The Peripheral Season 1 Episode 6 Review

The Peripheral Season 1 Episode 6, “Fuck You and Eat Shit,” is sadly back to a familiar pattern — the future is enjoyable, the present is rather dull. It’s a bit of a slog to get through.

While there isn’t anything, story-wise, horribly wrong with the hour, it still isn’t all that captivating. The series seems to have a hard time juggling the pacing and figuring out what to prioritize.

The cast of characters in both times seems to be a hindrance rather than an asset, as the series tries to balance out where to focus its attention.

The Peripheral manages to do a better job of balancing all the characters in the future.

We get little tidbits of information on everyone, but the show doesn’t go crazy trying to give, for instance, Ash a whole separate storyline. We learn about her through moments tied to Flynne, Wilf, and this Aelita mystery we’re unraveling.

The characters in the present, however, are a different story.

The show continues to divert its attention to tertiary characters to give them more of a backstory or to develop them more. Learning more about characters in Clanton isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but the show is sacrificing learning about the overarching mystery to spend time with Corbell Pickett and his wife.

The fact that more and more residents of Clanton are finding themselves being connected to this war Burton and Flynn have found themselves embroiled in isn’t helping matters either.

Bob is a great example of this. We didn’t need to learn a lot about an outsider the future hired to kill Burton and Flynn, but we spend time with him, witness him kill old friends/rivals, and now we watch him as he’s held captive by Corbell.

By spending time with Bob, we’re able to realize that we like him a hell of a lot more than Corbell, thus rooting for him to escape the situation he’s in, but in the grand scheme of things (which, granted, we don’t know yet as the season isn’t over), this doesn’t seem like something we should spend our time on.

Instead, maybe, we should focus on progressing the Aelita mystery a bit further, quickening the pace a bit. It would’ve been nice to know a bit more about the Neoprims prior to (or directly after) the news that Aelita either is one or is working with them.

Right now, this is only interesting because we know Wilf’s history with them. Outside of that, there’s very little we know about them as a group, so it’s hard to process this tidbit. It’s a piece of information that we will file away and hope that the series gives it some significance at some point.

The issue with prioritizing doesn’t make the show absolutely terrible, but it does keep it from being great.

Unfortunately, six episodes in, it’s doubtful that anything will change as we head into the final episodes of the season. If there’s a Season 2, all we can do is hope that the show learns from its mistakes.

Stray Thoughts

• In case there was any doubt, we get confirmation that Burton and Conner’s unit is the one future messed with.
• Tommy needs to realize that Burton is trying to keep him from getting killed.
• I can’t wait to see how Burton, Conner, and Flynn all being in the future at once will work. Will they travel everywhere together or divide and conquer?
• I’m enjoying the slow unraveling of how bleak the state of the future really is.

What did you think of this episode of The Peripheral? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

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New episodes of The Peripheral premiere Fridays on Prime Video.

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