Great premise but bad acting

I agree. Her acting is bad, and it kind of ruined the show so far. That's what we get when artistic integrity is sacrificed for political correctness. Nothing new under the sun.

I agree. The show is intriguing, but wow her acting stinks quite often. It's distracting and takes you out of what is otherwise an excellent, impressive show.

That sums up most of what I feel about Devs.
Biggest beef: lead actress nearly ruins the entire show
Coolest thing: the premise and the directing

While the overall plot was very cool, the writing suffered greatly along the way. Sometimes overt exposition and sometimes borderline non-sequitur cliches and sometimes dead end plotting. The script dipped into those flawed territories occasionally (and almost always when Lilly speaks).
My 2nd biggest complaint is Keaton. Don't know the actor's name (he played David on The Good Wife as well) but he was seriously miscast for the physical demands of the role. He tackles and subdues a guy in an early ep and it looks painfully unconvincing. He is is a fight with a Russian spy at one point and somehow wins the low-energy scuffle by killing him via bending his arm a little after a geriatric fall. He tortures a guy by your basic dunk-the-head-in-water technique but the guy isn't struggling at all (its a scene you have to see to understand how unrealistic it is). For such a high quality show, it is dotted with many head-shaker moments.
3rd biggest beef: Fuck that giant girl statue.

Observation: The show really felt like a """modern show""" due to things like:

1. Everyone has a conspicuously small carbon footprint. I hate even using that term.
2. There is a gender mysterious character.
3. There are no knock-out pretty people in it (actually refreshing and realistic) A few characters might be considered as high as 7/10 looks.
4. Everyone loves their homeless neighbors. People in Frisco don't.


Final verdict: 7.5/10
The makers of this show made lots of mistakes rushing to the end that they were so impressed with themselves about. Could have been 9/10

Main actress, she is too deadpan....the blonde, ugh. She's like she's a Stepford Wife.
The acting was a little poor.

I thought Sonoya was good in this... She's playing a socially awkward tech nerd, not a sexy robot like she did in Ex Machina...

She was incredibly awkward and distracting indeed. Had very low chemistry with both men. Kept being praised as courageous by various people, the One who changes everything, but spent most of her time with a "why are you hurting me!" expression, plus two or three sudden bouts of anger or resourcefulness. So yes, either odd acting, or odd direction.

Narratively, her role was also dubious. Her "Messianic" moment in the end was severely undermined by

1. the fact that Stewart had ALWAYS been the one who demagnetized the elevator,
2. nothing particularly interesting happened afterwards - the universe didn't implode, the machine didn't explode, it didn't even seem that there was any change in its functionality. So were they now free of determinism? Did the machine become incapable of predicting the future? WHAT was the consequence of Lily doing something different?
3. no explanation about how she could contradict the prediction, and why anyone else couldn't.
4. the fact that the movie ends with her being alive in a simulation, so not much sacrifice on her behalf.

So as much as I loved the premise and mood, they really could have written and directed the main character much better.