Spoiler-Free Summary
Apple has released their latest new TV show, “Amazing Stories”. If the first episode, “The Cellar”, is any indication, it should prove to be a thoroughly unimaginative, decidedly milquetoast delivery system for standard modernist propaganda.
☆☆☆ (0/3 - Avoid at all costs)
In-Depth Thoughts
(SPOILER ALERT!)
“The Cellar” opens with two men driving through a generic slice of rural America in a pickup truck. They arrive at an old house badly in need of renovation. When they walk in, the first man declares the house beautiful, the second says that it needs a lot of work.
Immediately my hackles are up and I’m wondering: is this a gay couple looking for a fixer-upper? No, they soon establish that they are brothers who do renovation work together. And the younger brother, Sam, has been lazily swiping through pictures of attractive women on his phone. I relax a little, reminding myself not to be too quick to judge—not to assume that absolutely everything made today is propaganda.
Later that night, though, he meets one of those attractive women, and although he is late for their date, he is charming enough to smooth things over. He blames his lateness on his brother, who has just adopted a daughter. His date is skeptical, so he shows her a picture as proof: his brother, his brother’s husband, and their adopted daughter. I was not too quick to judge after all.
He of course beds this young woman (thankfully offscreen).
Eventually, the brothers start work on the house. At one point our not so chivalrous hero finds a picture of a young woman in a wedding dress hidden in the mantlepiece. He is transfixed by her.
Later he ends up in the cellar during a bad storm, which teleports him, of course, back in time 100 years to 1919.
As Sam walks through the house, confused, I note the charming and warm vintage decorations which make the house feel inviting and comfy. Later in the episode we will see the house in the future, when it has been redecorated with modern sensibilities and it is clean, and cold, and uninviting.
What ensues is mostly just the plot of “Titanic”: he finds the young woman from his mysterious photograph. She is trapped in an engagement to a man she doesn’t love, but is being forced to go through with it because he is rich and she and her mother are soon to be destitute. Our unconventional young man shows her how to really live life. He takes her to a speakeasy where they dance the night away. They fall in love. Our young hero tells her of the wonders of the future, and she longs to be free. There is at one point a scuffle with her mildly abusive slave-master of a finance who is determined to force her to marry, even after she demonstrates her disinterest. And, eventually Sam has to sacrifice himself so that she can make it through the time portal. She goes on to become a famous singer, and she lives her best life as a free woman.
And for good measure we get a line about superstorms being more common because of global warming, and in the closing moments of the show we get to see Sam, stuck in the past, looking on approvingly as the women march for the vote through the streets of the rural town.
So, all in all: an unimaginative sci-fi premise, a dramatic story stolen from another movie, and barely reworked, and all the propaganda you could want: gay agenda, climate change, suffrage, and feminism.
There were three notes for which I was thankful. One, they do not have sex—so Sam (and the show) has at least a drop of respect for this lovely young women. Two, Sam is happier in the past because he has fewer choices in life, and apparently that’s what he needed after the fatigue of modern existence. So the past is not all bad—just mostly bad, especially for women. Three, though there is an opportunity, they do not throw in a racial justice plot, as every other time travel show that has an episode set in premodern America feels compelled to do.
Although a story of young love is always attractive, I must say the most distracting element of the show was the unbelievability of its central premise. No, not that time travel is possible—that’s just table stakes for a sci-fi show. Rather, that a typical young woman could be teleported from 1919, to 2019, and not experience massive culture shock. Will she really be happy when she arrives in our world? Will divorce, and godlessness, and gay marriage, and sex on TV, and twerking, and one night stands, and transgenderism, and ubiquitous foul language, and abortion on demand, and the lack of manners and chivalry, and rampant consumerism, and all the dizzying noise of the modern age really not take a toll on her?
Instead, we are to assume that because she listened to records in the basement without her mother’s approval, and because she wanted to marry for love rather than money, that she will feel right at home in the modern world. Indeed, when we see her house in the 2030s, she has decorated it just as a modern would decorate it. That she would not bring with her even a taste for antiques is unbelievable!
I felt sorry for her, for how little Sam seems to have told her about the modern world. And I think that would have made for a much more interesting story. A young woman, convinced by a time traveling young man that the future is wonderful, becomes trapped in that future only to find it hostile to everything she knows, and everything that she is.
Instead, we got “The Cellar”—which, hopefully, will prove to be the show’s most propagandistic episode, and it’s creative basement rather than its ceiling.