Friday, July 19, 2013

Review: The Colony

I seem to be on a post-apocalyptic rebuild humanity thing now, what with Last of Us, Survivors, and now The Colony.  The Colony is a "reality" experiment about a group of 7-10 people surviving in a world after a virus has wiped out most of humanity.  Since that hasn't actually happened, it's really just people relegated to a portion of some desolated town with broken down buildings, cars, and other debris.

They use whatever they can scavenge from designated areas to help them get fire, water, food, and power.  When they start getting really comfortable, they tend to pick random projects to work on to help with morale (like building a record player).  Every once in awhile, various "attacks" on the colony are staged by marauders.  In the first season, these marauders weren't supposed to actually make any physical contact with the colony (although the colonists didn't know that), so most fights were more verbal yelling matches than anything, but the second season that limitation seems to be gone because the group gets beat up by a militia in the second episode.

While the general concepts and most of what happens seems more realistic than some of how society is portrayed 15-20 years later in Revolutions and The Last of Us, there's also a lot of events that are a little too convenient on the show (Finding brand new tools in the building you're told to find shelter in?  Sure...).  I'm sure some of this is for legal or realistic reasons (since a virus has not wiped out most of humanity the colonists certainly have to follow certain rules like staying in designated areas) and some are to make it an interesting/educational show (the aforementioned brand new tools or when they find a large set of absolutely flawless solar panels).  But despite this, it's an interesting show with enough random little educational tidbits (it is a Discovery Channel show after all) and "expert" tips/advice (the psychologist constantly telling the audience why the colonists are acting like this is all real) to keep it entertaining.  The second season is definitely a lot more disturbing than the first, though, since the marauders seem to have more free reign for their attacks.

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