Dispatches from Elsewhere (AMC)

So this show premieres next week, and I'm curious to see how it unfolds. We have a number of trailers to go on, so I've begun a small page on the subject. If anyone's got anything to add or subtract, feel free.

Dispatches From Elsewhere

All right, the first two episodes have aired. My verdict: I don't know if it's great, but there's absolutely nothing like it on TV right now.

I just saw the first episode and damn do I love it. This is exactly my kind of thing.

The female lead character, Simone, is also played by a trans actress and this interview with her is great.

So I thought I'd be able to figure out this show by now. Nope.

Somebody said the general style of this series is somewhere between Michel Gondry and Wes Anderson — that encapsulates it pretty well.

Just finished watching the series with its strange, straaaange ending.

This kind of surreal meta ending (well, the one in ep 9 at least) where the characters recognise their fictionality, have an existential crisis, and basically take a sledgehammer to the fourth wall has been done before, but is usually far more bleak and cynical. I wasn't keeping track of the episode numbers, so for a moment I thought when Peter went with the clown faced boy was the end-end and I was ready to be PISSED.

From the very beginning, the show was about a layered reality. Like in a portal fantasy, each character steps from their normal reality into the fantasy of the "game." Then we get the sense that aspects of the game are grounded in a real world mystery. Then we found out that the "real" story was a metaphor that was hiding a very painful personal truth of the game's creator. Then the characters "transcend" into awareness of their world itself as a story, with the last episode taking place in something that is supposed to be very close to the real world, ending with a shot of the cast and crew and the montage of real people.

The show can be seen as a celebration of games, or fandom, or storytelling in general. It is about the truth within fiction, about how real connections are made through our engagement with a fantasy. It's about how characters have a life and significance outside the bounds of their story like the way Octavio continues to narrate and give no fucks about the fourth wall, even after he is revealed to be a fictional character played by an actor, and how the reality of a story can be just as real to people, sometimes moreso, than what is commonly known as Real Life.