Buy yourself a better tomorrow.
Hello Tomorrow! is a 2023 sci-fi dramedy series created by Amit Bhalla and Lucas Jansen. It stars Billy Crudup, Hank Azaria, Haneefah Wood, and Alison Pill.
Set in a Retro-Futuristic alternate version of America, the series follows a gang of traveling salespeople led by Jack (Crudup) on a mission to sell timeshares located on the moon. However, their mission may not be as simple, or as idyllic, as it seems. The series premiered on Apple TV+ on February 17, 2023.
Previews: Trailer
Hello Tomorrow! features the following tropes:
- Believing Their Own Lies: By the halfway point of the first season even as he admits the company is a fraud, Jack seems to believe they can launch people into space and build actual moon colonies.
- Cassandra Truth: In the series finale, Herb announces he's going on the rocket. Eddie and Shirley tell him the entire thing is a hoax but Herb thinks they're trying to steal his spot and the pair just wash their hands of him.
- Cute Machines: Many of the show's robots appear to be designed to be cute, to users or to viewers. How often this tips over the edge into "disturbing" may be a matter of personal taste.
- Flying Car: The standard form of personal transport in the setting is what look like 1950s model cars, but hovering on thin air instead of rolling on wheels.
- The Gambling Addict: Eddie (Azaria) clearly has a gambling problem, and evidently owes money to someone dangerous; in the first episode, he gets a finger broken by an enforcer to encourage him to pay up, and he returns from a later meeting with a painful severe limp.
- Gone Horribly Right:
- The company was only supposed to be short-lived so Jack could make money on this "moon city" scam and move on. However, his salespeople (especially Shirley), not knowing this is a fraud, go too far selling it so the company gets famous, the last thing a con artist wants. Also, Shirley and Eddie are ready to buy one of the "timeshares" themselves and move to the moon on the next flight.
- Jack's convincing Herb the moon colony exists and he's a top sales guy pushes Herb to help the customers escape the elevator and get on the rocket with Jack unaware they're on when he launches it.
- Malaproper: Lester is this combined with a speech impediment.
- Mob Debt: Eddie's gambling addiction is shown to have put him in debt to the mob sometime prior to the events of the series. Throughout the show, a mob creditor continuously intimidates, threatens or harms him whenever he's late to make a payment, going so far as to burn Eddie's hand off when he's caught cheating at a card game.
- Obstructive Bureaucrat: The salesmen find themselves being tracked by someone who has all the traits of a classic obstructive bureaucrat — nit-picky, prissy, and rules-obsessed. However, the trope is being subverted; given the shadiness of the business in which they are engaged, anyone enforcing some basic business regulations on them is on the side of the angels.
- Oh, Crap!: Jack's reaction when he realizes Shirley used her money to buy an ad for the launches at a baseball game, thus increasing customers for launches that don't exist and threatening the entire scam.
- Parental Abandonment: Jack ran out on his wife so long ago that his now-teenage son doesn't remember him at all. Now, guilt over this makes him recruit the boy to his team (without revealing their relationship to him) and give him countless advantages in their work.
- Politically Correct History: The setting looks like a technologically weird version of The '50s, but the series features at least one mixed-raced couple who attract no comment — unusual on America at the time. However, rather than gratuitous political correctness, this may be a hint about the setting's oddness.
- Retro Universe: The setting is a world filled with futuristic technology like hovering cars, jet packs, space travel, and roombas... but all with a distinctly 1950s aesthetic.
- Right for the Wrong Reasons: In episode 5, Shirley starts to realize this whole thing is a con. However, she concludes that it's the non-existent Jenkins who's hiding on Earth and ready to let Jack be the fall guy for the company going under.
- Robot Dog: At least one robot pet is glimpsed in a street scene.
- Spanner in the Works: In the season 1 finale, Jack has one more con set up. He gets all the customers onto the rocket, then fakes an emergency to get them on the elevator which he then stops. Thus, they'll figure a malfunction kept them from boarding the rocket which Jack launches, impressing watching investors to get more on board to build the moon town for real. Just before they launch, however, Jack and Joey get word Joey's mom awakened from her coma so rush off, leaving the launch button with Elle. Then, Lester comes by to find Myrtle and hears the people in the elevator complaining to open it up so they board the rocket. Thus, Jack has no idea the rocket is populated with folks who will expose the scam as soon as they land on the moon.
- Tin-Can Robot: Most of the show's robots are built along the lines of an early SF illustration, and hence are archetypical tin can designs.
- Traveling Salesman: Jack likes to say that they “aren’t just selling” but are “changing lives”, but the core cast are acting as classic ('50s vintage) salespeople, going from door to door with timeshare brochures and pitching to groups of interest people in hotel meeting rooms. Though they seem to have a fixed base of operations, their employers can send them from town to town on whim.
- Wham Episode: In episode 5 ("From the Desk of Stanley Jenkins"), some of the team realise that they have been employed as the front-men and fall-guys for a huge, outrageous con, and at the end of the episode, one of their clients discovers that there are no rockets taking customers to the moon. However, the impact of all this is muffled by the fact that these revelations have been quite clearly foreshadowed.
- Wham Line: The final one of the season as having awakened from her coma, Jack's wife intones "we weren't really that happy...were we?"
- Wham Shot: The pilot ends with Jack returning to a small apartment to check on his mom and then entering a room to find Buck, who is quite clearly not on the moon but believes he is. Jack then pets "Mr. Jenkins" who's a pet turtle whose aquarium houses the "moon rocks" Jack has been showing, revealing the entire company is a gigantic hoax.
