I’ve been seeing ads for the new series called Beyond, for weeks now. I was really looking forward to seeing it.
But right off the bat there were problems … well, at least for me.
At the start you see a young Holden about to enter high school, drinking a beer with his best friend. This puts him at 14 or 15 years old. They are very clear at the very start where the two best friends are saying they are about to enter high school.
Fast forward 12 years and that makes him 26 or 27.
The problem is, he looks barely 18. He is 24 in real life.
The little brother who at the start of the show was a couple years younger than him, is now 12 years later in college. If he was 10 to 12 or so at the start, he would now be 22 to 24.
Most people graduate college at 21.
However in the first episode of the series Holden asks his little brother how old he is now and he says 17. This means his little brother at the start would have only been 5 years old.
Here are two images of the little brother. Obviously he’s not a 5 year old. He’s 10 if he’s a day!
If this “12 year coma” was such a key point in the story, why not make the characters obviously older or maybe the 12 years significantly less to match the new ages of the characters. It just doesn’t make sense.
In real life the man who plays the character of Holden’s younger brother is actually 25, a year older than the man who play’s Holden’s character is, in real life.
But to the show’s credit, Jonathan Whitesell does look way younger than Burkely Duffield.
When they re-introduce the best friend character, as an adult, he’s now working as a high school counselor, working on finishing his PhD. This matches up as the average student takes 8.2 years to get through the PhD program, and is 33 years old before they finally get their PhD.
Freeform which used to be the ABC Family Channel is known for teen shows like The Fosters, Shadowhunters, Pretty little Liars, Switched at Birth, and Cheer squard, it seems out of the ordinary for them to green-light a show meant for people in their mid to late 20s,
Then again maybe they are trying to break out and bring in a new age group. Their show Party Girl is about a 27 year old and Ben and Lauren Happily Ever After is a show for the Bachelor fans, which is most people with females in that 21 to 35 age group.
So back to the show itself … what do you think? Were you annoyed as I was about the age issues? To me it was so distracting. I had a hard time focusing on the show because I kept trying to do the math in my head.
Age discrepancy aside, I like the show. I think it has a lot of potential.
Update: I decided to binge watch the whole series. In episode 6 they reveal that he was 13 the summer before he went into a coma, making him 14 or near it a year later and he is now 25.
