Main cast: Nolan North (Detective Briggs), Elodie Yung (Alice), Emily O’Brien (Eve), Michelle C Bonilla (Officer Pentle), Dendrie Allyn Taylor (Ruth), Debra Cardona (Maria), Ike Amadi (Officer Mantus), and Noshir Dalal (Officer Soran)
Director: Jennifer Yuh Nelson
Pop Squad is a tough one to watch, as the title is a reference to the cops in a dystopian future “popping” off kids. Call me a pushover, but at my age, the thought of kiddies getting hurt, much less killed, is a tough one to even entertain for a second.
Anyway, in this setting, thanks to a serum, one can live forever. This means that the population needs to be carefully controlled to avoid the world being overrun by the great unwashed.
That’s right, wealthy people run things, as usual, but the stinking poor as usual continue to breed without proper permit. Cops like Detective Briggs, our protagonist, hunt down these families and shoot those kids dead because that’s the law around that place.
Of course, Briggs start having a crisis of conscience, blah blah blah.
Now, I know this is based off some short story, but they could at least pick some other story from Paolo Bacigalupi that doesn’t already have such a played out premise, surely. This one has been done many times already, plus this particular rehash doesn’t make much sense, because there are far more cost-effective ways to dispose of kids instead of just wasting bullets on them.
Not to mention, it makes more sense to dispose of older people that may look young but have outlived their usefulness in terms of contribution of fresh new ideas and what not.
In other words, this is a story created by Mr Bacigulapi, not to tell a story, but to win awards and critical praises, and I have a hunch the show picked this story for that same purpose.
Furthermore, the episode ends in a way that makes zero impact on the overall status quo. The story doesn’t let Briggs succeed in doing anything; this is just a self-indulgent tale that lets the audience feel happy that Briggs did one thing that he feels is right, even if that thing makes zero difference in the long run.
Thus, this is a self-absorbed chest-thumping kind of story, in other words—a story by people that want to show off how enlightened they are, as opposed to entertaining an audience. It’s not even giving me good or logical social commentary!
The animation and visuals are nice, and the voice acting is solid, but eh, what’s the point really. Watch it for the pretty, but there’s not much else to savor.
Blade Runner 2049 makes this thing obsolete and redundant anyway.
