The story:
emotionaly numb guy sees odd flyers in posts. He follows it up to find a weird place called Jejune Institute. He interacts with an odd man Octavius that is on TV. Octavius tells Numb to sign up for the institute, and help them find a girl Clara and help make the world a better place. Under the sign up sheet there are insctructions written apparently by someone who has been here before, telling him to run away. He runs away and meets a male to female transsexual, which has also been to that odd room/ situation. He falls in love with her. Trans believes the whole thing is a game.
From time to time Numb and Trans and other people they meet (about a hundred people) receive clues that lead them down surreal adventures.
From these other people there are other 2 important characters: Game breaker and Empathic old woman: Game breaker is a genius young adult, self made millionaire, who is not good with the emotional side of things. He doesn't accept that it is a game, and believes it's part of a great conspiracy by giant companies who want to use people's personal information to manipulate them, to obtain power for those companies. Empathic old woman has a husband that is in a coma.
All of the "game" participants find out that besides the jejune institute, there's an anarchist group. And they are led to choose which side they are on. But the 4 main characters find out that they are both sides of a show being presented before them. That the choice being presented is an artificial one. They track down Clara and the game architects and find out that Clara was a real person. That the game architect is a young adult black female. But when they come knocking at her door she pretends she's just a regular person, to throw them off her scent.
They also find the apartment from where the architect has worked to make the game.
They find Clara's old house, her murals, her medical records, but they don't find a certificate of death.
On the last day of the game, Octavius, the leader of the jejune institute, and commander 14, the leader of the anarchists, show up and show that they are actually twin brothers, and that the last part of the puzzle is to realize that the participants are in a false dichotomy, and that they shouldn't be split into sides, and should see themselves into the participants of the other side. Then Clara is presented singing, and there's a big party where the twin brothers and Clara show that they are actors.
Numb doesn't accept that and demands to know the truth. Game breaker thinks that the Architect should be lurking around the party to see the result of his/her accomplishments. Empathic old woman finds her and gets her to confess she's the architect.
Throughout the adventures we find out that Clara's life went like this: Clara lived in a dull place, but she got 3 friends and tried to make the world a more interesting place by painting murals, and making crazy interesting stuff.
Then she got contacted by a big media group, which she worked for. She left her friends behind and saw her ideas being changed by the industry into things that sell stuff. She emotionally lost herself. She became the Architect. Clara and the Architect are the same person. The Architect designed this experience as a way to try to find herself, and attune to what she did, by giving a sense of wonder to other people.
Opinion: This is probably the part that most people who gave the series a bad rating would like it to stop.
Back to story:
Architect Clara says that she doesn't know if her work has completed it's purpose. It depends on the boy who is painted as a sad clown, as she points to him.
This is the part of the story that breaks the previous format. The 4 characters can see together a character that isn't real.
10th episode (things get closer to reality):
The story of the boy goes like this: a boy loved to act, so he decided to be an actor, and trained a lot for that. a businessman took him in and said do the shows and you'll get chocolate milk. The boy was happy. But doing the same thing over and over was boring, he wanted to change things. The businessman said that they should keep the format and gave more chocolate milk to the boy. The boy does a last big presentation where he faints on stage. Everyone leaves, and the boy gets a pile of money.
Another break in the format (same actors, different roles): The next scene we have what seems to be numb guy at an AA meeting telling peope about his experiences of feeling used up, and empty. But it isn't numb guy, it's Jason Segel (the actor that played numb guy, and also the writer of this story). The sad clown boy was Jason Segel.
After the meeting he meets Trans, or at least the same actor, but different role. Trans is now a person who's also at the AA meeting and can relate to what Jason has gone through. she invites him to her place, where they talk, and eventually she recommneds him to an experience, similar to the jejune institute experience that the numb character had.
Real life: explanation: In the real world (not in this tv series), some years ago, there was an interactive game that was played in San Francisco. See the documentary THE INSTITUTE for more info.
Back to the story:
Jason Segel follows the experience and it makes him confront his way of thinking. He starts to break down, but a person who works for the game (played by the actress who did the old empathic woman) tells him, that he shouldn't feel bad. That the game is not being personal against him. That the game is the same for everyone. And that it just seems personal because most people have the same doubts and problems, but don't tell each other.
Jason goes to a secluded house and writes down a show (this show: Dispatches from Elsewhere, or at least the first 9 episodes and a half of them).
He shows it to Trans. She tells him that the script is good, but that the main character of it, sad boy/ Jason Segel, didn't accept any personal responsability for what happened to him.
Jason gets mad, and leaves, and confronts his self, the sad clown boy, and we see that the real story is that Jason was an adult when he was offered a shitty script, but he accepted it because of the money. He drank alcohol, and not chocolate milk. And he was not a child when this happened, it's just that he's acting like a child.
The kid says that if Jason writes another muppet movie, he'll be back.
Real world talk: Jason Segel also wrote and acted on the latest muppet movie. The kid means: if you sell your self for money again, all this is going to happen again. But I don't think that the muppet movie was really what made him descend into numbness. It was probably that "How I met your mother" series. Why: 1) I think it's shitty, and a downer, and repetititve, and it took years. 2) He couldn't point to it and say that that series made that to him, because it would look bad on other people, and thus that would also make him look bad ("he's spitting in the faces of people that gave him a job!"), so he pointed the movie that he wrote, because pointing at yourself as the blame is considered acceptable.
Back to story:
He talks to same actor of game braker, different character. Now he's a tv exec/ audience. Jason is trying to pitch the tv show for him. The exec says the show is interesting, but it's a bit of a mess. Jason says he knows it's a mess, but that Jason is also a mess, and likes weird messes, and wants the show to be like that. The exec accepts it.
Then there's a scene where the 4 main actors are looking at a tv, like they have just watched the tv show and are reviewing it, saying that the last episode is self indulgent, and should focus on community. So the camera pans out, and shows not only the actors, but everyone that made the tv show. Than it shows the watchers of the tv show. Then there's an explanation about how we're all made of the same stuff, so we're all the same.
The end.
Opinion:
The final message is good intended and all, but I'll believe that Jason Segler believes what he's preaching (we're all the same) when he let's me use his bank account.
All and all it's a great tv show, with many original ideas (which is rare).
The title of my review is ouroboros, because it's the mythological serpent that is eating itself.
This is about a world that is supposed to be about creating a sense of wonder, but at the end, it explains itself so much, there's nothing to wonder left.
It starts off as a tv show for the audience, with an empty character, but at the end it seems to be a show for the writer, who's full of himself.
It's a show that could get mostly great reviews if it ended at episode 9, but it destroyed that possibility with episode 10.
I love anything that is meta (self referential), that's why I give this a 10. But people who got into this metaphorical bus (watched the tv show) for an emotional ride, might feel like they were thrown off a bus.
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