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asakiyumeI talked about this Brazilian SF show once before, in 2017, when just one season was out and I started watching it. It's now complete at four seasons. The premise is that 97% of the world (or at least the portion we're focused on) live in poverty in a desertified "Inland" (Continente), but 3% live in a tropical paradise, the Offshore (Maralto; probably based on the actual island of Fernando do Noronha based on its location on the map that plays in the opening credits). When people turn twenty, they get a chance to participate in "the process," a series of tests that separate the worthy 3% from the unworthy 97%.
Over the course of the four seasons, the characters find out the hidden history of how this process started and put into action various plans to counter the injustices of this system. All the characters end up doing things they deeply regret, in a way that sometimes feels like the creators jerking them around, but on the other hand gives them all a chastened human fallibility that's identifiable even when the decisions it resulted from are hard to credit.
There are problems with the setup that I could never quite get past (how both these places are provisioned, mainly), and one direction for a solution that's actually explored in the middle seasons (creation of an alternative to the Offshore) seems like it could have been explored more, in more different ways--basically I thought there were always more directions for change than the characters imagined--but within the limitations that the show marked out, I really wanted to see how the characters were going to sort things out--both societally and personally.
Brief aside: Everyone in the inland dresses in improbably fabulous rags--take a look at these sneakers!
I was super moved by the final episode (in spite of a plot mechanic that frustrated me) because it spoke to how I feel about the social situation in the United States right now (even though the show is Brazilian). It gave me the ending I want for us. Spoiler cut ahead! But if you're not going to see the show or don't mind about spoilers, read on ahead, or better yet, just watch the first few moments of the video of the final scene, because it's beautiful and uplifting.
The Offshore falls in the middle of the last season, but it seems like rather than pull together for a better future for all, people are going to fall into factional warfare that will result in more misery, with no good outcome--and then comes the unlikely plot mechanic: everyone agreeing to abide by a game of chance to determine the future. Eventually only Joana and André, the season's main villain, are left in the game, and at that point Joana gives an impassioned speech about what her one command will be if she wins:
If I win, everyone will have to destroy the weapons
And tomorrow we'll go to the Process building, but it won't be to prove who's better or worse.
We'll have the first general meeting, the first meeting of a united world
Where everybody has a voice,
where everybody can speak
If I win, that will be my only command
But André sabotages the end of the game, so it's unclear what people will do--will they descend into war, or will they do as Joana suggests?
... And they do as she suggests. As the morning sun rises, people on all sides walk up to the Process building, and it's an echo of the first episode of the series, where the year's batch of twenty-year-olds walk to the building--only now it's everyone, everyone. Including the elderly. That meant something to me, as an older person :-)
The future will be hard, but the moment is full of hope and joy. There's a video of that final scene; it's like a slice of heaven:
Over the course of the four seasons, the characters find out the hidden history of how this process started and put into action various plans to counter the injustices of this system. All the characters end up doing things they deeply regret, in a way that sometimes feels like the creators jerking them around, but on the other hand gives them all a chastened human fallibility that's identifiable even when the decisions it resulted from are hard to credit.
There are problems with the setup that I could never quite get past (how both these places are provisioned, mainly), and one direction for a solution that's actually explored in the middle seasons (creation of an alternative to the Offshore) seems like it could have been explored more, in more different ways--basically I thought there were always more directions for change than the characters imagined--but within the limitations that the show marked out, I really wanted to see how the characters were going to sort things out--both societally and personally.
Brief aside: Everyone in the inland dresses in improbably fabulous rags--take a look at these sneakers!
I was super moved by the final episode (in spite of a plot mechanic that frustrated me) because it spoke to how I feel about the social situation in the United States right now (even though the show is Brazilian). It gave me the ending I want for us. Spoiler cut ahead! But if you're not going to see the show or don't mind about spoilers, read on ahead, or better yet, just watch the first few moments of the video of the final scene, because it's beautiful and uplifting.
The Offshore falls in the middle of the last season, but it seems like rather than pull together for a better future for all, people are going to fall into factional warfare that will result in more misery, with no good outcome--and then comes the unlikely plot mechanic: everyone agreeing to abide by a game of chance to determine the future. Eventually only Joana and André, the season's main villain, are left in the game, and at that point Joana gives an impassioned speech about what her one command will be if she wins:
If I win, everyone will have to destroy the weapons
And tomorrow we'll go to the Process building, but it won't be to prove who's better or worse.
We'll have the first general meeting, the first meeting of a united world
Where everybody has a voice,
where everybody can speak
If I win, that will be my only command
But André sabotages the end of the game, so it's unclear what people will do--will they descend into war, or will they do as Joana suggests?
... And they do as she suggests. As the morning sun rises, people on all sides walk up to the Process building, and it's an echo of the first episode of the series, where the year's batch of twenty-year-olds walk to the building--only now it's everyone, everyone. Including the elderly. That meant something to me, as an older person :-)
The future will be hard, but the moment is full of hope and joy. There's a video of that final scene; it's like a slice of heaven:
