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Sep 14, 2019

The I-Land: "Lost" Written by a Writing-School Dropout

10 people on a desert island, with no memory of who they are or how they got there.  Sounds interesting, sort of Lost light.

We discover almost immediately that this is a computer simulation (the title I-Land is one clue.)  But that's ok, maybe a combination of Lost and The Prisoner.   Does someone want in-for-mation?

Except: the people are complete jerks.  They immediately start bickering, hooking up, and trying to rape each other instead of looking for food, water, and shelter.

For plot complications, there is a cannibal among them, and two bounty hunters named Bonnie and Clyde (Clyde played by KeiLyn Durrel Jones, left).

We learn all the details in Episodes 3 and 7 (the finale),  which are all long plot exposition discussions.  Hey, did anyone take Creative Writing 101?  Show, don't tell?

Due to global warming, Texas is now mostly underwater, so the crime rate has increased, and the prisons are full:   "So many more people are criminals, now that the water has reclaimed the land, that we have to find a way to redeem them."

Um...we've had rehabilitation programs for over 180 years.  Job training, GED classes, life skills classes, drug treatment, counseling....

 So they are trying out a program to give parole to murderers if they can prove that they have been reformed.

Um...what about the non-violent inmates?  Maybe parole them first?

So the murderers are memory-wiped, put into young, hot bodies, and dumped on a hologram-island to see what happens.  This group consists of:

1. Chase, who killed her husband and children
2. KC
3. Cooper
4. Moses (Kyle Schmid, left)
5. Blair






6. Mason, a mass murderer
7. Donova
8. Taylor
9. Hayden
10. Brody (Alex Pettyfer, left)

It would be very interesting to see the back stories of all of these people, to learn how and why they became murderers, but nope, the writer never took Creative Writing 101.  We learn nothing about the lives of most of them.

Therefore I have no idea if any of them are gay.  Some shy away from hetero-hookups, but that's as far as it gets.


I sort of liked the scenes set back in real life, with Bruce McGill as the Warden channeling the Rich Texan from The Simpsons.  He is so incredibly over the top that I thought he must be a parody.  After all, Bruce McGill has been in a lot of movies.  He must have taken acting lessons, right?

Now, if we can just get the writers into Creative Writing 101....

4 comments:

  1. To be fair, job training programs have been a bust since the late 70s at least.

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    1. On the contrary, they are one of the more effective programs at reducing recidivism, second only to educational programs, particularly college-level classes. California's professional diver training program has received special praise. Some of the work-release programs that allow the inmate to work in the community during the daytime practically guarantee them jobs upon release.

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    2. Oh, I was thinking of unemployment statistics, where they generally are a failure. Very infamously, in fact. Basically, rather than teach you a skill, they drive you to the nearest Burger King.

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    3. The unemployment rate among ex-cons is amazingly high due to a number of factors: restrictions on the jobs they can get and tasks they can perform (you can't handle milk products or lottery tickets), restrictions on things like student loans, and employer prejudice (over 60% of potential employers state that they will not hire an ex-con).

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