So I guess I'm not the only person who forgot this came out yesterday.
I watched the first two episodes, one hit and one big miss. Spoilers to follow...
Striking Vipers
While I get what they were going for, this episode fell completely flat for me. Remove the hyperrealistic virtual reality game and the story is barely changed: Two men explore their feelings for each other and...that's it. The core of the story is a good one but the episode did nothing with it and barely had any resolution to it. No moral, no classic twisting of the knife, just simply ended with very little happening and very little exploration of the ideas the episode presented. I was left feeling "Okay, whatever," not unlike how I felt about the new version of
The Twilight Zone before I got bored and stopped watching.
Smithereens
This episode, however, did a much better job of slowing presenting its multifaceted themes and largely explored the ideas behind to their fullest. Anchored by a riveting performance by the always wonderful Andrew Scott, the story showed how a man marred by tragedy tried and failed to execute a flawed plan to find redemption, only for it to end in tragedy again. I enjoyed how Chris' plan quickly fell apart because of two simple but large mistakes (kidnapping a mere intern and then forgetting the intern's gun in the first car) and I further enjoyed how the combined forces of the police, data mining, and basic social media networking quickly identified him, motivations, and his ultimate goal. I also appreciated when Billy offered Chris anything after he bared his soul, Chris' request was an act of kindness for the woman he slept with earlier in the episode.
