Spoilers ahead!
“Hypothetical.
A man of science, a physics professor. He is married to the woman of his dreams, and they have a son. And they all have a good life.
Until one night, this man goes to a bar.
He's seeing an old friend, a college buddy, who's won a prestigious award. But on the walk home, something happens.
He doesn't make it home.
When he regains his full presence of mind… Everything has changed.”
"Are You Happy in Your Life?" — Dark Matter. Photo: Apple TV ©. All Rights Reserved
When Jason Dessen, played by Joel Edgerton, says these lines, his life has turned upside down. He needs help, and he’s trying to get it, but he also fears that he’s far past the brink of insanity. The people he’s talking to, his old friend Ryan Holder (Jimmi Simpson) and his ex-lover (it’s more complicated than that) Daniela Vargas (Jennifer Connelly), are both also sure that their friend lost his mind.
After all, Jason keeps saying that he and Daniela are married, and they have a teenage son together, and they’ve loved each other and faced so much together that Jason can’t bear the fact that this marriage isn’t real and that they don’t have a son. And Ryan, his old friend — he should be an award-winning scientist, but he’s not. Jason is the award-winning scientist, Daniela is his old lover (and they probably still have feelings for each other, but things didn’t work out between them), and Ryan is (probably) just unhappy with his life.
What happened then? Jason gets his first answers towards the end of the second episode, and oh boy…
Adapted from Blake Crouch’s book of the same name, Dark Matter (not to be confused with the SyFy 2015 show) is about a man who is wondering what his life could have been if he took the other path. What if he didn’t choose to marry his girlfriend? What if he became a successful scientist instead of a father? Would he be happier? What if the answer is “no”, he wouldn’t? He would still be unhappy, dreaming of a life in which he made different choices and has a wife and a kid. But we’re talking about a successful scientist who can build a machine capable of traveling across alternate realities — and with this, the scientist can finally discover if he’d be happier in this other reality.
The first episode, Are You Happy in Your Life?, introduces us to these conflicts very steadily. Jason is a university professor (a frustrated one), he has a cold relationship with his wife (they had better days), but his teenage son Charlie (Oakes Fegley) seems to be the glue keeping them together. One night, after going out to celebrate that his friend Ryan won an important award, Jason receives an offer. He’d have to move to another city and change his life completely, but he could finally feel fulfilled professionally. When returning home, a masked man kidnaps, threatens, and drugs him.
"Are You Happy in Your Life?" — Dark Matter, Pictured: Joel Edgerton as Jason, Jennifer Connelly as Daniela. Photo: Apple TV ©. All Rights Reserved
When Jason wakes up, he’s in a different place — a sort of lab. There are people — the lab people — celebrating his return after more than a year away. But he doesn’t know what is happening, or what they’re talking about, so Jason runs away from them. He goes to the local bar and the bartender doesn’t recognize him. And when returning to his house, he faces a different place. Instead of a wife, there he meets Amanda (Alice Braga), one of the scientists who celebrated his return (and from whom he’s running away). She claims they live together, but he doesn’t trust her and runs away.
Elsewhere, Daniela and Charlie deal with a different Jason — one who’s happy to have them as family, one who fought for them and risked so much to get to them. After all, Jason (the successful scientist) was the one who kidnapped, drugged, and sent our Jason (husband, father, and professor) to another universe.
Trip of a Lifetime is interesting because of this: we see two different versions of Jason and Daniela interacting with each other, and it’s so cool because Joel Edgerton and Jennifer Connelly deliver great, captivating performances. It’s nice because we see Joel acting as the Jason scientist who is trying to replace Jason the husband, and while he’s been well received in the beginning, something tells me soon Daniela and Charlie will suspect something’s wrong. It’s also nice because Jennifer Connelly is Jennifer Connelly and she’s always good (which means that the second episode’s ending, well… I felt that!)
Anyway, Dark Matter started strong, with a solid premiere and a great follow-up. While episode one introduces the characters and some first mysteries, things start to get crazier in the second episode, when we get some answers (that bring with them more questions). The pacing, the tone, the acting, everything's in the right direction, and I'm excited to discover what else this story has to offer.
Now let me know your thoughts, theories, feelings. What do you think about Dark Matter's initial episodes? Feel free to leave a comment with your favorite moments, and thanks for reading!
