{"id":14015,"date":"2022-09-07T15:12:39","date_gmt":"2022-09-07T15:12:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/scienceandnerds.com\/2022\/09\/07\/amc-plus-pantheon-is-a-haunting-hyperproductivity-nightmare-that-shouldnt-feel-so-real\/"},"modified":"2022-09-07T15:12:40","modified_gmt":"2022-09-07T15:12:40","slug":"amc-plus-pantheon-is-a-haunting-hyperproductivity-nightmare-that-shouldnt-feel-so-real","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scienceandnerds.com\/2022\/09\/07\/amc-plus-pantheon-is-a-haunting-hyperproductivity-nightmare-that-shouldnt-feel-so-real\/","title":{"rendered":"AMC Plus\u2019 Pantheon is a haunting hyperproductivity nightmare that shouldn\u2019t feel so real"},"content":{"rendered":"

Source: https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/2022\/9\/6\/23333055\/amc-pantheon-review<\/a>
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In a less stressful world, the premise of AMC\u2019s new animated series Pantheon <\/em>from Craig Silverstein would feel much more far-fetched and implausible the way some of Black Mirror<\/em>\u2019s more fantastical episodes used to. But at a time when people use phrases like \u201cquiet quitting<\/a>\u201d with a straight face, a show about corporations racing to see who can perfect technology to turn workers into hyperproductive automatons stripped of their humanity feels far less fictional than it ought to. <\/p>\n

Pantheon<\/em> tells a series of interconnecting narratives set in a near-future world not unlike our own, but its story largely revolves around a teenager named Maddie (Katie Chang) and her mother Ellen (Rosemarie DeWitt) as the pair struggle to cope with a tragedy. Though Maddie understood how serious her father David\u2019s (Daniel Dae Kim) battle with a terminal illness was, the shock of his death still sends her into an emotional spiral that makes it hard for her to be present or empathetic to her mother\u2019s pain. Like her daughter, Ellen\u2019s feelings about David\u2019s death are complicated and difficult to put into words, but she understands that moving on is something she has to do for her own healing. <\/p>\n

Because David\u2019s death is so relatively recent as Pantheon <\/em>opens, neither Ellen nor Maddie really feel as though they can open up to one another about their feelings or where they\u2019re at mentally. But all of that changes one fateful afternoon when Maddie receives a mysterious message written in emoji that somehow manages to pop up in her command line interface, of all places. <\/p>\n

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Ellen and Maddie trying to figure out who\u2019s speaking to them through the command line.<\/em><\/figcaption>Image: Titmouse<\/cite><\/p>\n

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While Ellen and David raised Maddie to be tech-savvy and careful about how she engages with people she meets online, she can\u2019t help but vent her frustrations about being bullied at school to her new online pen pal, whose simplistic messages she extrapolates into lengthy sentences. Maddie knows better than to give whoever\u2019s on the other side of their chat too much personal information. But when a variety of strange things that work to her benefit start to happen offline, she\u2019s certain that whoever she has been speaking to in secret is behind them, and she strongly <\/em>suspects that the person might somehow be her father. Or at least a part of him. <\/p>\n

Eventually, Pantheon<\/em>, which is based on a series of short stories by author Ken Liu<\/a>, becomes a story about people rallying together in the face of the show\u2019s villains: two unfathomably powerful tech giants. But it\u2019s <\/em>mindful about spotlighting the small personal losses its heroes experience as their paths gradually intersect with one another \u2014 something that keeps Pantheon <\/em>feeling surprisingly intimate in spite of the way its stakes rise exponentially. <\/p>\n

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