Adam Lenhardt
Senior HTF Member
I just finished the 10-episode first season.
The junior and senior classes of the town of New Ham go on a class trip. After driving for hours there is a bad storm, and the school buses return home. The students are dropped off in the town square in the middle of the night, and then the buses drive off. The next morning they discover that their town is the only thing left of the world. Everything outside a certain circumference is wilderness. The roads just end. Sunrise and sunset exactly match the farmer's almanac, but there is a solar eclipse when the next one isn't supposed to happen in North America until 2024. The constellations are close to what we see in the northern hemisphere, but the alignment of the stars are slightly off. Electricity in the town still works, even though there's no evident power source. Their cellphones still work for calls and texts, but only with one another. Data doesn't work. The internet on their personal PCs and the PCs in the schools and offices doesn't work. Any information stored on their phones and devices is still there, but nothing stored on the cloud. The town itself is an exact copy of their own town, up to two days prior to their departure. Graffiti painted on the day they left isn't present. There are no documents in the offices dated more recent than two days prior to their departure.
What follows is a modern take on Lord of the Flies, if the kids were a bit more sophisticated and better prepared and had more resources at their disposal. The trailer made it seem like another teen relationship drama, but that's only a small part of the show. It's interested in human beings and civilization, the forces that bring us together and the forces that drive us apart. The power of institutions, and the fragility of institutions.
It took a few episodes to hook me, but then it impressed me more and more.
Fair warning: It ends on two brutal cliffhangers, one related to human drama in the town, the other related to the larger cosmic mystery of how they got there.
The junior and senior classes of the town of New Ham go on a class trip. After driving for hours there is a bad storm, and the school buses return home. The students are dropped off in the town square in the middle of the night, and then the buses drive off. The next morning they discover that their town is the only thing left of the world. Everything outside a certain circumference is wilderness. The roads just end. Sunrise and sunset exactly match the farmer's almanac, but there is a solar eclipse when the next one isn't supposed to happen in North America until 2024. The constellations are close to what we see in the northern hemisphere, but the alignment of the stars are slightly off. Electricity in the town still works, even though there's no evident power source. Their cellphones still work for calls and texts, but only with one another. Data doesn't work. The internet on their personal PCs and the PCs in the schools and offices doesn't work. Any information stored on their phones and devices is still there, but nothing stored on the cloud. The town itself is an exact copy of their own town, up to two days prior to their departure. Graffiti painted on the day they left isn't present. There are no documents in the offices dated more recent than two days prior to their departure.
What follows is a modern take on Lord of the Flies, if the kids were a bit more sophisticated and better prepared and had more resources at their disposal. The trailer made it seem like another teen relationship drama, but that's only a small part of the show. It's interested in human beings and civilization, the forces that bring us together and the forces that drive us apart. The power of institutions, and the fragility of institutions.
It took a few episodes to hook me, but then it impressed me more and more.
Fair warning: It ends on two brutal cliffhangers, one related to human drama in the town, the other related to the larger cosmic mystery of how they got there.
