Fired on Mars

Fired on Mars Left me Shaking in My Khakis

HBO has a new show, Fired on Mars, that takes us all to an all-too-familiar scenario. Graphic designer Jeff Cooper, (Luke Wilson), is a dependable worker. He loves his cubicle, adores creating the week’s menu for the company cafeteria, and lives to make playlists. He’s the corporate dream — a cheerful worker who asks for nothing and questions even less.

Oh, and he lives and works on Mars.

In the show, America has sent the first group of colonizers up to the red planet to set up a corporate office, because… reasons. As viewers, we get no intel about what the company Marsly does or why. Maybe they’re terraforming the planet for the next wave of human inhabitants? Perhaps they’re developing the first interstellar internet? No one knows and truly, no one cares. They’re all happy to be employed and have a small apartment provided by the company.

Why rock the boat when there’s no shore in sight?

I feel you, Jeff

The first episode is Jeff’s first run-in with the truth — no one on Mars needs a graphic designer. While the CEO, the HR department, and the jazz musician in the lounge are all indispensable, Jeff is told he doesn’t need to come in anymore.

But Jeff’s entire identity is his job. He’s the guy; the guy who chats up the office supply warehouse manager, the guy who always meets deadlines, who never misses an early morning meeting. Who is he if he isn’t working?

Worse, there are no other companies on Mars. It’s Marsly or nothing, and there are no ships headed back to Earth. Even if there were, he wouldn’t survive the journey.

Like so many of us, Jeff finds himself adrift on a river of the rapids of an ever-changing job market.

The creatives of the world are right there with him

I’ve learned the hard way that being a writer means I have to do more than have a job. I have to write on Medium; I have to have a newsletter and an email list, and I must be on social media despite how much it turns my stomach.

It all sucks, but it’s a reality. Jeff finds himself obsolete at the first intergalactic company just like so many writers lost their jobs the moment open-sources AI became available. Artists lost commissions that should have been an easy get thanks to an algorithm that stepped up to make their years of study and refinement meaningless.

Yet, we have nowhere else to go. We’re all just wandering around in the cold stars, trying not to run out of oxygen. Meanwhile, the rest of the universe continues without us.

I don’t know if the creators of Fired on Mars were exceptionally prescient or just plain lucky to release the show at such a perfect moment, but man, it hit me hard. There are currently only a few episodes available and I am salivating for the next installment.

Jeff’s life feels like an instruction manual for what’s next

After I watched the first two episodes on the streaming service HBO Max, I realized the style of the show felt way too familiar. What was this animation? Why did the flat realism tug at me the way it did?

Then I realized — it’s the same color scheme and style as a safety brochure we get on the plane; the one that tells what to do as we hurtle to the ground at thousands of miles per hour.

Something about that combination of a horrible scenario presented in familiar, neutral tones in a familiar office setting makes the show terrifying. Sure, we’re on Mars, but the red planet only serves as a device for Jeff’s never-ending loneliness. He manages to carve a divot of optimism out of the situation, but that only makes everything more bleak and all too real.

The poor man gets so broken by his dismissal that he accepts a major demotion with genuine excitement, leaving the audience heartbroken.

We want him to tell his boss to eff off in the worst way, but that moment never comes.

What can the Jeffs of the world teach us?

Essentially, we all have to be iconoclasts all the time. Sure, you have a full-time job and benefits, but that can disappear in an instant. Your small, turnkey apartment might be great right now, but it can become a trap that gobbles up the last of your savings the second you get comfortable.

We all have to have an escape hatch built into everything we do, especially if we work in any creative field. How much longer until a program can whip up a fully designed, SEO-optimized website in seconds? Will HR departments get replaced with automated chatbots? Will our new bosses be supercomputers that decide who lives and who gets thrown out to freeze in space?

Will any job be safe in the not-so-distant future?

I don’t know about you, but I’m working hard just to work. And I think about Jeff and how hard he’s trying to manifest a better situation, to live laugh love, to stay above the line, and I just want to cry.

Check out Fired on Mars if you want to see a show that sees you right to your core. And if you’re already watching, let me know.