The Peripheral 1.7: The Unreliable Genie

Let's just start with what I thought was the most significant moment in The Peripheral 1.7 on Amazon Prime since yesterday, an episode which I thought was laden with significance.  Which, I think is a good thing.  As I've been saying throughout these reviews.

[And, of course, spoilers follow ... ]

That moment comes when Lowbeer -- who again plays a highly informative narrative role in this episode, in just about everything she says -- but the most significant moment comes, in my opinion, in what she doesn't say, when she declines to answer the third question Flynne puts to her, after telling Flynne that Lowbeer would answer three questions, just like "a genie".   And that third question to Lowbeer is: do you have the power to sever our connection, i.e,, Lowbeer's connection to Flynne?

Lowbeer's demurral -- stated as an apology for "overpromising" -- is notable for more than one reason.  First, Lowbeer refuses to answer that question after she in effect robs Flynne of her second question, categorizing Flynne's clarification of her first questions as the second question.  (Flynne's first question was "What's your biggest fear?"  Lowbeer answers: "the past".  Flynne replies: "What, like where I'm from?")  And Lowbeer says that's a second question?  Come on.  Not fair.  At most, it's a quarter question, or maybe an eighth of a question.  But ruling that fragment a "second" question shows that Lowbeer is unfair, not honest, and not really wanting to answer Flynne's questions.

Even more important, it shows Lowbeer doesn't want to answer that question.  Which is reinforced by Flynne's immediately preceding not being able to answer Lowbeer's follow-up question of why Flynne would not want to cut the connection between their two worlds.  All of which reinforces the flashing neon sign that this is one crucial question indeed.

I doubt we'll find anything close to why it's such a pivotal question in next week's concluding eighth episode of this first season.  But we'll likely get some more intriguing glimpses of what travel by avatars to the past can do, who lives and who dies in the alternate realities that are engendered, and that's more than fine with me, in this powerhouse of a story, in which, as I've said before, the intellect provides even more punch than the doodad which provides a title for this seventh episode.

See also The Peripheral 1.1-1.2: Cyberpunk, Time Travel, and Alternate Reality ... 1.3: John Snow ... 1.4 Who Took Lev's Tea? ... 1.5: The AI Therapist ... 1.6: Now or Soonest

alternate reality about The Beatles on Amazon, and  FREE on Vocal