Steven Soderbergh’s secret TV show is the weirdest PSA I’ve ever seen
No one claims to know what Command Z is, even the people who made it. Best described as a web series, available directly on director Steven Soderbergh’s website after a $7.99 charitable donation, Command Z comprises eight episodes of varying length. (It was also announced mere days in advance of its release, roughly at the same time that Full Circle — a more traditional TV series directed by Soderbergh — debuted on Max). A second, secret Soderbergh series? ¡Que maravilla!
With a trailer proclaiming that the show is “from the ass of Steven Soderbergh,” Command Z mostly looks like an experimental web series centered around three people in the future commissioned by the disembodied head of Michael Cera to go back in time to fix their present. And it is that. Mostly. It’s also a bizarre PSA, a comedic plea to the viewer to both see the problems in our world as fixable and to get involved in fixing them — and maybe to watch more movies.
A given episode runs anywhere from eight to 20 minutes in length (for a total runtime of about 90 minutes) and centers on Jamie (JJ Maley), Sam (Roy Wood Jr.), and Emma (Chloe Radcliffe), three people who work for the AI version of Kearning Fealty (Michael Cera), a long-dead billionaire who has a time machine that looks like a dryer in the basement. Turn the dryer on, drink a gross brown fluid, put on a helmet, and Jamie, Sam, or Emma can send their consciousness back in time to influence the minds of select people, which Fealty tells them will make the world a better place.
Consequently, the issues Kearning sends his employees to fix are also real-world issues that the presumed American audience (and beyond) also faces, from climate change to social media and beyond. The team identifies
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