I thought the first season was interesting. It's played out like a video game where you go room to room and solve puzzles. I also liked how you didn't really know who was good and who was bad. The show didn't seem to take a side. You didn't know who to pull for. That was appealing. I saw the parallels between the poverty of Brazil vs the their wealthy resort areas, which I interpreted as a commentary on its leftist government, but I was wrong. It seems to be about class envy.
Season 2. All that mystery and ambiguity is out the window. The 3 main characters are all determined to destroy the Offshore and the 3% process. So the show has taken sides and the idea is that the offshore is the villain. But why? It's never really explained. They show a slum, very much like the slums of Brazil, and in season 2 you finally see the Offshore which looks like Hawaii. What you don't see is the rest of the mainland where clearly there is a military; a police force, food producers, doctors, auto production, lawyers etc. In otherwords there is a functioning economy somewhere or everyone in the slums would die off. So they create this idea that 97% of the world lives in a slum, and the rest on fantasy island.
The 3% refers to the percentage of people that get to live on the island. The process is a way of determining who qualifies for life on the island, because they only want the best. So it's very much like the military, law school, medical school, or joining a country club. There's a lot of competition and they only want the best. That seems like a valid idea to me. You can't let the other 97% live on the island because the island seems to be about the size of Key West.
Now I feel this way because the show never establishes a connection between the awful life in the slums and the people that live Offshore. It's just pure envy. To use my country club example, it's like people who don't play golf and can't afford to join Augusta, wake up one day and say "let's kill everyone at Augusta. This will solve the economic problems of Atlanta" The show never makes the case for what the Island has to do with the 97% on the mainland.
Why doesn't the Cause, which is a terrorist group, set on destroying the Offshore, spend some time cleaning up the slums. Starting businesses to employee people. Why don't they work on the problems of the mainland instead stewing with class envy about some distant Island.
Which brings me to my last point. None of these people have jobs or careers. The members of the cause just seem to lie around all day and worry about the Offshore. The only ones that work are the people that work for the Process. They all take great pride in their work and they seemed quite skilled at it. The people applying for the Offshore are boring wastes of humanity that seem to have never worked in their lives. Even the "blue blood" boy who's whole family has been accepted to the Offshore does not have a career, and it's unclear how the family made its money. By the way, the way we know the blue bloods are well off is that they have a servant. But their house is pretty run down too. So the idea seems to be that if you are rich you live in a crappy house. If you're poor you live in a crappy shack.
Oh and here's the kicker. People on the Offshore are steril. There are not any children. They can't sustain the race of the Offshore, because they can't reproduce. So what's the problem? You want to end the Offshore. Just convince people not to apply to live there. They will all die off on there own. End of conflict. End of story.
So I gave up on season 2 because of some of the reasons stated above, but mostly it was because the first episode was just awfully boring and sinfully slow, especially compared to the rapid fire pace of season 1. It was really bad television. I felt like none of the writers ever even thought there would be a season 2, so they never developed a Plot line . They just seem to be winging it.
Season 2. All that mystery and ambiguity is out the window. The 3 main characters are all determined to destroy the Offshore and the 3% process. So the show has taken sides and the idea is that the offshore is the villain. But why? It's never really explained. They show a slum, very much like the slums of Brazil, and in season 2 you finally see the Offshore which looks like Hawaii. What you don't see is the rest of the mainland where clearly there is a military; a police force, food producers, doctors, auto production, lawyers etc. In otherwords there is a functioning economy somewhere or everyone in the slums would die off. So they create this idea that 97% of the world lives in a slum, and the rest on fantasy island.
The 3% refers to the percentage of people that get to live on the island. The process is a way of determining who qualifies for life on the island, because they only want the best. So it's very much like the military, law school, medical school, or joining a country club. There's a lot of competition and they only want the best. That seems like a valid idea to me. You can't let the other 97% live on the island because the island seems to be about the size of Key West.
Now I feel this way because the show never establishes a connection between the awful life in the slums and the people that live Offshore. It's just pure envy. To use my country club example, it's like people who don't play golf and can't afford to join Augusta, wake up one day and say "let's kill everyone at Augusta. This will solve the economic problems of Atlanta" The show never makes the case for what the Island has to do with the 97% on the mainland.
Why doesn't the Cause, which is a terrorist group, set on destroying the Offshore, spend some time cleaning up the slums. Starting businesses to employee people. Why don't they work on the problems of the mainland instead stewing with class envy about some distant Island.
Which brings me to my last point. None of these people have jobs or careers. The members of the cause just seem to lie around all day and worry about the Offshore. The only ones that work are the people that work for the Process. They all take great pride in their work and they seemed quite skilled at it. The people applying for the Offshore are boring wastes of humanity that seem to have never worked in their lives. Even the "blue blood" boy who's whole family has been accepted to the Offshore does not have a career, and it's unclear how the family made its money. By the way, the way we know the blue bloods are well off is that they have a servant. But their house is pretty run down too. So the idea seems to be that if you are rich you live in a crappy house. If you're poor you live in a crappy shack.
Oh and here's the kicker. People on the Offshore are steril. There are not any children. They can't sustain the race of the Offshore, because they can't reproduce. So what's the problem? You want to end the Offshore. Just convince people not to apply to live there. They will all die off on there own. End of conflict. End of story.
So I gave up on season 2 because of some of the reasons stated above, but mostly it was because the first episode was just awfully boring and sinfully slow, especially compared to the rapid fire pace of season 1. It was really bad television. I felt like none of the writers ever even thought there would be a season 2, so they never developed a Plot line . They just seem to be winging it.