Lolli123456

Repressed black people at the ivy league university in their palacial segragated dormatory sitting in high-backed leather chairs and having to wear high fashion clothes and sport $200 hair while talking and texting on their iPhones (in show ad placement like every minute).

Its mosty typical millenian whining, though there are many very funny parts, I LOLed several times. The season picks up steam, but I felt the ending was rather lame and anti-climatic. If it gets another season it would have to be revamped as I dont see where they left room for it to grow.

** SEASON 2 ** - Although there are some good moments in season 2, there is almost zero plot. The first half of the episodes are vignettes of particular characters, and the second half gets kind of weird at times, like a Scooby Do mystery show.

These vignettes are emotional at times and they all end in the same way, almost trying to force you to accept that its real. Get woke, viewer. Its basically a spin the wheel of repression: What is it like being gay, What is it like being half-white, What is it like to get pregnant and deal with the decision to get an abortion or not... but none of the episodes get that deep into the characters, its mostly shock value sound bites like you are watching someone self indulgent self obsessed person's youtube channel.

Unlike season 1, there are almost no funny parts.

I kept wondering when the intro would stop and the story would begin, but it just kept being back-story with little to nothing about the future. Which is kind of odd since its suppose to be an ivy league college and you would think there would be a lot of plot about who the characters are evoling into... who they will become. After two seasons, I could barely tell you what their majors are.

And all that would be fine if it was the black version of The Big Bang Theory, with one inane scene after another, but this is clearly supposed to be a deeper show and have a message. And that message should not be Scoobie Doobie Doooooo!!

As stated above, the writers kind of backed themselves into a corner at the end of season 1, so season 2 just meanders along with no real destination. So its not surprising that they didn't know what to write.

They will probably do a season 3, if for no other reason than good looking naked young people having sex and doing drugs in every other scene.

All that said, I'm still giving it 3 stars as the episodes do stand up within themselves, even if there is no overall direction to the show. Its slightly arty and they do explore some aspects of racism that are obv relavent today.

So far, its really slow, like a tv movie of the week. Hoping it gets more exciting as he makes it to the US and Perimeter Institute. The flashback flashforward is mostly unneccesary imo, though I can understand why they did it that way as it would have been amazingly slow to start at the beginning and progress linearly through his life. The opening scene is... {ahem}... revealing.

UPDATE: I have now watched the first season up until episode 6. Although the first show bounced around in his timeline between the 1930s and the 1890s, which was annoying, the first half of the season is firmly in the 1890s to 1905 time range, which made it a solid show with a great deal of historical significance. I had known about his first wife and how she basically got screwed in every sense of the word, but it was good to see the show address the events in a dramatized but likely near factual manner. I've upgraded my rating to 4 stars.

Overall it was a great show and the look of it was fantastic. The 'Water' episode should win awards.

SPOILER:
I found it very obviously racist that the light skinned black people get to go to the promise land at the end, and the two dark skinned black people have to go back to the ghetto... even though they passed all the tests. There is a lot of inherent racism in South America toward darker skinned people... just sayin', I bet the producers receive criticism about this. As they should. But then again, as the show teaches us, the system isn't fair. I thought they should have called the show "1%".

Exceedingly good stories. All 8 center around the same family for the most part, but each stands on its own and they are not a single timeline series. The setting is an alternative reality that is a lot like the 1950s but an alien object has been found (you find that out in the first episode), and this object somehow allows the development of strange futuristic technology. Each episode features some aspect of that technology, but the stories are very human and emotionally centered. Certain episodes are better than others, but as a whole they are an amazingly good show. Can't wait for the next season... you know... after the plague subsides.

Its far from perfect, the scene where the LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOG path to the courthouse allows the assassination of main defendant is just stupid. Its like most Stephen King stories, trivially dumb, but that is not to say its un-enjoyable.