'Dark Matter' Is a Dad Show in the Multiverse of Madness
Fellas, would you travel through time to kidnap yourself if it meant you got to marry Jennifer Connelly?
I’m trying something a little different this week. The first half of this entry is a short review of Dark Matter, Apple TV+’s latest sci-fi show. The second half will be a quick rundown of recent Dad Show news. Let’s get to it.
Dad Matter
I’ve written before about how sci-fi is not inherently a Dad Show genre. Though its audience slightly skews older and male, sci-fi’s concepts of how to define humanity or what the future will look like and things like that are often too heady for Dad Shows, which are more immediate and concerned with the world as it is, not as it could be.
But Dark Matter? That’s a Dad Show.
The series uses the multiverse concept to explore a scenario about a man putting his career or his family first. Joel Edgerton plays two versions of the same guy, a brilliant scientist named Jason whose multiversal paths diverged. One Jason never achieved as much career-wise as he could have. He’s a middling university lecturer. But he’s married to Jennifer Connelly, and they have a son, and he loves them and spends a lot of time with them. His life is comfortable, and he’s happy. The other Jason achieved a lot. He won awards and founded a technology company that made him rich and famous. But he never married Jennifer Connelly or had a son, and he’s a cold, miserable bastard.
Mean Jason regrets not starting a family with Jennifer Connelly when he had the chance, so he goes to Nice Jason’s reality, kidnaps him, and swaps places with him. So Nice Jason is trying to get back to Jennifer Connelly, while Mean Jason is trying to stay with Jennifer Connelly. It’s great Dad Show casting. Dads love Jennifer Connelly. A Dad would bend the fabric of space and time for his wife, especially if she was Jennifer Connelly.
The concept of career vs. family is usually explored with how it relates to mothers, and it’s pretty rare to see it examined from a Dad’s perspective. It’s even rarer still to see it from a sci-fi perspective. So Dark Matter is fairly novel. It’s a sci-fi thriller, but it’s grappling with what it means to be a modern man balancing career and family in a relatively emotionally grounded way.
I’ve watched two episodes. I liked what I saw, but probably not enough to keep watching. I’m pretty burnt out on multiverse stuff, and the pace is a little too slow to really hook me. But if you’re looking for a sci-fi pure Dad Show, you could do a lot worse than Dark Matter.
The Dad Show Reporter
This week was Upfronts, the annual event where TV distributors preview their upcoming slates to advertisers. There are always a lot of new shows announced during Upfronts, but traditionally the event has been for broadcast and cable networks. But now that most of the major streaming services have added advertising, they showed up for Upfronts like they never have before. Which means there was a lot of news about new Dad Shows.
There were two Dad Shows teased during Upfronts that I’m excited about.
James Dadderson. Cross is the latest Prime Video series that does what Amazon does best. It’s another action series based on a popular book series (James Patterson’s Alex Cross novels) about a guy who fights crime and is not afraid to fuck people up. Cross stars Aldis Hodge, a likable actor who’s been in a lot of stuff but has never gotten a starring role this big. It’s meant to be the next Reacher. It’s produced by the same company, Skydance. And Aldis Hodge is to Tyler Perry (who played Alex Cross in the most recent Alex Cross movie) what Alan Ritchson is to Tom Cruise – a much better fit for the character.
Dad’s first rodeo. Netflix is making a series starring Tim McGraw as a champion bull rider being challenged by a young upstart. It’s Netflix’s most Yellowstone series yet. Rodeo is an important part of Yellowstone, and McGraw is a veteran of Yellowstone spinoff 1883. This series is also produced by Skydance. One of the showrunners is even named Taylor (Elmore, not Sheridan) A title has not been announced yet, nor has casting for the young upstart. It’ll probably be a handsome, swaggy country boy named Braxton Bryson or something.