Brief Story Line
After 10 years of unhappy marriage to a billionaire tech mogul named Byron Gogol (Billy Magnussen - Game Night, Birth of the Dragon etc), Hazel Green (Cristin Milioti - How I Met Your Mother TV series, Palm Springs etc) managed to break away from her prison-like home and attempted to be free from her husband.
As she tried to go back to her home town and live with her estranged father Herbert (Ray Romano - Ice Age movies, Everybody Loves Raymond TV series etc), Hazel was being chased by Byron's employees Herringbone (Dan Bakkedahl - Life in Pieces TV series etc) and Fiffany (Noma Dumezweni). Hazel would later realize that Byron has actually planted a chip inside her brain which would make him able to see and hear everything that she experienced.
So what would happen to Hazel and how would the story conclude? You can find them out in the first season of this unique series.
End of Brief Story Line
You know at first, the series felt like a comedy that was pretty dark in nature. But as the story progressed, I felt that the humor was getting lesser and focused more on the drama. It actually felt more like a full satire on the progress of technology. You can see even the name of the tech billionaire was Byron Gogol which seemed a bit like a pun of the number one internet search engine.
The pilot episode felt very intriguing. The way the story was told with few flashbacks to show the background story little by little was generally OK. And our lead cast Cristin Milioti was quite amazing with the portrayal of a wife in a difficult relationship with a totally possessive husband. Though critics were in high praise of Cristin's performance, I also admired Billy Magnussen in his role.
In this 8 episodes first season, my most favorite character was actually Herbert (brilliantly played by Ray Romano). I think he was just perfect as the loving father with problems of his own. And his sometimes sarcastic comments were always perfectly placed. I believe his vast prior experience was a major reason for him to fit in nicely. Now what I was really confused was the presence of the character Liver (Augusto Aguilera - The Predator etc) who aside from providing one weird scene, did not have any memorable moment. Perhaps he would have more screen time in second season? In fact I thought Caleb Foote (who played Bennet) and Kym Whitley (as Judiff) were more impressive.
This series was based on a novel of the same title written by Alissa Nutting who also served as co-executive producer and co-creator. The novel itself received positive reviews and with such a creative thought, it was no wonder it would be having a series adaptation. The idea where a chip would be planted in the brains of two loving people for "connectivity" reasons was definitely disturbing, however it would not that far fetched and scarily possible in the future.
Overall this was an interesting series with unique idea. It was considered a dark comedy though to my personal views, this one is more like a drama with a bit of dark humor. I did enjoy watching and finding out how it played out. It has a bright opening but I think the middle was not that great. However the ending was absolutely amazing and I thought it has a satisfying finale. Before I forgot, this series was classified for 18+ due to some sex scene and brief nudity. So if you want to see a short 8 episodes series with attributes I mentioned above, then you can give it a try. But avoid them if you prefer a sitcom as this is not that kind of comedy.
Mike's movie moments rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
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