Hey, I like The Good Place! I heard this is pretty much like The Good Place! Let’s watch it!

The Premise

It’s sorta like The Good Place! It’s the year 2033, and technology has advanced to the point where a person can opt to have their consciousness uploaded to a computer-simulated afterlife environment for a cost. The richer you are, the more affordable the good locations are. Forever 27-year-old Nathan Brown (Robbie Amell) is a lucky guy! His wealthy, self-absorbed, materialistic girlfriend Ingrid (Allegra Edwards) is paying the bills for a virtual stay at Lakeview, the best of the best, following Nathan’s premature death in a car crash. Continental breakfasts with maple bacon donuts! Lavish living quarters! Rubbing elbows with fellow millionaires! What more could a dead guy want?

How about attending your own shitty funeral?

Well, Nathan, as an “Upload” has some initial issues adjusting. Luckily, there are living people employed to assist Uploads at Lakeview. Nathan gets assigned to Nora Antony (Andy Allo), a young woman working her dead-end job to pay the bills. Nathan just needs to say the word, and Nora will to a virtual pop-in to Lakeview to help with whatever he needs.

Well, an inappropriate romantic bond forms between Nathan and Nora. Ingrid is possessive and can cut Nathan off and eliminate his consciousness at any moment. Nora could be fired for starting a relationship with an Upload. Does love prevail? Does Nathan die twice? Does Nora have to suck it up and find someone alive to fall in love with??

And does Lakeview ever run out of maple bacon donuts?

And, also, was Nathan murdered? That’s a real question. Possibly!

Also, where can I get some of those coooool glasses?

My Half-Baked Thoughts

It took me a few episodes to fall into its groove, but man did I fall in love with Upload. I binged it in about four days. It definitely is very similar to The Good Place, what with all the afterlife-related cockamamie shenanigans and the ethical, moral, and philosophical questions regarding of the humanity of the Uploads. But don’t be fooled, this is not a profound show. It’s humorous and light-hearted, with the science fiction and philosophy taking a seat waaaay in the back in favor of the romantic comedy aspects.

This first date kinda sucks, actually.

Speaking of which, the romance is handled well. It gets cheesy once in a while, but it never gets too cringe. The progression is believable, and you start caring about Nathan and Nora enough to get invested in their relationship. I do like the development of Nathan’s character, going from insufferable douchebag to a kind-hearted, sympathetic person. Well… dead person.

While the subject matter is presented with levity, there’s quite a bit of thought-provoking material underneath the surface. Are Uploads still people? Their brains and consciousnesses are stored on a hard drive. They can be transferred to other afterlife locations with the push of a button. They can even be deleted forever. But, for all intents and purposes, they are the same as they were in life. They think and feel and develop and learn and grow, just like anybody else. They get happy and sad, feel pain, feel loneliness, feel love, all that happy horseshit. Upload customer service representatives like Nora (i.e. an “angel”) spend eight hours a day taking care their small pool of Upload clients. Of course you’re going to have affairs popping up! That’s a fuckin’ no-brainer, man. Whether or not these Uploads are living people is negligible. It’s not like falling love with a computer, like my friend Kyle did with a stripper screen saver in college.

For $3,000,000 you can visit your afterlife lightbulb vacation home.

I speak semi-often about my ongoing existential crisis, and while Upload didn’t trigger anything too seriously like Severance did, it still got me thinking about the continuation of consciousness after death. While The Good Place never truly felt like anyone was dead, Upload did a good job of making me believe that these people are basically just sentient computer programs. They lightly cover moral subjects such as the humanity of the Uploads and whether or not they should have similar rights. For all intents and purposes, these “people” are still very much alive. Nathan’s consciousness persists in a shared drive with other dead individuals. He forms new memories, enjoys eating, sleeping, PLEASURES OF THE FLESH, and hobbies. Hell, he’s even able to communicate with his friends and family with his phone. Double hell, his friends and family are able to visit him via VR. Seems like a pretty sweet deal to me.

You can even get a visit from your old girlfriend that you died to get away from!

Eventually, this begs the question of would I choose to upload? A resounding fuck yeah from me on this one. As long as I’m able to afford it for as long as possible, I’d stay at the Upload Lakeview Hotel in a heartbeat. It’s a pretty sweet afterlife gig, and the only thing I’d have to worry about is crashing computer systems or accidentally launching myself in “the torrent” (a swirling vortex in the outskirts that permanently destroys an Upload’s consciousness). Send me on my way with an iPhone crammed to the brim with music and a big pile of books and I’d be fine as hell, man. Maybe an Xbox and some streaming services, too. And internet. Fuck yeah.

Worth the Watch?

Yeah, I thought it was. Upload is a very interesting take on a premise that has already been touched upon a few times with a love story that’s not only believable, but something I genuinely got invested in.

I hear Season 2 is disappointing, so I’m already letting people on the internet ruin my mood about this show. Season 1 is great, though. Watch Season 1.

We’ve run out of data. Post over.