User Reviews

So at the beginning here we get the self identified 'Jessica Hyde', searching thru the PENTHOUSE....AND then she goes to the HOTEL SECURITY OFFICE.....Did she beat the ASSASSINS there???? She gets a photo of the KID.....She's on the track!!! Good for her.

LOL.. poor housekeeping going to find a bunch of dead bodies in the morning rounds....

+1 Star for Opening Sequence!!!

So 4 people from the LIST OF BIDDERS are still alive. And they are over at WILSONS, WHO SHOWS THE GROUP TO HIS BUNKER! It's so awesome that dude has a bunker.

Ahh finally we are introduced to Cusask's character, DR. KEVIN CHRISTIE. He works for some BIOSCIENCE company here. He interviews introducing new LABMEAT, SIMPRO, for simple protein.

The ASSASSINS show up at WILSON WILSONS HOUSE, and they start dispensing OXYGEN to his parents, first of all. And then to Wilson Wilsons, where is UTOPIA? Where is the Boy?? Where is Jessica Hyde???? Salt, Bleach, and then the SPOON!!!

+1 Star for that grisly sequence, pretty awesome.

Oh and nice, Wilsonns gets loose, gets the gun, altho he's in no condition to fight. and who shows up??? JESSICA HYDE!!. She kills ROD with an axe? But the other half of the ASSASSINS team, Arby, is next door dispensing OXYGEN.

SO HYDE RESCUES WILSONNS, and they pick up the other 3 fanboys coming back from the store. Hyde brings them to a secluded farm ESTATE where they get rid of phones and wallets.

And we are introduced to MICHAEL STEAMS, a VIROLOGIST apparently who is supposed to be doing RESEARCH.

And we get to meet the very DIVERSE, CHRISTIE FAMILY.....

And JESSICA HYDE, at the end of the EP. SHE 'SUBTRACTS' SAMANTHA from the equation but for some reason she lets IAN walk away. I thought that was dumb.

-1 Star for the SUBTRACTION of Samantha.

6/10

Here comes the first major stumbling point...

Just 2 episodes in & already, Gillian Flynn continues to struggle in her attempts to tell the exact same story as the original - but within the space of 2 episodes instead of 1 - & where Dennis Kelly irrefutably succeeded, she ultimately fails with a much bigger budget & twice the amount of time as he had in order to get things moving.

We see Wilson Wilson's infamous torture sequence reimagined for American audiences (executed ineffectively) where instead of rescuing himself like before, this time he's incapable of saving his own life & is therefore reliant upon others to do it for him... So his character's robbed of the ability to prove himself as a survivor (which is what he needs to be - or become - in this situation) & hence, the conclusion to what was meant to be the first, iconic, shocking confrontation between the two sides becomes a lacklustre interaction that delivers far less impact than intended (that furthermore acts as a blatant reminder of Cristobal Tapia De Veer's absence). Jessica Hyde's introduction also sadly falls flat... The cast deliver subpar performances & the only actress who actually seemed to be doing an adequate job on screen is subsequently killed off (for shock value) within the last few moments of the episode. There's no tension, no unsettling atmosphere or emotional stakes because unlike the first, we don't actually care about these characters. Everything's lesser than what it was & it's sad to see UTOPIA become "average" as "average" was never a word you'd have associated with the series before. They're playing it far too safe. It's meant to be disturbing.

Why? After the first episode I thought I found a new show I was going to love. Why are you trying to make your audience hate Jessica Hide? I literally turned the show off two minutes into the third episode because of this garbage. You had plenty of shock value before doing that and it doesn't make sense.

So Gillian Flynn rips off Dennis Kelly's hugely original & incredible "utopia" & "creates" her version of "utopia", a poorly acted, badly written farce with a barely interesting plot/story. Episode 2, the supposed hero murders an innocent member of the group, why? in Jessica's own words "because one group can't have two leaders".....??? & who writes this garbage? Gillian Flynn, that's who, the oraly challenged Sasha Bianca Lane that plays "Jessica", the hero, just murdered an innocent person for no reason whatsoever, pathetic, a scene written for shock value & nothing to do with the plot/story at all. To be fair I can imagine Jessica Rothe asked to be killed off as she could see this show doing more harm than good to her career, probably why her acting was so OTT from the start. Still I'm going to keep watching, there may be something good about this show, somewhere, unfortunately the "Jessica" character has just become the most unlikeable character of the show, the total opposite of the original show.

One part torture porn + one part family murdered in their home + one part screaming + one part over acting= this episode. The only decent character gets his eye ripped out. Rainn Wilson tries but can't lift this episode out of its dour, grim arc. Zero fun storytelling.