Being an auto enthusiast, I noticed right away that they haven't updated the police cruiser design in over 35 years. The Crown Vic lasted 20 years or so, but in a world of rapid technological progression a 35 year old design looks ancient. Especially when there are floating bubble cars around. In a way, though, I can appreciate the flat black Fusions; I can see it as a call back to the OCP Taurus from Robocop. Good episodes, I'll continue to check it out.
I haven't seen any bubble cars in the show. I have noticed ring-shaped aerial surveillance drones; perhaps that's what you're thinking of.
In the pilot episode, a bubble car zooms past the police vehicle on the highway just before Kennex pushes his first android partner out of the car. The way the bubble car moved, it did seem to be either floating or designed to tilt at an odd angle to the ground. A blink and you miss it shot that I only caught after jumping back to see it again on my recording.
Okay, bubble car, then. My thoughts about vehicular futurism: Thirty-five years from now, cars will still have wheels and drive on roads, but they'll be largely or entirely self-driving. It's a losing battle to convince people to give up their texting and phoning and other modern distractions to focus on the road; the safer option is to make the cars and roads intelligent enough to handle the driving for us. And this is a plus for TV driving scenes as well, since drivers on TV always spend too much time looking at the person they're talking to in the passenger seat and too little time looking at the road. If the cars drive themselves, then that ceases to be a credibility problem. So far, though, I'm seeing no sign that the cars in this show are self-driving.
It's funny, when they were walking up to the sexbot showroom I turned to my wife and said "I wonder if they'll have any male sexbots". I think they dropped the ball a bit there. As to the futurism, I'd agree it could use some work, but I would much prefer a more subtle approach than being hit over the head with super high tech stuff all the time. One instance of tech I felt was a little out of place was the electronic police tape in the first episode. It seems to me that old fashioned police tape would be more practical than using an electronic gadget. I suppose the electronic police tape could be used for more than just marking an area as off limits, like detecting unauthorized access to the crime scene, but I just felt like it was a bit too in your face in saying "look, it's the future!" In any case, it's only a minor gripe. I don't really have a problem with the phones. You can only make a phone so small before it becomes difficult to use. They probably could have come up with something a little slicker but it really hasn't impacted my enjoyment of the show.
if you watch the scene again, as they cross the police tape, it does depict them as being scanned so it could well detect if some-one is authorised to cross it or not.
Yeah, I remember there being some kind of blip when they passed through it which is what made me think there might be more to it.
I don't know what happened but for some reason, I did a complete 180. Last night's episode didn't impress me at all but the second one did quite a bit. It's like everything just fell into place. A clichéd show suddenly became interesting. Good characterization between out two main guys, some good humor and I loved the future tech. I can appreciate some of the debate we have here so far about where technology might actually go, but what we got on screen was still pretty impressive. Like I said yesterday, the first episode felt like Minority Report & I, Robot but this one felt like Blade Runner mixed with Demolition Man. They manage to make the show look pretty good on a TV budget. I was going to give up but I think I'll stick around. Hopefully Minka Kelly won't distract me too much. I was distracted by another thing though... Michael Ealy reminds me of Chris Pine. That's what I thought too.
On the issue of cell phones or the internet for that matter, I can see people using interactive virtual displays that are visible through glasses, contact lenses or by some other means.
I don't remember that scene. I remember him saying that he couldn't go on the date because he had another commitment that evening, but his commitment was to go talk to his late partner's wife and son and tell the boy about his father. If he did mention an interest in another woman, it may have been a sidelong reference to wanting to hunt down his ex-girlfriend whom he now knows was part of the Insyndicate. Yeah, that's the sort of thing I was thinking about. The hand-implant cell phones in the Total Recall remake were kind of cool, though maybe a bit impractical. The thing is, it's hard to predict what phones will look like in the future. Look at the original Total Recall, or Back to the Future Part II, or the classic "Lisa's Wedding" episode of The Simpsons, and they all assumed that futuristic phones would be these massive wall-mounted or desktop units festooned with buttons. None of them anticipated the kind of phones that have become universal today. So we have no idea what phones may end up looking like in 35 years. Yeah, but only one or two, which is why they dropped the ball. You'd think there would've been at least a few more options available.
Cars have the luxury of coming in different makes, models, years and brand names, so in a case dealing with cars, there has never been quite the irritation over hearing car repeated incessantly. Since this episode for me, was less engaging than the pilot, I guess I found how the characters emphasized it when they spoke, sort of overkill.
You say self drive, but here's what I see... Farms of poor people in India, in cubicles driving cars in the US remotely. Is that cheaper than the AI they use in robots? Probably not.
You might have trouble if you wanted the car to pull in to a McDonald's drive through for a hamburger.
I watched the first two episodes of Hulu, and have to say that I'm down. The concept is pretty much Alien Nation meets the Will Smith I, Robot. I'm already an admirer of Karl Urban, and he makes a great lead. The interaction between him and Ealy can be pretty charming and amusing. I'm glad to see the two lead actors have been able to play off each other so well so early in the show. It helps that the scripts have been strong, as well.