THE GOOD STUFF A corporation owns everyone's dreams. REM sells bootleg ones out of the lining of his coat, in a parking lot, in broad daylight, and nobody walking past even looks at him. Every episode is one sale. You're the customer. The whole thing is shot through your glasses, so you never see your face, and neither does he. The pilot has REM working outside a big-box store. You walk up, he clocks you immediately, and he starts running you through the latest shipment. Dreams, fresh in, one color at a time. Then you ask him for something stronger. He always has something stronger. He'll judge you for it, and he'll sell it to you anyway. Where it goes next: same lot, same coat, a new customer every episode. That's the format, and the format is the joke. Whatever you came looking for, REM has a color for it and a speech to go with it. "This is what you're looking for." He says it every time, and it's always true. The pilot cuts right there, with the iridescent one already sold and no idea what's inside it. A spicy dream, or one last dinner with your parents on a school night. You decide what counts as stronger. The next episode opens that dream. And that's where the series starts showing its hand: every customer asks for one thing, but what they walk away with says a lot more about them than it does about REM.