Fifteen Million Merits (S01E02) is one of the best things I've ever watched, period!

Not just the futility, it also subtly depicts the lack of power in a person who has been immersed in an environment that has

* denied them any significant agency

* ambition can only be expressed in a narrow set of avenues

* questioning the way of things is futile

There isn't any person behind the screen orchestrating things, simply each individual doing the "best" they can, and boy, that is a chilling world. Not scary in the sense of horror, just chilling because of the dread it fills me with. I won't say any more lest I give away the ending. The acting left an impression on me, even though I don't remember a single word that was said. Definitely recommended!

>There isn't any person behind the screen orchestrating things

Yeah, I love that! Even the judges on the reality show have this air of fear and desperation about them.

It's what makes the episode, IMO, and it's something that a lot of people don't seem to notice. We never see police or enforcers. The closest thing are the stage hands at the show, and they're not that close. We don't see someone carted off to become one of the janitors, for example, which a lesser show or concept would have depicted explicitly. Then at the end we see that the outside world looks fine[1], if neglected (by humans) and wild. People are where they are due to lack of will and imagination to make something different for themselves.

[1] There's some debate over whether those are real windows or viewscreens, but since one of those options acts a punch-line to this theme and the other serves basically no purpose, I'm pretty sure we're supposed to take them to be real.

Plus the advertisements you cannot skip are like an entirely plausible nightmare scenario.

Truly. I'd truly hope there is a mass rebellion before we ever get anywhere close to that. Luckily we still have adblockers and mute buttons. And lastly enough redundancy that many people can go elsewhere if you can't use adblockers or mute.

Cannot skip, or even shut your eyes! That was the part that punched me in the gut.