It's a good show. I just finished it. As for the politics of it, the show isn't Marxist despite its anger at the super rich.
The show makes a number of mistakes in its analysis of the world. Firstly, it acts as though the problems of Capitalism began in the 1980s. We know that Capitalism has always been horrific. The show also falls for the Great Men Fallacy. At one point we see all of the the bad, rich people who run the world in a room together. Capitalism is more pervasive than that. The guy who owns a fast-food franchise is just as much a Capitalist as a CEO.
These mistakes work for the themes of the show, however. It is a show about hacking and conspiracies. In reality, a group of super hackers can't expose the big bads who rule the world and steal their money, but it does make for an entertaining show.
It is mostly radlib anti-capitalism, and there is a huge recession and a lot of bailouts for E-Corp after their heist. So, I believe that it is season 2 and 3 where several characters are starting to say things like "maybe overthrowing capitalism and revolution are misguided". But if you just want a character based drama with a lot of twists, it is not bad.
That's really disappointing to hear. I'll still probably watch it but the first episode gives heavy revolutionary vibes, no? I mean he's literally just ripping apart capitalist society and the drones it produces lol
It's more like adventurism. Yankee productions have this idea of "revolution" that is basically "step 1: independently sabotage one specific critical bit of the government, step 2: ???, step 3: communism". It's funny that Ecorp is a bit of a shorthand for corporations like Amazon, but Amazon bought exclusive rights for online distribution of the series, which I bet impacted the writing. But you can finish the first season, it remains good until the finale or so.
Okay, first my honest review is it's one of my favorite shows I've ever watched. It portrays hacking relatively well. It portrays Anxiety and mental issues fairly well for a show. And it's a fantastic execution of the unreliable narrator. If you haven't heard of the unreliable narrator, then go look up the trope so you get the gist of what's going on.
Now for my full disclosure I fell in love with the show before becoming a Marxist. So this has absolutely nothing to do with my Marxist identity now.
Yeah, it's pretty anti-capitalist, and they use the term "revolution" a lot. But it's kind of a bougie revolution, like an anti-technocrat thing.
I wouldn't watch it for any marxist vibes, but in the end I still heavily recommend the show. Even as Marxists can enjoy some regular old TV shows and this was one of the highest claimed and most well-rewarded shows on TV when it came out.
All of that being said, the first season is the best season. I do think it gets a little bit hard to track over time, but the creator of the show built the entire series to be one fluid storyline from the beginning. So I think it's worth finishing. You will literally learn things in the very last season that will affect the first episodes that you're watching right now. I'm not trying to spoil it, but I am trying to get you excited to watch the whole thing. I had to watch the entire series twice to truly come to my understanding of the show and what it really means.
Not to spoil it, but it starts out very strong but the political quality goes down exponentially over time after the first season. I couldn't bring myself to finish the last season because I was pretty bored.
I watched the first two episodes and I realized oh, it's one of those shows. The ones where everyone is an asshole for no reason and they do shit nobody would ever do because we have to show how big of an asshole they are. That's what makes it mature and gritty.
There's a heavy bend towards hyper-violence later on in the show. I was invested in the characters and the storytelling at that point, but it was really difficult to watch.
I'm editing this comment because I can't get the spoiler tags to work. I'll just vaguely say the writers had a lack of political economy for the second half of the show. Still thoroughly enjoyed it, just didn't get the release I needed at the end.
It s a good show, well produced and acted. The writing is better than a majority of TV shows. It has ups and downs in the quality as all shows do but its worth watching the whole thing. I've watched the whole thing a couple times and depending on how quickly my slop trough fills I may watch it again in the next couple years.
Its not Marxist. Its "proto-left" liberal daydreaming but that is better than the majority of slop available. I'd say it pipelines towards leftist ideas without ever saying anything directly leftist.