The Peripheral: Fuck You and Eat Shit   Books Included 
November 18, 2022 1:05 AM - Season 1, Episode 6 - Subscribe

The long-awaited Detective Ainsley Lowbeer enters the scene, amongst other intrigue.
posted by tovarisch (19 comments total)
 
Hoo boy, did the hitman's arc (which was not in the book and was unnecessary to begin with) get even dumber this week... It's so stupid it has to be satire, yet it is not satire, and it is stinking up the show real bad.
posted by tovarisch at 1:09 AM on November 18, 2022 [1 favorite]


My usual litany of complaints will come later as usually there isn't a post up so soon after a new episode has become available, but for now I'll say that it was nice to hear so much dialogue taken directly from the novel (or deviating only slightly therefrom), mostly in the conversation between Inspector Lowbeer and Lev (and Ash's interjection about colonialism). I wish the whole show felt like this.
posted by Strutter Cane - United Planets Stilt Patrol at 5:26 AM on November 18, 2022 [1 favorite]


Rather hoping Lowbeer's rather chilling quote about asymmetrical warfare makes it into the screenplay at some stage.
posted by MarchHare at 6:44 PM on November 18, 2022 [1 favorite]


I'm enjoying this more after Conner and Burton's chat on the porch inspired me to rethink the show as LetterkennyVR. There are 5000 people in Clanton County. These are their problems.

Liking Lowbeer a lot though. Feels like they're going for intentional gender ambiguity, which is working for me.
posted by kokaku at 7:49 PM on November 18, 2022 [4 favorites]


The episode title turning out to be passwords made me think of Macon's estimation of Flynne's password "easyice": "That's such a shit password, it's not even a password."

I was dumb/hopeful enough to actually believe, even if just for a few seconds, that the ominous knife sharpening in the butcher's wouldn't lead to another completely unnecessary fight scene. I also once again found myself wondering how peripherals work in the show vis-à-vis Flynne's formidableness; Conner and Burton and their experience with operating drones in HaptRec wouldn't be quite the assets they are in the book.

Silly of me in hindsight, but due to the present imbalance between the number of actors hailing from other anglophone countries who play Americans (for example, Jack Reynor as Burton) and the reverse, I had just been assuming that Lowbeer wouldn't remain English because of the casting (until a line of hers was included in the "next week on" for last week's episode). She wasn't exactly as I imagined her and I missed her "Savile Row or Jermyn Street" suit and "banker's very precise black oxfords" versus the tweeds, but it was a pleasant surprise/relief to hear recognizable lines from the novel coming out of a recognizable version of a character.

The differences in Lev were foregrounded for me again with his calling for his father's solicitors and his attitude toward Lowbeer, but then again, that could just be a consequence of her arrival at Lev's being unexpected in the show.

Along with Lowbeer, I think Ossian has made the jump from book to screen best, which is probably helped by how minor a character he is (whereas they really have lost most if not all of what made Ash interesting and I'd rather they'd just ignored her tattoos if this is all they were going to do with them).

Seeing as there's a name for the cloaking tech ("chromatic tinting") and Sheriff Jackman turned out to have been driving the vehicle, I guess my inference that it had been introduced to the stub was inaccurate.
posted by Strutter Cane - United Planets Stilt Patrol at 11:37 PM on November 18, 2022


jackman was hired by Corbel Pickett to fake the paperwork and steal the cloaked SUVs from the impound lot, get Bob, and deliver him to Corbel, so he could be questioned. The cloaked SUVs were from the first set of killers, currently buried behind Flynn's house, sent by the same people who sent Bob.
posted by rebent at 6:48 AM on November 19, 2022


kokaku I’ve been feeling the Letterkenny vibes since day one!

“So, you’re jacking into future post-post-apocalyptic London with your buddies the other day…”
posted by sixswitch at 8:24 PM on November 19, 2022 [2 favorites]


give your stub a tug and fuckin figure it out.
posted by Cold Lurkey at 9:36 AM on November 20, 2022 [2 favorites]


that's what i appreciates about you, sixswitch

I'm surprised we're not jacking into future post-post-apocalyptic London right now
posted by kokaku at 4:34 PM on November 20, 2022 [1 favorite]


To be fair…
posted by sixswitch at 7:56 PM on November 20, 2022


“Fuck you Wilfy, your mom called me the Jackpot after I gave her a polycausal orgasm.”
posted by sixswitch at 8:01 PM on November 20, 2022 [1 favorite]


Flynn, you’ve got to jack in, it’s London calling.
posted by sixswitch at 8:04 PM on November 20, 2022


serious question; do people actually enjoy watching fistfights in stuff? I mean, they never advance the plot further than, maybe, who wins the fight. And not even always that - what was the point of the Flynne-vs-Cherise fight? Flynne just wanted to cause Cherise some pain? How does that fit with the clever strategist her character is supposed to be? Fights seem to me to be just 5 to 10 minutes of pointless action, and they're jammed into so many stories these days. I think it's really dragging down the quality of storytelling in film and tv. I want cool ideas, not stupid smashy-smashy. Is it just me?
posted by 5_13_23_42_69_666 at 8:18 PM on November 20, 2022 [4 favorites]


No. Extended fights in general just bore me at this point.
posted by Candleman at 9:03 PM on November 20, 2022 [3 favorites]


No, it's not just you.
posted by Coaticass at 10:53 PM on November 20, 2022 [4 favorites]


There are shows (Banshee springs to mind) where I'm *more* than happy to sit through visceral, brutal, and amazingly filmed fistfights - shows where the plot seems to be primarily a mechanism to move from fight to car chase to fistfight.

But I'd rather hoped The Peripheral would be different. That it would use violence the way Gibson himself uses brands, mostly hinting at them in passing to add texture and flavor to the world. Something this series isn't bothering with nearly enough, by the way, and which makes it feel decidedly nonGibsonian. You can't just tease the toothpaste gum and the chicken nubbins, damnit.

Even Gibson's most physically violent passages - and I'm thinking specifically of Molly boosting the Dixie Flatline's ROM cartridge from the Sense/Net archives here - have an economy of action to them, covering multiple locations simultaneously in a way that I rarely see translated well to the screen. When I read them and think of how they might be filmed, I'm reminded of the multi-window approach used in The Thomas Crown Affair or (if we must) Super Troopers, and find myself wondering how that could be used in The Peripheral, because based on questions from folks I work with who've started watching it, the show doesn't t seem to have done an amazing job of conveying that the time passes at the same rate in both... temporalations(?).
posted by MarchHare at 2:34 AM on November 21, 2022 [5 favorites]


I enjoyed how Lowbeer just steamrolled over Lev. He'd begin to answer her question and she'd answer herself before he could actually speak. And it looks like she got a lot of details out of him in the time it took for Flynne and co to be rounded up. I wonder if Lowbeer will show up in the present day and what kind of accent he'll have.

At this point it feels like Burton excluding Tommy is just mean. He knows something is up and is pretty obviously on their side. Bring him on board at least so that he can give them a heads up if any info passes his way. Otherwise he'll just get into trouble by himself.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 12:04 PM on November 21, 2022


Also, as far as I recall, this is the 2nd episode in a row with 0 scenes from the book.
posted by Candleman at 8:54 PM on November 22, 2022


Zero scenes might be going a bit too far. Albeit in altered form as a consequence of changes to the worldbuilding details and characters, a lot of the following (excerpted from Chapter 26, Very Senior) seemed to make it into this episode.
[…] Ossian, looking even more butler-like than usual, brought in the tea.

"Mr. Murphy," Lowbeer said, evidently delighted to see him.

"Yes, mum," said Ossian, freezing, silver tray in hand.

"Forgive me," she said. "We haven't been properly introduced. Someone my age is all feeds, Mr. Murphy. For my sins, I've continual access to most things, resulting in a terrible habit of behaving as if I already know everyone I meet."

"Not in the least, mum," Ossian said, staying in character, eyes downcast, "no offense taken."

"Which," she said to the others, as if she hadn't heard him, "in a sense, of course, I do."

Ossian, carefully expressionless, placed the heavy service on the sideboard and prepared to offer small sandwiches.

[…]

"The salmon, thank you," Lowbeer said to Ossian.

"[…] You use [the server] to communicate with the past, or rather a past, since in our actual past, you didn't. That rather hurts my head, Mr. Zubov. I gather it doesn't hurt yours?"

"Far less than the sort of paradox we're accustomed to culturally in discussing imaginary transtemporal affairs," said Lev. "It's actually quite simple. The act of connection produces a fork in causality, the new branch causally unique, A stub, as we call them."

"But why do you?" she asked, as Ossian poured her tea. "Call them that. It sounds short. Nasty. Brutish. Wouldn't one expect the fork's new branch to continue to grow?"

"We do," said Lev, "assume exactly that. Actually I'm not sure why enthusiasts settled on that expression."

"Imperialism," said Ash. "We're third-worlding alternate continua. Calling them stubs makes that a bit easier."

[…]

"Very well, then. And you, Mr. Murphy," stepping to Ossian, "thank you." She shook his hand. "You seem to have done very well for yourself, considering the frequency of your youthful encounters with the law."

Ossian said nothing.
posted by Strutter Cane - United Planets Stilt Patrol at 5:53 AM on November 23, 2022 [2 favorites]


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