Crazy Diamond

"Sales Pitch" by PKD is a decent little story, a funny take on over-intrusive advertising. It actually could have more resonance these days with the advent of ad companies that exist to spy on users and sell their personal information to the highest bidder, like Google and Facebook. But instead of maybe taking the story more in that direction, this idiocy ditches any semblance of the PKD story except a couple character names and replaces it with basically nothing. There is nothing of any interest at all in this episode, just an incoherent mess and a complete waste of time.

Crazy Diamond seemed stretched at its one hour length not helped by its pedestrian pace and a thin story. Not even Steve Buscemi could save this.

The setting is a near future where food and vegetable instantly rot, there is coastal erosion at an extreme pace and there are artificial robots who look like real life humans known as Jack and Jill.

Buscemi plays Ed, he lives with his wife Sally. Ed is dreaming of adventure in the high seas to escape his house that is on the verge of falling down to the sea. He works in a scientific laboratory and likes to listen to vinyl records.

Things change when he meets a Jill who is dressed like a femme fatale. She is selling double indemnity life assurance and wants regenerative medicine as her life force is dying. Ed is swayed by her, Sally is worried about him and Jill attracts danger.

In some ways this had a similar theme to Blade Runner, a replicant that wants to extend its life.

If it weren't for a fascination with Steve Buscemi I wouldn't have stayed with this. It's about a future where there is little food and some replicants called Jacks and Jills do the labor. Of course, with most artificial intelligence in sci fi, eventually they begin to rebel. I have little else to say. The plot is a mess and we aren't given enough information to really understand the world we are witnessing. Oh, who's in charge? What are the motivations?

There is a lot that this episode had in it's favor. The set design, acting, soundtrack, and camera work is well above average. Unfortunately, the story never really goes anywhere. While engaging while being watch, the story seems to tactfully avoid any sense of climax and ending. It just kind of stops. The story is adapted from the short story "Sales Pitch", which I found to be a great little story. The problem is: it is severely lacking in material substantial enough to adapt into a one hour television program. So the story has been altered to almost unrecognizable proportions. I normally wouldn't have a problem with this, but the story was strong in every way this interpretation was not. The themes were clear, it had a healthy dose of comedy at the ineptitude of the technology depicted, and the characters were well defined. This story evades any point or theme. (Even though the ideas of manufactured souls is extremely enticing, its used sparingly and is almost irrelevant to the story.) If you love Phillip K. Dick or Science Fiction, give it a try. Just know it's not the best of either. If there are any episodes weaker than this, I will likely be left frustrated with this season.

This episode isn't uniformly great, but it has all of the interesting angles and moral dilemmas that populate the best of Dick's stories. Steve Buscemi is perfect as Ed, a shabby man with a good heart who nevertheless keeps making bad decisions. Sidse Babett Knudsen (Westworld) is engaging in the femme fatale role of Jill, tempting Ed less with her sexuality and more with her cunning insight into his prosaic dreams. There are a lot of fascinating ideas that percolate just under the surface, such as why the world needs replicants or DNA spliced humans and why everything seems like it is running down into ruin. Unfortunately, they remain window dressing, but the story itself is clever and thoughtful.