Silo (Apple+)

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Voyage. Welcome to watch this tonight. I'm your host, Dan Bettimore.

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I'm a producer, writer of film
and television and now a podcast producer.

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And despite having every streaming service,
I never know what to watch. So

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anytime I watch something good, I
talk about it on the show. This

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way, you'll never have the same
problem I do. I watch this tonight,

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there's always something good to watch.
Let's get started. We don't know

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who built the silo. We don't
know why we're here. We don't know

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why things are and the way they
are outside. We don't know when it

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will be safe to go outside.
This is the religious motto of the silo.

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This is a new show on Apple
Plus. I'm going to give you

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just the basic premise and then we're
gonna talk about why the execution of this

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show is proof that chat GPT is
never going to be able to write television.

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So there's all these people underground.
They're in a silo. The silo

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is at least one hundred and twenty
floors, it could be even more.

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I'm going to really avoid spoilers here
because I really want you to watch this

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and I want you to be able
to listen to this episode without it being

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spoiled for you. The essential idea
of dystopian, you know, all these

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people in a silo underground. If
you just start from that, typically what

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you're gonna have is something where you
know, there was like ecological disaster,

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humans were driven underground, and it's
a known thing. Everybody knows what happened,

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why they're there, their history.
Instead a really clever subversion of that,

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they don't know, they don't know
like how long really have we been

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here? Why did this start?
Who built this thing? Like what are

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we doing here? So that was
a really clever subversion of probably like the

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typical way you would write this.
We meet David Oyolowo and Rashida Jones and

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there are a couple and they've they've
been given reproductive clearance, so they're going

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to try to have a baby,
and everyone in the silo knows immediately.

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It's like the next day, like
they're walking to breakfast and it was like

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hey, sweet good luck, good
luck bro. And clearly Rashida Jones doesn't

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like that everybody knows, which means
that it's not something that they like shared

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on like the silo Facebook page,
like they clearly it's like this is just

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a thing that is known in the
community for some reason. But like why,

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you know, if anything you would
expect the opposite, wouldn't it be

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kind of like a secret, And
it's a privilege that they're getting, and

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so that's sort of interesting. And
then the doctor removes Rashida Jones birth control

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capsule. They do like an extreme
close up of this terrifying looking device,

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and I'm watching it, going,
there's no fucking way, there's no way

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that's just for birth control. So
at each step in the pilot you can

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sense that something is wrong, but
it's not exactly the way that you would

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expect given the premise. In other
words, it's really well written in a

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nuanced way. That's why I'm saying
chat GPT would never be able to do

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this. The nuance of it,
the cleverness of it, the way that

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it kind of subtly subverts a lot
of what you would expect given the premise.

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That's special. That's what makes it
good. Also great to see Tim

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Robbins coming out of the Witness Protection
Program. Tim Robbins has just been very

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unlucky in picking TV projects since twenty
fifteen. His TV credits are The Brink

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which is a show that I don't
think very many people watched. Here and

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Now again a show I don't think
many people watched, and Castle Rock,

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which I think more people watched,
but again still wasn't like a big hit,

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wasn't part of the zeitgeist, that
kind of thing. He shows up

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for one scene and then he goes
back into witness protection everybody to see if

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we get I hope to see a
lot more of Tim Robbins and the rest

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of the show. So the reason
that they don't know their own history is

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they say, we blame the rebels
for racing our history. One criticism of

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the show is they refer to their
history before what they know of as the

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before Times, which I'm pretty sure
they did that on Solar opposites. Like

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that's the one thing that's like a
little bit of a sci fi trope,

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just the language there. But it
is really interesting. Their history only goes

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back one hundred and forty years.
They have no idea what happened prior to

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that. All they know is that
they've been told their whole lives. If

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anyone opens the door to the outside
world, we're all going to die.

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A computer repair guy finds one hundred
and forty year old hard drive and it

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gets through. Shea Jones curious about
what's inside of it, and they find

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some video in there that they watch
and we just see it reflected in her

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glasses. Whatever she sees in there
totally blows her mind. And what's so

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exciting in that moment and that moment
as you're watching the show, you're like,

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this could be anything. It could
be like giant bird creatures, like

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what is on this video? What
I also love about it is that Silo

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really moves like the pilot moves.
We are getting through plot here. I

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think the bad version of this,
the stuff that happens in the pilot,

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would be like six episodes and it
just is burning through plot and you're thinking,

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man, like, where are we
going here? How are they gonna,

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you know, have enough road left
to go that they can do a

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TV series. About halfway through the
pilot, there's definitive proof that the system

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is a lie, which like obviously
you know that going in right, that's

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not really a spoiler. Like you
know, if you've ever watched television,

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if you've ever read sci fi,
like you know that that something's run in

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Denmark. Here we also know because
they do a teaser device to tease it

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in the opening that Rashida Jones is
going to go out of the silo.

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We see her in the teaser with
an astronaut kind of helmet, and we

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also know that Oyoloo will want to
go outside eventually too, So we know

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all those things very early in the
show. The spoiler, which I'm not

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going to spoil here is why why
does she want to go outside? And

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I want to just again compliment the
quality of the writing, so you know,

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I think typically with this sort of
premise, it would be a bit

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convoluted to keep the people in the
silo, right, it would be just

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like, oh, we just just
don't go like, but the way they've

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designed this world, they've made it
so it's credible, Like if you were

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living in the silo, you'd probably
be like, all right, like says

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to me, If you want to
leave, all you have to do is

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say I want to leave, and
any request to leave the silo is granted,

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so you're not trapped there. They
have a giant viewscreen in their like

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cafeteria that shows the outside world and
shows the bodies of people who have previously

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left the silo. So again it's
it's really well thought out, Like you

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could totally understand if you are a
resident in the silo that you would stay

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there. It wouldn't be it wouldn't
be an unreasonable thing to think that you

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would see there. So it takes
this standard sci fi premise, this kind

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of you know, it's high concept, but it's familiar, and they execute

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it really well every step of the
way. And then at the end of

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the pilot and this is not again
I'm not explaining anything. Rebecca Ferguson,

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who's on the cover on all the
art. You're sort of watching the pilot

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like where is she? She shows
up at the end, and she's just

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immediately a star. She kind of
has always been like that, you know,

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since she showed up in Mission a
Possible Rogue Nation. She owns the

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screen. She just has a quality
and she would have been a star in

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any era of Hollywood. Like there's
a version of where Rebecca Ferguson is born,

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you know, however, many years
earlier and is in Casablanca, right,

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Like she is just a classic star. And there's a way that she's

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introduced, the visual of which how
she's introduced really reminded me of Ripley and

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Aliens. She's just you know,
she has a magnetism to her that she's

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such an asset to anything she's in
and I'm really excited to see where the

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story is going to go with her
with Tim Robbins. Just you know,

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a lot of good actors in this
show and a very aggressive plot. And

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this continues in episode two by the
way, Like I'm again not spoiling it,

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but I started watching eppisode two and
they're just give and ship away.

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You're like, WHOA. So that's
exciting when you're watching a show and you're

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like they're not stalling for time,
like they're not trying to fill an episode

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count here, they are moving.
So yeah, Silo, you know,

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another good Apple Plus show. It's
almost to the point where I got to

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start reviewing the Apple Plus shows that
aren't that good, just so it doesn't

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feel like I'm like a homer for
Apple Plus. But really Silo is very

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impressed with So if you like sci
fi, totally encourage you to check out

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Silo. Definitely worth your time.
That is the show for today. If

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you notice the show sounding a little
different today, it's because I had to

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record it on my iPhone. Yeah, spoiler, This is all recorded on

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my iPhone in the sound booth of
my car because my Friday was a disaster

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and I did not have time to
record on Friday, so I had to

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sneak in a weekend recording away from
my children. That's what I do for

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you, dear listener. Anyway,
let me know what you think of Silo

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if you check it out. And
that is the show for the day till

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next time. M h m hm
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