SUMMARY
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Like-Life Productions built a set to document the life of a married couple in the show “Stuck in the ‘90s”. This sounds innocent enough, but when they had a daughter (Jess), the show’s watcher base dramatically increased. To protect their ratings, Jess’s parents don’t tell Jess that the “town” that they live in is actually a TV set. Over time, the producers keep hiring a bunch of actors to play as Jess’s neighbors, teachers, friends, or extras. They plant a bunch of cameras and microphones everywhere (except for in bathrooms, aside from a couple microphones under the school bathroom sinks). Even though a female editor is in charge of editing any sensitive footage (such as footage of Jess changing clothes in the school locker room), the producers’ actions are a violation of privacy. The whole world has watched Jess’s temper tantrums growing up, they buy merchandise that have pictures of her bad haircut from 7th grade, and they know all of her secrets.
MORALITY ISSUES
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Besides the violation in Jess’s rights to privacy, the producers go to extreme measures to protect their revenue streams.
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Jess’s parents prohibit her from traveling too far (and cancel a trip to Disneyland that she begged for) to keep her within the set’s boundaries. They do this by pretending to be overprotective (or by coming up with excuses), when really, they are trying to keep up the illusion that the set is real life (so that Jess's performance won't be altered).
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Everyone is forced to “play their roles” instead of being authentic to Jess. The producers try to control Jess’s love life by setting her up with Patrick (by giving him padded shirts for fake muscles, hiring a stunt-double to give him the reputation of a star soccer player, staging a scene where he “saves” the lives of kindergarteners, and getting Jess’s “friends” to try to persuade her to go out with him).
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Jess’s guitar teacher hints to Jess about the idea that there’s more to life outside the town that they live in, and then he mysteriously “moves”. Later on, it’s indicated that he could have been killed for trying to expose the secret of the show to Jess.
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The producers speed up the storyline of Jess's sister’s “sickness” to write her off the show (so that Jess’s grieving process would be the viewer’s entertainment).
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The producers allow the audience’s votes to determine the course of what happens, even for things that shouldn’t be up for debate. For example, after Jess escapes, the majority of the audience votes to have the security team take whatever measures are necessary to bring her back, even if it involves hurting her.
Jess’s parents, as the show’s executive producers, admit that they kept putting off telling Jess about the show. They claim that they were going to tell her about it when she turned 18, but would they really have (if Jess didn’t start questioning things herself)?
People can do desperate things in desperate situations. Jess and Kipps aren’t perfect (as they do whatever it takes to gain their freedom, including stealing a car that they said they wanted for a “test drive”, breaking-and-entering into a stranger’s guest house for warmth, shelter, and food, and dining-and-dashing).
However, these acts pale in comparison to what other characters did out of greed.
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Jess’s childhood “best friend”, Tyler, presumably ran into a basketball she threw in gym class to guilt her into a conversation (to be promoted from an extra). Later on, when he reveals the secret of the show to her, he congratulates himself on the “romantic” performance he gave after Jess had developed feelings for him (even though he never actually had feeling for her) and tries to negotiate a “business deal” of passing along more information in exchange for keeping him in the show.
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After Jess and Kipps escape, the producers announce a $500,000 reward for anyone who can turn them in. This drives a couple to even shoot Kipps in the arm (as he tries to capture them).
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The Jess-look-a-like (who was a fan who agreed to help Jess and Kipps in exchange for all their memorabilia) was supposed to serve as a temporary decoy until Jess and Kipps escaped for good. However, in the end, she seems to actually take Jess’s place (and Jess’s parents treat her as if she were their daughter).
QUOTES
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Similar to how the real world was bigger than the TV set, life (in the Christian sense) is bigger than what happens on Earth (even though people do have more freedom on Earth than on a TV set).
“Six lessons in my guitar teacher, Harry, had what my parents described as a ‘psychotic break.’ He’d been showing me how to play ‘Landslide’ when he paused, staring at the mirror that hung across from our sofa. He asked if I’d ever wondered about the nature of reality. Did I ever feel, in my gut, that there was more to this world? That things were oppressively surface-level? Did I ever feel trapped in someone else’s delusion? …Harry never came back to our house. When we went back to Mel’s Music a week later, they said he’d moved in with his mother in New Jersey… I looked at my reflection in the mirror above our sofa, trying to see what Harry saw in it. Maybe I was smart not to say it out loud, but I still did question ‘the nature of reality.’ I did feel like everything was surface level” (25-26).
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Some things are inevitable, but actions that we take can change our story before the inevitable happens. For example, this is how Jess responds when asked about how her sick sister is doing:
“The fake answer is: she’s good, her spirits are up, and the doctors say she’s stable… The real answer is that it feels like we’re all on this train we can’t get off of. And we can see that there’s another train up ahead and we’re going to crash into it if we don’t do something, if something doesn’t change. But we can’t switch tracks and we don’t have control of the steering, and so we’re all just bracing for it. I keep wishing I could just slow everything down, like maybe if I had enough time they’d figure out a cure, or there’d be some medicine that really helped her. Maybe there’d be another way” (64).
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We need to take action for there to be progress.
“We wouldn’t have electricity or movies or museums with great art if people didn’t dream” (65).
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Talking with others can help us cope with stressful situations.
“Talking always made me feel better, like handing off bricks one by one until the weight of everything isn’t just on me” (87).
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People nowadays are too absorbed on their phones to be fully present in what’s around them. After Jess and Kipps escaped to a mall, people around them were too busy scrolling on their phones to recognize them.
“The only thing that saved us was people’s phones, their ‘devices’ I guessed, which held most of their attention. Everyone was looking down, checking something on their screens, or turning them to show someone else” (180).
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One of the head producers, Chrysalis, tries to guilt Jess into coming back by admitting that their TV set idea wasn’t perfect.
“The world isn’t a perfect place, and this isn’t some perfect story about perfect people. Part of growing up is realizing the adults around you have faults and flaws” (271).
But no apology can completely make up for betrayal (even if that betrayal came about by a bunch of small decisions).
“Chrysalis didn’t need to tell me the world wasn’t perfect, that much was apparent. It wasn’t beyond my ability to understand how it could happen, how the show might’ve started as one thing and turned into something else entirely, and my parents had just kept on every day, making hundreds of these small concessions that had destroyed us. They could be distraught, they could miss me. They could be human. It didn’t change how much it hurt” (273).
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Tragedy can have the power to bring people together and demonstrate their love. Kipps selflessly took a bullet to try to allow Jess to escape, Jess considered turning herself in just so that Kipps could get medical attention, and Sara put herself in danger to rescue Jess and Kipps. So thus, in the end, when Jess was in a car with Kipps, Sara, and Sara’s mom, she feels truly loved.
“I’d never felt so safe -- not even in Swickley, when I was home” (298).
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