Hello Tomorrows Technooptimism Hides Something Much Darker
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The new Apple TV Plus series is all about shenanigans and deception in the style of a bright, sunny 1950s retrospective.
ByAndrew Webster
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As soon as you open Hello Tomorrow , everything seems extraordinary. The new half-hour sci-fi series on Apple TV Plus imagines a futuristic vision of Tomorrowland in the 1950s with all the hope and optimism. Technology has perfected life: people drive hovercraft like Cadillacs, robots deliver mail and serve beer, businessmen use jetpacks to get to work, and all sorts of unusual gadgets make housework easier. There's even a cartoon bird that drives a delivery truck and proclaims that it 'brings laughter' to the world
But it didn't take long for cracks to appear. Hello Tomorrow uses the contrast between the dream of a better future and the harsh reality of today to tell a profound story about life's challenges and the choices we make. It starts out bright and cheerful, but as reality sets in, the show feels filtered through the spring- autumn moments of Uncut Gems .
Note: This review is based on the first three episodes of Salam Sabah . Contains very light spoilers for this episode.
The story revolves around Jack (Billy Crudup), a traveling salesman who leads a small crew selling accommodation for a lunar colony called Brightside. They go door to door making big promises about life in space before moving on to the next small town. Jack is very good at this; In one of the show's first scenes, he manages to sell a piece of land to a drunk and lonely stranger at an inn. The lifestyle suits most groups. This leaves Eddie (Hank Azaria) continuing to sell hunts to pay off his gambling debts, while Herb (DeoSean Williams) tries to build a home for his soon-to-be-expanding family. Shirley (Hanifah Wood) does her best to hold everyone back as she climbs the corporate ladder.
But their nomadic lifestyle is amazing. It turns out that smooth-talking Jack has some secrets of his own, including his 20-year-old son, Joey (Nicholas Bodani), who he doesn't even know exists or wants. Events lead to the Brightside sales team staying longer in Joey's hometown, where sales are low, but Jack manages to find at least a small way into his son's life.
What becomes immediately clear is that almost everything in the world of Hello Tomorrow is fiction. You can see this in the many potential customers of BrightSide who, despite all this great technology, are often very dissatisfied. Some have lost their jobs, replaced by technology, while others have been banished by family and friends in pursuit of their sci-fi dreams. No one embodies this more than Jack, whose business acumen allows him to escape from all the real problems in his life. Over the years, this includes her son, but that changes when he tries to be a part of Joey's life without giving a clue about their true relationship with each other.
Things are getting really stressful. Jack's personal and professional world is built on a dangerous house of cards. When she lies about her relationship with her son, her work life also begins to unravel. Soon, meeting Joey isn't enough for him, so he offers his estranged son a job as a salesman. He poured his time, effort and money into this new venture, causing confusion and anger among his colleagues. While everyone was ready to move to a town with better sales prospects, Jack kept making excuses to stay.
Even doing so while BrightSide's rocket — which at three episodes in, I'm not sure is actually beyond a 3D sales video — continues to be delayed, forcing customers to wait for the next release or to ' to ask for a refund. (It's reminiscent of a monorail episode of The Simpsons , but without the musical number.) You can feel the house of cards starting to shake, but at least in the early episodes, Jack keeps them from falling out of sheer.
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Part of what really makes the retrofit concept better (besides Jack's impassioned sales pitch) is how good Hello Tomorrow looks. First class production design. Robots and floating cars were perfect for life in the 1950s, and everywhere you look, you'll find plenty of hyper-designed equipment, from individual popcorn bowls at baseball games to dictation machines attached to typewriters. There are video calls on black and white TVs and cylindrical robots that do any small task you can think of. Some, like hotel bartenders, are a little rude. The functional and tangible nature of this technology makes it seem believable, even if nothing is real. And on the face of it, they find this '50s version more proud than ours because (at least for now) it avoids talking about real issues like race.
It's hard to say exactly where Hello Tomorrow is going at this point (full 10-episode season). But that's not necessarily a good thing anywhere - at least not for actors. A glimpse into Jack's life as he witnesses a slow motion car crash leaves no doubt that things are going wrong. The only question is how bad it will be and if anyone will make it out alive.
Hello Tomorrow starts on February 17 on Apple TV Plus , with new episodes every Friday.
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