Soulmates: Season 1

By: Amos Lassen

"SOULMATES"

The Soul Particle

Amos Lassen

Watching "Soulmates" is like being part of a dream. It is set in the near future after the discovery of the "soul particle" and looks at what it means to live in a world where you can be paired, through scientific proof with the one person who is destined to be your soulmate.

The first episode opens with an advertisement for Soul Connex, the company that performs the infamous test. We are to a world that's just starting to change to make room for this. We get a primer for a universe with soulmates and an intense examination of all that means. The episode follows a couple who married and started a family before the soul particle was discovered and now have to wonder whether what they've built together is enough. So we get off to a strong start. There is a problem though; the episode only serves as a starting point and does what the rest of the episodes don't have to. The first season's remaining five episodes are more or less a free-for-all, telling stories that exist in a world with soulmates but could, theoretically, be told in one in which they don't.

That does not mean that the stories told aren't all good, or that they don't have anything to do with the premise that unites them. Some good questions are raised-What do you do if you're already married and then you find your soulmate? What do you do if your soulmate is dead? What do you do if your soulmate isn't what you expect in relation to what you know about yourself?

But an hour is just not long enough to explore those questions. We do not have much of a chance to know or care about the characters.

The production value is high, and the performances are good with a new cast for each episode. Co-creators William Bridges and Brett Goldstein try to give us something daring and new but they are not as successful as they could have been.

The idea of "Soul Connex", set 15 or so years in our future is fascinating "Soulmates" tells some of the stories we might immediately expect from this premise but despite the promise and excellent acting, we get no real feeling from the series.