Episode 4 was by far my least favorite, just really deliberate and slow. Ep 5 was at least very interesting, even if a tad on the slow paced side. I really like the main character of the episode...he was borderline brilliant.
so i 'think what ep 4 was doing was very subtle world building
ep 2 just hits the ground running with 'this is the future and we're plowing ahead'
ep 4 let's us fill in some of the backstory but as nostalgia and memory as opposed to flashback
-- i kinda like the philosophy that we are not what we did but what we remembered what we did
there are 3 layers of humanity here - post-pans, pre-pans who came of age post-pan, and pre-pans who already had a firm identity before the pandemic
the latter group is show in the golf club - clearly a lost colony of sorts. served its purpose but no longer very functional
what they seem to be setting up is a battle for the soul of the post-pans between Kirsten and The Prophet - traditional order v chaos dichotomy