Devs, Episode 1.2 Review

By Mark

Back with Devs and the episodes starts with Forrest (Offerman) comforting Lily (Mizuno), explaining that she can take all the time she needs, her salary is safe, she is safe.

He also tells her about the loss of his daughter Amaya, who he named the company after, but Lily is lost, not listening, she excuses herself.

She heads to her ex-boyfriends again, Jamie, Jin Ha (“Hot Air”, “Bogo (Short)”), and convinces him to help her and crack what is on Sergei’s phone. Somewhat reluctantly, he agrees.

Very quickly, a bit to quickly, he discovers that the Sudoku app is actually an old messaging service from the Russian state, meaning Sergei must have been a spy. He cracks it, changes the password and Lily heads home to read the messages, to see if she can piece together what’s happened.

Meanwhile Kenton, Zach Grenier (“RoboCop”, “The Good Wife (TV)”), Forrest’s security guy, visits Forrest at home, a surprisingly meagre place, which he drives to in a meagre car, for someone who, in Kenton’s words, has ‘more money than god’.

Kenton advises Forrest that he thinks it’s all over when it comes to Sergei. The police have a body and film evidence of the act. Though he says it’s not over for Lily, a pause, and then they both agree emotionally only.

Back at Devs, Stewart, Stephen McKinley Henderson (“Lady Bird”, “Lincoln”), and Lyndon, Cailee Spaeny (“Bad Times At The El Royale”, “Vice”), are sat in front of a large screen, watching static.

Katie (Pill) enters and, as she does so, an image begins to emerge; a man on a cross, other crucified people behind, not just a man, Jesus, they’re watching Jesus on the cross. The trio look on, awestruck.

The image, as we later discover, is a 2,000 year old projection, but not everyone, except Stuart, is happy about it. Forrest wants perfection, or nothing. Stuart Lyndon don’t think that’s possible without a computer the size of the planet.

Forrest, annoyed, excuses everyone, fires up the machine and views a fuzzy image of his daughter, sat on her bed, blowing bubbles. The real reason for the machine?

Lily meanwhile is back home and reading through Sergei’s Russian app messages and then decides to send one herself. Someone responds, they arrange to meet, and then the app deletes itself.

The man she meets is Russian and says his name is Anton, Brian d’Arcy James (“X-Men: Dark Phoenix”, “First Man”), who works for the Russian State. They chat, he says Sergei didn’t commit suicide and if she wants to know the truth she should work with him. Kenton watches on from afar.

As the episode ends, we see Kenton and Anton fighting, no outcome.

It’s another gripping episode for Garland’s mini-series. It feels like he’s shown his hand early; we know what the machine is, what it does, we know why Forrest wants it…what are we missing? What else is going on here?

Originally published at https://www.ocmoviereviews.com on April 16, 2020.