Ranking Every Episode of Amazon's Electric Dreams

"The Commuter" is one of the simplest premises you'll find in Electric Dreams, but it also has far more to say than many of the more sci-fi-heavy entries. It's a classic Philip K. Dick character study that eschews dystopian and technological distractions in favor of more profound questions about reality and contentment.

The slowly paced, almost meditative episode is set in a contemporary London devoid of future tech. Timothy Spall is Ed Jacobson, a transit worker drifting through the daily monotony of his job while struggling to parent a troubled son at home. Ed's life changes when he meets a woman asking for a ticket to a station that doesn't exist. He finds himself riding a train out into the suburbs to find a nonexistent town that is somehow there anyway, and where things are not as they seem. As he returns to the town again and again, Ed's reality begins to distort as he grapples with his choices and the kind of life he truly wants.

“The Commuter” feels more like an old episode of The Twilight Zone than the concept-driven sci-fi of Black Mirror, and in this case the tone fits perfectly. Spall anchors the episode with a magnetic performance in a story where the traditional plot elements aren't as important as the deeply human themes it explores. The episode doesn't answer its larger mysteries because it's not trying to. "The Commuter" is the best episode of Electric Dreams not only because it feels the most sure-footed and original, but because it reminds us that there's more than one way to tell a sci-fi story.

How did it take this long to cast Steve Buscemi as a sci-fi protagonist? (A supporting role in Michael Bay's The Island does NOT count.) "Crazy Diamond" is an absolute pleasure and one of the most stylishly crafted, positively bonkers episodes of Electric Dreams. Buscemi stars as Ed Morris (yep, another Ed), an average Joe scientist working in a bio-engineering lab that makes synthetic beings. The episode takes place in a world where everything is, to one degree or another, artificial.

There are a lot of sci-fi constructs here, which can get confusing. Normal people, or "normies," live alongside synthetic beings with varying percentages of human DNA. Some look relatively normal, and others have traits like the face and snout of a pig. At the same time, there is massive coastal erosion and agricultural upheaval in a world adorned with smart cars and wind farms. Citizens are not allowed to grow their own food, and bio-engineered eggs, fruit, and vegetables go bad in days or even hours.

I won't spoil the main plot, but Ed gets wrapped up in a heist with a synthetic woman who's close to "being recalled" and the caper threatens to tear his quaint life apart. Buscemi is fantastic as Ed's world comes crashing down around him, racing through a beautifully shot episode boasting a unique visual style that jumps off the screen. "Crazy Diamond" creates one of the more bizarrely transfixing and memorable worlds of the first season, and ends on what was my favorite closing shot of any Electric Dreams episode. Even when it's dizzyingly hard to figure out what the hell is going on, you can't help but delight in this singular experience from start to finish.

If you're looking for dystopian allegories about increasingly authoritarian states, look no further than "Kill All Others." In a semi-near future, all of North America has been unified under the "mega nation" of Mexiscan. The government has been consolidated into a uni-party system where a single candidate (Vera Farmiga) runs unopposed on the intentionally comical slogan of "Yes Us Can!"

The protagonist here is factory worker Philbert Noyce (Mel Rodriguez), who notices odd subliminal messaging during a state TV interview with the candidate where she urges citizens to "Kill All Others." Soon, billboards bearing the message begin to appear. The more Philbert speaks out against the violent mandate, the further removed from society he becomes as the all-seeing government scrutinizes his life.

The world-building is great in this one. There is recognizable tech like self-driving cars, wireless earbuds, and biometrics, but the best sci-fi element is omnipresent AR/VR hologram advertisements. Philbert comes home to find his wife canoodling with a hunky hologram advertisement for coffee, and on the recommendation of his factory buddies starts buying a new brand of cheese to spend time with the attractive hologram ad that comes with it. As the government clamps down on freedoms, the masses remain apathetic, sated by consumerism and distractions. "Kill All Others" is the Electric Dreams premise that hits closest to home, and the deftly crafted episode ramps up the tension to a truly walloping climax that was easy to see coming but still lands with quite an impact.

There's a reason the three best episodes of the season all center around average people whose lives are profoundly changed by extraordinary circumstances. Dick's sci-fi excels at exploring thought-provoking concepts and ideas through the eyes of well-developed characters we can identify with and latch onto. "The Commuter," "Crazy Diamond," and "Kill All Others" each build their worlds around that moral center, which makes each story all the more devastating when the narrative pieces finally come together.

"Autofac" is another standout from the first season. Set in a nuclear war-ravaged future where society has ended, the automated consumer-industrial complex or Autofac keeps churning out packages and shipping them by drone to a populace that no longer exists. A small community of survivors trapped by Autofac supply lines, including a coder played by Juno Temple, tries to find a way to shut down the factory. The long tracking shot of a drone entering the Autofac skyscraper is about as blatant a Blade Runner homage as you'll see outside of "The Hood Maker," and I am here for it.

Janelle Monáe is phenomenal as the customer service android that the tribe of post-apocalyptic settlers interacts with, and serves as the perfect foil to Juno Temple's passionate hacker character. Amazon should rebrand Alexa with Janelle Monáe's voice. In fact, all voice assistants and robots should be voiced by Janelle Monáe. But I digress. "Autofac" is one of the most immersive and cohesively constructed episodes of Electric Dreams, and also features one of my favorite endings thus far, as it brings all of its main themes to a dramatic close. The quick flashback cuts used to set up the reveal weren't seamless, but they worked. I'm pleasantly surprised that an Amazon series would be as bold as "Autofac" in taking the darkest possible view of the company's own technology, and it pays off beautifully.

"Real Life" is a clear-cut thriller about which of two parallel worlds is real and which is virtual. The VR-heavy episode follows a near-future Chicago policewoman (Anna Paquin) racked with survivor's guilt over a past tragedy who takes a vacation in a virtual simulation. She wakes up as a tech billionaire named George (Terrance Howard) who built a prototype VR headset in modern-day Chicago, using it as his own mental break to escape grief over his wife's brutal murder and his vigilante attempts to find the killer.

It's a straightforward premise balanced by strong performances on both sides by Howard and Paquin. They experience déjà vu from their alternate realities while trying to figure out which world is real. Where a Black Mirror episode may have left the ending ambiguous, Electric Dreams gives this mystery a dark and definitive conclusion to end a satisfying episode. "Real Life" isn't exactly transcendent, but it's a far more fully realized concept than some of the half-baked episodes below. This enjoyable VR ride lands squarely in the middle.

Rounding out the middle tier of good-not-great episodes of Electric Dreams is "Impossible Planet," a brightly colored far-future depiction of the space tourism industry. In a galaxy where Earth has long-since been abandoned after a solar flare wiped out out the planet, Norton (Jack Reynor) and Andrews (the great Benedict Wong) are middling employees giving out space tours. They crew a ship called Astral Dreams, one vessel in the vast Primo corporation run by a CEO who looks a bit too on-the-nose like Richard Branson. Norton and Andrews fly tourists around on tours, doctoring the planetary panoramas with special effects to play up the iridescent glows for their interstellar viewing parties.

At this point in human existence, medical technology has also granted humanity extremely long lifespans. When a 342-year-old dying woman named Irma (Geraldine Chaplin) and her assistive robot show up asking for a private tour of Earth, the frustrated employees take the illicit payday and chart a course to "Earth" with dubious intentions. The voyage itself is more of an intimate character study of Branson and Irma, complicated by an odd supernatural connection that ties them together across space and time. The episode ends on an ambiguous but hopeful note. The story and dialogue air on the cheesy side and there are too many plot holes for the ending to truly work in a conventional sense, but "Impossible Planet" is one of the more upbeat episodes of Electric Dreams in spite of its setting in a cynical, commercialist future.

"Safe and Sound" takes a number of promising concepts and slaps them together in the most conventional, unimaginative, and predictable way possible. In a near future America that seems like the early makings of the full-on authoritarian state seen in "Kill All Others," an activist leader (Maura Tierney) and her daughter Foster (Annalise Basso) travel from one of the West America "bubbles" to a regulated "certified safe zone" city in the government-controlled East for political negotiations. No explanation is ever given for what's outside the bubbles or why the country has fractured. The big theme here is the perception of safety reinforced by fear-mongering nationalist propaganda. Sound familiar?

Foster starts at a new eastern school where most children are "registered" using an Apple Watch-like technology called a Dex (dexterity device). The Dex gives kids access to holographic apps and games in exchange for tracking their every move for "safety." Foster begins bonding with a customer support representative named Ethan who helps talk her through newfound high school drama. Ethan is, unsurprisingly, not what he seems and ropes Foster into stopping one of the many perceived terrorist attacks that justifies the government's policies. Basso gives a harrowing performance, but the narrative here is painfully transparent. The protagonist never questions her escalating relationship with Ethan or puts the obvious pieces together about what's really going on. The "twist" ending is as lazy as they come. Ultimately, "Safe and Sound" wastes both Tierney's time (since the episode gives her almost nothing to do) and squanders some great world-building and themes with disappointingly lackluster storytelling.

There's one quote that stuck with me, though: "When we call them out on their lies, we challenge their monopoly on reality."

Also known as: Robb Stark does a British Rick Deckard impression. "The Hood Maker" isn't a flat-out bad episode of Electric Dreams, it's just a rather simple and unimaginative one. In a rundown futuristic city that might be London, Richard Madden's police detective is teamed up with a telepath who can read minds. There are definitely shades of Minority Report here. The world has been divided between normal people and those with telepathic powers.

There's a larger mystery that pays off melodramatically around the mysterious hood maker crafting crude masks that can block telepathic reading, but mostly this one is kind of a snooze. The telepathy is really the only sci-fi element, aside from taking place in a very Blade Runner-like city bathed in a dank mist and with gigantic apartment buildings reminiscent of the Dredd remake. Of all the episodes, "The Hood Maker" is the most blatant Blade Runner homage. The episode is complete with a cookie-cutter re-enactment where telepath Honor (The Borgias' Holliday Grainger) enjoys a rain-soaked romantic moment with Madden and then hides out at his apartment. To be honest, the seemingly purposeful copying of Deckard and Rachel's storyline from the 1982 classic was the most enjoyable aspect of an otherwise dull affair.

For more, check out our interview with Dr. Mayank Mehta, professor of physics, neurology and neurobiology at UCLA, who studies VR's effect on the brain.

"The Father Thing" is the episode of Electric Dreams that feels the most dated, slapping a new coat of paint and a shade of Stranger Things on a tired Invasion of the Body Snatchers-like premise. Greg Kinnear and The Killing's Mirelle Enos play a present-day suburban couple on the brink of divorce who haven't yet told their young son Charlie (the episode's real star, Jack Gore), whose picturesque childhood consists mostly of playing baseball and Skyping with friends on his iMac. When odd lights begin drifting down from the sky at night, Charlie glimpses his dad being attacked by an alien and then walk casually back into the house. More and more kids begin reporting their parents as "impostors," and Charlie has to decide what to do. There isn't much to work with here, though Kinnear does his best. When an episode ends with the protagonist sending out a social media post pledging to #Resist, to clumsily slather some topicality atop a pile of tired tropes, you know you just watched a dud.

Boy, was this one a disappointment. Starring Bryan Cranston and Liam Cunningham (Game of Thrones' Davos Seaworth), "Human Is" had a lot of potential. Taking place in the far distant future of 2520, the episode chronicles a human colony on the planet Terra that has survived by conquering and mining other planets for air and natural resources. There's a lot to work with here, from the Battlestar Galactica deep space vibes and military intrigue to the environmental allegories at the root of the story, but the end product is a lazy and melodramatic clunker of an episode.

The real star is Essie Davis as the wife of Cranston's General Silas Herrick, whose quiet intensity grants a very thin plot some emotional weight. The second lazy second half of the episode relies on cheap subterfuge as it builds to a "twist" that's not even remotely surprising or revelatory enough to redeem a cheesy, unevenly paced hour that doesn't do nearly enough world-building, character development, or even smart dialogue. Maybe most damning of all, Davos had barely anything to do.