Reverie Review: Blue is the Coldest Colour S01E04

There’s a whole load of conspiracy bubbling to the surface in Reverie, with Episode 4: Blue is the Coldest Colour.  (Warning! The following review contains SPOILERS!)

The first few episodes of Reverie have been laying the groundwork of this world and what the mechanics of the system are.  This is to be expected from a new show, and it has tried a few different options, opening up some interesting avenues for future stories.

This week, the emphasis is bringing into play a conspiracy element, which is a little cliché, but not entirely unexpected, as they’ve been hinting at a darker, unknown side in previous episodes.  The conspiracy here appears to be in the form of the previously unmentioned co-founder of Oniratech, Oliver Hill (Joe Fletcher), who makes contact with Mara (Sarah Shahi).  Affected by the derealisation issues still, Mara has gone back to the house where her family was killed and become fully enveloped in a hallucination, where she thinks she’s in the house talking to her dead niece; she is in fact standing in the road though, and is saved from being run over by Oliver.

Oliver explains to her that he has also been in Reverie 2.0, has experienced everything she is going through, and that he can help her.  He asks her not to mention their meeting to Charlie (Dennis Haysbert) or Alexis (Jessica Lu), as he says they will just try to discredit him.  Despite this, she does mention it, and they do indeed explain that he’s unstable.  Paul (Sendhil Ramamurthy) also shows her some scans that purportedly demonstrate that Oliver was unhinged before Reverie 2.0.  This is all by the numbers stuff, and hopefully they can spin this into something more interesting as the season progresses, as at the moment, it’s not exactly lighting up the screen.

The actual main plot of this episode concerns a theft of one of their devices, and an unauthorised user in the system, which they ask Mara to investigate.  This user turns out to be Glenn (David Rogers), who has a severe combination of a Panic Disorder, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, and agoraphobia.  Being self-employed and working from home, his only contact with the outside world appears to be his neighbour Liz (Erica Luttrell), and her sick son Quincy (Justin Claiborne), who has been passed over for a clinical trial.

Quincy’s illness is the motivator for Glenn, as Mara discovers he has been using Reverie to practice breaking into a pharmaceutical company to get the drugs that Quincy needs, and would have got had he been accepted onto the trial.  This is a new use of the Reverie software, and there is much talk in the episode about the ‘Dark Reverie’ and various safeguards that are normally in place, although there appears to be some dissention in the ranks as to whether that is a good thing or not.

The problem with this whole plot line is that for me they mishandle Glenn’s condition very badly, and it is treated with very broad strokes, almost like a caricature.  At no point does it seem particularly genuine, and the denouement of the whole episode was especially awful.  According to this episode a lot of anxiety related conditions could be treated by a couple of sessions with Mara and a couple of dice; this struck me as ridiculously unrealistic, and gave us another very unhelpful depiction of some serious conditions in mainstream media.

This episode is a very patchy affair and there’s not a lot to recommend it.  Yes, Shahi and Ramamurthy are good as usual, but most of the story is so-so.  There are a few elements that are brought in which could end up being interesting, but we shall have to see if they develop into something worthwhile, as they’re not there yet.

Reverie continues to be potentially a good show, but they really need to find their feet.  It is still early days though, and some of the best shows ever, have had rocky starts.  It still has time, so with this quality cast, let’s hope the writers can find some interesting things for them to do.