Bing lives in a world where he rides an exercise bicycle for a living. He earns merits riding the bicycle for a living. He uses those merits to pay for everything he wants and needs. He has a little over fifteen million merits.
Bing meets Abi, a woman who also rides an exercise bicycle for a living. She has a really nice singing voice. He encourages her to go on Hot Shot, a talent search type show. She doesn't have the money but he does. He insists that she take it. Abi refuses at first but Bing keeps encouraging her to and eventually she agrees to take the money.
Abi goes on the show and kills but the judges only offer her a job in porn. She doesn't know how to respond. Everyone in the audience encourages her to take it so she does. Bing is heart broken. He freaks out for a while but then he comes up with a plan.
Bing puts in extra time and works his way back up to fifteen million merits. He buys a ticket for Hot Shot for himself and goes on the show. He says he's going to dance for the judges, and he does. Bing pulls out a large glass shard in the middle of the dance routine, stops dancing, and puts it to his neck. He threatens to kill himself unless they let him speak.
Bing goes off on a diatribe about the nature of the society that he lives in, mostly about the commercial and virtual nature of it. In the end the judges offer him a job as a sales person. He takes it.
Thoughts
Daniel Kaluuya played the part of Bing. I know him best from Get Out (2017), Black Panther (2018), and Nope (2022).
I didn't fully grasp what the point of this story was supposed to be. There is definitely some commentary on the nature of society, especially in Bing's rant near the end of the episode.
I guess the part that left me feeling a bit strange was the resolution of Abi's part in the episode. There wasn't much of one. She just ends up working in porn, and she has Bing, in part, to thank for that. It doesn't seem to reflect well on Bing.
I don't understand why Bing insisted on giving her the money. It wasn't clear what if anything he hoped to get out of that. My immediate reaction to the suggestion that he was willing to use all his merits to buy her a shot on Hot Shot was a hard no. He shouldn't have made the offer and she shouldn't have accepted it.
This was better than the first episode of the season but I'm not sure if would recommend this episode to most people.
No comments:
Post a Comment