Wednesday, December 12, 2007

Afterworld: Over It

Afterworld is an online TV series that started a few months ago. At first when it came out I was HYPED. I thought it would be perfect to report on for this class. The basic plot is:
Sometime between 5 and 6 AM EST, the world as we knew it suddenly,inexplicably, changed. After traveling to New York City on a business trip Russell Shoemaker wakes to find all electronic technology dead and more than 99% of the human race missing. Driven by a need to discover the truth and determined to return to his family, he embarks on a journey to his home in Seattle. Afterworld is the harrowing story of Russell's 3000 mile trek across a post-apocalyptic America as encounters the strange new societies rebuilding themselves. Along the way, he is forced to confront his greatest fears while unraveling the mystery of what caused this global event.
Over time, Russel figures out that something called an 'ENP' destroyed everything. Never fully explained, its something like an electromagnetic wave that was able to turn off technology and wipe out humans. But within about 20 episodes, the spastic plot line began to get to me. Every 3 or 4 episodes, a whole new subplot came up. He'd meet someone new, get chased by someone new, etc. Bascially, whoever wrote Afterworld tried to cover every single post-apocalyptic archetype ever written. There are those who respond to the disaster by pumping up their religion, retreating into nature, or just losing it because of a longing for survival. Because of these crazy subplots that just kept piling up I couldn't manage to form a coherent blog entry. Afterworld is a fun series but isn't making any general statement just yet. Any great Digital Age point it could make is lost. Eventually I lost track of episodes and I don't think I can catch up now. Sometimes, the greatest Digital Age attempts just turn to dust.

1 comment:

web said...

Hi Anna I took the liberty of posting your post on my blog http://afterworldblog.blogspot.com/2007/12/another-critics-post.html and a couple of people have left comments for you : )