Thursday, July 17, 2014

Previewing The Lottery: A Dude's Review of Lifetime vol. VIII



Marley Shelton from The Lottery

Near future dystopias have been all the rage in multiplexes lately it is surprising it has taken this long for it to make it to the small screen. Since the future dystopian movies are like comic book movies for the fairer sex, it should not be surprising that Lifetime got in on the ground floor. And they are really hitting at female fears with what went wrong in the near future: In The Lottery all women become infertile. As the opening scenes describes: “In 2016 there was an alarming drop in worldwide human birth rates. No specific cause could be identified. In 2019, only six children were born. They were the last ones. Every effort to reverse infertility has failed.”

See, every young woman’s nightmare. But here is the thing; the show may be the first project Lifetime has ever done that can actual appeal to dudes too. Except instead preying on possible dystopian fears for women, the world that The Lottery lives in is a utopia for men. Seriously, a future where even chubby dudes with receding hairlines can get to hook up with absurdly attractive doctors because if you also decent from Ethiopia, you are extremely fertile (oh yeah, dudes are still fine in the future, it is the woman’s uterus that is the problem; there are even billboards plastered everywhere that says, “Sam wants you to donate sperm”). Seriously, sex is so prominent in this future there are beds inside the bars because people cannot even be bothered to spend the time to drive home. Awesome, if not kind of extremely unsanitary.

The Lottery picks up in 2025, so those final six kids are now six years old. One of course is raised by a single dad who has to be getting more action than even your average chubby Ethiopian with receding hairline. And though there are no kids under six (sorry kindergarten teachers, you are now out of work in this near future) at least there are now televisions inside gas pumps and virtual treadmills for those who what to feel like their outside without actually having to be outside. But do not fret women of the future, Marley Shelton was able to fertilize one hundred embryos (of course the chick from Sugar and Spice plays the smartest doctor in the world).


So why The Lottery? As you can probably guess the show is not based on the short story you probably read in school about the dystopian future where kids are stoned to death. No, the president, facing low poll numbers and a possible recall (apparently you can also recall the president in the future too; wait until the Tea Party hears of this idea) has decided to host a lottery where the one hundred women of America will get to carry one of the embryos to term. Yeah, Lifetime is really going hard at the female viewer. But I am just watch for the thought of the future where I can easily hook up with any random hot chick with a ticking biological clock without fear she would actually get pregnant barring some miraculous super sperm. But in all seriousness, this is the best project from Lifetime that I have seen yet.

The Lottery airs Sundays at 10:00 on Lifetime.

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