S01.E05: What About Bob?

[AnimeMania]

Flynne’s life is threatened again, forcing her to confront Cherise.

Original Air Date: November 11, 2022

[showme]

So intense! That bridge assassination scene. Poor sheriff, I am glad that he survived, now he has 2.5 million more questions.

 Flynne is right to go after Cherise, but she needs an edge, where can she find it?

Edited November 12, 2022 by showme
Typo

[Nellise]

This is a much better show whenever they stay in the "present".

[peach]

I love this show!

At what point does Tommy think, maybe I don't want to know any more about this?  I think the first time I found a cloaked car would be it for me.  Above my pay grade!

I do like how this show is spinning out the inevitable consequences and complications of trying to keep secrets in a small town.  My favorite part was the mom lecturing Flynne and Burton on taking things from strangers from the future.  lol

Terrifying to think about the future people testing anything and everything on the present people.  

[Quilt Fairy]

4 hours ago, peach said:

Terrifying to think about the future people testing anything and everything on the present people.  

The first few episodes I thought that the "present" should be further in the future than 2032 because the technology seemed too advanced for just 10 years from now.  With this episode, everything is starting to make sense.

[AuntieMame]

It’s official. I’m loving this show! The time travel is different and interesting, the characters are realistic and whole in what is considered an unrealistic genre. The acting is good and the look of the show is gorgeous in both the present and the future. 
 
 

On 11/12/2022 at 1:21 PM, peach said:

I do like how this show is spinning out the inevitable consequences and complications of trying to keep secrets in a small town.  My favorite part was the mom lecturing Flynne and Burton on taking things from strangers from the future.  lol

Terrifying to think about the future people testing anything and everything on the present people.  

Don’t take candy from strangers (or funny uncles) seems to be a motif what with the uncle and Jasper’s wife lecturing him on asking what the quid pro quo is before taking money and now Flynn and Burton’s mother suggesting that there are hidden costs and unintended consequences to everything they’re doing not just in the future but in the stub they’ve created. 
 
Unintended consequences might be an even bigger theme for the entire show. For example, did anyone else think it’s going to be Burton and his band of haptic brothers that cause the nuclear piece of the Jackpot and that it will either be purposeful for the very best of reasons or an unintended consequence of things they’re doing now? Or that the Burton of the non-stub timeline might have done it and changing that is one of the many goals of the power elite of the future? With every known area of human endeavor involved in the stub they’re up to something big. 
 
Or that even though the neoprimitive Luddite faction was named and dismissed, that when the world has been nearly destroyed by various technologies that more technology as the fix, especially when creating stub or pocket universes and timelines as a known effect might have even More unintended consequences? The Jackpot is right in line with my own musings on the nature of our next historical conflagration. It won’t be one thing or all at once and our ability to meet the challenge is going to be overwhelmed by events. 
 
I liked seeing Aelita and Grace together. It was fun and gave weight to Grace’s death. Grace told Aelita a lot more than she admitted to Cherise. Interesting. 

[peach]

7 hours ago, AuntieMame said:

Unintended consequences might be an even bigger theme for the entire show. For example, did anyone else think it’s going to be Burton and his band of haptic brothers that cause the nuclear piece of the Jackpot and that it will either be purposeful for the very best of reasons or an unintended consequence of things they’re doing now? Or that the Burton of the non-stub timeline might have done it and changing that is one of the many goals of the power elite of the future? 

Yes!  I also think it's going to be Burton and Co. or at least related to them.  And why they were chosen for the headset.  It is really unsettling to think about how much Burton and friends have been and are being manipulated and controlled.  In the carrot & stick speech, he assumes it's the haptic connection between the men that makes him respond certain ways.  But the way Grace got so excited about discussing controlling their brains, it makes me wonder.

Also, From the beginning I have always gotten the sense that Burton is holding something back from Flynne.  They always show him staring intently at her for a few extra moments here and there, like he may know more than he's saying.

[AuntieMame]

4 minutes ago, peach said:

Yes!  I also think it's going to be Burton and Co. or at least related to them.  And why they were chosen for the headset.  It is really unsettling to think about how much Burton and friends have been and are being manipulated and controlled.  In the carrot & stick speech, he assumes it's the haptic connection between the men that makes him respond certain ways.  But the way Grace got so excited about discussing controlling their brains, it makes me wonder.

Also, From the beginning I have always gotten the sense that Burton is holding something back from Flynne.  They always show him staring intently at her for a few extra moments here and there, like he may know more than he's saying.

Those are both amazing points! The mind control aspects especially. Burton seems to think he understands the ways the link to his unit affects him because of the military training, but it’s very possible that he’s been lulled into a false sense of security so that he can be manipulated more effectively. 
 
I’d noticed on the emotional level but not processed the way Burton looks at Flynn and does always seem on the verge of saying more. If your theory is right, this is probably not just why Burton and his merry band were chosen but why Flynn was chosen. Burton did convince her to try the headset the first time. Burton’s upset about the physical effects data transfer to the future has had on her has more than a tinge of guilt. 
 
Data transfer is a misnomer I think. There has to be time travel involved somehow because data travels from server to server and via WiFi, but it travels in the material universe which is bounded by time. There must be some point at which the “data” i.e. Flynn is jumping the time barrier. Maybe those jumps happen in a lot of small jumps that cracked the probabilities of all of those strange subatomic particles that mirror each other and can be more than one place at once.  
 
These future people are making me more and more nervous. The people in the past are expendable and they’ll feel morally justified because they’re saving the Earth and the species as a whole (we hope) and they can shift responsibility to the past as people have always done. Which is interesting because in spite of the luxe trappings of that future, the people seem pragmatic to the point of heartlessness. They’re ruthless. Yes, we’re getting hints that they’ve survived terrible times, but with a population reduced by almost ninety percent and the planet at least a bit on the mend, what exactly are they fighting for? Survival is the obvious answer. Is the Jackpot not over? Are they all peripherals? Are people, like the bees having to constantly climb the long climb from nothingness? 
 
The writers must be having an amazing time with this because this is already far more sophisticated than anything I’ve ever read by Gibson. 
 
I loved the balanced dichotomy of Aelita being a bad good girl and Grace being a good bad girl. Even though it was a bit mean, I laughed when Aelita took some potshots at Grace’s seeming hypocrisy. “Were the children stipulated?” Ouch. 
 
Why do some of the peripherals have those silver and white masks? It denotes lower status but is it also showing us when there is nobody “real” driving the peripheral ala the guy who seems to be Cherise’s fixer and pet depending on the day? It seems that everyone has several bodies they can use as needs arise. Why? And who and where is “real”? Normally I hate questions like that but this show has enchanted me.  I think I might go through all five episodes again to see if I can suss out some of the paradoxical details. 
 
Does anyone know how many episodes we’re getting? 
 

[Rickster]

According to Wikipedia, there are 8 episodes.

[AuntieMame]

15 hours ago, Rickster said:

According to Wikipedia, there are 8 episodes.

Thank you. After I asked the question, I flashed on an article saying this. Wow, we can’t even get a 13 episode season? I hope that they don’t make it long between seasons because I’m really enjoying this. 

[peach]

On 11/14/2022 at 10:01 PM, AuntieMame said:

. If your theory is right, this is probably not just why Burton and his merry band were chosen but why Flynn was chosen. 
 
These future people are making me more and more nervous. The people in the past are expendable and they’ll feel morally justified because they’re saving the Earth and the species as a whole (we hope) and they can shift responsibility to the past as people have always done. Which is interesting because in spite of the luxe trappings of that future, the people seem pragmatic to the point of heartlessness. They’re ruthless. Yes, we’re getting hints that they’ve survived terrible times, but with a population reduced by almost ninety percent and the planet at least a bit on the mend, what exactly are they fighting for? Survival is the obvious answer. Is the Jackpot not over? Are they all peripherals? Are people, like the bees having to constantly climb the long climb from nothingness? 
 

Stories like this often deal with fate.  So. do the efforts to "save the world" continually cause the end of the world, over and over?  What will Burton do when he finds out his haptics were implanted by and controlled by evil people in the future?  They interact with the past thru this "data transfer" which obviously relies on electricity.  If someone like Burton Fisher and his military unit discover they are being controlled this way, would they not...hack the electrical grid, causing the Jackpot?  The final disaster is in their town, but is it the Fishers destroying the connection or the Future destroying their resistance?  Plus we have multiple factions in the future.

It seems being "terrifyingly good" means it's Aelita's interference with the past that could actually cause them to fight back and create the apocalypse.  She also said she enjoyed the power that comes with ordering them around, playing with her dollhouse, as it were.  Then there's Lev.  So it seems everyone enjoys playing the "sim" of the past, making quite a mess. 

Anyway, I look forward to more!  And to see how they go on the offense.  

Edited November 16, 2022 by peach

[AuntieMame]

@Peach, yes, me too. I’m enthralled and you bring up interesting possibilities about which bits of meddling from the future have consequences. I hadn’t thought about the electrical grid for example. I was wondering though if the possible time jumps from server to server are minute and cumulative so that it is more like science than magic. An interesting show, no doubt about it. 

[Rickster]

3 hours ago, peach said:

Stories like this often deal with fate.  So. do the efforts to "save the world" continually cause the end of the world, over and over?  What will Burton do when he finds out his haptics were implanted by and controlled by evil people in the future?  They interact with the past thru this "data transfer" which obviously relies on electricity.  If someone like Burton Fisher and his military unit discover they are being controlled this way, would they not...hack the electrical grid, causing the Jackpot?  The final disaster is in their town, but is it the Fishers destroying the connection or the Future destroying their resistance?  Plus we have multiple factions in the future.

It seems being "terrifyingly good" means it's Aelita's interference with the past that could actually cause them to fight back and create the apocalypse.  She also said she enjoyed the power that comes with ordering them around, playing with her dollhouse, as it were.  Then there's Lev.  So it seems everyone enjoys playing the "sim" of the past, making quite a mess. 

Anyway, I look forward to more!  And to see how they go on the offense.  

This is where time travel logic can fry your brain, but I had the impression that the actions of the future world  in the “stub” world (like introducing haptics) would not impact the future we see on the show and couldn’t create the Jackpot. It could impact a different future spinning off from from the stub. Otherwise, every time the future does something in the stub, it would change their own present. 
 

Edited to add: 

What the future world learns from messing around in the stub of course would impact their own world going forward.

Edited November 16, 2022 by Rickster

[chaifan]

On 11/16/2022 at 3:38 PM, Rickster said:

This is where time travel logic can fry your brain, but I had the impression that the actions of the future world  in the “stub” world (like introducing haptics) would not impact the future we see on the show and couldn’t create the Jackpot. It could impact a different future spinning off from from the stub. Otherwise, every time the future does something in the stub, it would change their own present. 

Yes, this is my understanding of the "stubs", too.  Wilf could send someone back to kill Hitler, and not a thing would change in his time.  That stub, however, would change accordingly and proceed as a new "alternate" universe. 

I'll be honest... I really don't understand the main plot line here.  I don't know what Wilf & Co. are doing with Flynn.  They're not expecting her to change the future, since it won't have any impact on them.  So I don't know what's going on there.  I don't know why Charise wants her dead, and I don't know what Charise thinks Flynn "stole" from her.  It's weird - I'm watching a show not really having any idea what it's all really about.  But I still pretty much like it.  This is a new spin on time travel for me, and I how it's dealt with.  I like the actors, and I like the changes they've made to 2032 that make it just a little different from our time, but not ridiculously different. 

[Haleth]

11 hours ago, chaifan said:

I'll be honest... I really don't understand the main plot line here.  I don't know what Wilf & Co. are doing with Flynn.  They're not expecting her to change the future, since it won't have any impact on them.  So I don't know what's going on there.  I don't know why Charise wants her dead, and I don't know what Charise thinks Flynn "stole" from her.  It's weird - I'm watching a show not really having any idea what it's all really about.  But I still pretty much like it.

Me too.  I don't understand what good changing/creating another future will be to Lev and his group.  Is their plan to travel to a more livable Earth?  Is that why he killed another version of his family, so there wouldn't be duplicates?  He seems to have a pretty good thing in his current world.  Why would Charise care what happens in another world?  (She doesn't seem the type to care.)  What is the real motive for the Institute?

I did roll my eyes at myself by being surprised that the haptic technology came from the future.  Of course it did.  Duh.  (Don't take gifts from strangers from the future, Burton!)

I figured Tommy wasn't going to make it to the county jail but thought Bob was going to find a way to escape.

[Tachi Rocinante]

I was hoping for a quick shot of Cherise at the end, flinging her headset in anger/fear or showing a modicum of respect for Flynne.

Edited March 29, 2023 by Tachi Rocinante