The Peripheral Season 1 Ep 7 is the penultimate instalment of the first season of a 2022 American science fiction cyberpunk drama streaming television series executive produced and created by Scott Smith. Produced by Amazon, it is based on the 2014 book of the same name written by William Gibson. Westworld creators Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy serve as executive producers, along with Athena Wickham, Steve Hoban, and Vincenzo Natali.
S P O I L E R S
Entitled “The Doodad”, The Peripheral Season 1 Ep 7 demonstrates conclusively that this series is a criminal waste of potential. William Gibson’s edgy imaginative scifi novel has been reduced to chunky exposition married with unnecessary ultra-violence and a plot that goes nowhere. The writers have mishandled the complicated nature of Gibson’s storyline, choosing to have characters spit out expository dialogue in such an awkward manner that engagement appears impossible.
Worst still, the series punctuates these boring moments with extreme (and often gratuitous) violence that never advances the story one iota. Take the whole pointless tale of Bob the hitman. After all the trouble he goes through to capture the Fishers’ mother to serve as bait – and a grisly scene of wanton killing – Bob is taken out in a manner of seconds. What was the point?
READ OUR ANALYSES OF THE PERIPHERAL.
Another tedious sequence of fighting involves the Burton and Conner polts fighting numerous robots in a pseudo game environment. Again, no story purpose. Just to keep people watching? Cuz folks fighting is better than folks talking? After seven episodes of this, it seems that the writers are adept at boring us in both kinds of scenarios!
The Peripheral Season 1 Ep 7 also provides us with a critical revelation – presumably this is the narrative payoff but it falls flat. It seems that Aleita (remember her?) had intended to store stolen RI tech in Burton’s haptics BUT since it was Flynne who was actually plugged in, that data has turned into bacteria and is colonising Flynne’s brain. Whatever the fuck that means!
Even when all this exposition is thrown at us, it isn’t clear what this RI tech really does… God, The Peripheral Season 1 Ep 7 is an absolute mess and there is no hope for the season finale to salvage this shit show! None at all!!
Watch The Peripheral on Amazon.
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