What I’m Watching: Upload

Upload: Season 1, Episode 8 “Shopping Other Digital After-Lives” (B+)

So much of Lakeview is incredibly fancy, yet there’s still that horrible ejection and insertion that should be a much smoother process. It was remarkably easy for Nathan to get signed out of Lakeview and transported on a hard drive, and I would have thought that he would have needed to get the permission of the person paying for his account to leave. What we did see was how much less glamorous a lot of the cheaper options were, with the cheap travel agent showing them the IR simulations that were only superficially detailed while Nathan had to be stuck in a lamp. I got worried when Lucy suspended Nora for fraternizing with an upload, but kudos to her for flying economy minus, a humorous concept where she somehow had chairs from both the back and the front, to show up at Ingrid’s front door to ask her why she had pulled Nathan out of Lakeview. I liked the idea of Ingrid and Nora getting along, though I think that Nora caught on pretty quick to Ingrid’s ditzy nature, smartly choosing not to give Ingrid the real hard drive to carry. It turns out that what she did earned her a glowing review from Ingrid that enabled her to get her job back – though she’s working from home for some reason – and Lucy having gone in pretending to be her with Nathan didn’t do too much damage. Ending with Nora pulling the same walk-on-water prank on Nathan was great, and I do hope their romance continues, especially now that Nora and Ingrid have met in real life.