Best Podcast Reviews

“Give Me Away,” Altruism, and Greed

November 23, 2021 4:26 pm

Give Me Away is a nine-part science fiction podcast (also known as an audio drama) from Gideon Media, the minds behind Steal the Stars and The Message. The first season follows Graham Shapiro, a man experiencing a midlife crisis amidst the dissolution of his marriage and humanity’s first contact with The Ghosthouse, a horrifying data prison that’s host to the disembodied minds of 50,000 alien convicts. It’s made up of equal parts sociopolitical thriller and gripping family drama, and can easily be finished in a single sitting–if you’re not careful enough to parcel it out for yourself.

Written by Mac Rogers and directed by his longtime creative partner, Jordana Williams, the premiere of Give Me Away smartly plants itself in the middle of a lived-in fight between Graham and his wife Morgan. They’re still married, but not entirely sure why, now that their two adult children have grown up and moved away. Rather than dropping the audience immediately into the inventive and haunting sound design of The Ghosthouse itself, and thus into the series’ ultimate sci-fi setting, it allows you to familiarize yourself with its ensemble’s hopes, dreams, and interpersonal relationships first.

Make no mistake, Give Me Away has a cool premise that becomes more and more apparent as the premiere continues, but initially, is only introduced in fits and spurts. Graham and Morgan can’t be bothered to finish their ongoing fight because they both notice a crowd of their neighbors gathering outside, all staring at their phones. We flash forward to a newscast, describing what happens as scientists attempt to enter the ship, before segueing into the background of a barroom conversation between Graham and Travis, the close family friend who has a barely disguised obsession with Morgan.

Later, as we’re intercut between conversations with both Jamie, Graham and Morgan’s older, if slightly-less-together daughter, and Talia, their wise-beyond-their-years nonbinary college kid, breaking the news of their divorce. Even though we don’t see them together, we can feel the tension and strain in all of their relationships from a mile away. Their lives are all about to change drastically, but they can’t be bothered to notice it yet, because they’re too preoccupied with who’s going to keep the house, and what’s stopping them from staying together after all this time.

It isn’t until here, at the end of the pilot’s first act, that we’re introduced to the inhabitants of the Ghosthouse, who aren’t really inhabitants at all, in the traditional sense. There are no physical lifeforms in the ship itself, just the disembodied screams of the convicts uploaded to its hard drives. And the effect of finally being plunged into the ship is an extremely haunting experience that’s also parceled throughout the series. First, from a distance as Graham an unnamed podcaster go on a tour of the outside of the facility, and later much more up close, as he and other volunteers are briefly connected to the ship’s hard drive themselves.

Graham finds a new purpose in life after discovering the sinister truth of the Ghosthouse. The Nevada Project, led by professor Brooke Harris, seeks to free these political prisoners from their painful existence by extracting their consciousnesses and putting them into the bodies of human volunteers willing to house them forever. It is an extreme solution to an even more extreme problem, and one with an often chilling effect, as we meet more of these volunteers who no longer only speak for themselves.

Shapiro applies to the program and travels to Red Camp, their base of operations, in order to be interviewed by Brooke and her second Dierdre, as well as the first few other successful Acceptances. He’s put through the wringer as they play psychological mind games with him, forcing him to convince them he should be able to use the bathroom, and then wear a weighted backpack he isn’t allowed to take off, even when he sleeps. This isn’t meant to torture him, but to demonstrate what his life will be like: with every single choice, even ones that may have previously felt automatic, now requiring prior discussion.

It’s at the halfway point that the world-building kicks into high gear and the series focus becomes weighted more heavily toward alien conspiracy than family drama. After learning that something has gone wrong with Graham’s Acceptance, we’re treated to a flashback episode that follows Brooke as she first comes to Red Camp and develops the technology that will allow for the aliens’ liberation. We also learn more about Brooke’s assistant, Liz, and Robin, the second with whom she has developed a romantic relationship, and Corey, a traumatized young soldier who abandons his post in the military in order to offer himself up to his second, Isaiah.

Afterward, once Graham and his second, Joshua, wake back up, we finally learn more about who those aliens really are, and why they were trapped in the Ghost House in the first place. And what will happen now that the midterm elections have passed and the Democratic President no longer has a Democratic Senate majority at his disposal for this kind of humanitarian project. And yet, through all of that, we never lose sight of the fact that these characters that we’re meeting and the relationships they’re developing carry the most propulsive narrative thrust the series has to offer.

The idea of symbiotic first contact with extraterrestrial beings isn’t new for Mac Rogers and the Gideon Media team. Fans of their podcast work may think back to the bonkers ending of Steal the Stars where (Editor’s note: SPOILER ALERT!!!) Dak finds true love in congress with Moss, the alien she has stolen from the secret government facility where she once worked. Or, earlier still, in The Message, as the Cypher Group are finally able to break the code inherent in the titular message itself. But the concept goes back even further for their team, to The Honeycomb Trilogy, a piece of experimental theater put on in New York City first in 2012 and again in 2015.

The Honeycomb Trilogy tracks the history of an alien invasion from the vantage point of a single-family living room across three one-act plays. In the first part, we learn of a team of scientists that have made contact and invited the alien species to earth. In the second, a few years have passed and the aliens have enslaved humanity and forced them to do their bidding. But it’s the third part where the comparison to Give Me Away finally comes in because we see a world where one of the scientist’s descendants has led a successful rebellion against the Hivemind, and are treated to a human sympathizer who has agreed to share their body with one of the surviving creatures.

When I have a chance to speak with Rogers about the recurring themes in his work, he isn’t a stranger to these comparisons, and in fact welcomes them: “I’ve my piece with the fact that I’m gonna go back to certain wells, as long as I flavor the water a little bit differently each time.” And flavor the water differently he has because while body snatching is an idea that stretches back nearly ten years for him, the execution in Give Me Away allows for a completely new spin on the situation. Rather than giving us another Hivemind like in The Honeycomb Trilogy, who manifest as a massive and terrifying insectoid with the power to subjugate the human race, this series places all of the power and the onus into the human’s hands. And begs the question, for Rogers, “What kind of people would sign up for that? So in a certain way, the story could become a portrait of the motivations people have for doing good things.”

And this question is asked of Graham over and over again, both by the people running The Nevada Project and the family he’s, in a way, leaving behind. What will his relationship with his kid Talia be like, now that they’ll never be able to spend a day alone together again? And why will he fight to save an alien consciousness, when he couldn’t even be bothered to fight to save his relationship with Morgan? And why is he so willing to give up his job of multiple decades in order to do so?

The other major difference between Give Me Away and Gideon Media’s previous works is that it isn’t a limited series. We aren’t treated to a complete story and have instead been introduced to a massive ensemble that leaves us begging for more. More of the brilliant interpersonal relationships that Jordana is able to pull out of the actors. More of the governmental conspiracy as both the military and the Senate react to what is going on in Red Camp. And more of the Acceptances themselves, which allow performers like Sean Williams (who plays Graham and his second, Joshua) and Lori Elizabeth Parquet (who plays Brooke and Dierdre) the chance to each play two wildly different characters simultaneously.

Give Me Away asks us if there really is such a thing as unselfish altruism, or if the good deeds we commit have more to do with something we perceive as missing about our own internal lives. It begs us to consider what we might do, if we were in Graham’s position, grappling with a family and world who no longer need us as much as they used to, and something (or someone) else did. I truly cannot wait to hear how all of the disparate threads that were left dangling in its thrilling finale come together in season two and beyond.