Hello Tomorrow (Season 1), Episodes 1, 2 & 3: Since the advent of tech billionaires’ desire to go to Mars, pop culture also became invested in this pursuit. Whether ironic or genuine, people are talking about it. Many are also considering it as a real possibility in the near future. The new Apple TV+ series – ‘Hello Tomorrow!’ presents a reality where going to Mars is a normal thing.
Set in a retro-futuristic world, it presents a narrative that is believable due to the greed and selfishness of the money-making minds. In a fictional town called Vistaville, several salesmen entice the citizens to move to a condo on Mars. Just like our present world, dreams of better tomorrow are sold, and hope is monetized upon.
In between this game of crooked motives, the show presents heart-warming narratives to establish a human connection between its characters. Let’s dive into its three-episode premiere, which starts streaming this weekend.
Hello Tomorrow (Season 1), Episodes 1, 2 & 3 Recap:
Episode 1: Your Brighter Tomorrow, Today
The narrative occurs in a 70’s-looking futuristic world, a salesman called Jack Billings (Billy Crudup) meets a miserable drunkard in a bar. He offers this man the glorious opportunity of having a condo on Mars in the Brightside Lunar Residences. While initially, the man isn’t convinced by his glossy offer (probably for having been approached by similar suave salespeople in the past), Jack works his charm into instilling a desire to move to this other planet.
In their life on Earth, they start getting several facilities to ease up the stress of the need for manpower. Machines distribute the newspapers, and so are other necessities. Yet, along with its allure, this progress comes with a fair share of weaknesses. You see a defect unfurl when one of these machines gets out of control and endangers a person’s life. A woman, unfortunately, gets crushed by a machine.
Meanwhile, Jack keeps selling the aspirants the hope for a better life on Mars. He presents Buck Manzell (Frankie Faison) as the visionary man who envisioned this future for them. His associates, Eddie (Hank Azaria) and Herb Porter (Dewshane Williams), support him in those endeavors, while Shirley Stedman (Haneefah Wood) manages their troop of dream sellers. Despite that, it becomes evident that Jack is the one running this ship.
Eddie constantly tries to improve his image in Jack’s eyes in order to increase sales in their troop. Meanwhile, Jack’s bureaucratic loyalty frustrates Herb. While Buck sits up on the Moon and lives a cozy, comforting life, they all struggle to make a living. Through his resentment, Eddie becomes a voice of reason and rebellion. Meanwhile, Jack meets his elderly mother, Barbara (Jacki Weaver), at the old age home. Unlike his cheery salesman-y optimism, she has started losing hope. During their meeting, she tells him about his wife getting crushed by a machine, now being in a hospital in a coma, and leaving their son trying to gather up funds to pay for her operations.
While Jack continues to see it being none of his concern, Barbara persuades him to take an empathetic action. Despite having distanced himself from his son – Joey Shorter (Nicholas Podany), and his wife for years, Jack goes to meet them. He offers Joey a better facility for her treatment out of guilt. However, Jack feels a mix of emotions when he sees Joey, which makes him want his son to spend more time with him. So, he rejects Joey’s application to move to Mars and leaves him heartbroken.
Joey approaches him due to this deceit, where Jack sees how he has been brainwashed just like others into believing that ‘all their problems will go away when they move to Mars.’ He tries to talk some sense into the young man, giving him sage guidance (while taking off his salesman hat). He tells Joey how problems will not magically disappear if you move to a different place. Joey sees through Jack’s mixed signals communication and calls out spades for spades.
During their awkward interaction, Jack ends up offering his son a position as one of the salesmen and takes him under his wings. He then goes back to meet Barbara to inform her about this father-son reunion. Meanwhile, in that old-age room, he goes to meet Buck, who is not the man he portrayed to his customers. It turns out Jack was only using Buck to make his pitch seem more convincing.
Episode 2: Great Salesmen Make Their Own Turf
Until then, Joey only had retail sales experience where he did not need to be suave but only needed to comply with his customer’s demands. Working in a supermarket does not prepare him to work for this conglomerate. While he has to face the obstacle of personal incompetence as a result of that, he also has to deal with Eddie and especially Herb, who are jealous of his sudden inclusion in their baton. They see him as a threat to their position and sales opportunities.
As a result, in a conventional senior employee approach, the two feed Joey with false narratives of how he needs to work his way up. He enters their troop like a scared sheep and has difficulty even communicating basic details about his pitch. Jack, overcome by his guilt, decides to help his son during his initial phase. He accompanies Joey through his pitches to guide him to become a better salesman. He senses Joey’s anxiety and advises a way to own his stance as a dream-seller.
In his pep talk, Jack tells Joey to establish a human connection with his customers and be more attentive to the details of their lives. By submersing yourself into their world, you can establish a friendly dialogue that can lead to a sale. He tells that to, Joey. Then the young lad approaches a house and manages to enter successfully to make a sale. Looking at it from his car, Jack momentarily cheers in joy seeing his son’s fist soar in the sky.
During the day of the father-son bonding, the salesmen duo of Eddie & Herb approach a house for their pitch. They see the man evidently with his mistress but try to be as respectful as possible to persuade him to purchase. Due to an accidental slip-of-tongue, their interaction soon goes awry, and the two decide to leave. Later, Herb approaches their door again to give it another shot. He now meets another woman and falls in love with her within moments. He shares his knowledge of her husband having a mistress whom he met during his prior visit. That upsets this woman, and Herb presents himself as a guardian angel.
Jack takes Joey for a baseball match as a gift for his first sale. The kid sees the match unfold with dreamy eyes. Besides them, Eddie, Herb, and Shirley are also attending this live match. While Jack goes away for a minute, Joey confesses to Herb (the worst possible person for him to confide in) that he hasn’t actually made a sale but only manipulated a prospective customer to let him enter his house for a bit. He only pretends to do it so that Jack isn’t disappointed in him. Herb promises not to reveal this detail, but we already see what lies ahead in Joey’s future.
During this match, Shirley cooks up a plan to share their advertisement on the billboard. It advertises the home-on-mars dream to several people at the same time. While Jack worries about how they will deal with so many clients with just a few salespeople, Shirley looks at it as an opportunity to make more sales.
Meanwhile, Joey is dissatisfied with himself for not being able to live up to the expectations that Jack has of him. Back in his supermarket job, he approaches his manager with the same misery. Through that, he manages to create a genuine connection that makes the old man buy his promise. He tells Jack about it, and they rejoice at this success. As a result of this initiative, Joey finally gets to live the dream of a better future, where he stands up in his shoes and enjoys dignity in his work.
Episode 3: A Travelling Salesman Travels
As Shirley surmised, their sales started rising from other sources of advertisements. The salespeople keep getting a call every single minute, and they try to make all of those people purchase a condo on Mars. Meanwhile, the wife that Herb met before – Myrtle Mayburn (Alison Pill), comes to their office to get their condo. She has already left her husband, and it would be impossible for her to return to that home. Seeing a woman in need (and she, being the one that he is infatuated with), Herb assures her that he will try to bring the travel process to the shortest period.
While Eddie constantly drowns in his dreams of owning an abundance, Shirley brings him back to the ground reality of his life. He is a salesman, and he should only keep doing his job while thinking it in itself will solve his issues! He takes out his frustration by belittling Joey, who seems to be doing better with his father by then(despite knowing Jack is not his father). Their bonding makes him (Joey) hopeful for a better future. I mean, he finally gets a person who believes in him and who wants him to succeed. Who wouldn’t want that, right?
Since the salespeople are traveling for their work, Herb takes Myrtle along with him and gives her his room to stay in. During his video chat with his wife, he makes unsuccessful attempts to hide it from her. In a bar, Big Fred (W. Earl Brown), who is probably a journalist looking for his next big story, probably a person who pays him for stories (and gives him passive income), sniffs the frustration in Eddie and tries to get some scoop out of him. Eddie manages to evade Fred’s verbal attack.
Disappointed by the long wait time, Myrtle approached the customer support service to file a complaint about it. She records a long message and hopes that it will ease up the process for her. Meanwhile, Shirley gets approached by officer Lester Costopoulos (Matthew Maher) about her billboard advertisement. Since she did it without prior permission, he summons her. She smartly evades him since she does not want her work to suffer because of it. She later speaks with Herb and tries to calm his frustration for the new kid upping his game and for being pushed by Jack more than him despite his years of dedicated commitment to the job. We can sense that his palpable jealousy is bound to show up in the future in one way or the other.
Hello Tomorrow (Season 1), Episode 3 Ending, Explained:
How does Jack handle the awkward interaction with Barbara?
Jack tries to form a strong bond with Joey on a personal front. The son opens up about his mother’s wishes for him to do better, which melts Jack’s heart. While he takes him back to their office, Barbara is just waiting for them to get down from their car. She cannot control her excitement to see these two generations together. However, Jack is flabbergasted by her sudden visit and can’t think of a way to face this interaction without awkwardness. She keeps up with Jack’s façade of no familial relation. But she doubles down on sharing his desire to have someone like Joey.
Why does Lester approach Myrtel in the bar? What does he want to accomplish through their interaction?
Sensing the truth getting revealed, Jack takes her away and tells her to be patient. Meanwhile, Shirley comes out and sees the expensive gift Jack has given Joey to drive. She starts getting angry about this partiality just as much as Eddie. Their shared resentment makes them bond in their hotel room. Meanwhile, Lester approaches Myrtle in a bar, who senses her anger against the corporation. He offers to join hands with her in solidarity to speak against their unjust treatment. Through that, he seems to want to push his agenda against this conglomerate, which does not give respect his requests.
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