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extrapolations.jpeg

'Extrapolations' on Apple TV+ Is the Sean Penn of Television Shows

By Dustin Rowles | TV | March 23, 2023 |

By Dustin Rowles | TV | March 23, 2023 |


extrapolations.jpeg

A problem almost as big as the world’s climate crisis is getting people to care about the world’s climate crisis. There are a lot of very knowledgeable and passionate climate scientists whose message is not getting out there, and there are also a lot of well-intentioned actors and filmmakers with sizable platforms. Unfortunately, no one has yet figured out how to combine the two to create a movie, a television show, or a documentary that is informative enough to be useful and entertaining enough to compel people to watch.

Adam McKay and an all-star cast gave it a shot with Netflix’s Don’t Look Up, but that wasn’t it, and neither unfortunately is Extrapolations, the Apple TV+ series from Scott Z. Burns (Contagion, The Bourne Ultimatum) and another all-star cast. That cast includes Meryl Streep, Sienna Miller, Kit Harington, Daveed Diggs, Edward Norton, Diane Lane, Yara Shahidi, Matthew Rhys, Gemma Chan, David Schwimmer, Keri Russell, Adarsh Gourav, Indira Varma, Marion Cotillard, Forest Whitaker, and more. It doesn’t matter how many stars they line up, however, if the show is no damn good. That’s the problem with Extrapolations.

Extrapolations is kind of but not exactly an anthology series that is set beginning in 2039 and ends in 2070 with episodes dealing with issues the world will no doubt have to contend with. Those issues also include ones we are already dealing with, namely billionaires and corporations exploiting the climate crisis for financial gain while other billionaires and corporations essentially play God with the environment. There’s geoengineering — using technology to effectuate environmental change. There’s a future in 2047 where most of the world’s remaining wildlife are essentially clones in zoos that are more like museums. Temperatures rise and wildfires are an occurrence so normal that kids are born with “summer heart” and can die if they get too excited and their hearts are overworked. Floods are common, which is lousy for rabbis who have to keep Torah scrolls from getting wet.

The subject material is vaguely interesting — we’re talking about the future of humanity and the world here — but the delivery is decidedly not. The stories are leaden, the characters are not interesting, the tone is smug, and there are no moments of levity. Zero. They’re like airless, sterile Black Mirror episodes that make no attempt to use satire or humor to convey their message. The threat is grave, but Extrpolations basically ends up boring us into complacency.

Chris Revelle passed around a silly/fun list of personalities in our Slack the other day, which included things like “Centrist Neutral,” “Lawful Anxios,” “Thirsty Evil,” etc. The first was “Bastard Good,” a personality that was described as, “You make the world better for people, but in a really obnoxious way so everyone low-key hates you for it.” That basically describes both Sean Penn — he’s well-intentioned, he puts in the work, and he allocates the resources — and this series. It is real stars tackling real issues that are real threats to the globe, and yet it’s so obnoxious that it’s hard not to low-key hate it. If we gave gold stars for good intentions, Extropolations would be a gold bar. But the best intentions in the world do not make Extrapolations any less insufferable, and no one wants to listen to the insufferable guy, no matter how right he might be.