2021 Prime Video series of loosely-connected episodes dealing with issues of identity and memory in the possibly near future. Each episode has a Minimalist Cast, generally one or two on-screen characters.
Tropes
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Episode 1: Leah
- Armor-Piercing Question: "Why do you want to go to the future?" Leah has a list of acceptable answers, but Future Leah knows the truth and forces her to confront it.
- Bootstrap Paradox: It's a little tricky to distinguish WHEN time travel was invented. In a sense, Leah invents it three times.
- Butterfly Effect: Discussed Trope . Leah is well aware of the risks involved in prematurely learning about the future.
- Delayed Ripple Effect: Gives Present Leah time to make one last call to her mom before everything goes away.
- Future Self Reveal: With the twist that she was posing as Past Leah (she's had some work done).
- I Hate Past Me: Leah views her past self as a naive idiot.
- Shout-Out:
- "F__k magic wishing dust!"
- There is a valiant attempt to turn "Can you hear me now?" into a Catchphrase.
- Time Machine: Apparently the trick involves the Fibonacci Curve and LOTS of light bulbs.
- We Will Have Perfect Health in the Future: Well, not in 5 years, but it's not unreasonable for Leah to think there will EVENTUALLY be a cure for ALS.
Episode 2: Tom
- Married to the Job: Tom's main regret, he spent so much of his time making himself financially successful and worries that his children will not know how much they mean to him.
- Other Me Annoys Me: Tom's first impression of his replacement is that he's "an asshole". Turns out to be a case of Too Much Alike.
- Robot Me: Tom-2, and all Remember-Me-Bots, are intentionally made as replacements for people with short life expectancies.
- Secret Handshake: Shared between Tom and his adopted daughter, Peg. He teaches it to Tom-2.
- 20% More Awesome: Tom has an Asshole Quotient of 7.
Episode 3: Peg
- Artificial Intelligence: Peg is accompanied on her journey by a rather insightful computer assistant.
- Immortality Through Memory: Why Peg volunteered for a one-way trip into deep space. She just wanted "to be counted" after a lifetime of being ignored.
- Meekness is Weakness: Poor Peg spent her while life being overlooked, ignored, or simply avoiding opportunities for happiness because she "didn't want to be a bother."
- Secret Handshake: Demonstrated by Peg, confirming to the audience that she is the adopted daughter of the previous episode's Tom.
- Shrinking Violet: According to Peg, she avoided contact with the love of her life because she didn't want him to be bullied for being with her, and later because she assumed he just wanted to let her down easy. Whether these perceptions were accurate or just the delusions of a painfully shy girl, there is way of knowing, but the AI believes it was the latter.
Episode 4: Sasha
- Artificial Intelligence: Sasha's computer assistant actually gets pretty emotional when it looks like time is running out.
- The Paranoiac: Somewhat justified by being locked in her home against her will and only getting news via the internet for 20+ years.
- The Plague: Details aren't given, but it was severe enough to necessitate locking people in their homes for one to two decades.
- Ripped from the Headlines: Filmed against the backdrop of COVID lockdowns and related conspiracies.
- The Shut-In: Involuntarily at first, but after so many years trapped inside Sasha is terrified at the idea of leaving.
- You Were Not Ready: Why Sasha's computer companion says it couldn't just tell her she had to leave. Whoever's in charge doesn't want anyone in society unless they're willing to rejoin it voluntarily.
Episode 5: Jenny
- Drowning My Sorrows: Jenny's reaction to a miscarriage. Leads to Drunk Driving and Death of a Child.
- Hard-Drinking Party Girl: More or less describes herself as such in her intro.
- In A Coma All Along: The whole story takes place mid-memory upload, in some sort of mental construct of a waiting room where she's trying to process her last memories. The all-white room and her angel costume (she was at a costume party) really give the impression that she's stuck in a sci-fi version of Limbo.
- Mistaken for Pedophile: Not explicitly stated, but after Jenny was found passed out, drunk, and naked in her neighbor's bed when she was supposed to be babysitting, he made it clear she was not to come anywhere near his son again.
- Tragic Stillbirth: Tragic both for its own sake and for what it leads Jenny to do.
Episode 6: Nera
- Alone with the Psycho: Though unusually for the trope, when the calvary arrives it is voluntarily turned away.
- Cell Phones Are Useless: Justified by a storm, but given the otherwise advanced technology it's a bit jarring that Nera can't even reliably reach 911.
- Enfant Terrible: Nera's child Jacob is basically born terrifying. It's not a good sign when the OB/GYN doctor tells you that you need to protect yourself.
- Rapid Aging: Through some sort of "glitch" in the IVF medications, Jacob ages very rapidly, going from newborn to teenager in the course of no more than a few hours.
Episode 7: Stuart
- The Guards Must Be Crazy: We are never told why "Solos" are not allowed visitors, but it takes little more than an impassioned plea for Otto to be allowed in, unsupervised.
- Laser-Guided Karma. A memory thief who can't remember anything.
- Mundane Utility: Stuart has access to a century's worth of memories from countless people, and what does he take from Leah, the inventor of time travel? The time she watched 13 Going on 30 .
- The Plague: Cause of the death of Stuart's son, tying him to Spisode 4's Sasha.
- Shaped Like Itself: "The Solos are meant to remain solo." Also a bit of Leaning on the Fourth Wall regarding the episode having more than one lead actor.
- Transferable Memory: Building off the Memory Upload technology introduced in Episode 5, it turns out that uploading other peoples' memories is both addictive and dangerous.
- Unreliable Narrator: Because he sees all of the stolen memories from a first-person point of view, it can be difficult for Stuart to distinguish his own memories from those that happened to someone else.
- Villains Want Mercy: Despite stealing personal memories of an unknown number of people, Stuart has the nerve to ask that at least one of his memories be spared.
- We Will Have Perfect Health in the Future: Or at least, a universally available cure for Alzheimer's and other degenerative memory diseases. Why Stuart hasn't received said treatment before the episode is never explained.
