Upload is one of the top 2020 Amazon releases, so much so that the series was renewed for a second season after only two weeks of being out. The show brings together many TV elements that have been tested and seasoned by many shows before it, but that isn’t to say Upload has nothing new to offer.
In a time where viewers have an abundance of media to choose from, it’s difficult to stand out from the crowd and be noticed for subtleties. There are some smart subtleties in the show mingled amongst the wholesome and familiar aspects, and it’s worth watching for it. However, there are also some things that stand out because they simply don’t make much sense.
Jamie Ignoring Nathan’s Calls
It becomes clear that Jamie slept with Ingrid, and he claims that this is why he’s been out of touch with Nathan. But for how Jamie has been portrayed, this reason doesn’t add up. Jamie and Nathan as best friends and Nathan died in a tragic accident. Jamie ignores his dead best friend’s phone calls? It’s inconsistent with the character set-up and unrealistic.
Ingrid’s Behavior At Nathan’s Funeral
Ingrid is made out to be a possible suspect In Nathan’s murder until the writers provide an excuse for her suspicious behavior in sneaking into his car the night he dies. She does love Nathan, she was just setting his car to protect occupant because she worries about him. Once this information is given it makes very little sense why she treated him so horribly at his funeral.
Nora’s Treatment Of Byron At The Party
Nora is completely disrespectful of Byron at the staff party she invites him to. She is only using him so that her boss won’t be suspicious that she’s seeing Nathan.
She invites him to a personal occasion, kisses him randomly all night, and then treats him like he’s crazy when he says he feels a connection between them. It’s cruel and dismissive and reflects badly on her character, which is never acknowledged.
Everyone Can Come And Go In The Virtual World
The show gets lazier and lazier when it comes to the technicalities of the laws of the future. Everything is supposed to be hyper-capitalist, so much that people in the afterlife must pay extra for certain items in their fridge before eating them.
Yet Nathan’s family, who have little money, come and go in the virtual world with no explanation given to how they accomplish this as if the general public can hop in and out whenever they want and don’t have to pay, which is unlikely in the world which has been offered to the viewer
Residents Aren’t Warned Of Visitors
Ingrid surprises Nathan with a visit by appearing at his hotel room door–his virtual hotel room. If the virtual afterworld is where people must exist forever and pay great money to live in, one would think they would get some warning when it comes to people interrupting their lives, seeing as they can’t leave the world and therefore can’t get away from visitors if they don’t want to see them.
Nora And Nathan Kissing With No Suit
Nora puts on gloves so that she can feel the texture of the gift that Nathan crafted for her out of random things he found in Lakeview. By putting on the gloves, she asserts that before this time she couldn’t feel anything in Lakeview, yet when Nathan held her hand in an earlier episode she responded and took it away while wearing no gloves.
Then, immediately after putting on the gloves, she and Nathan kiss, and she responds to kissing him as if she can feel it. Yet there is nothing on her face in the real world that would allow her to feel him.
Inconsistencies In The 2 Gig Floor
When Nathan first sees the members of the 2 Gig floor people sit reading books samplers, folding body parts out of paper, and playing with toilet roll toys.
This is supposed to show how little they have to occupy their time with. While doing these activities, however, none of them lose a significant amount of data. When Nathan becomes a 2 Gig, he loses data just by thinking too hard or talking, so much that he loses it all in one day.
Nora’s Dad Is Shocked By Lakeview
When Nora’s dad arrives in Lakeview he acts like he is extremely surprised by being in virtual reality, when just recently viewers saw he and Nora interacting in virtual reality while he sat at the hospital.
They both stood together in a world that looked extremely real, and he made nothing of it. This sudden surprise could be from how fancy Lakeview is, but it doesn’t account for his extreme response.
Nora And Nathan Talking As If No One Is Watching
It’s unsettling at times to watch Nora and Nathan talk as if nobody can hear them. Nora knows that her boss could view what she is doing at any time if she so desired, and yet she breaks rules regularly. It’s such an obvious aspect of the structure of the show that it’s distracting for the writers to not have accounted for it by having Nora create some kind of loophole.
Nora Abandons Nathan
It makes absolutely no sense that Nora assumes Nathan doesn’t answer her confession of love because he doesn’t love her. She knows that he is a chatterbox and that he was only just begging her to stay with him. She also knows that he lives on 2 Gigs of data now and that he’s been using it to help her escape an attacker, yet when he doesn’t respond it doesn’t occur to her to just put on her virtual goggles and check on him before she goes off the grid and leaves him alone.
