If you’re missing The Good Place, which you absolutely should be, check out Amazon Prime’s new dramedy, Upload.
Upload, created by Greg Daniels (The Office, Parks and Recreation), becomes available Friday, and paints a somewhat different, but also rather enchanting vision of the afterlife, with similar rom-com undercurrents as The Good Place.
Among other things, Upload explores the age-old question of whether it’s possible for a living person to have a meaningful relationship with a dead person.
The answer in Upload is surprisingly optimistic.
Nathan (Robbie Amell, top) is a stereotypical sort of millennial-type guy. A little entitled, a little self-centered, but with the proverbial good heart. Unfortunately, his lung isn’t so good after it gets punctured when his self-driving car plows into the back of a truck.
That puts an abrupt early end to Nathan’s run on Earth. Happily for Nathan, he was born in a future world where there is not only an afterlife but a choice of destination, as it were.
Rich people can buy themselves an eternal spot in a particular area of the afterlife – Lake View, run by a company called Horizen, which is a world not unlike the Good Place in The Good Place.
The breakfast buffet, for instance, features maple bacon doughnuts. A thermostat-style control on your wall lets you set the outdoors to any season you want that day – summer, winter, spring, fall.
It still seems to be a work in progress since its construction is virtual, and each day technology gets a little more sophisticated. But if you have to spend eternity somewhere, Lake View doesn’t look to be a bad option.
There is, however, that caveat about needing to be wealthy. You have to sign up for your afterlife while you’re still in your Earth life, and a young guy like Nathan can’t afford Lake View on his own.
Enter Ingrid (Allegra Edwards). She’s Nathan’s girlfriend on Earth, and while she’s got some good qualities, Nathan isn’t sure she’s the one. Her family does, however, have a place in Lake View, so between the time of Nathan’s accident and the time Nathan has to decide where he wants to spend eternity, she convinces him to sign onto her plan – which includes, of course, her.
Meanwhile, the Horizen company, which is based on Earth, provides a sort of Welcome Wagon for all the new arrivals in its afterlife of Lake View. Each new “guest” has an “angel” who walks him or her through the introductory procedures and answers questions. Say “Angel,” and in an instant, a virtual angel is standing next to you. Yup, sort of like Janet on The Good Place.
Nathan’s angel is Nora (Andy Allo), who’s good at the job but ambivalent. She seems a little depressed about life in general, maybe because she lives at home with her Dad, and they miss her Mom, she’s exasperated with most other people in the world and feels like her life is a little small.
She does get along with the coworker at the adjacent terminal, Aleesha (Zainab Johnson), so that makes things more bearable. Also, Aleesha is funny, which is good for viewers, too.
Nathan, not unlike many other new arrivals at Lake View, feels disoriented, lost, and depressed at first. About being dead and everything. Then Nora takes a particular interest in trying to coax Nathan toward acceptance and peace.
The afterlife is really a continuation of your other life, she tells him, only in better trappings. Nathan doesn’t disagree, but in his case, “trappings” includes the Ingrid trap, which will kick off in 50 or 60 years and continue for the rest of eternity.
So a sort of triangle takes shape here, though it’s somewhat unconventional given the relative situations of the three people involved.
There’s also a large supporting cast of friends, family, and just generally odd people, like the guy in the afterlife who keeps trying to give everyone a free sample of gum. Who knew the afterlife took some of its moves from Costco?
In any case, we like the people here and want them to be happy even if we can’t be sure exactly what that means or how you figure out the roadmap to getting there, but the journey is fun. You might even say it seems to be taking us to a good place.