Tales From The Loop: Amazon show based on Simon Stalenhag's ace art

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

With my month of free Prime about to run out (and no desire, whatsoever, to renew it) I watched this over the last few days. I have the odd quibble, but I rather liked it overall.

On the surface, it seems pretty blatantly to be Amazon's attempt at Stranger Things, with a bit of Black Mirror for good measure. The small town setting, with its brown '80s stylings and mysterious science facility couldn't be more obvious. The tone is quite different though - more pensive and sombre (although that's perhaps as much thanks to the insistence of the near constant piano/cello score as it is to the writing). I don't know if a second series is in the offing, but it certainly doesn't feel like it made a big impression, which isn't particularly surprising.

Quibbles: The Loop is ridiculously sloppy about keeping tabs on its inventions. It seemed like every story was sparked by someone finding some potentially deadly thing just lying around in the woods. Maybe that's a comment on our thoughtless uptake of new technologies, but in the context of the show, it got a little comical. The only one that they made any attempt to hide was

Spoiler alert

the robot castaway and that was to prevent it from coming to harm

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; Then again the characters seemed unusually phlegmatic about a lot of developments. Rebecca Hall and Paul Schneider's characters, in particular, didn't seem to give much of a toss about anything and no one ever seemed interested in actually fixing any of the problems that arose. Did Danny

Spoiler alert

never once try to have Jacob's family fix the body swap situation? Even with his own parents grieving and going broke over his comatose body?

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I know teenagers are emotional fuckwits, but come on. Again though, maybe that's the point.