Yesterday was the official premiere date for SyFy’s new show Incorporated. And, although the first episode of this television series came out online on November 16, I thought I share my thoughts on this futuristic drama now. So here it goes, my first impression of Incorporated.
Background on Incorporated
Spoiler warning!
Incorporated is created by David and Alex Pastor, the duo that wrote the screenplay for 2015’s “Self/less”, a sci-fi thriller starring Ryan Reynolds.
The show is set in 2074 and follows Ben Larson, a young man, who is working in one of the largest companies in the world. From the first glance Ben seems like a regular guy living his life with wife Laura. But he actually is Aaron, a man who grew up outside the corporation ruled Green Zone, and has embedded himself in the dangerous world of Spiga to find the woman he loves.
The show stars Sean Teale as Ben, Allison Miller as his wife Laura, Julia Ormond as Laura’s mother and Spiga executive Elizabeth, Eddie Ramos as Ben’s Red Zone associate Theo, and many more. And the show is executively produced by Ben Affleck and Matt Damon.
Incorporated world
Since this show is set in the future, the world-building aspect of it was great. I really loved how they not only showed us the high tech gadgets and the clothing style of the future, but that they also established the dystopian aspect of the show very early on. The shot with Ben driving to work, and the camera panning out to show that the highway is intact, but around it the world in in ruins, perfectly set up the state of the world in which we will be spending the next 40 minutes.
The other aspect of the shows world that had to be demonstrated and somewhat explained to us were the characters. I think the show set them up pretty good, too. They showed the main character Ben and the conflict within him about leading two different lives. They also established Ben’s wife’s character and gave us glimpses of her past, which explains her relationship with her mother Elizabeth. Then they gave us more information on both the Green and the Red zone and their inhabitants, which helped us better understand the divide between these two classes. And they even gave us a wild party, that showed just how crazy and unregulated the Red zone is.
I think that it is always really hard to establish the world and the characters who live in it in just one episode. That is especially true for science fiction TV series, because usually the world, were the characters of these types of shows live, is so vastly different from our real word. But Incorporated managed to do it very well, because the 2074 America seemed cold, yet, at the same time, I would like to explore it more, just to see what else it holds beyond what we saw in the pilot episode.
The goriness of it all
One thing that I really didn’t like about this show was all the explicit torture and blood related shots. For someone, who isn’t found of these types of graphic scenes, they were off-putting. Nevertheless, I do get what the show was trying to do by using them in the very first episode. Incorporated was trying to show us how real and cruel the show’s world really is. And at that they did succeed.
Ben’s objective
And the second thing, that was a bit lacking in this first episode, was clearly stated objective of what Ben, the protagonist of the show, is trying to accomplish. We could gather, that he has infiltrated Spiga to find a woman, who he most likely loves. However, weather he has been pretending to be Ben for 6 years, just to find this woman, or he actually wants to do more and take down the whole corporation system, reminded fuzzy. So I hope that this will be cleared up, because then it would be easier to follow the already quite complicated story.
The verdict
If you are a big fan of the Sci-Fi genre. If you like dystopian movies and shows, that are set in the future à la Orwell’s “1984”. And, if you like getting a glimpse of what our society could look like 60 years from now, then this show might be for you. Incorporated is an interesting and very realistic take on the future, with added elements of drama, action and suspense. So if you want a thought-provoking and a little gory future-set show in your weekly entertainment arsenal, then definitely check out Incorporated.