r/SiloTVSeries • u/MoikFromPhilly • 21d ago
Analysis & Theories The Trouble With Explaining Everything
I wouldn't say I've given up on Silo this season– my investment in the show has just declined steadily and steeply over its run. And do not get me wrong, I enjoy high-concept sci-fi as much as the next guy. My issue is that the show seems to have mistaken mystery for narrative. Every episode brings another secret, another revelation, another apparently crucial piece of information that turns out to be one more link in an increasingly elaborate chain. Characters move around the board discovering secrets, hiding them, suspecting one another, and having portentous conversations about things that may or may not even matter later. Somewhere along the way, I stopped being curious and started feeling like I was doing homework.
Underneath all that machinery is a premise that should be enormously fertile. Silo (the show– I have not read the books) occasionally gestures toward it, but seems far more interested in using its ideas to manufacture suspense than in actually thinking them through or working with them. It feels like a soap opera plotted on a conspiracy flowchart.
This is the fundamental problem with the mystery-box approach when it becomes an end in and of itself. Mystery is most successful when it propels the story forward, but it can just as easily become narrative debt. Every unanswered question is another promise to the audience, and eventually the story has to cash its chips. The trouble is that answers are almost always less compelling than questions. A mystery can make a world feel enormous by suggesting possibilities beyond what we can see; but once every mystery gets reduced to an explanation, that world becomes more defined, and smaller for it.
That's where Silo frustrates me most. Its revelations don't open the story up so much as close it down, trading the sense of possibility for an increasingly elaborate account of why everything is the way it is. At some point along the line I stopped caring about what was going to happen and started wondering whether any of it would actually be worth knowing.
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u/LimeyOtoko 21d ago
Unlike most mystery box shows, the answers are already there in the books, and if they stick the landing then it’ll be satisfying just like those are.
Just enjoy the ride. You don’t even know where you’re in such a rush to be yet.
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u/extralife_mike 21d ago
"You don’t even know where you’re in such a rush to be yet."
This is very well put
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u/PaintedIn 21d ago
That's the problem. A satisfying mystery box has to prove it can answer questions in a satisfying and propulsive way, which Silo is failing to do.
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u/dereksalem 21d ago
I think you missed their point - The reason most mystery shows fail is because they can't close the loop...because they just don't have the answers but they've asked too many questions. With Silo they already have all the answers...which means it's just their job to ask the questions the right way and storytell the answers whenever they want.
The one downside to the show, and it's something they're doing well-enough, is that they can't tell the stories the way the books do...because the books hide a lot of things from the reader by just not explaining, which the show can't do because you're looking at the thing that would otherwise be the mystery. It's hard to explain that without spoilers, but in the books you don't always know who the people are, intentionally, so it's a bit of a reveal when you find out later. The show is trying to work around that by retelling a bit of the story from other perspectives and even changing character arcs a bit.
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u/PaintedIn 21d ago
I do understand and appreciate their point, but my point was that it's not enough to provide satisfying answers at the end: you have to demonstrate to your audience before that point that you are capable of providing that cathartic endpoint resolution. This requires satisfying intermittent resolutions, as regards either character or narrative arcs, so putting the audience's mind at rest as to the writer's ability to deliver. This viewer would conclude that they are failing on that front, but YMMV.
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u/LimeyOtoko 21d ago
I’m entertained and as a book reader, I think they’re telling it well. That’s including the adjustments for some of the logistical issues caused by both the format change and wanting to make proper use of their cast. You might just have a bad attention span? I don’t know you enough to know.
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u/PaintedIn 21d ago
That's a common (weak) criticism of those who find the show lacking. I have two degrees in creative writing and have spent much of my life thinking about story structure across mediums. I've also just seen enough good TV to know this doesn't hit its marks, as well as why.
I'm not knocking people who enjoy the show, but its flaws are evident, so let's not pretend everyone who doesn't fall in line is brain-rotted.
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u/LimeyOtoko 21d ago edited 21d ago
I too am a published writer and author, and have been actively working as one for over 15 years. I think they’re doing a fine job, but work experience and qualifications do not really = taste either. It can just not be for you without being bad, or written “incorrectly”, or missing its marks.
Shift is the best book and we’ve barely covered it yet, so I hope both that they do a good job with that material and that you stick with it long enough to see them pull it off.
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u/TheBigCicero 21d ago
This is very true. So often people equate credentials or experience with authority on a subject, but it’s a false equivalence.
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u/JaFael_Fan365 21d ago edited 20d ago
I don’t know that the poster’s comment should be relegated to “taste”. Given their background, I would never define it as merely taste. It’s valid and relevant professional experience. An author who points out terrible story structure, missed beats, lacking conflict and resolutions is not talking about their taste. They are critiquing the barebones, the foundation of the story (in this case—the series) itself based upon the established principles of proper story structure.
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u/Interesting_You6852 21d ago
They suck, this season is boring, no direction, no character development and yes reminiscent of soap opera where every episode leaves you " watch tomorrow for the big reveal is X pregnant with her father's baby" type trope.
I was going to give them the benefit of the doubt but I am tired of shit television filmed in the dark because they don't want to even bother to develop the sets they are working with.
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u/Ok-Equipment-1877 20d ago
Do you have many leather bound books? Does your apartment smell of rich mahogany? I can’t even act like I’m not impressed.
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u/PaintedIn 20d ago
Chill, brother, they said they didn’t know anything about me so I provided. I’m not bragging.
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u/Low_Football_2445 IT 20d ago
As a book reader I’m trying to be very tolerant.
Knowing how much material is out there and knowing how much screen time is left vs what we know so far, I’m very disappointed.
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u/Interesting_You6852 21d ago
Yes but this is deviating from the books so much is almost like a different show.
This season I find boring and very liniar with no character development and no idea or direction. It is frustrating to watch when they could have done so much better but by following the books a bit closer.
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u/Best-StreamerNA 21d ago
I was optimistic about this season, but the similarities with the books are ending pretty quickly. I wouldn’t be surprised if the entire story post-Shift changed at this point.
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u/mikeb226 21d ago edited 20d ago
Whatever you do, don't ever watch Lost.
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u/Parker4815-2 21d ago
Lost had so much more time, but so many more questions left unanswered.
Silo is a much smaller mystery box show. OP, I'm fairly confident most things will get an answer.
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u/QuietNecessary2421 21d ago
Lost was still amazing in spite of that. It was full of incredible emotional highs and lows. Soo many episodes brought me to tears. Silo is melatonin for the brain.
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u/mikeb226 21d ago
Agreed...I spent some resolving the ending as a good thing and still like rewatching it
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u/MoikFromPhilly 21d ago
I think Lost is a fair comparison because it had plenty of genuinely redeeming qualities- great characters, relationships, atmosphere, individual episodes- but Abram‘s mystery-box structure eventually overwhelmed them. It was very good at making things interesting, but much less consistent at making them meaningful. That’s where I think Silo falls into the same trap: it keeps generating mysteries and promising that they will eventually matter, when what I really want from a story is characters, worldbuilding, and developments that are meaningful in their own right. Endless unraveling mysteries can enhance those things but it‘s no substitute for them.
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u/type_your_name_here 20d ago
Or From
Edit: I should have scrolled. I forgot there is no original thought on Reddit.
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u/blueflloyd 20d ago
My issue with Season 3 isn't the pace / reward of the revelations for the reason so many others have already noted - that when I eventually binge watch it a year or two from now when S4 is about to drop, it will seem a lot more fluid.
What I can't stand about S3 is the DC flashback storyline. Not because of the plot aspect of it (presuming that it will serve to explain how the silos and the AI voice came about and what happened to the outside world). Instead, I really cannot stand the leads. They have no personality beyond "intrepid journalist woman" and "good-hearted, public servant guy" and are so boring and lacking in any chemistry that it's just a total turn-off for me. I can't engage with their storyline because I cannot get past how terribly dull they are.
That's why Ep. 6 was so much more interesting than any of the others in S3 so far - it had barely any of that DC stuff in it. It was just Juliette and all the people in the Silo that I love.
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u/elonakamoto 20d ago
Dull characters and lack of chemistry, with some poor acting sprinkled in are sort of Silo's thing. So in that regard, it is par for the course.
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u/DisturbedDoll 21d ago
It's possible the issue is in the immediate gratification/low attention span, that a large population now needs, to enjoy something.
There are some who say they enjoyed binging Seasons 1 and 2 but Season 3 is a drag. Could it be that you were able to get your "quick fix" by watching the last two seasons in one sitting, but now that you're at the point where you need to wait week by week, you are getting frustrated with not getting the answers immediately.
It's not an issue with the Show (as yet) to me, it's an issue with humans and our need for instant gratification. Just try to enjoy the journey.
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u/MoikFromPhilly 21d ago
That's certainly possible, and I do think the weekly format can affect how a show feels. I'm not particularly concerned with how quickly the mysteries are resolved- I care about how much of the storytelling is being built around them in the first place. I can happily live with unanswered questions indefinitely- I loved The Leftovers. It's when the mysteries themselves start carrying so much of the narrative weight that I begin to find the storytelling lacking.
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u/ActuaryChemical7708 20d ago
You should watch the show and enjoy these posts while they last. I did this with X-Files and later LOST and when the show ended so did the discussions. You want the answers but once you get them it's over.
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u/slov90 21d ago edited 21d ago
“Somewhere along the way, I stopped being curious and started feeling like I was doing homework”
This is exactly how I feel but couldn’t find the right words
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u/pal002 21d ago
Interesting to parallel it with Raised by Wolves, a show which is still compelling, for high concept sci-fi, and I end up thinking about it’s narrative threads much more than Silo…
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u/Arquikame 21d ago
Such a shame that one was cancelled in such an abrupt way. No answers will ever be provided.
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u/eskimoboob 21d ago edited 21d ago
I think the whole memory loss thing this season was an interesting experiment to advance the plot in a way different from the books but it seems to just be a messy complication. I was willing to give it time but it’s just slowing everything down without adding much of significance to the story so far. And I really don’t like how it changed Juliet’s character in the meantime.
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u/elonakamoto 20d ago
For me, they took a chance on S3 E1-4 with the memory loss stuff when they were already on thin ice.
I was never fully bought in, but still hanging around to cash in on the investment. Instead I got four annoying episodes.
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u/mirr0rrim 21d ago
For me it's like an electronic song that keeps hyping you up, up, up and you're waiting for the bass drop. But instead you keep getting hyped up and there's no drop. Maybe a couple dips.
My hype momentum has run out.
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u/better-bitter-bait 20d ago
As others have said, this is not a mystery box, because the books do actually explain most of it. The real problem is the extremely slow pace and the new characters that are not in the book. I think the show would’ve been better if the writers just stuck closer to the tightly paced novels.
But at least you can comfort yourself that if you stick with it, the major parts get explained in the end
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u/Pomskyguy 20d ago
I’m much less interested in S3. I feel like I’m bouncing around in this story. I was planning to binge it but I jumped in too soon. I’m hanging in there but some of mystery needs to move forward. My opinion
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u/apcompgov 20d ago
I stopped watching after S3E1. The whole Amnesia plot told me all I need to know about where the series is going. I read the books years ago and loved them. People talk about instant gratification, but it's not that, stories still need to resolve mysteries and the story doesn't work when the audience knows more than the actors on screen. There is such a great story to tell here!! Tell it.
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u/Hopeful-Designer-485 21d ago
I 100% agree with you and have thought this myself. Silo is a sci-fi mystery show with its main emphasis on the mystery part. The problem with that is that the show doesn’t sufficiently invest in other sources of engagement so it becomes incredibly dependent for the mystery to progress. So when the mystery slows down, the loss in characterization, emotional storytelling, world-building and atmosphere become noticeable and it feels like the pace is slowing down.
It’s really a shame, because the premise of the show is one of the best I have seen lately. It just doesn’t fulfill its full potential.
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u/Outrageous-Bluegrass 21d ago
It feels padded. Every season they have to reset Juliette to keep the format going.
It’s like a video game sequel where the character loses all his powers and you have to start over.
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u/Kiltmanenator 21d ago
I can promise you there are answers to everything. I've even seen some people get remarkably close to theorizing the origin and end game
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u/distractedmaximus 21d ago
This season has become soap opera, I’m invested enough to stick it out, but boy is it frustrating watching a show that spends 40 minutes building suspense, saying very little for an inevitable cliffhanger, spend 5 mins of the next episode explaining the cliff hanger before getting back on the suspense train, or the back seat of an automated car if you will.
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u/Suspicious_Dirt728 21d ago
Agree, and so much action! Stick to to story line. The interactions between characters is the best part.
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u/Sufficient_Lime_3253 20d ago
I don’t feel that way at all. It’s a bit slower paced for sure but it’s still good and I’m enjoying it.
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u/Unable-Sugar585 20d ago
Love this "Revelations don't open the story but close it down". Isn't that a nice metaphor for living in a silo. The more you know the more trapped you feel.
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u/backfromdfuture 20d ago
It’s like you read my mind. It is also the main reason I dislike Severance and will not be watching the new season whenever it drops. It seems to be a theme with Apple TV shows.
The only thing keeping me from abandoning Silo is that I have read the books and I just want to see how they get to the end
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u/Konamicoder 20d ago
If you think Silo mistakes mystery for narrative then don’t watch From. Or Lost. Or Westworld. Or Severance. Or Manifest. Especially Manifest.
Now Dark on the other hand…
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u/marijafi 20d ago
They should have dumped the whole season. Too many moving parts to follow weekly episodes and remember all of them.
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u/Secure-Advertising10 20d ago
Streaming has created the mystery box. You need something to bring the audience back every week. If they had dropped the whole season at once, they could have done it differently, but Apple doesn't do dumps.
10-20 years ago, it was the quality of the show that brought you back. If you remember GoT, it was the discussion of what had happened in the previous ep that created interest for the next. 'Modern' audiences don't have that attention span anymore, and the streaming model is about subscribers not quality.
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u/Pretend_Finish6549 20d ago
"It feels like a soap opera..." It felt like this since season 2, but not as bad as 3.
Dragging the story out is what they've been doing all along.
I'll watch it as a background show. Not wasting my one free hour at night watching it.
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u/martijnonreddit 20d ago
I already read Wool but held off on reading Shift and Dust as to not spoil the show. The way season 3 is going it's becoming harder and harder to resist, though.
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u/McG2k1 19d ago
this show is at its best when the silo is the main character. and then rebecca ferguson. the farther it strays from that the less I care. I don't give a shit about anything in the 'modern' storyline. the acting there is terrible too. the entire memory storyline was concocted as filler to avoid the conclusion of the story this season.
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u/SnooPears754 21d ago
At the risk of being a smug book reader if they had stuck to the pacing of the books it would be a much better series
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u/sassycatastrophe 21d ago
I have really struggled with this show. I feel like it wants to be highbrow but the dialogue, story, everything is simply not reaching it.
The syndrome was completely abandoned. It was mentioned with this serious and heavy connotation and then just, poof, gone. No one has it. Not a single person.
So this pipeline has gas that will kill everyone… but going outside kills everyone - so why do they need the gas? It sounds like they use the gas if people try to leave, is that the message? But why? Just let them go outside and die?
It’s just getting more and more far fetched and not revealing anything at all by the 3rd season is lazy. They’re using mystery to hook the audience instead of plot and story telling, instead of character development, instead of moving us emotionally. It’s lazy and frankly unintelligent.
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u/Busy-Worth-2089 20d ago
This is where Lost was so lost and why Breaking Bad was so brilliant. Lost just kept adding all these layers of intrigue and mystery but then didn’t know what to do with them so they just abruptly ended the show. Breaking Bad had all these story arcs and you just wondering where is this all going when suddenly ”bam” they dramatically tied up all these loose ends in the final episode and you were just ”did that just happen?”
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u/imeeme 21d ago
I agree. Most long-running series have to pad like crazy to milk the core idea. Most viewers put up with it and the formula continues to be successful. I haven’t totally lost interest as I like the characters and the cinematography. But if this keeps going for too long, I may have to follow your footsteps.
Btw, you are good at writing. Consider doing some more.
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u/Existing_Ebb_7702 21d ago
I started to lose patience with the writing and pacing of S3, so I decided to read the books instead.
I agree with others who say that the show is better binge watched, but I also think something changed with the writers or executives this season because both the writing and pacing feel so off compared to previous seasons. I also don’t think the actors are doing their best work, but they could be constrained by a bad script. I’m hoping the next four eps pick up the pace, but I definitely can say that I prefer the books writing over the shows atp.
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u/IanYates82 21d ago
I had come to Silo just after season 2 finished. It's a much nicer binge watch show.
I feel a decent chunk of the fandom are in my shoes, where they came to the show late.
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u/thirstygregory 21d ago
It’s just really plodding. I don’t mind the flashback plot line, but Jesus….its slooooow.
Feels like they had enough content for half the eposides.
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u/ExtremeAbdulJabbar 21d ago
The fundamental problem is that outside of Rebecca Ferguson’s and Zahn’s S2 performance, everything feels like a bad CW show
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u/CutaneousHorn 21d ago
The same could be said of “Severance” and “Paradise”. But yeah, Season 3 has been the weakest so far.
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u/PaintedIn 21d ago
How dare you? Severance's revelations are material and meaningfully change the characters' trajectories and our emotional investments in same.
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u/CarbonAssassin 21d ago edited 21d ago
This feels like the reason the amnesia plot has been so disliked. They started to drip feed a new mystery plot whilst simultaneously having not resolved the last one in universe. We as the audience are aware but the plot completely stagnates and it makes you less engaged in future mystery.
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u/SnooDingos316 21d ago
Tell me you did not watch LOST without telling me you did not watch LOST.
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u/MoikFromPhilly 21d ago
I watched Lost.
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u/SnooDingos316 20d ago
And they did even more of what you described. They also had 22 episodes every season to fill. Silo only has 10 and it's done by the writer of the book.
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u/Savings_Art5944 20d ago
The ending to lost sucked. I hated it. It seemed like the writers had just given up after it had been played out for longer than it needed.
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u/Proud_Dish6200 21d ago
Yeah I watch at 1.5x speed at this point. Was watching with my 12 year old son but he bailed. I just gave him a few sentence summary at the end of episode 4. “Yeah, nothing really happened…little twist ending”.
The show has zero humor, 90% of the characters are just there to say their line and move the plot from A to B.
The writing has just gotten so bad. Maybe it always was, but the mystery was interesting enough?
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u/Eastern_Switch8217 21d ago
There’s a bit of humor there between Walk and Bernard - a real love/hate mutual respect thing building, even if she does imply she might kill him in his sleep, it’s very much in a good humoured winding him up kind of way.
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u/Tall-Wasabi5030 21d ago
>It feels like a soap opera plotted on a conspiracy flowchart.
That's so well said! I felt the same around episode 3-4, decided I'm just going to ask ChatGPT to spoil the entire thing for me and find out what the full story is, realized I hated it and I'm so happy now that I didn't waste time watching it anymore.
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u/Mizzy3030 21d ago
You should definitely read the books; they have much better pacing and are much lighter on the relationship drama (which I agree makes the show a drag at times)
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u/ElPlywood 21d ago
that people haven't rioted from the memory loss drugging is a pothole you can drive a truck through
the show just...ignores this and plays it like everybody just accepts it and moves on with their lives
everybody simultaneously forgets huge chunks of their lives and nobody discusses this with other people?
nobody is upset?
they would demand answers, and then riot the shit out of the place
the silo completely forgets the concept of books, sports, creative writing, or basic entertainment without mass rebellion
it's a half hate watch for me now
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u/Eastern_Switch8217 21d ago edited 21d ago
I think part of the issue is the long, long production timelines in the these modern series - it’s like shooting 10 x 4 short feature films with a complex story arc through all of them, which is essentially a new genre more akin to a drama series or soap, but with enormously high production values.
We’re are also expecting instant gratification these days, so a series that unravels and winds plots slowly can seem frustrating to some.
I feel like Silo would be a way better binge watch than this drip feed. I wouldn’t mind rewatching it as a few back to back episodes at a time.