[PaulS]

It's only been two episodes but this show is very good and interesting so far.

This is based on a William Gibson book? I thought he was against his books being made into movies or tv shows.

Yup. This is book one of the "Jackpot" trilogy. Book 2 is called "Agency" and follows some of the same characters and themes from Book 1.

Answering another above question : Yes, Burton and his mates were all in the same Marine "Haptic Recon" unit.

 

[PaulS]

If Flynne was controlling another body then why did she have to be trapped in that body while they performed eye surgery on it? Shouldn't they have been able to perform that and any other body modifications on the host without her?

It was a training exercise. Flynne needs to disassociate her "physical well-being" when she's inhabiting the peripheral. It's not her body that's being damaged.

 

[PaulS]

That was the point, no? She needs to learn to NOT have detrimental effects. She's driving a robot, why should she care if it's taking damage?

 

[PaulS]

I don't understand the source of the money. They sent the $250,000 which they used to buy the 3D printing place and rent a car...I don't know the lottery amount (that's the $250k, right?) so where is he getting $200k per week from and how long can that last?

As we've seen with the lottery incident, the future's hacking skills are elite - should be pretty simple for them to "access" those funds within the stub.

Otherwise, the stub's timeline isn't 100% different from the future's past timeline, so they could be making sure bets on events in the stub, a la Back the the Future's Biff's sports almanac.

Other otherwise, while the show hasn't really gone into Lev's situation, let's just say he has more than enough funds to cover $200k/week.

 

[PaulS]

Well that was certainly a whole lot of info that just got dumped on us this episode. Now we now who the players are in London, what the RI is up to, who Lev are the Klepts are (mostly), and what’s at stake when the Jackpot hits. Now that we know all this, I suspect things are going to accelerate rapidly towards the conclusion.

 

[PaulS]

Seeing as though the series and book are barely the same at this point..:

In the book, the only explanation for the connection between timelines is there’s a server in China in the 22nd century that’s facilitating communication between the two. You could just as easily substitute worm hole and not miss a beat. It’s just a bit of techo-babble to set up its main reason for being : comms between the two times.

 

[PaulS]

Was wondering if/when Lowbeer would show up. Might be my favorite character in the novel.

 

[PaulS]

Thanks to Rob’s elaboration, I’m pretty sure I now understand the timeline mechanics. All the neo characters will continue onward, while the original Burton and Conner continue on in the original stub. Got it.

What I’m not clear on is whether or not Flynne’s sacrifice actually saves her stub. Cherise seems vindictive enough to still go thru with the silo plan. She’s really after the secrets embedded in Flynne’s head, so there’s nothing stopping her any more from blowing up the original stub now that OG Flynn is dead.

 

[PaulS]

My hope is that the show runners don't follow the same path that they took with Westworld. There was a really good story there to start with, and they went down their own rabbit hole and made it extraordinarily difficult to keep track of what was going on, who was a host or human, plots within plots, etc.