I don't want to venture into spoilers territory, but I interpreted the flashbacks as exploring, in part, what it might be like to be *really* alone - addressed in a couple of different ways. It's just that they came too early, maybe, to really mean anything respective to our new character.
Random Q. Was Juliette floundering in the water because temperature shock? Not knowing how to swim? The latter makes absolutely the most sense but I don't remember if she ever went into the water in S1.
Anyway, I liked it but then again, I really liked the sometimes very long segments of the books that was basically just Juliette *doing* things. The lore is incredible but so is just Juliette's determined competence. Some comparisons with The Martian to be drawn there.
I do wonder how non-book readers are keeping up with the details. My wife saw season one when it came out and she was trying to remember things. She had a bunch of questions about why things had happened and even I had to eventually be like "uhh I'd hate to ruin anything!" As if I even could fully explain everything lol.
> I do wonder how non-book readers are keeping up with the details.
We watched a great recap video on youtube! Otherwise yes, it would have been hard to remember the details without a full season 1 rewatch.
> Random Q. Was Juliette floundering in the water because temperature shock? Not knowing how to swim?
The recap video suggested no one in the silos knows how to swim, which makes sense because the silo dwellers don't have an easily accessible body of safe water to practice with, but it seems like you reads the books so you probably know more than me about that.
I know I can't really complain about darkness in a show where she spends the whole time in a sealed underground space with almost no power, but still... couldn't see a damn thing!
The bit where she had to walk over piles of bones to get in was pretty creepy. Very curious to learn what happened in this silo. Obviously all 10,000 residents didn't surge out and die right away.
I also wonder what would have happened if she'd walked up to an occupied silo. Can you imagine the chaos?
> Obviously all 10,000 residents didn't surge out and die right away.
Maybe I'm missing something but why is this obvious? I thought it was pretty clear that the outside air is not breathable anymore, so they were all rushing out to their deaths aboveground.
Silo was my favorite show of 2023 and I have told everyone with a remote interest in scifi to watch it. So I'm pretty invested, and I thought S1 was pretty flawless (rather than uneven). I was lucky to see the last ten minutes of the S2 E1 at Comic-Con in July and have been waiting for more context since then.
I didn't mind that we got few hints regarding the looming larger questions and rather got more flashbacks to Juliette's early days of learning to be an engineer--in my opinion, the flashbacks provided an emotional depth to the episode that it would have lacked if we'd only stayed with Juliette's exploration of the silo. A great start to what will hopefully be a stellar second season.
I see what you did there! I recently rewatched s1 and it definitely works better when you watch episodes closely together and know where everything is headed (and thus can pick up all the subtle hints in early episodes).
One small note from a fellow book reader - I did NOT miss the soup decontamination which is a scene I find so gross it still makes me shudder years after reading. I was extremely happy to see it switched out 😅
It felt so refreshing to go back to this world! I participated in the rewatch reviews but for me it was my first time watching the show this summer. I feel like it had some issues with pacing in the first season but it was nice feeling gripping suspense throughout this episode. I may have covered my eyes due to vertigo for some of the bridge scenes!!
I feel like a dum-dum, but I didn't understand in 2023 (and still don't understand now, after the S2 premiere) what the fake vision of outside was supposed to accomplish? Why not step outside to see it's just as apocalyptic as the camera? Why would it being beautiful make the cleaners clean the camera -- wouldn't it reinforce the idea the camera is lying? It felt like a triple twist that somehow negated itself and it completely threw me last season.
As a non-book reader, I completely missed the importance of the wool and how it kept her from dying outside last year, too; the recap and this writeup helped clarify that for me. I was pretty undershelmed last season and have been surprised by the darling's reception it's maintained. But this new episode feels like a big step forward (I found the flashbacks superfluous and even heavy-handed). The Steve Zahn reveal was terribly exciting.
I think the idea is that the exiles see the pristine landscape and think that if they just clean the camera the people inside will see it too. It doesn't make a lot of sense, but the fact that most Silo residents have very limited knowledge of video technology makes it a little more plausible.
While watching this I couldn't help but think how stupid it was for ALL of the new silo's occupants to run outside at once into what they've been told was an environment that will instantly kill them. And it was stupid, it was so worth it for the chilling image of all those bodies strewn around the exterior.
From what I understood, it was less stupidity and more born from a very similar environment to what we saw in the first season in our original silo - a society full of information suppression by the Judicial class. Hence all the graffiti of LIES and TRUTH etc in this new silo - the inhabitants somehow figured out they were being lied to, but were wrong about what exactly they were being lied to about. I suspect they found some evidence similar to last season's video file of a green and healthy outdoors and assumed it was safe to leave and Judicial was preventing their freedom, but were obviously fatally mistaken.
Honestly, I found the implications of this episode to be more interesting than the hour itself. The idea that different silos have different results and the potential of exploring them? Exciting! The execution of this hour? Left something to be desired.
Listen, Myles, Gen-Z-cusp writers need representation at Episodic Medium too.
Wait, are we Gen-Z-cusp people?!
I don't want to venture into spoilers territory, but I interpreted the flashbacks as exploring, in part, what it might be like to be *really* alone - addressed in a couple of different ways. It's just that they came too early, maybe, to really mean anything respective to our new character.
Random Q. Was Juliette floundering in the water because temperature shock? Not knowing how to swim? The latter makes absolutely the most sense but I don't remember if she ever went into the water in S1.
Anyway, I liked it but then again, I really liked the sometimes very long segments of the books that was basically just Juliette *doing* things. The lore is incredible but so is just Juliette's determined competence. Some comparisons with The Martian to be drawn there.
I do wonder how non-book readers are keeping up with the details. My wife saw season one when it came out and she was trying to remember things. She had a bunch of questions about why things had happened and even I had to eventually be like "uhh I'd hate to ruin anything!" As if I even could fully explain everything lol.
> I do wonder how non-book readers are keeping up with the details.
We watched a great recap video on youtube! Otherwise yes, it would have been hard to remember the details without a full season 1 rewatch.
> Random Q. Was Juliette floundering in the water because temperature shock? Not knowing how to swim?
The recap video suggested no one in the silos knows how to swim, which makes sense because the silo dwellers don't have an easily accessible body of safe water to practice with, but it seems like you reads the books so you probably know more than me about that.
I know I can't really complain about darkness in a show where she spends the whole time in a sealed underground space with almost no power, but still... couldn't see a damn thing!
The bit where she had to walk over piles of bones to get in was pretty creepy. Very curious to learn what happened in this silo. Obviously all 10,000 residents didn't surge out and die right away.
I also wonder what would have happened if she'd walked up to an occupied silo. Can you imagine the chaos?
> Obviously all 10,000 residents didn't surge out and die right away.
Maybe I'm missing something but why is this obvious? I thought it was pretty clear that the outside air is not breathable anymore, so they were all rushing out to their deaths aboveground.
I think they were suggesting there must have been some number of people who didn’t go outside at all.
Silo was my favorite show of 2023 and I have told everyone with a remote interest in scifi to watch it. So I'm pretty invested, and I thought S1 was pretty flawless (rather than uneven). I was lucky to see the last ten minutes of the S2 E1 at Comic-Con in July and have been waiting for more context since then.
I didn't mind that we got few hints regarding the looming larger questions and rather got more flashbacks to Juliette's early days of learning to be an engineer--in my opinion, the flashbacks provided an emotional depth to the episode that it would have lacked if we'd only stayed with Juliette's exploration of the silo. A great start to what will hopefully be a stellar second season.
Thinking season 1 was flawless is a very un-Common opinion.
I see what you did there! I recently rewatched s1 and it definitely works better when you watch episodes closely together and know where everything is headed (and thus can pick up all the subtle hints in early episodes).
As someone who has only read Wool, I'll be quite happy if they just take their time and complete that book this season. There's so much more to come.
I really liked this premiere, and I feel it captured the essence of the experience she was having very well. Her competence is exhilarating!
I didn't think they were doing to introduce Solo this episode, then BAM, second encore.
It will be interesting to see how they structure this season. I assume they are going to be mixing some version of Shift into the second half of Wool.
One small note from a fellow book reader - I did NOT miss the soup decontamination which is a scene I find so gross it still makes me shudder years after reading. I was extremely happy to see it switched out 😅
It felt so refreshing to go back to this world! I participated in the rewatch reviews but for me it was my first time watching the show this summer. I feel like it had some issues with pacing in the first season but it was nice feeling gripping suspense throughout this episode. I may have covered my eyes due to vertigo for some of the bridge scenes!!
I feel like a dum-dum, but I didn't understand in 2023 (and still don't understand now, after the S2 premiere) what the fake vision of outside was supposed to accomplish? Why not step outside to see it's just as apocalyptic as the camera? Why would it being beautiful make the cleaners clean the camera -- wouldn't it reinforce the idea the camera is lying? It felt like a triple twist that somehow negated itself and it completely threw me last season.
As a non-book reader, I completely missed the importance of the wool and how it kept her from dying outside last year, too; the recap and this writeup helped clarify that for me. I was pretty undershelmed last season and have been surprised by the darling's reception it's maintained. But this new episode feels like a big step forward (I found the flashbacks superfluous and even heavy-handed). The Steve Zahn reveal was terribly exciting.
I have always wondered about that too, even with the books.
I think the idea is that the exiles see the pristine landscape and think that if they just clean the camera the people inside will see it too. It doesn't make a lot of sense, but the fact that most Silo residents have very limited knowledge of video technology makes it a little more plausible.
While watching this I couldn't help but think how stupid it was for ALL of the new silo's occupants to run outside at once into what they've been told was an environment that will instantly kill them. And it was stupid, it was so worth it for the chilling image of all those bodies strewn around the exterior.
From what I understood, it was less stupidity and more born from a very similar environment to what we saw in the first season in our original silo - a society full of information suppression by the Judicial class. Hence all the graffiti of LIES and TRUTH etc in this new silo - the inhabitants somehow figured out they were being lied to, but were wrong about what exactly they were being lied to about. I suspect they found some evidence similar to last season's video file of a green and healthy outdoors and assumed it was safe to leave and Judicial was preventing their freedom, but were obviously fatally mistaken.
Honestly, I found the implications of this episode to be more interesting than the hour itself. The idea that different silos have different results and the potential of exploring them? Exciting! The execution of this hour? Left something to be desired.
I am intrigued by the cliffhanger though