User Reviews

The soundtrack is amazing and it feels like something important is about to happen very soon, but sadly it never does. Lily has a face that does not show any emotion or tries to appear deep and fails miserably. I still have faith as there is one more episode to go but, overall, i found it quite boring. P.S. Jaime didn't have to die. He was the only character I didn't hate.

Devs is very, very well made. From the cinematography to the music, to the use of sound, to the acting (well, maybe not the lead, but that recital by Stephen McKinley Henderson is sublime).

But while the execution is great and the concept is at times fascinating, the problem is that it's also so glaringly wrong: not in a nitpicky sort of way, but exactly because it tries to be just correct enough to make sense. So it suggests a more or less plausible (at least to suspend disbelief) mechanism of 'prediction' but then never answers the most obvious question: how could their machine ever have enough data to do what it does? That's just skipped over - I know there is no good answer that could be given so it's best that none is, but it's such an obvious problem with what it proposes. Then, it (seems so far that it) argues for both a deterministic universe AND a multiple worlds interpretation at the same time; and of course, it makes the classic film/series blunder of reducing infinite worlds/outcomes to two. In this episode for example, Lyndon is told he will balance on the ledge, to prove he is right about the multiple-world interpretation, because in the universes he lives, he is accepted back into Devs (or something, it was not a very convincing argument to throw your life for). Except of course, there isn't a number of possible universes where he falls and another set of them where he doesn't; there are also universes he refuses to do it. There are also infinite universes where he, and all life anywhere, simply doesn't exist, but in any case, NOT doing it is what would prove the many-worlds. Conversely, doing exactly what he is told he will do suggests that the many-worlds interpretation is wrong and this is the ONLY possible outcome - but that does not seem to be what the series is suggesting, based on how the scene is shot. Arguably, the very fact of seeing what happens means "the wavefunction has collapsed", and the experiment has been ruined. Lastly, I hope the last episode explains what Forest actually wants, because so far everything he has worked towards is really not that much more than watching home videos.

That said, it's still a great episode; but I think overall judgment needs to wait for the finale.