See (AppleTV, 2019-2022)

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shevek
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Somehow, I had absolutely never heard about this series from anyone, until I saw an ad for it on Youtube a couple weeks ago.
Having only previously watched one other AppleTV series (Foundation), I figured I should take a look.

The premise of this series is that a virus killed everyone on Earth except two million people, but rendered all the survivors blind.
Somehow, even though there must have been lots of skilled and educated people among those survivors, the world completely lost its
grasp on technology, and was plunged back into a Dark Age of iron and leather, with warring mini-fiefdoms. Then, suddenly about 600
years later, sighted people begin to re-emerge, thanks to a single man who goes around knocking up as many women as he can to create
a new race of the sighted. Call it "Eye: The Last Man" or "Blind Game of Thrones".

Anyway, what attracted me about this series was not just that it starred Jason Momoa - the only significant name actor in the main cast other than the esteemed Alfre Woodard - but that it was SET IN PITTSBURGH! Yes, these "kingdoms" you hear about in the series are centered on the Three Rivers and in Central PA, and there are lots of references to locales across the Western and Central parts of our state (as well as Canton Ohio). Even though (of course) the series was filmed in British Columbia, and the trees look *nothing* like the ones in the Pennsylvania forest. Ah well, they tried their best. The inclusion of a sly "Pittsburgh" in the second season's title sequence is a nice touch, as are the shots of a ruined skyline of the Downtown area.

I'm going to refrain from commenting on casting and characterizations, for fear of waking sleeping beasts. That's fine. But what I can say is 1) this show is ultra-violent - certainly as violent as I've heard Game of Thrones is (having never seen it). 2) On the sex side of things, it's certainly an R as well - there are both male/female and lesbian sex scenes, as well as a seduction-slash-rape-coercion by a dominant female against a hesitant younger man. So, keep that in mind when approaching it. We're all adults here.

Having binged through the first two seasons (the third one is on the way shortly), I do have some overall questions about the whole premise of this show.
-They've had 600 years, and hardly anyone has been able to discover the most basic technology like how to generate electricity?
-And yet how does a hydroelectric power plant still create electricity 600 years later, without anyone really maintaining its machinery?
- All radio communication was lost? Really?
-There's a record player..how does a turntable needle work so well after 600 years?
-Also, why are there no guns - did people forget entirely about gunsmithy and gunpowder, even though they are experts at crafting swords & armor?
- And how does archery happen - other than the one sighted archer, how do the blind warriors go about making their bows and arrows and practicing archery when they can't see?
- It seems that the blind civilization devised (basically out of nowhere) a knotted rope system for communication (like the quipu of the ancient Incas)..but what happened to Braille? Pittsburgh itself has a huge Braille library, and nobody thought of plundering it for information on history and technology?
- The Pittsburgh empire is noted to be the most powerful on the continent, and it's only about a quarter the size of Pennsylvania..but how do these people even know they're living on a "continent" if they don't read any books and haven't been far past their own villages?
- Language change seems to be inconsistent and all over the place, like they simply didn't hire a linguistics consultant. That leaves some words like "Altoona" and "Charlotte" untouched for 600 years, while others like "Sibeth" (Elizabeth) and "Maghra" (Margaret) are altered a little but still not much. Out of nowhere, Momoa and another actor utter a couple of Maori phrases - what was even the purpose of doing that?
- I noticed a couple of intriguingly "non-Current Year" aspects of the series which are somewhat forced upon the writers due to 1) the society being thrown back to the Dark Ages where life was a bit simpler, and 2) the whole idea of the characters fighting over what they claim is their "native land". But we'll leave it at that, unless someone else figures it out and cares to bring it up.
- Finally, questions about genetics: there should have been some sighted people all along, who would basically have been in charge of society because of their powers..like gods. How would a sighted gene (even if recessive) lie dormant for almost 600 years without being entirely bred out of the population?

That's just the tip of the iceberg, but if you're willing to do a bunch of suspension of disbelief about things like that, and settle yourself on the casting choices (two stunningly beautiful actresses who might deserve Emmys for their performances are the Dutch Sylvia Hoeks as ruthless Queen Sibeth Kane and the Icelandic Hera Hilmar as valiant Princess Maghra) you can enjoy this. Ladies will also be attracted to the raw masculinity of Jason Momoa, who seems to be on an endless quest to play the most alpha-chad warriors on the screen (his 'Baba Voss' is basically a post-apocalyptic Conan the Barbarian).

Season 3 of See debuts on August 26 on AppleTV, with a new episode every week after that. It's the final and concluding season of the series.
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shevek
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Well, I just binged through the 3rd and final season of See.
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There's a lot of emotional moments and also a lot of very bloody and intense fighting, so it's living up to its rep as an apocalyptic sweeping Game of Thrones epic. I thought that the ending was satisfying enough, although there is a rather strained and elongated epilogue which takes up pretty much half of the final episode. The final shot is very cool, though.

For the members of this forum, there's just a bit of sex and peril:
Harlan and the Trivantian envoy, Trovere, have quite a naked romp in the hay.
The evil weapons master Tormada (Torquemada??) and the evil insane queen Sibeth are briefly shown doing it.
And for peril, they've got Haniwa and Harlan tied up by a gang of flesh-eating cannibals.

Here are some observations I've made:

- Not only does this series lean heavily on the diversity factor, but there's a bit of the "OP" in many of the main characters. Sure, they endure hardships now and then, but ultimately when it comes down to it, they're all able to kill literally dozens of enemies on the battlefield. It also leans very heavily on the women triumphing quite a lot - the "100 pound woman" defeating many warriors twice her size is a big trope here. I also don't know if the female archer (a Katniss/Kate Bishop type) is ever capable of missing her target - she kills probably 60 people in the series with 60 arrows.

- The idea of "sight" is definitely a metaphor for Current Year "marginalized" communities. That thread is kept mostly buried under three seasons of story (mostly woven into religious belief which makes sighted people into witches), but in the last episode, the whole idea of 'different' people eventually being accepted by society, with the conversation resolving "among cities" and "between families," comes barreling out in a big sociopolitical speech made by the warrior Tamacti Jun. The showrunners couldn't just let sleeping dogs lie and keep their message hidden in the story - they had to get didactic about it right at the end. At least they waited.

- Some things that happen in the story are almost incomprehensible, and here are two things I just couldn't understand:
1) The Baba Voss character (played by Jason Momoa) literally burns an entire library of books. That was just stupid and didn't need to be shown
to drive the point home that the knowledge was dangerous. Later on, anyway, it turns out not to be.
2) The prince character, Baba's son Kofun, decides to *blind himself* in order to relate better to his blind son. Totally idiotic.
3) Song lyrics, perfectly preserved for 600 years - what? You mean there's been no changes whatsoever to Doris Day's "Dream a Little Dream"
or Carly Simon's "Let the River Run", even though there have been no recording devices to preserve the integrity of the material, and these songs have obviously been passed down in an oral tradition for dozens of generations? Yeah....right.

- The aesthetic of the Lone Samurai, as represented by the Baba Voss character, is given a lot of play, as you can see from the promo photo.
What I don't understand, though, is how Baba knows to name his children "Kofun" and "Haniwa", which are clear references to ancient Japanese
artifacts. Where would he get the knowledge of such exotic names, living in a backwater village with his Alkenny tribe?

- Haniwa and Wren are quite openly a lesbian couple and eventually get married by the end. Mazel Tov to the lovely brides, but this all happens in a post-apocalyptic society where the technology has been thrown back to the medieval level. You're going to tell me that these people believe in a superstitious religion based around a "God Flame" that vilifies the sighted, they live in a jumble of ramshackle huts in the center of Pennsylvania, they call iron and steel "God Bone", they know almost nothing about science (not even how to make a gun), and yet they're totally OK with public homosexuality like it's 2022? That seems a bit too conveniently injected for current audiences, almost like saying "Hey, we're sorry about what happened with Lexa from The 100. We're not going to do that here, so can you please please watch our show?" So we've got a bunch of ignorant peasantry who somehow have the social awareness of a progressive Penn State gender studies professor.

And I'm told that this was the most-watched show on the Apple TV network, but every time I try to bring it up in a sci-fi or geekdom crowd, **absolutely nobody has heard of it**. The show takes place in and around Altoona, State College and Pittsburgh, but I don't hear anyone from Comicons in those cities (Sci-Fi Valley Con, Happy Valley Con, and Steel City Con) doing anything to celebrate it or bring in stars from the show. Even though it stars Jason Momoa, it barely exists in the pop culture consciousness. Which makes me wonder if Momoa's upcoming TV series, "Chief of War" (about the Hawaiian battle against the US colonizers) is going to do any better with making any kind of impression. Guess we'll see.

Finally, I thought one thing was very cool: they used the network of steam tunnels under Penn State as a plot device in the series!

OK, anyone else have any thoughts on See, now that it's concluded and over after 3 seasons? (I could see them making a sequel based on the adventures of Haniwa & Wren in the final shots, but I'm not sure if it would have much of an audience).
brdiy
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I saw like 2 or 3 episodes of the first season but never really got into it. Maybe I'll try this again when I run out of shows to watch.
Check out my superheroine-related short stories here:

https://archiveofourown.org/users/brdiy/works
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