The first two episodes introduce viewers to the underground universe of the show through the eyes of Sheriff Holston Becker (David Oyelowo) and his wife, Allison (Rashida Jones). They live happily inside the Silo when they gain the opportunity to potentially reproduce. Allison’s government-mandated birth control is removed and they have a year to conceive. There’s a sense of urgency: We found out this is her third chance to have a baby, and probably her last. As the months go by without a pregnancy, Allison begins to suspect that her fertility problems are not a coincidence, but rather related to the shady nature of Silo’s government and what she wants from its residents.
Holston and Allison’s story is made emotionally resonant through two excellent performances (Jones’ is a career highlight) while also serving as an efficient part of the exposition. We learn that the Silo functions as an autonomous city, powered by a strange patchwork of technologies from the past; there is an IT department, radios and old computers, but no elevators or pulleys or telephones. The residents don’t know much about its history, because a failed rebel group destroyed most of the available documentation on how the silo came to be and what happened to the surface world. The Silo is governed by a document called the Pact, which stipulates strict rules on how to behave. The most important rule? If you ask to leave, you must leave and you cannot return.
The people leaving are outfitted in some sort of hazmat suit and given a piece of wool to “clean up”. They are asked to clean the camera sensor that gives the silo its only view to the outside. These “cleanups” are a communal ritual, a kind of public execution, and people gather to watch their doomed neighbors succumb to the toxic air. The corpses of former cleaners dot the decrepit landscape.
After the second episode, the show’s true protagonist emerges: Rebecca Ferguson’s tough and capable mechanic, Juliette Nichols, who is recruited from a life of hard work at the lower levels to join the law enforcement team “upstairs.” Ferguson takes an action star turn here, magnetic and agile. (My only complaint about her acting is the accent work: Despite spending her entire life in a North American underground city, Juliette sometimes sounds strangely Scandinavian.)
Juliette doesn’t want to leave her home full of soot and her precious generator. He loves machines! She has a wise old friend! But, you see, it is necessary to unravel a mystery. Her boyfriend, a curious guy, went looking for ~answers~ about the true nature of the Silo and ended up dead. Juliette suspects a murder, and a sheriff’s badge means she can investigate. She quickly confronts the leaders of the Silo’s other two main centers of power: the towering Sims of the judicial branch (Common, scowling) and Bernard, the conniving tech leader (Tim Robbins, scowling even more). . The intrigue arises.
The dead boyfriend isn’t on Howey’s books. I suspect they made it up to soften the edges of Juliette, since she’s a pretty tough hero. He is… whatever. There are a few other changes, mostly to the look of the Silo. In the novels, it is a claustrophobic, dilapidated place with few resources, and all the residents wear uniforms corresponding to their jobs. The show’s Silo is a vast, cavernous place, and the people who inhabit it dress as they please. (They also seem somewhat immune to vitamin D deficiency.) Otherwise, the first season is a pretty faithful adaptation of the beginning of Howey’s story, a good thing, since Wool It’s a humdinger, twisted and exciting.
If this show does pick up for future seasons, it will be fascinating to see if it follows Howey’s structure, as the second volume, Change, is a prequel with parts set hundreds of years in the past. This is not a George RR Martin situation; they won’t run out of pages to adapt and have to improvise.
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