is so similar to the entirety of “Black Mirror” that it’s mildly infuriating. It has to do with transferring consciousnesses and AIs and all that great stuff. It’s confusing and very stupid and shoddily constructed. The production design is lazy and it’s poorly directed, and, as I said at the top, the adjective that really describes all this is “embarrassing.”
There’s another one that has Bryan Cranston playing a Star Trek-ian commander who’s a real goddamn asshole to his wife, played by Essie Davis. He goes off to war on a scary planet, and when he comes back he’s suddenly a nice guy. Soon you begin to wonder if he’s been replaced by an alien (if you were blind enough not to have seen it immediately). And if you can’t telegraph the episode’s conclusion from there, I don’t know what to tell you. (Also, you should watch Charlie McDowell’s excellent 2014 film “The One I Love,” which is structured similarly and is monumentally better.)
An episode titled “The Hood Maker,” which stars Robb Stark off “Game of Thrones,” posits a future where some percentage of the population has developed telepathic powers. They are called “Teeps” and are largely discriminated against. The episode tells the story of the first Teep police officer, who is partnered up with Robb Stark…
… this is reminding me of something, but I cant quite place it…
It’s reminding you of Netflix’s “Bright”!
Holy shit, you’re right.
You know, the movie where Will Smith is a cop and his partner is the first Orc on the force? In a world where Orcs are discriminated against, as a poor stand-in for racial prejudice of the real world? This is so exactly “Bright” it’s scary. Right down to how shitty the thing looks. It’s supposed to have a grimy, “City of Men” vibe to it, but fails miserably.
This must be better than “Bright.” Right?
Honestly, I think “Bright” is better.
The only other episode that I thought had redeeming qualities is called “Safe and Sound.” It stars Maura Tierney as a futurist radical-revolutionary type, and Annalise Basso as her daughter. Together, they move from a middle-America community — literally called a “Bubble” — to a futuristic city, where everyone suspects them of being terrorists.
Like every other episode of this show, a lot of stupid stuff goes down in “Safe and Sound.” But it’s bolstered by a strong central performance from Basso, as well as a distinctly scary and topical throughline about sexual assault, which alone makes the episode worth taking a look at.
Still, it’s not quite “good,” as the stupid outweighs the interesting. At one point, some government propagandist shouts that “radical Western terrorists [in the Bubbles] want to undermine the values of Eastern society” — political analogy this transparent, shallow, and dumb really has no place in an ostensibly serious program.
I’m not going to watch this.
Smart decision. Now will you let me get back to forgetting about “Philip K. Dick’s Electric Dreams?” Maybe go spend some time catching up on “Black Mirror,” whose most recent season is really quite good. [D]
