Vantages
In a welcome respite from the creeping funk of the times, LostFoundry Streaming is giving the people what they want. Somebody’s got to. Season 2 of Alphas by the Bay is here and the first episode took us on a trip, man.
Jenya Goes East! for a series of fancy business soirées in tastefully lit hot spots on the eastern seaboard. CEO Jenya Zhao and the Sherwood app are being courted by all the movers and hand shakers that keep the Old Coast in the black. Community Relations lead Mathilde Hummel rides shotgun for support and some home cooking. (More on that later.)
Over an ironic Lobster Nü-berg at the Millennium Tower, Jenya and Mathilde huddle with the Biotech Brahmin who have led their own not-insignificantly fizzy economy over the last decades in Boston. Creating a world where Wellness can be further defined and packaged, they see a natural affinity between Sherwood’s social mission and their own focus on health diagnostics. And they have some Big Boy Financial backing looking to make a match. A powerful bi-coastal marriage that would link tradition and innovation seamlessly, they say.
Jenya explains Sherwood is actually a cooperative affair and it would take more than a cannily crafted PR pitch to appeal to her Merries. The Newton Nabobs counsel her not to miss certain opportunity during these uncertain times. Operations that once looked formidable can perish all too quickly given the general national tenor. She thanks them for their concern and asks them to pass the tartar sauce.
The Sherwood gals grab their seldom used winter wear from coat check and head off to a dingy house club plastered with flyers of never-known bands for some Glitch Hop and Brown Derbies. A couple of guys pique their interest as they make their way to the dance floor to show off their classic shuffling. The ladies are more interested in cutting shapes with each other but the bros are just happy just be in the game. (The women’s T-steps looked sharp!)
Back in ‘Frisco (yes, I know) the Sherwood office is humming. But it’s an efficient hum. The team has grown considerably and there is now signage and branding covering the walls. The décor is significantly up-leveled but at least there are no framed Vision Statements or Shackleton quotes. CFO Pascal Freemantle runs a morning check-in with crack developers Duc Parrish and Amrita Vevo on plans for rolling out the app to new markets. While there is little in the way of application hurdles handling user load, they want to proceed cautiously so as not to overwhelm their brittle hardware currently being upgraded.
Pascal makes it clear they want this done right, but it needs to be done on time. There’s a lot riding on a successful push of their pilot program, including some strategic partnerships at the state level. The increased user base will stabilize key relationships which means additional funding for him to work with.
There’s an interesting mix of cities listed on the white board: Madison, Springfield, and Philadelphia are circled, while Minneapolis and Tucson have been crossed out. Amrita assures Pascal that both the hardware and app extensions will be on time. Duc’s face tightens a bit but Pascal doesn’t catch it.
Meanwhile, the Green Ball big board lists all the open cases. Golden Bay Online Academy tops the list while Cabot Barley is all the way at the bottom with no activity for months. Hmm.
Back in the chilly morning air on Mass Ave, Mathilde and Jenya look a little worse for wear from their late night. Mathilde groans at the ticket on the windshield of her rental and wonders what it felt like in yesteryear when you could just crumple it up and throw it in garbage. Now there’s no way to hide.
“I’m aware that is precisely what Sherwood is meant to prevent. I just wonder how it felt to not be known.”
We all do.
They lurch into traffic, changing lanes a couple of times for the onramp to 93-South. The music stays off and they silently watch the morning commuters grind through the dirty weather. Along their route to Rhode Island, they bat ideas back and forth about life.
Mathilde thinks the app is well architected but what really runs it is the community organizing. Jenya sees the situation completely inverted. For her, decades of community activism have yielded paltry results for the underserved. Her platform is a super-powered weapon to cut through the corrupt forces that limit social progress. While each concede a little ground, there is some mutual eye-rolling that the other doesn’t get it. Looks like we’ve got ourselves a bonafide Hegelian dialectic on our hands, folks! The radio goes on.
A quick stop in Mathilde’s hometown of Woonsocket, RI eases the tension. Mother and Papa Hummel bustle around getting lunch ready and give Mathilde all sorts of things they’ve saved up for her since they’ve last seen her. It’s a cute scene but it’s actually Jenya who enjoys the parental warmth the most.
Meanwhile, Pascal burns the midnight renewable energy at home crunching numbers and kettle chips when partner Kasia Tate returns late from her own high-powered analytics job. They talk about her many moves up the office ladder and she not so subtly grills him on all the extra work he’s putting in on the intra-city rollout. He should want even more of the pie, she opines. When he refuses to engage, Kasia pushes. “Only you put a limit on how high you could climb at Sherwood. I’m sure, she’s not taking less for you.” What there is to be taking at a start-up, I’m not exactly sure but both Pascal and I think better of bringing that up in the wee hours during the work week.
Across town in their cramped apartment, Duc soothes a new bundle of responsibility while wife Nancy showers. One wall of the living room has been painted pale green with a crib in the corner for a nursery feel. Duc refers to it as Papa’s Pop-up. (This show is really pushing it.)
Crossing over the Benjamin Franklin bridge, the emissaries from Sherwood find themselves surrounded by the historic Georgian and Federal Style buildings in The Birthplace of America. They wind their way to the Drexel campus to meet with several university officials looking to partner with private entrepreneurs along with other area schools Penn and Temple. Their goal is to build an “incubator of excellence” on their campuses with access to endowments and government funding with Sherwood on board as a model course creator. In addition, the school of Public Health and the Department of Criminology want to co-sponsor the Sherwood service roll-out to schools to aid community building, monitoring and response. The proposal has the attention of the Mayor’s Office and the State’s Attorney General.
Jenya and Mathilde are in synch and they paint a picture of private enterprise and civic cooperation to tackle neighborhood problems left to molder for too long. When Jenya inquires about funding and logistics, they learn from Chancellor Peabody that the initiative involves key sponsorship from national companies, including organic grocery upstart Nature Stop. It all sounds provisionally okay to the Sherwood team, who has already targeted several east coast cities for expansion. Partnering with a well-established presence in the city will help sort out red tape and provide entrée to further halls of influence.
Just as the academics are about to break for afternoon cocktails, a record scratches in the cozy wood-paneled room. Enter Derek Bonafair, SVP from Nature Stop headquarters who just got in from NYC. He greets everyone with a firm handshake and offers Jenya a friendly wave. “You look great” he mouths at her as the color drains from her face. When introduced by the chancellor, Jenya forces a smile. “We’ve met before.” Seems like they’ve done more than meet.
Additional Reflections:
Pascal’s got a beard! It’s got good coverage and he’s not taking it up too high on the neckline like most shrinking heads in SF. (Yes, that’s my first critical observation of season 2.)
Mathilde’s social worker parents were amazing. Now we know where she gets it from!
And she definitely needs those newspaper clippings and used books. “Faulkner for a buck. Can you believe it?”
Joe Cicchetti just wanted to name check Woonsocket, right? Ditto on the fried quahogs for lunch.
We learn Jenya promised her mom she’d take care of her dad and ne’er do well brothers. It’s implied that Mrs. Zhao isn’t with us anymore though no further details are offered. (Even after Mathilde’s prodding.)
Amrita is going zero-waste. While the mason jars and bamboo travel fork are understandable, the glass straw is indefensible. How about don’t use straws after second grade?
Pascal and Kasia’s new house in Sea Cliff is ridonk. Somebody’s got some deep pockets.
Some sharp-eyed viewers caught that actor Tom Davey (Derek Bonafair) is Catnip from The Carnevale Conundrum. I knew his voice but I couldn’t recognize him without the mask.
That Glitch Hop in the club was decent, right? Shazam tells me the main track was Unity by The Fat Rat.