This starts today and might be worth a spoiler thread.
(TV spoilers only please – anything from the book should still be spoiler-tagged!)
The Peripheral – SPOILER discussion
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I watched the first two episodes and enjoyed it. It feels nicely pacy to me – it doesn’t waste much time in getting stuck into the central ideas and their implications, and the plot and character motivations are all pretty clear so far.
I also think Chloe Grace Moretz is particularly good in it and carries the show to a large extent.
And I also like that the visual differentiation between past and future isn’t overdone (and both futures are believable extrapolations of our present).
A couple of the characters are a little bit cliché in the writing and performances, but it doesn’t hurt the show too badly. I’ll be back for more.
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This an entire series block drop or double start then weekly?
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This an entire series block drop or double start then weekly?
Double then weekly, looks like.
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It was good… the premise is dumb, but the show is good… CGM is really carrying the shit out of it.
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Well, that eye scene really put me off this.
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Well, that eye scene really put me off this.
If you’re choosing to watch something about futuristic VR headsets then you shouldn’t be put off by an ocular rift.
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I see what you did there
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Good episode again. With several recent high-profile series being fairly slow in terms of plot, it’s nice to have a show with some strong forward momentum and significant new developments every episode.
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I’m glad the explained the Jackpot relatively early into the show rather than try and drag it out, but I dunno if the AR CGI thing was the way to go? The dates and symbolism felt off. In the book it’s a bit more vague in that there were wars and terrorism and pandemics and so on, but the order is left vague. I also feel that you couldn’t necessarily get away with that sort of worldbuilding on TV up until relatively recently? The idea that most of humanity could die, and there’s enough left behind that even though a significant chunk of the world is run by the literal Russian mob, almost everyone lives a life of plenty is quite bleak in a lot of ways.
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Yeah that was quite a lot to absorb at the end there. It’s interesting stuff but I think more is going to be needed to make you buy the impact of it all on the future society.
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One thing in the novel is that a huge amount of the “people” in London are Michikoids just there to make it feel more inhabited. There are “cosplay zones” where it’s set up like part of the city from a historical timeframe, populated with Michikoids working like actors in a theme park, and humans there are expected to dress in period-appropriate clothes. IIRC they show up after Inspector Lowbeer is introduced, who really needs to arrive next episode because she’s awesome.
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I’m still enjoying this but it does feel like it’s lost a bit of momentum in the last couple of episodes. I hope it picks up again as it heads towards the end of the season.
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I shouldn’t have laughed at when Conner said “For fuck’s sake”, but I did.
Really enjoyed this one, and a lot of that was Inspector Lowbeer not disappointing. She’s not quite the same as the novel – she’s more subtle in her execution of power, but the force of her personality works so well here. And I really hope they do the whole (spoiler for the book) pre-transition version shows up in Flynne’s time thing
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Yeah, she’s a fun character and it’s nice to have such a big performance in the show to keep things interesting.
Enjoyed it again this week too. I like the way that the details of the future world are gradually being filled in – the section with the illusory people and buildings worked well.
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Haven’t caught up with the last one yet, but I quite liked the one before that. Yes, maybe not so much momentum there as it’s just a repeat of Someone Tries to Kill Flynn, but I liked the way it was all handled very much. Neat new character, pretty terse moments.
Looking forward to meeting Lowbeer.
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Just watched the last two eps, liked them a lot.
Lowbeer was great, I loved how they portrayed the character. The combat test sequence was fun, if a bit silly. Bit of a shame that Cherise got the better of Lowbeer. Well, for the moment. Loved how I was first rooting for Bob against the bigger assholes and then reminded my that he’s a monster himself. And the ending of the last episode was hugely surprising. Wouldn’t have thought Tommy had it in him, or that they’d go that way with him. It’ll be interesting to see what happens now – in the present, things are theoretically all wrapped up now, so either the plot will focus on the future or there’ll be conflict with Tommy, I suppose.
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Yeah the latest episode was decent. I thought the combat test thing was a bit hollow – it felt a bit like they had to have some action in the episode, but there was no drama or suspense in them fighting those bots, so it felt a bit empty to watch – but there was enough elsewhere in the way of plot development and interesting little reveals that it was still a good episode. Feels like things are building to a conclusion now. How many episodes in this first season?
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The show definitely feels like it’s getting into the twists and meandering as opposed to just adapting the novel like I feared would happen, and stuff like the combat sim really feels like it’s marking time. Or as much fun as Bob was, what was the point of him except to kill a couple of supporting characters who hadn’t done much?
Complaints aside, it’s still perfectly enjoyable and I’m very interested to see where they go with the new elements like Tommy’s expanded plot. In the novel he doesn’t do much at all.
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The show definitely feels like it’s getting into the twists and meandering as opposed to just adapting the novel like I feared would happen,
Well, the novel doesn’t exactly lend itself to adaptation, at least not to do a multi-season sci-fi action series. I can go along pretty well with the changes they’ve made to make it work. Including adding new external threats, like Bob, simply because there wouldn’t have been enough of those otherwise. It’s still a bit weird that they killed of Pickett (without him having kidnapped Flynn or anything!), provided he’s dead, because at the same time it feels like they’re leaving some conflicts on the table for season 2. (At least it would surprise me if they neatly wrapped up the plot this season and ended it like the novel.)
So are they going to introduce a new present-day threat in the last episode? Or leave the present in peace for the moment and focus on the conflict in the future?
I suppose they could introduce Matryoshka in the last episode, as a cliffhanger or something.1 user thanked author for this post.
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My guess is Corbell is still alive right now at least.
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So, according to Wikipedia next week is the last episode.
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There is a lengthy post-credit sequence this week, just so people are aware.
I think I need rewatch the episode to fully make sense of Flynne’s plan.
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Just watched the finale. Pretty open-ended for now but I’m still enjoying it. Hope a second season is confirmed soon (if it hasn’t been already).
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I think I need rewatch the episode to fully make sense of Flynne’s plan.
I think I got the gist of it even if the specific mechanics weren’t 100% clear. Presumably we’ll see more of the detail next season.
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There is a lengthy post-credit sequence this week, just so people are aware
Yeah, it was a odd one, felt more like a deleted scene that they wanted to get out there rather than being a particularly strong tease in its own right.
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Yeah, same here.
Still need to watch that post-credits scene, I hadn’t realised that there was one.
I’d agree with Jon that the episode felt rushed. Flynn’s plan also didn’t really become clear to me, which is probably a weak point… what I understood of it (creating another stub, possibly to sacrifice it instead of her world? Or maybe just to confuse everybody as to where she is? Or to create another copy of herself so that even if her own world is destroyed, there will be another Flynn with that information in her head?) feels a bit like a cop-out really as far as the story is concerned.
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My interpretation was that she creates an alternate present-day timeline branch that will have a (very recent and effectively identical) version of her in it, but scrambles the coordinates so that the big bad in the future can’t track her, then gets her sniper mate to kill her so that she’s dead in her reality and there’s no longer any reason for the big bad to nuke it – but there’s now an alternate branched version of her in the new reality who is essentially the same person but untraceable and who reuploads into the future in that final scene with Lowbeer.
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Ah yeah, that’s right. Already forgot little bits of what happened, cheers.
It’ll be interesting whether we get to see Conner and Burton from the old stub, or it’ll entirely focus on new stub personnel, which is basically the same only that that Conner didn’t have to shoot Flynn.
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Yeah, I don’t know how many timelines they’ll keep in play, but it’d be kind of weird to not acknowledge the “dead” reality at all.
Then again, it might get confusing if multiple alternate versions of the same people from different stubs can all upload themselves into the same single future.
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Creating a stub like they do in the show is a change from the rules of the novel, where the stub breaks off from a point in the post-Jackpot timeline rather than being able to make a stub break off from another stub. In the second novel Wilf and Lowbeer are interacting with a separate stub that was split off close to our present day.
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Not just Wilf and Lowbeer though, but also some of the people from the other stub. Stub-to-stub interaction, if you will.
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https://variety.com/2023/tv/news/the-peripheral-renewed-season-2-amazon-1235518073/
Guess I’ll finish watching the first season then.
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Thanks, might return to it then.
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Yeah, eyeball torturing is not a recurring motif, no worries.
It’ll be interesting where they’ll go with the show now that they’ve completely separated it from the novel.
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