“Devs” on FX on Hulu

Cafe Society
1

Is anyone watching this? I was surprised to find no thread about it because it seems perfect for this board. I guess it’s kind of niche, since it’s not even on the FX cable channel but only on their new imprint within Hulu.

But it’s created, written, and directed by Alex Garland, who is obviously a high profile filmmaker, and not only are the cinematography and production design stellar, but it engages with some pretty heavy sci-fi philosophy. Plus it’s just really intense. I would in fact warn people that if they can’t handle super stressful plot developments that feel like a gut punch, they probably ought to stay away.

2

I’m on the fence about it so far. I expect to be increasingly disappointed by their handling of the central SF conceit (a computing project I won’t describe any further to avoid spoilers), and the surrounding story so far is fairly run of the mill.

3

I love me some Alex Garland: 28 Days Later, Sunshine, Never Let Me Go, Ex Machina, Annihilation? Hell yes, sign me up! (I am cautiously excited to see his Halo movie. Master Chief!)

The problem is that it’s on Hulu, which I only consider to be worth a yearly one-month binge. I’m waiting until the next season of Handmaid’s Tale is fully available (August?) before doing my next month of Hulu.

Side note: What in the heck is “FX on Hulu”? If I do a normal Hulu subscription for a month, will I get Devs or do I need to pay more for the FX “channel”, similar to Amazon Prime channels?

4

In terms of what you have to pay for and all that, it’s functionally not much different from it being just a Hulu show–except that it will be found in the “FX on Hulu” section, and have a little FX icon on the screen. If you’re interested in the behind-the-scenes aspects of TV production, though, FX’s chief John Landgraf is kind of a legend in terms of developing and curating quality content, as well as being a kind of philosopher king. And even though the “FX on Hulu” content is not available on the “terrestrial cable” channel or whatever they call it, it’s still developed/overseen by Landgraf, which is meaningful to me.

5

I’m going to attempt to spoiler tag this, but I’m a few years out of practice.

I’m enjoying the show so far. The reveal of what the mysterious tech is all about (as of episode 3) reminded me of one of my favorite books, which I will recommend here for those who are interested:

The book is The Light of Other Worlds by Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter. It takes a classic hard sci-fi approach of imagining one new technology and then following that through to its logical conclusion. In this case, the discovery is that spacetime is punctured by huge numbers of submicroscopic wormholes through which information can be passed. In practice, this means that you can look into any spot on the planet any time you want. I can sit in my living room and peer into my neighbors’ bedroom or the White House or the bottom of the ocean. The concept of privacy instantly disappears as people post videos of politicians cheating on their spouses or the Pope pooping or whatever else. The initial response is to try to legislate the problem away, which obviously fails.

As the consequences of this technology continue to be felt, the next iteration arrives - the ability to look not only around the present, but also into the past, similar to what appears to be happening in Devs. From there, things get more and more interesting. Highly recommended, especially if you find the concept of this show intriguing and want to explore it more.

6

Definitely some Ex Machina vibes going on with this show. It’s different, obviously, but there are some rhyming themes. I’m enjoying it so far.

But, goddamn, Hulu fucking chopped my enjoyment in half with its teasers.

First episode, I’m just settling in, just barely getting my mind around all of the “what’s that about?” moments, just starting to really let the flavor of the intrigue Garland is creating settle in and envelop the tongue…

and BANG! “Ms. Peacock did it in the drawing room with the candlestick!” “The island is purgatory!”

WTF, Man. Let Garland tell me what the show is about in his own damn time. The next three episodes I’m not watching the story unfold, I’m just waiting for it to catch up with what I already know is going to happen.

7

Smeghead, I have read some other Clarke but not that one. Sounds really cool!

Orr, I guess I was lucky as I did not see those previews. I always avoid all previews (or even descriptions) of movies and TV for just this reason. I had no idea what the show was about until I watched it unfold.

A really fascinating issue the tech tycoon raised in the most recent episode was when he posed the quandary: “what if we look a half hour in the future and see that you cross your arms, but then you decide to defy this and refuse to cross your arms?” Yeah, good question: what WOULD happen, if “we are all on tramlines”? She responds that not to worry, the tramlines are real and the employee who is causing them trouble will soon be dead–but she never really engages with his specific thought experiment about the crossing of arms.

8

Just watched the finale, and I felt they really stuck the landing. My issues with predestination in a world where people can see the “tramlines” yet generally not change anything, were not entirely cleared up—but Garland came a lot closer than I expected. And the whole ride was such a mind bending, thought provoking trip, definitely not like anything else on TV.

Bonus: I finally let Hulu steer me back to “Legion” S2, which I had abandoned 10 minutes in after liking the first season. Hulu kept insisting over the past few Thursdays, “You watch ‘Devs”, you must love this show, c’mon. As it turned out, once I finally caved (being fresh out of my new mindfuck of a show and craving another hit of WTF) they were right. I don’t know what it was about that first 10 minutes that derailed me, but that’s a really cool show too, in a little bit different way.

9

Wife and I have been watching this, slowly. My wife isn’t enjoying it as much as me, but she’s not *not *enjoying it enough to give me the go-ahead to finish watching it on my own, so we watch an episode every now and then when she doesn’t feel like watching anything else.

I really enjoyed “Ex Machina” and appreciated the philosophical and practical questions raised. I watched a PBS special years ago on the difficulties in getting an AI to understand things humans understand easily without the AI existing in a human-like form. For example, not understanding that, for a person shaving, the razor is not part of their body but a tool being used. Or, once someone dies, they stay dead. I thought Ex Machina did an interesting job of dealing with similar issues.

I’ve been enjoying the slow burn and gradual reveals of the show, and I like the issues being raised in Devs. But although I’m far from an expert in them, sometimes it has a little too much of a “Physics for Dummies / Philosophy 101” vibe for me. For example in episode 6, which we just finished last night:

When Katie is telling everything to Lily (well, almost everything), explaining how all existence is an endless chain of cause and effect, she illustrates this by asking Lily to name a truly random event. Lily comes up with a few kind of lame examples, which Katie easily shoots down by explaining how each example actually has a number of causes. I was waiting for Lily to say “the exact time of decay of a single radioactive particle”, which I would think her character would have known. My guess is the writers probably thought of that, but didn’t want to get into that whole can of worms.

Also, I thought this was kind of a silly plot hole in an earlier episode:

Jamie can tell the video of Lily’s boyfriend setting himself on fire was faked because the fire effect was duplicated: two identically appearing sets of flames side by side. So, a hugely powerful multi-billion dollar tech company that is tampering with the very existence of space and time fakes self-immolation with what amounts to an amateurish video clone stamp job? I know programmers aren’t typically good with visuals and graphics, but it seems like they’d have at least one competent graphic designer / video guy on payroll.

Couple more random observations:
[ul]
[li]Nick Offerman is great in this[/li][li]That giant Amaya statue is creepy AF[/li][/ul]

10

I finished it last night and my impression from the initial episodes didn’t change much. It’s a show that thinks it’s a lot cleverer than it is, and, considering its length, doesn’t truly engage with the core concepts as much or as cleanly, as I think it should.

I found the ending to be dissatisfying and full of holes and missed opportunities.

11

Solost, I have seen other people complain about the “philosophy for dummies” nature of that scene between Lily and Katie. I understand their impatience, as I too have been thinking about these issues for years, weighing in on free will debates between Sam Harris and Daniel Dennett, etc. But there aren’t enough people like us to support a TV show with this budget. They need to hold the hands of viewers who dig slick-looking sci-fi but have not previously grappled with these concepts.

I still think they have pushed this philosophical exploration further than we could really have any expectation for on a corporate Hollywood production.

As for the fake flames, keep in mind that they never expected Lily to get an actual copy of the video file.

12

Good points, SlackerInc. Regarding the video file though, it would have been meant to pass police inspection. Even assuming the police bought the self-immolation setup, it was pretty amateurish. The gang at CSI (the original, with Gil Grissim) would have seen through that in 5 minutes :slight_smile:

13

Fair. Although would they be suspicious of a big Google type company though?