What I am currently consuming to while away the time.
Reading Dune for the first time.
Watching S3 of Westworld
Rewatching Fargo, the series
JUST FINISHED: Watched Season One of Devs.
And Devs is what we’ll be discussing here.
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I bear no ill will nor have any feelings of superiority towards those who have watched Tiger King. But I’ve made a conscious choice to not watch the Netflix series, nor know even remotely what it’s about, save for random ephemera that I cannot avoid since I am brain damaged and spend many waking hours on Twitter. Seems like people like it! Good!
SPOILERS AHOY!!!!
Devs is helmed by Alex Garland, who rose to prominence as an author (of The Beach, which turned into a Moby-scored, Leo DiCap movie) and screenwriter (28 Days Later and Dredd) and then wrote and directed two excellent movies: Ex-Machina and Annihilation.
Nick Offerman plays against type as the founder of a quantum computing company who is bereft at the loss of his daughter years ago. Such that he named his company after her and is seemingly obsessed with either proving he was not responsible for her death or, as some speculated throughout the series, bringing her back to life.
Devs leads with a McGuffin: a Russian developer who works at the company is invited into top-secret Devs, a group within the company, and is so shocked by what they were working on, that learning its true mission led him to vomit.
But then he stole the code and was murdered for his transgression. Lily, her boyfriend who also works at the company, tries to figure out what really happened to him, which drives a lot of the action-based plot points. None of which are that interesting when the more interesting sci-fi concept looms.
Offerman’s character’s secondary motivation is to prove we live in a deterministic world that would absolve him of responsibility for the death of his daughter.
We soon learn that the quantum computer he and his team built can peer into the future - which has been pre-determined - except it cannot see past an incident involving Lily. So the entire show leads to that moment so Offerman’s character, his team, and you, the reader, can learn what happens in the point of inflection.
MORE SPOILERSSSSS AHOY
A quick spoiler warning (for not only Devs, but Twin Peaks and Lost)
We live in a post-Lost world. What I mean by that is it is hard for me (and I assume a lot of other people) to enjoy a piece of science fiction content without a lingering feeling of dread. That dread is on account of Lost, a show that broke more than a few hearts and a lot of minds along the way (and in a bad way; Twin Peaks, for instance, made minds melt in a good way - more on that below).
There has been no shortage of ink spilled on the lifespan of Lost and the creators and their initial vision and subsequent lack of focus. No need to re-litigate, but I believe (and let’s say for the sake of argument) that they did not expect that the show to last as long as it did and got caught up in more preposterous plot devices that could never pay off. And then the show had to end, and so it just sort of did with a thud.
If you never watched Lost, congratulations. If you did and it’s not too traumatic, remember back to the first moment you realized <spooky voice> all was not what it seemed and then think about…
The numbers and what they meant
I could go on. What a mess.
The phrase your mileage may vary would seemingly apply to a situation like this, but I really have yet to encounter someone who likes the ending and reflects fondly on the series. And rational minds could disagree, but I never particularly cared too much for the characters and their backstories; I was hooked by the mystery and it let me down.
However, we have experienced good shows with bad or inconclusively solved sci-fi or fantasy.
There’s Twin Peaks, which is an extension of David Lynch, who has zero interest in fan service or neat culminations or anything remotely resembling normal. Nothing in that show makes sense or
And there’s The X-Files, which likewise to Lost had no idea where it was going to go, and, in all honesty, creator Chris Carter much more favored the Monster of the Week arc, but spent enough credibility.
The X-Files fails as a project of plot coherence. As a rumination of science versus faith and of friends who find each other and know each other despite their differences, it’s titanic.
So, it goes. And so every time I begin to invest in a show with a science fiction plot, the echoes of Lost arise; this will end in a dissatisfying way.
If I can locate a truism, it’s that all science fiction requires credulousness, but the strains on it are more pronounced if you don’t find something else interesting to focus on. With Lost, nothing else was interesting. You needed to slog through everything else to get to it. And when the payoff failed, you felt like a fool.
Back to Devs
I won’t spoil what happens in the moment of inflection previously mentioned, but I will say that it reminds me that it’s incredibly hard to stick the landing in science fiction. Perhaps too many are daunted (myself included) to tackle story ideas because the more complex it becomes, the harder it is to tie up every loose end.
Devs was incredibly complex and therefore the loose ends abound. The disappointment is that Devs hewed more towards Lost in that, if you don’t like the payoff, you’re not going to appreciate what came before it as a good character study or enjoyable theatre. I still love Garland and enjoyed the show, but it feels like they had a smart premise and then backed into the landing. As many often do in sci-fi because they fall in love with the premise and find culmination is where the real work happens and the real difficulties lie.
The OFFICIAL God Damn Honey Question of the Week.
For me, it’s
Alex Garland
Denis Villeneuve
Jordan Peele
Shane Carruth
Christopher Nolan