2 out of 5

Created by: Timothy J. Sexton

‘The Lottery’ isn’t brimming with promise.  It doesn’t have an arresting pilot, or plot twists that keep drawing you back for more.  It has a valid premise, is executed respectably, and has a cast that dutifully performs their roles.  Which makes it sound very cut and dry.  It is.  It’s almost amusingly cut and dry, given that it’s a sci-fi conspiracy thriller, but like the recent ‘Extant,’ the only real bid it makes toward science fiction is in projecting us slightly into the future and giving people see-thru smart phones.  And the conspiracy is about as by-the-books spot-the-villain as it gets.  …However, what the Lottery does right is that it doesn’t really pretend to be something else.  And there’s something to be said for shows that just do what they’re supposed to do and then wave goodnight.

So in the see-thru cellphone future, no one’s having babies anymore.  It’s considered a worldwide ‘fertility crisis.’  Suddenly, scientist Alison Lennon (Marley Shelton) is able to fertilize 100 eggs, and soon after, those 100 eggs become government property, to be delved out to a group of 100 women to be selected by the public via a televised ‘lottery.’  Sprinkle some “who caused the crisis?” dramatics onto things, and an evil government guy (Martin Donovan) and there you go.  Only we don’t “go” very fast.  The ‘Extant’ comparison starts to spread out a bit, as ‘Lottery’ similarly doesn’t seem to know exactly what it’s focused should be, even though the most interesting pieces of the show come once the titular lottery starts rolling.  Before the program is established, we dive deep into a chase-the-eggs runaround that includes some completely irrelevant distractions involving Chief of Staff Vanessa Keller (Athena Karkanis), who does become an important ally for Alison later on, but the writers wanted to, I suppose, warm us to the character first and so focus on showing her wavering between humanity and dedication to her job.  Then we’re on the hunt for kidnapped kid Elvis, one of the six remaining children aged 6 and son of single dad Kyle (Michael Graziadei), to whom we’re also warmed-to via backstory excess.  Later, we get a murder mystery and an assassination attempt.  All of which, again, isn’t done poorly, per se, but feels like the show testing waters.  When we stop to see the lottery – which functions like a reality TV show – and finalist Perry Summers (Karissa Staples), the show starts to actually feel sci-fi and not so much several ideas Nesting Doll’ed into one another.

Now to separate the Extant reference – this is a better show.  Characters aren’t stupid, and although there’re all of these wanderings with the focus, the majority of the elements do end up being used in one way or another, unlike Extant’s fun with straight up dropping plotlines.  The unexplored was also a frustration with Extant, because it wasn’t clear what the show was aiming for.  With the Lottery, we do have several unexplored elements – the world without children has been seen before but Lottery still had some interesting aspects to add – but, again, the plot is in the title, and though the creatives were apparently experimenting with the most sensible way to get us there, getting us there was always the goal.

Calling ‘Lottery’ average television isn’t descriptive enough because it does well with its limited resources to string together something that’s not faceless.  Unfortunately, though this face means the show has personality, that personality is the kid on the fringes of the conversation who nods most of the time, piping in with some interesting additions here and there, but nothing that splinters off into a brand new conversation.  And that extended metaphor is all I got in me, folks.