Something in me tells me this could have been so much more and better.
It's a good tv show don't get me wrong, it's enjoyable and there's some nice ideas in there.
[spoiler]
But the whole oh we have to just follow the tram lines cause we have no choice so now I'm going to say this and you're going to say that and we're going to walk that door just like the machine told us we'll do, and then the big turnaround when Lilly threw away the gun, disobeying the predetermined nature of our universe etc. I mean come on, I suspect that people who watch and enjoy these kind of shows need a little bit more than that.
Also, what? In the machine? What does that even mean you live in the machine? Physically? The machine doesn't even create atoms, it just projects what it predicts so it's not even a simulation. In code as part of a program? That wouldn't be less weird either. So I gave up and just looked at the tv show more like an abstract kind of piece of art and I can live with that. And it's a great show. But F this could have been so much more interesting in my opinion.
[/spoiler]

I was a bit bummed out that the core relationships that the drama stems from are pretty basic, but I guess that they were kinda necessary to have some grounding for all the crazy complex ideas to bounce off of.
The reveal about the name was real dumb, I really enjoyed that. The show has moments of obvious humor, like cuts & angles $ awkward interactions you'd see in a comedy, but it comes off as almost off putting in the context of the usual heavy droning abstract music, people staring into the camera mournfully aesthetic. The effect of that is unnerving and it feels like it should throw the tone off balance, but personally I found it made me more engaged. It's like the show telling me that it's not trying to be realistic or recreate known human emotions and dilemmas. Everyone talks so plainly and slowly & with a consideration that people in real life (or in most movies) only ever find briefly. The 'drama' of the show is mostly about people coming to terms with big metaphysical realizations, so I guess it makes sense that they just say what they think a lot.
I appreciate that the focus was always on the character reactions. The twists and revelations are presented as being wild and huge, and I guess I haven't seen all of them in the specific arrangement they have here, but each of the individual beats and ideas are common to a lot of sci-fi. The drama isn't "what are they going to do" it's "how would that affect a person". Like for as much as dweebs like [spoiler]Elon Musk[/spoiler] will talk about [spoiler]'what if the world was a computer simulation' or whatever, [/spoiler] they never really extrapolate past that into the things that would be actually interesting to think about. I don't give a shit if Deckard was a robot or not, but it's really interesting to think about what it means for the world around him if he was, right?

Devs fits right in with Garland's themes and style, and I love his work. I find cohesive, thoughtful limited series to be very enjoyable as they don't get repetitive or outstay their welcome as some shows can but have time to explore their characters and themes in considerable depth. Devs is squarely focused on determinism and the implications of perfect information about the predetermined future. Even more than Annihilation, Devs is more of an intellectual show that is filled with tension and interesting ideas than a show with an emotional hook. I don't know how much I like the climactic choice of [spoiler] Lily throwing the gun and breaking the perfect prediction, and that's treated as this crazy thing. If the model is perfect and is this world and not a many worlds prediction, then that shouldn't be possible. If the prediction was simply from a parallel world, then that should've happened earlier in some of the predictions Forrest and Katie watched, and there would be no reason for that to ruin the system. It's not a deal breaker but wasn't quite as satisfying as I was hoping. I do quite like the ending of them dying and being in a simulation, though. [/spoiler] I'm definitely happy I watched it for the way it made me wrestle with the implications of determinism and am eager to see more content from Garland.

During the first few episodes of this show I was really enjoying it. I have always liked time travel stories, and the grainy images of Christ on the cross (setting aside the lack of documentation of his existence) and Joan of Arc and other ancient or medieval images was intriguing to me.

And then, for me anyway, the plot drifted towards a more hard sci-fI, speculative physics sort of plot. Multiple universes, the idea that everything we do may or may not be determined by what came before. Well, I won’t delve into all that because I am not at all qualified to do so.

Don’t get me wrong; the series still interested me and I stuck around until the end, but I would have preferred that it had stuck closer to the time travel portal aspect of the story rather than the theoretical underpinnings. It is perhaps more of a thriller than a thought experiment surrounding our perceptions of history.

If Devs had been a 2 hour movie, I would've felt differently, but stretching it out over an entire series makes the experience feel tiring.

I really wanted to like it. There are good performances, and it's rare to find a show dive into interesting concepts. The problem is that it doesn't really dive in. It just splashes around on the surface for 10 hours, then takes an abrupt left turn at the very end rather than actual deliver an answer to the questions its asking.

If you don't mind that, you might still want to check it out, but I wouldn't expect it to deliver on the promise of the first two episodes. If you're interested in the concepts, I think it's better to just research the actual material.