I started this Danish series about a rain carried virus that devastates the population of Scandinavia and then I kind of gave up because it seemed like an endless idiot plot.
Our unlikely crew of incredibly stupid survivors…. somehow
An idiot plot depends on the main characters doing incredibly stupid things because if they didn’t then not much very dramatic would happen. Here, the main characters react in the most stupid possible way again and again and again. I was starting to hope their next dumb decision would be the one to get them all killed.
In the first episode the father (a scientist working for a mysterious company) realizes what’s about to happen (death from above) and gathers his family to go to a company underground shelter. But despite having lots of time he doesn’t try to explain what’s going on at all to his 16-17 year old daughter (much less the 11 year old son). It’s all “It’s dangerous and I can’t tell you why or what will happen but it’s dangerous!” They arrive at the shelter and he’s called away by his company and then five minutes later the children do something astronomically stupid and the mother dies.
Skip to five years later and they’re ready to leave the shelter when they’re smoked out by a rag tag band of age peers who they manage to convince them to take them along rather than to kill them. Many, many, stupid decisions follow. So many that by the end of the third episode I gave up.
And then I started thinking in metaphorical terms and though maybe it’s a critique of Danish society and how authority figures do a terrible job of equipping people to deal in the larger, harsher world which is full of people who are not as trusting and honest as most Danes.
A desolate post-apocalyptic hull of a once prosperous city… let’s act is if nothing has changed!
Scenes like the heroine trying to be kind to a child dying in slow motion but only hastening a quicker more traumatic death, looked at as a metaphor for first world meddling in systems it doesn’t understand, might be devastating.
I haven’t decided whether to give it another chance or not but now I’m thinking it might be worth a second look.
