Notes for season 2 episode 2, “Bad Code“
01:54 The hacking app that Reese sends to Fusco’s phone has an icon of a retractable blade knife (boxcutter).
08:20 [Bojack voice] It’s Character Actress Margo Martindale
08:45 I’m from the UK and I’ve never played The Oregon Trail. But it feels like everyone is now aware of it culturally, due to it being constantly referenced as a shared experience of American kids since the mid-80s. One thing that comes to mind now, is that a couple of years ago there was speculation that one of the first kids to ever play it may have been Prince.
09:43 Flowers for Algernon is an apt book, considering Root’s voiced frustration that humans, as a species, are incapable of improving themselves.
12:04 The credit card junk mail says “Visit us online at creditcard/cashrewards”. They’re not even trying with the fake URLs. Also, OCR-A on the address. But there’s something else obsolete about the letter that’s a bit of an anachronism…
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The barcode over the Texas address is a 52 bar binary code. It’s what’s known as a POSTNET type C code, but this form was replaced in 2009 by the Intelligent Mail barcode (which uses both ascending and descending bars). The episode is set in late 2012, although the USPS had postponed the final switchover to Jan 2013, so it’s still possible that the fictional credit card company had left it to the last minute to update their systems.
Unsurprisingly the code isn’t that of the Texas address given, but it is a valid code (not, ah, Bad Code). The binary is “10100 10010 00011 00011 01100 11000 10001 01001 01010 10100”, which translates to “9811607459”. The sum of the first 9 digits is 41. The check digit (9) should be 10 – mod(41, 10) = 10 – 1 = 9. So the ZIP+4 is “98116-0745”, which can be resolved to the mailing address “PO BOX 1745, SEATTLE WA 98116-0745”. (I wouldn’t have added this part if it was a residential address, inadvertently added by some production member.)
The post-2009 US barcodes are based on the RM4SCC 4-state barcodes introduced in the UK at some point before 2001. By 2023 they too have mostly been phased out in favour of standard ISO/IEC 16022 data matrixes, but you still see 4-state barcodes (containing routing/tracking details rather than just the address) added to envelopes during routing in the UK.
Ok, out of the rabbit hole.
12:27 “Look at the guy in the suit” someone mockingly says, as Reese enters the Texas bar. Indicating that the patrons are either roughnecks, or work for internet companies.
14:14 Carter assumes that Hanna must be alive because someone opened a bank account in her name after she disappeared. But doesn’t suggest the possibility of identity theft, even though there was a whole episode about it in the previous season.
15:00 Root has access to a top secret memo authorising “enhanced interrogation”. This episode aired a few weeks before the Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA torture was approved, and years before the report was made public (“We tortured some folk”). Even now, it feels like visiting strappado on fictional officials is the only catharsis available.
30:57 We briefly see another letter with an obsolete POSTNET barcode – but unlike the earlier one, this is bad code. “10100 11000 11011 11011 11010 00111 00110 0110” is too short, but also “11011” encodes as 12 in POSTNET two-out-of-five code, so wouldn’t actually be seen in a 0-9 zipcode.
33:57 Root speedruns Oregon Trail, so you know she’s hardcore.
37:28 Obligatory OCR-A on a CCTV image. Drink!
37:36 Despite looking at a news site article about Denton Weeks, the URL suggests Fusco was searching for “zambrano christopher” – which, as this is a character in a later episode, suggests things got mixed up producing the in-world graphics.
39:31 Reese guesses the code on the phone “44 42 11 24 33 43 44 33” was a tap code for “TRAINSTN”
42:00 Bear has savaged a rare first-edition Isaac Asimov – not clear which one, probably something covering the Three Laws.