This is not my Life - episode synopses

TINML is a local TV production - and enjoyed by members. We do have a reviewer who likes the series sufficently to write a synopsis and commentary on each episode. Reading them is faster than watching the screen, but should be accompanied by a health warning: you may get interested and grab the TV remote of a Thursday evening.

I (the webmaster) have a minority view. I find the sets grey-bland and think the core philosophy of a threatening we-will-fix-your-brain society is something that died in the 70's. Even the scenery is bland. In episode 1, our mind-wiped hero was driving by some misty pines and I could swear that they were so wishy washy they were already radiating an aura of paper pulp. Now you know why they are called pinus radiata - they are psychic. They know their own future. They know yours. The series-writer lived in Pinehaven.

But the reviewer likes it, so (mumble, millennium buggrit), up it goes.

This is not my lifeThis Is Not My Life

NZ TV SciFi series. Started 29 July 2010
4 StarsAlright if there's nothing else available.
Genre:  Science Fiction – Local
 
TV One 8.30 Thursday (and maybe 9.30 Sunday)
Reviewed by Mike Talks

The series so far. 

Rumour had it that there were only 6 episodes in all. But it trundles on and on....

Episode 1.

You wake up in your beautiful home, downstairs are your adoring wife, and well balanced children. Over the fence from you a helpful neighbour. Could life get any better? There's only one problem - you don't recognise any of them, and you can't even remember who you are. So begins the premise of TVNZs foray into science fiction "This is not my life".

And so you follow Alec Ross, as he finds out about the life he can't remember. It's soon apparent this is a world of the Apple inspired near future - everyone has wall screens, digital photo frames, electric cars and next-gen iPhones. Poor Alec is recovering from a ladder fall and everyone thinks he has temporary amnesia, so is taken to his local Wellness clinic.

But things soon start to not add up for Alec. Why are some of his clothes the wrong size? Why are there sinister things his Doctor is keeping from him?

Although the show feels very familiar - it's a bit like a blend of a lot of things you've seen before in the Prisoner, The Truman Show, Dark City, Demolition Man - but it all blends in a unique way.

Alecs town of Waimona (with the tag "You'll never want to leave") is a fascinating invention - at first glance it's a Green Party Utopia. Everything's recycled, no-one's allowed to use paper. In the supermarket you can choose between Free Range or Organic Free Range eggs. Alec tries to escape the town, but his car says he's used up his power credits. He tries to get a flight out, but the receptionist tells him he has a carbon credit deficit and can't take a flight until he's in credit again.

Soon with the constant chirpy greeting of "Kia Ora" from the smiling happy residents, it's apparent this is more a dystopia with a Stepford veneer.

It seems the Wellness clinic is somehow controlling people's memories. Is he really Alec Ross and are they really his family?

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Faces to the names

Faces: Alex        Wife Callie            Jessica         Doctor N         Harry           Richard

Not all the important faces, just some lifted from the TVNZ cast site. Get the names of the actors and bios from there. The order is Alec first, then light background alternating with dark, and stop at 600 pixels. Editorial insight had any no play whatsoever. As to why most of them look like they got their break appearing in Crimewatch?  Stealing scenes is against the Enviromental Protection Act (1986).

Episode 2.

After last week it was always going to be difficult to know where to go in this episode.  In last week's conclusion Alec had befriended a young teenager Kyle who also suspected something was not quite right with the world.

After a fevered night of escaping the sinister security forces of Waimona, Alec returned to Kyle's house to find a teenager who he didn't recognise but everyone else knew to be Kyle.  The next morning Alec too accepts this new person is Kyle, his memories tell him that.  Can his memories be lying to him?
 
This week Kyle is trying to continue to investigate the world of Waimona, fearing being discovered and possibly replaced by the Wellness clinic in much the same fashion as Kyle.

In this perfect world, things are becoming noticable by their absence.  Talking with his wife, Alec asks if they know anyone is unhappy, the answer again is pretty much "why would anyone be unhappy in Waimona".  In his office, he attempts to look up depression on his office computer, and the internet responds it doesn't understand.  Looking through his company records he manages to find one person who left due to conflict, a girl called Jessica, who now works at strip club, which Alec visits "in the interests of investigation".  This is the first look at anything like a seedy side to Waimona, the strip club "which will appear as Personal Trainer on your credit card".

Meanwhile Alec's wife is starting to find his behaviour suspicious.  Confronting him saying she thinks he's having an affair, he tells her the truth that he thinks until a few weeks ago he lived another life and all his memories are fake.  She doesn't really appreciate this.

He's having bad dreams, or are they flashbacks, concerning a green door, "the truth is in the teddy" and a girl named Hannah.  His wife thinks Hannah is someone he's having an affair with, but Jessica tells her when she was unhappy she kept dreaming about a green door ... then her unhappiness went away.

Perhaps the biggest breadcrumbs (as who knows at this point) came in the Councellors office.  Alex asks "Do I have a choice", to which the Councellor tells him "there is freedom of choice ... but you need to make the right choices".  This is a jarring thing.  The world of Waimona at face value is idillic, supermarkets with only healthy, ethical goods, limited use of cars "for the environment".  In a world where you are only allowed to make "the right choice" however well meaning, you have no real choice at all ...

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Episode 3.

Episode 1 was intriguing, episode 2 though enjoyable felt a bit like it was going in circles.
 
So episode 3 was a crucial one - would it move the story forward or just tread water for an hour?  Thankfully the former.
 
What is going on in Waimoana?  This episode left a lot of breadcrumbs, and what's being alluded to is in stages more and more creepy.
 
Alec has teamed up with fellow misfit Jessica who now works as a cleaner in his office.  She discovers a new girl Rebecca who works the same office job she used to.  She looks like Jessica, and when Jessica cleans her desk, she notices not only does she come from the same place as her, but has the same pictures of a Golden Retriever.  Both Alec and Jessica try and engage some of the new arrivals about life outside Waimoana, and it's soon clear this is a taboo subject.
 
Meanwhile Jessica and Alec are being stalked by Gordie from "personal systems", who is able to track their every move.  Everything points to sinister goings on at the local library - this is one place you don't want overdue fees from.
 
Thanks to hacking the program that follows them, Alec is able to steal some files from the library (or is that lie bury).  He and Jessica don't have any records - but Gordie and Alec's wife Sally do.  The files take the form of the kind of video usually reserved for video dating companies, where both Gordie and Sally talk about the life they'd like to buy and the people they'd like to fall in love with them, disturbingly Sally (a single career woman in real life) even pretty much putting an order in for the children she'd want to buy for her new life.
 
This Is Not My Life has always been about a subtle but sinister loss of choice.  Up until now it'd looked like your standard Prisoner meet THX-1138 mix of an evil Government trying to brainwash its citizens.  However now it looks like Waimoana is some creepy dating version of Stepford Wives, where people have obviously been kidnapped and brainwashed to fall in love with someone paying the bills to be the target of their affection.
 
In Waimoana if you're one of the unwitting many, you are denied even the freedom of who to fall in love with.  Remember, it's for your own good ...
 
I would rate it probably 4.5  
[Editors note: Half stars are cosmologically banned. We will accept 4 main sequence G type suns (goodol'sol *4) and a red dwarf. In recognition thereof, we created a little cluster. It was up there for a while, but... you're only as good as your last episode.] 

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Episode 4.

Well yes ... it's all about pace.  It's a sci-fi mystery I know ... and every week you have to be given another nugget and clue.  But if it's too long then you get the feeling it's not going anywhere.
 
So this week no huge revelations.  It's like being stuck in traffic the radio says is "heavy but moving from Petone".  Part of you wants to beep your horn and put your head out the window and tell them to "hurry up".
 
After last weeks discoveries it seems there are two kinds of people in Waimoana - the haves who've paid for this life, and people who've just been ordered and brainwashed "like a human pizza".
 
Jessica's best friend Louie from her lapdancing days tells her he's met his true love.  Jessica thought he was gay so is suspicious when the love of his life turned out to be a much older woman named Delia, and hardly a prime candidate for Cougar Town.  Suspicious, she tells Louie everything he knows, which eventually finds it's way back to the sinister Wellness institute.  However it turns out Louie lost his mother to "the big flu" and looking for a substitute in his life, maybe it's Louie who's ordered Delia and not the other way around.
 
A lot of mention is made this episode of "the big flu", our first indication that something very bad has happened to the outside world and what we see in Waimoana might not be a reflection of the rest of the world.  It's not called the best little place in the World for nothing I'm sure.  At the Wellness clinic the damage of this big flu was possibly underlined when it was mentioned how powerless modern medicine is against viruses.  Of course the Spainish Flu virus in the 20th Century is infamous for causing more deaths than the Great War that preceeded it.  Are the people of Waimoana unwittingly Survivors, and This Is Not My Life is trying to channel both Survivors and the Prisoner ...
 
Elsewhere Alec's daughter is having trouble sleeping, and having bad dreams about a man with snakes who calls her by another name.  She's sleeping in the cupboard, and gets worse when the TV to the house is sabotaged.  She ends up turning relatively normal for a TV child, getting a bit stroppy and difficult.  However before things get too Shortland Street, an emergency counsellor is dispatched to remind her "everyone in Waimoana is your friend".
 
With the TV restored and her back sleeping in her bed, she "reboots" to normal perfect daughter. Seems there's a wi-fi in your bed to reset and download your memories at the end of the day.
 
Interesting, but as I mentioned this is all about pace.  Another 9 episodes of treading water, or another 2 to wrap up?  I'm hoping the latter.

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Episode 5.

What is going with Doctor Collins at Wellness?  She's watching a video of the 'original' Kyle before he was replaced with a less disturbed version.  Is she with the sinister folk behind Waimoana, or is she as suspicious as Alec?  Possibly the later as even she cannot see files on Alec Ross.

Jessica is trying to piece things together.  If things in Waimoana is what everyone desired, why did so many people visit the sex club she worked in?  Will people always want more?

Before too long Jessica is being escorted to a visit with Doctor Collins.  Seems Jessica is a client under review as it transpires people who are not suitable for Waimoana are 'transferred' to Galton.  After being forcibly medicated reacting badly to the drugs she's given, Jessica tries to escape, showing her boyfriend Gordy the tape he made before coming to Waimoana.  Gordy is visibly disturbed by watching it, not able to recall it.

However this has sealed Jessicas fate, and Doctor Collins puts her on the 'transfer' list, and she's soon abducted by the sinister officers of Safeway security.  It's soon obvious though she's playing a game, tipping off Alec and Gordy that they'll have to follow Jessica if he wants to save her life.

Following her into the 'restricted contaminated area', they find (unsurprisingly) just what a macabre fate awaits those being 'transferred'.  The facility contains piles of dead bodies littered around, including one Alec recognises as the original Kyle.  All a bit messy - even the Nazis were better housekeepers.

Jessica retrieved and hidden, Doctor Collins removes her from her 'transfer list'.  Has she been using Alec to investigate for her?

As with last week and the revelation of the 'big flu' epidemic which killed so many, there are more disturbing hints at the world, which is described as 'falling apart'.  The breadcrumbs seems to suggest the worlds problems not caused by war ... but a society where people forever want more, and keep creating more problems and devastation from greed.  Hence Waimoanas antedote of a cleansed ecologically friendly society of smiles and Kia Oras.

Once more the question revolving around is simply - what price do we surrender for "the perfect life" ...

[ Rating now dropped to 3 out of 5. But maybe some stars have circled behind others and will reappear. ]

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Episode 6.

Six was not the last episode.  It's like falling - uncomfortably unsure when you're going to hit rock bottom ...

Gordy the wannabe boyfriend of Jessica and Alec have kind of teamed up after last weeks episode.  Gordy is starting to open his eyes a bit more, noticing not all people in Waimoana have chips and can be tracked.  His snooping though has brought him to the attention of Richard Foster of Safeway Security, who decides to recruit him.  Safeway are there to keep the people of Waimoana safe from outsiders who envy the Waimoana way of life.  There are lots more hints of an outside world that's falling apart and desperate to get into Waimoana.

Meanwhile Alec is trying to get closer to Jessica, who he feels is the only person he can talk to.  He wonders if he puts too much of a foot wrong will he be replaced too, and at this point does he even care?  Jessica's decided she wants to make things work with Gordy, and if that fails then she's thinking she can always check out on her own terms.

The first day on his new job, Gordy is introduced to Jonny, and intelligent computer system.  It monitors everyone in Waimoana, looking for any changes in behaviour which might need investigating. This is real 1984 stuff.

Teaming up Gordy and Alex follow the head of Safeway Security, blocking their tracking chips, finding an outside bunker.  Inside they find that Jessica is not quite the innocent victim they always believed, and only one of them will be leaving ...

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Episode 7

Perhaps one of the most exciting episodes so far ...
 
Last week Alec Ross seemed to recieve a fatal electric shock to the heart after raiding the Safeway security bunker.  But the episode starts with a lot of people trying to revive him.  They seem to be yet another faction in this complex struggle at Waimoana ... and are trying to find out what he knows.  Good luck to them.
 
Meanwhile Richard Foster at Safeway is trying to find out who is behind the raid at the bunker.  It becomes obvious there are a lot of people covering up for Alec - why is he so important?
 
Alec manages to escape his captors, but is taken to Wellness for examination.  His Doctor explains his chip has become burnt out from the electric shock, and makes a deal with him not to replace it.  Another chilling conversation hints at life outside Waimoana "Everyone has free will to a point.  Outside is a different story".
 
Soon at Safeway the bunker attack is being blames on "Outsiders".  With what feels the chilling coincidence of the Reichstag fire, a bomb goes off knocking out power to the town, there are rumours of outsiders stealing children.  Are there really Outsiders, or is this a fictitious attack to keep everyone in their place?
 
But it seems the Outsiders are all too real, and a terrorist gang in a broken down van.  The kind of thing you'd expect if Che Guvara hung out with Scooby Doo.  It's the kind of thing that's not allowed to happen in Waimoana "the best little place in the world".  And so Alec has to play along as everyones memories of the attack are erased, even the parents who've lost children will be programmed to forget them ...

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Episode 8

In episode 1 there was a shady old man following Alec around Waimoana - today we get to meet him.  Harry Sheridan, the man behind uGen - the company that brought you Waimoana.  Oh and Alec's father in the outside world ...
 
Harry knows that Alec has broken his programming.  He put Alec and his daughter into Waimoana to keep them safe, but is prepared to get them out of there.  Alec is the son of one of many of Harry's wives - he lost Alecs mother to viral cancer.  Alec wants to take Jessica with him - but it turns out Alecs wife Sarah is waiting for him outside (and what will she make of Alec spending so much time with Calli, the fake wife?).
 
But not everyone loves Harry.  Richard Foster, head of Safeway security, has a clear dislike of the man.  Harry reminds Richard the people of Waimoana pay good money to be here, and it needs to be less of a police state.
 
Alec is upset at leaving Jessica behind, and they end up sleeping together.  He then shows how crap he is at pillow talk by choosing this moment to tell her "by the way you're a double murderer".  Oops.
 
Alec grabs his daughter to leave Waimoana with Harry.  But then finds a hidden message in his daughters bear.  It's from his real wife Sarah - she's standing in front of an obviously damaged and smoking ruins of Auckland - and she's warning Alec that Harry may be his father. but he's not to be trusted ...

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Episode 9

Unfortunately we ended up missing this episode.  Nothing for it we had to just trust we could pick up the trail.
 
So in the obligatory "Previously on This Is Not My Life ..." - tensions between Harry Sheridan and Richard Foster came to a head, with Richard managing to arrange a little accident for Harry to put him out the picture ... Alec found out he designed the memory upload technology that made Waimoana possible ... Jessica and Gordy got engaged ... Jessica got a better job and found out she was pregnant ... but who's the father?
 
Not that much really.  Phew now we're up to date. 

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Episode 10

Within moments there is a power cut as the power station is attacked.  Wait a minute haven't we been here before?  It's not just us who think this, but Alec is a little riled by it all too!
 
Their minds wiped from the previous attack, the residents of Waimoana are shocked - nothing bad EVER happens here.  As quick trip to Doctor Collins confirms something is different this time around - no-one has any major injuries, and those coming in are more the victims of panic.
 
It looks like Richard Foster of Safeway Security is playing the evil pied piper, and trying to induce a bit of paranoia to increase security.
 
Jessica goes to Doctor Collins, deciding she needs to have a termination.  Doctor Collins says with fertility rates at an all time low (another hint of the global problems) that's out of the question, and she won't be allowed to make that choice.  Bet that'll get the feminists riled.
 
Before you know it there is a community patrol group called Waimoana Safe being formed, to watch out for strangers.  They even wear armbands (which is subtle ...).  But Richard Foster isn't having it all his own way - there's a board meeting of uGen.  Mrs Hobbs the evil-Supernanny librarian says they are invalidating their charter if they don't uphold their customers rights to privacy and happiness, something she feels Richard Foster is all to keen to trample on.
 
Meanwhile Jessica is working as an admin for a trucking company, trucks which come from "outside".  She and Alec decide to jump one to escape together.  Doctor Collins gets wind of their plans, warning Alec that Waimoana contains those who paid for happiness and those on death row on their final chance.  Leaving for either of them would be a mistake.
 
Not that it matters as both Alec and Jessica bungle their escape attempt, and end up right back in Waimoana.  "You'll never leave".
 
Feeling a bit dejected, Alec returns home to be attacked by a stranger who says he's the real Alec Ross, and he's come to get his life back ...

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Episode 11

Eleven.... Coming soon.  Stay tooned.

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