By Robert Scucci
| Published
Have you ever worked for a start-up company that overpromises and underdelivers while simultaneously proclaiming that they’re synergizing outside of the box? Outside of having an established “influencer strategy” to move units, the same could be said about the culture of Mars-based company, Mars.ly, in the Max Original Series, Fired on Mars. Rife with corporate doublespeak, dubious intention, and nobody’s best interest in mind aside from their own bottom line, Mars.ly’s colonization efforts offer a bleak look at the future– one that suggests no matter where you live or work, you’re always going to get the runaround, and you’re almost always being watched while raiding the supply room for your new labeling obsession as it begins to take hold.
Creatives Always Get The Shaft
Fired on Mars is a story about Jeff Cooper (Luke Wilson), a graphic designer who booked a one-way ticket to work for Mars.ly, the first established colony on the red planet. After working for the company for a few short months, Jeff is told by the higher ups that his job has been deemed redundant, and his services are no longer required. Jeff maintains a long-distance relationship with his Earthside girlfriend, Hannah (Chase Bernstein), but they’re just going through the motions because Jeff has lost all sense of personal and professional direction, and Hannah is doing well for herself without uprooting her entire life to join the Mars.ly colony.
Oh yeah, and since his ticket was one-way, Jeff is just left to his own devices on the company’s dime while he patiently waits for a new job to open up.
Looking for a sense of purpose in Fired on Mars, Jeff befriends Jaxton (Cedric Yarbrough), the super-motivated assistant to Regan Smith (Pamela Adlon), the head of Mars.ly’s Dreamspiration division, which is just a fancy way of saying Human Resources.
Functioning as a sort of executive assistant to Reagan – the most emotionally abusive and volatile person that could ever be put in charge of HR – the ever-clumsy Jeff causes disaster after disaster, resulting in cryo-sleep punishments that get sabotaged, nearly killing him (on more than one occasion), leaving him once again unemployed and under heightened watch by company executives, Brandon O’Brien (Sean Wing) and Darren Young (Tim Heidecker).
Unexpected Consequences Of Corporate Oversight
Totally unaware of the complex inner-workings of Mars.ly in Fired on Mars, Jeff once again finds himself in search of a new job, and gets relegated to performing manual labor in the form of moving rocks from one surface of the planet to another. Working alongside a literal walking grunt named Sluggo (Carson Mell) under the supervision of Crystal (Amara Karan), who works for a secret organization known as the Buckys – a group that plans to build their own Mars colony that breaks away from the corporate, self-serving hellscape that Mars.ly has created – Jeff finds himself longing for a new life while trying to stay in the good graces of his ever-watching Mars.ly superiors.
Across eight episodes, Fired on Mars has no qualms showing its disdain for corporate structures in the sense that Jeff is given a high-level graphic design job to keep him quiet about all of his near-death experiences working for Mars.ly.
Only focused on their upcoming Marsiversary ceremony, which is instrumental in obtaining additional funding from shareholders and recruiting new employees from Earth while brushing any possible perceived misstep under the rug, Mars.ly unwittingly sets themselves up for failure because Jeff has had such a unique view of the entire operation that he can no longer stand being caught between the “ideal” lifestyle that the company is selling to its constituents, and the revolution that’s happening just under the radar.
A Masterclass In Cause And Effect
Fired on Mars is tightly written, as every single effort that Jeff makes to reinvent himself epically backfires, leading him to his next assignment, consequently exposing Mars.ly as the evil corporation that it has always been. Rewarding the viewer with a payoff for every seemingly innocuous detail and passing exchange, Fired from Mars has zero fat in its storytelling thanks to its deliberate delivery. Warranting repeat watches so you can unpack every single context clue along the way, this is a satire that you don’t want to cryo-sleep on, and you’ll have no problem burning through its eight-episode run in a single night because of how smoothly each episode flows into the next.
Fired on Mars is a Max Original, and can be streamed with an active subscription.
