Amazon Prime isn’t my main streaming service. I’ve added a handful of things to my queue to watch at some point, but when I sit down to relax and watch a show/movie, I typically forget to check Amazon. Every once in a while, I’ll see a trailer for a new show as I watch my regulars on YouTube, and I’ll hop over to Amazon to check it out. The Rig is one of those shows. When I saw that Ian Glen was in it, I thought, “Oh, sweet! This is going to be really good!” Spoiler Alert: He was probably the best part of the show.
The Rig
An Amazon Original
Synopsis
Kinloch Bravo is an oil rig located off the coast of Scotland. Its crew is just getting ready to go home when dense fog rolls in and covers the entire facility. When the fog lingers for several days, the crew becomes increasingly anxious to leave the rig and return home. Unfortunately, the fog makes it dangerous for anyone to leave via helicopter or ship, so all they can do is wait. When ash begins to fall in the fog, exposed crew members begin to exhibit strange symptoms of illness.
My Thoughts
When I first saw the trailer for the show, I was really excited because I love sci-fi, and the trailer definitely had a sci-fi air about it. The trailer makes it seem very mysterious, which it is! But I felt like the premise was a little weak. Or maybe I should say that at least the explanation of what’s going on is feeble. I really wanted to enjoy this show, but the storyline was just too unconvincing.
Essentially, the crew of Kinloch Bravo discovers that there is this ancient microbiological organism that returns to the Earth’s surface and destroys all life on the planet every couple of million years. I suppose I shouldn’t say that it kills all biological life because when it makes its appearance, it actually turns the production facility of the oil rig into a garden-like environment. So, it’s not that it kills everything, but you get the sense that it’s purging things it deems are unnecessary, if that makes sense. So, of course, you get the idea that the show is trying to tell you that humans are the unnecessary lifeforms on the planet, and they must be destroyed for the Earth to heal itself. Yeah, it’s one of those stories. One of the characters comments – something to the effect of, “With all the damage we’ve done to the Earth, it’s only a matter of time until it hits us back,” or something along those lines.
I think I would’ve enjoyed it more if they had explained more about the life form – telling us more of the story behind what it did in the past. And why is it so dangerous? I think they tried to do that a little bit, but it was all in the form of scribbling on paper or a whiteboard. I think I wanted something more, like a flashback (take us back a bajillion years and show us what it did in the past). Could you give us a visual? Maybe that would’ve made it more ominous.
You’re not going to miss out on anything by skipping this one.
But before you go, check out this awesome cross-section of an oil rig that I found on Pinterest. When I was a kid, we didn’t have the internet yet, so I spent a lot of time looking at cross-section books.
Talk to you in the next one!
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