this post was submitted on 01 Dec 2025
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I popped in the first episode just for this post-
The show seems to be an elaborate Thought Experiment in the vein of a lot of classic sci-fi: How would the average upper/middle class American react to their society transforming from an individualist one to a collectivist one overnight?
The POV character in the show isn't exactly the most flattering portrayal of the average upper-class American, I'll say that much.
Yeah, the hivemind is an old redscare sci-fi trope but I don't know, the vibes I'm getting are that ol' Vince "Breaking Bad" Gilligan isn't exactly going weigh in on the side of American exceptionalism, but I could be wrong I only watched 1 episode.
Edit: I thought about it some more- If the hivemind is actually supposed to be villainous, there's a queer reading where the hivemind could represent hetero-normative society attempting to stamp out what makes the main character (who is a lesbian) "different". But I'd need to see more of the show to see how exactly it handles queer identity beyond what was introduced in the first episode.
Double edit: Ok made it thru episode 2 and the entire scene set on Air Force One of a white person belligerently "explaining" to a room of coloured people that they have to save the world, only to engender the response of "Wait what why? The world doesn't need saving from this" is waaaaaaaaaay too on-the-nose that there really isn't any further room for discussion here.
Also, pre- and post-hivemind, the show has been deliberate in highlighting Carol's flaws, isolation, and poor decision making, specifically her being a functional alcoholic. In some regards, the hivemind is correct; Carol does need fixing. So I would think the Stalin namedrop right before she accidentally kills millions of people fits into the "bumbling empire" trope of a typical lib in the imperial core.
Plus, the anti-communist message is blunted slightly by Carol's attempts to build solidarity (on the surface) with the other individuals but being completely ill equipped to do so, specifically because she's an American chauvinist. So she orients her position out of her own personal gripes rather than providing a benefit for the others to rally around. She even begins by asking the hivemind, "how many of them speak English?" lol. I mean, c'mon! If you really think the world is at stake, put in a little effort!
can you expand more on your Double edit? without seeing the show I'm having trouble discerning which way you're going
I don't think the show is anti-communist.
I don't think the show is explicitly pro-communist either, but it's very very critical of American Exceptionalism. The entire point of the scene I described is to show how absurd the main character is for trying to do what she's doing- she just immediately thinks that her way of seeing things is correct, without considering that other people might have other points of view and see the situation differently. (And the dramatic irony is that even the bloody hivemind gets that.)
And sure there's a line about "being the worst mass murderer since Stalin", but that line is coming out of the mouth of our American brain-wormed white-splaining main character, who is err... not portrayed as an authority on anything, really. Rather the opposite, like she's Harry DuBois levels of complete fuck-up.
My interpretation of the show so far is that it is a character piece about how the average American would react to their society changing drastically (whether the societal change depicted in the show is an allegory for communism or A.I. singularity stuff that other commenters pointed out in this thread is kinda left to the viewer's interpretation). It's an examination of exactly how many of their fears of change are legitimate issues of identity and consent/rights, and how many are knee-jerk reactionary fears born from a lifetime of capitalist and American propaganda.
The show is not exactly kind to the average American, in my opinion.
thanks. I like his past work enough to at least give this a shot
Yeah, Breaking Bad is probably my favourite American tv serial too, tho maybe it's a toss-up with True Detective S1.
Altho to be fair my friends have yelled at me for not having seen the Wire, dunno if I'll ever get round to that lol
I felt ashamed at causing Discourse the way I did (no investigation no right to speak) so I watched up to the last episode. I think it's fine, it's worth viewing. It does a decent job of making the question of joining the plurbs actually hard to decide. There isn't really an obvious political allegory, and while I think the show might be commenting on AI as some people in this thread have said, I think there's a lot of other clear symbols and allusions to other themes that I don't think it's just a commentary on LLMs. The commentary on American Chauvinism, similarly, is definitely there but it's not the meat of the show. The meat is the thought experiment and the character drama.