Just started it today.
Staunchly anti-capitalist so far. Seems really good. If anyone’s seen it I’d like to hear their feedback.
It’s a good show. I just finished it. As for the politics of it, the show isn’t Marxist despite its anger at the super rich.
The show makes a number of mistakes in its analysis of the world. Firstly, it acts as though the problems of Capitalism began in the 1980s. We know that Capitalism has always been horrific. The show also falls for the Great Men Fallacy. At one point we see all of the the bad, rich people who run the world in a room together. Capitalism is more pervasive than that. The guy who owns a fast-food franchise is just as much a Capitalist as a CEO. These mistakes work for the themes of the show, however. It is a show about hacking and conspiracies. In reality, a group of super hackers can’t expose the big bads who rule the world and steal their money, but it does make for an entertaining show.
Its great, but dont fixate too much on the anti-capitalism vibes, its more of a character driven show
spoiler
If you think all character suck, but you want the world building, stop after s1, it won’t progress much after that
How far are you? By season 3 I found the main character’s resistance to actually resisting capitalism was becoming annoying.
Literally half way through the first episode hahaha just relating deeply to the anxiety, drug use and hatred for capitalism
Starts really good and gets worse as it goes on
It’s quite good. The first piece of content to show the hacking/computer world accurately.
Rami Malek does a stellar job.
It is mostly radlib anti-capitalism, and there is a huge recession and a lot of bailouts for E-Corp after their heist. So, I believe that it is season 2 and 3 where several characters are starting to say things like “maybe overthrowing capitalism and revolution are misguided”. But if you just want a character based drama with a lot of twists, it is not bad.
That’s really disappointing to hear. I’ll still probably watch it but the first episode gives heavy revolutionary vibes, no? I mean he’s literally just ripping apart capitalist society and the drones it produces lol
It’s more like adventurism. Yankee productions have this idea of “revolution” that is basically “step 1: independently sabotage one specific critical bit of the government, step 2: ???, step 3: communism”. It’s funny that Ecorp is a bit of a shorthand for corporations like Amazon, but Amazon bought exclusive rights for online distribution of the series, which I bet impacted the writing. But you can finish the first season, it remains good until the finale or so.
You’re right, but it gets worse than that.
spoiler
After the success of the attack on the world financial system, global capital basically just pivots and recovers while life gets worse for normal people. I think that’s a good and interesting direction to explore, but the solution the show’s middle posits is basically that trying to change the system was a mistake. The solution is presented as trying to work within the evil company to undo the attack and reform the global financial system from within. By the end, it somehow gets even worse by revealing that the real problem with capitalism was always China, and specifically one insane evil Chinese trans person. The score and acting remain terrific throughout, but the plot outside the character drama starts revolutionary and nosedives into disgusting lib shit really hard.
Not to spoil it, but it starts out very strong but the political quality goes down exponentially over time after the first season. I couldn’t bring myself to finish the last season because I was pretty bored.
Okay, first my honest review is it’s one of my favorite shows I’ve ever watched. It portrays hacking relatively well. It portrays Anxiety and mental issues fairly well for a show. And it’s a fantastic execution of the unreliable narrator. If you haven’t heard of the unreliable narrator, then go look up the trope so you get the gist of what’s going on.
Now for my full disclosure I fell in love with the show before becoming a Marxist. So this has absolutely nothing to do with my Marxist identity now.
Yeah, it’s pretty anti-capitalist, and they use the term “revolution” a lot. But it’s kind of a bougie revolution, like an anti-technocrat thing.
I wouldn’t watch it for any marxist vibes, but in the end I still heavily recommend the show. Even as Marxists can enjoy some regular old TV shows and this was one of the highest claimed and most well-rewarded shows on TV when it came out.
All of that being said, the first season is the best season. I do think it gets a little bit hard to track over time, but the creator of the show built the entire series to be one fluid storyline from the beginning. So I think it’s worth finishing. You will literally learn things in the very last season that will affect the first episodes that you’re watching right now. I’m not trying to spoil it, but I am trying to get you excited to watch the whole thing. I had to watch the entire series twice to truly come to my understanding of the show and what it really means.
Yeah, it’s pretty anti-capitalist, and they use the term “revolution” a lot. But it’s kind of a bougie revolution, like an anti-technocrat thing.
Personally I found it to be roughly on the level of Watchdogs 2 and Legion
I watched the first two episodes and I realized oh, it’s one of those shows. The ones where everyone is an asshole for no reason and they do shit nobody would ever do because we have to show how big of an asshole they are. That’s what makes it mature and gritty.
but but he’s using actually terminal programs
There’s a heavy bend towards hyper-violence later on in the show. I was invested in the characters and the storytelling at that point, but it was really difficult to watch.
I watched the whole thing. I liked it a lot. It hits like an anarchist fantasy (in the best possible way).
Honestly, just watch season 1 and then bail. Mac Quayle’s soundtrack was phenomenal throughout, though. Do yourself a favour and listen to all of it.
Honestly, there’s probably some fanfic written by leftists out there that picks up after S1 and does everything better.
The first few seasons are great. The 4th season is a bit of a mess. First it was cancelled, and later renewed, if I remember correctly.
Yes, one of best TV series I saw, I miss it much
Loved the series. >!Things get pretty dark and somewhat boring in the later seasons !<
I’m editing this comment because I can’t get the spoiler tags to work. I’ll just vaguely say the writers had a lack of political economy for the second half of the show. Still thoroughly enjoyed it, just didn’t get the release I needed at the end.
