Devs (1.1-1.2) - "This is forgiveness. This is absolution."

The first episode of Devs opens on a couple. The couple at the heart of the television show. The audience starts to get a sense of how much each of them loves and supports one another. Such connections between people are a prominent theme in Devs. It is not always romantic, either. For Devs, the concern is not necessarily with what connects us, but how those connections drive us to do different things. This is foretold by Forest’s (Nick Offerman) first monologue about the illusion of free will and cause and effect. Though it is not necessarily a defining characteristic of the show, it certainly is of Forest’s approach to the software company at the center of this mystery, Amaya. Because for all the boxes Devs might find itself placed in – from science fiction to romance to drama – mystery is where each of these other tales spins off from. Alex Garland (the creative behind Ex Machina and Annihilation among others) slowly reveals details throughout the course of the first episode so as to force his audience to crave more.

From a technical perspective, the show is wondrous. Lighting and color throughout both episodes move between the artificial (inside Devs) and the natural (in the forest) so gracefully, your eyes are left searching all over the scene to take in every bit that you can. The score is driven by electronic and industrial patterns, oscillating between horns guiding us through the forest in the beginning of the first episode and deep synth rhythms making us feel claustrophobic as fog permeates the Golden Gate Bridge in the second episode. One technique in particular that stood out between the first two episodes was the only use of a song from another band, Low’s “Congregation.” It bookends the second episode and brings the images full circle as to the journey Devscharacters take throughout the course of the episode. It’s a simple and effective distillation of the atmosphere and progression of the episode.

I also want to avoid overstating this part, but Sonoya Mizuno’s performance so far as Lily is magnificent. To capture love, adoration, grief, confusion, anger, heartbreak and whatever lies between all of that in the understated way she does is stirring. It can be heard in the way she talks to Jamie as she asks him to help with her search for Sergei, the full-hearted concern she demonstrates when Sergei doesn’t come home, and even felt in the way her breath shortens in the scene where she finds a Sudoku app on Sergei’s phone.

There’s a moment in the second episode where it is apparent that Lily is talking to her parents back in Hong Kong. She is telling her parents she doesn’t need to come back to Hong Kong, that she has friends, and that they are supporting her through tragedy. As she talks through this justification, the camera is slowly panning out to show an empty, dark, and glum apartment. It is this moment, as Lily quietly attempts to reassure her mother of her safety, the audience realizes the brutal loneliness that surrounds her following Sergei’s disappearance. However, an important note of characterization comes as Lily shortly thereafter starts to literally climb a wall to get help getting answers about Sergei. The moment is not lost on viewers that Lily’s tenacity is informed by her grief. It’s a brief moment and the transition is quick, but it is one that over the course of two episodes comes to help define her character. And if the firs two episodes are any indication, character is what is at the center of Devs.

Similar to Annihilation and Ex Machina that came before Garland’s work on Devs, the central premise is high-concept science fiction – in this case projections of living organisms altering the very fabric of our idea of existence – but with one key component at its heart. Each of these projects is tethered by its relationships, connections, and love (however twisted). In the first two episodes of Devs, it is not that you won’t be confused, because you will. Or I was. So, I hope you are too and we can try and unravel this mystery together. But it is because Garland – and subsequently the viewers – genuinely cares about these characters that the show never drifts too far away from the people it most affects. Some people might not like that in their high concept science fiction. They are interested in pushing the boundaries of science fiction to explore what life could be like in a multiverse, as Sergei might suggest. There is certainly enough to satiate those viewers in this show as well. But what has set Garland apart (or at the very least set him on a tram line toward one of the foremost voices in science fiction) is the magnificent balancing act he crafts between being character-driven without sacrificing the exploration of both the wonders and horrors of technology and the unseen.