Summary
Prime Target Episode 7 is impressively dull for a penultimate episode, spending almost its entire runtime on Ed writing on the wall. A merciful finale is all that remains before we can put this show behind us.
Can you recall a penultimate episode of any series being less urgent than “Prime Finder”? I don’t think I can. Although I’m hardly surprised at this point. Prime Target has been spectacularly dull throughout and has become increasingly nonsensical, recently reaching an apotheosis of stupidity. Episode 7, an admittedly exciting final five minutes notwithstanding, is just as bad.
I know what we’re supposed to feel. We’re supposed to be marveling at Ed’s genius, totally invested in the power of his magical theorem. But we’re not, because the theorem is badly-explained gobbledygook, Ed’s a wanker, and he’s working at the behest of people we know to be unequivocally villainous. There’s no upside. The fact that Prime Target thinks we’ll care about any of this is hilarious, and in a way ironic — it’s the TV equivalent of those annoying math test questions that make you show your working out step by step.
Another Betrayal
Despite having angrily parted ways in the previous episode, Ed and Taylah nonetheless end up in the same place in Prime Target Episode 7. That place is the headquarters of Axiorn, the private company bankrolling the protection of the prime finder. Already I’m confused. Jane and Andrew are both seniors in the NSA, and Syracuse was an NSA project. So the efforts to surveil prominent mathematicians are official NSA stuff, but the efforts to actually pursue and/or assassinate them are privately funded? Nothing about this is clear.
Anyway, the reason Ed ends up there is because Adam betrays him. As it turns out he was an Axiorn plant all along and just happened to get in a little over his head (so to speak). It’s implied that he was being threatened, and he also claims that his relationship with Ed was genuine, but that’s a little bit difficult to believe given he drives Ed right to Axiorn’s doorstep. And who’d be romantically interested in Ed anyway?
Ed’s wounded, but once Andrew lays out the red carpet and Ed is given the opportunity to complete his work, he just can’t resist. This is presented as a key moment of tension, by the way. We’re supposed to earnestly wonder whether Ed will take a moral stance against Axiorn or if his purist mathematician’s heart will take over. Given Ed has already expressed his viewpoint on this issue, it’s no surprise whatsoever that he starts working on the prime finder almost immediately.
Better the Devil You Know
While this is going on, Jane is explaining to Taylah that Axiorn is basically alright since their goal for the last three decades has been to simply prevent the creation of the prime finder, and their goal has only shifted to creating it now so that it can be protected from sinister exterior forces. And while we haven’t seen any explicit proof that this isn’t true, Axiorn are so blatantly villainous in everything they do that it’s extremely difficult to believe.
Also, what was the point of dramatically splitting Ed and Taylah up at the end of the previous episode only to immediately reunite them in this one? It’s almost as if this show has absolutely no idea what it’s doing. But I digress.
Jane needs to sell Taylah on the idea of Axiorn’s altruism because they’re going to need a coder to compile Ed’s theorem into a workable digital form, and since they’d like to keep everything in-house it needs to be her. Her moral dilemma is deciding who she’d prefer the prime finder being in the hands of. Sometimes, it’s better the devil you know, so she agrees to help.
Side note: Wouldn’t it be easier to just kill Ed and destroy his research as initially intended? In thirty years only two people — three if you include Mallinder, which you probably shouldn’t — have even come close to solving this puzzle. It stood to reason that other nations or organizations would be interested in the same, but if the personnel doesn’t exist, then the prime finder can never be built. Someone having hired a mercenary is all it took for Axiorn to decide that it would be easier to protect the completed prime finder than it would be to just stop anyone from making it in the first place. Something doesn’t add up.
Harry Lloyd and Quintessa Swindell in Prime Target | Image via Apple TV+
An Unfortunate Casualty
To motivate Ed when he hits a roadblock, Andrew brings in Professor Osborne, who is luckily having a good day, Alzheimer’s-wise, which basically translates to him not having Alzheimer’s for as long as it takes to complete the equation, and then remembering he has it the second it’s finished. I have a relative with dementia, so I get it can work a bit like this, but it’s a little bit too convenient for my tastes.
But Professor Osborne is the only character I like because Joseph Mydell is really talented — although you can probably include Andrew as well since he’s the only character who seems to be as sick of it all as I am — so it’s nice to see him. Ed agrees since it’s with his help that he’s able to complete the prime finder, prompting Taylah to finally present herself to Ed and rehash the same argument about moral responsibility that she had with Jane earlier.
But Taylah secretly has other ideas. As she’s compiling the code she runs into an error and goes to ask Ed to solve it. She seizes the opportunity to hack into the building’s security system — her magic hacker phone works the same way as her magic hacker laptop — and break Ed and Osborne out of there, chopping Andrew in the throat for good measure. They’re able to get out, but Osborne slows them down for long enough that Andrew catches up and shoots him. Taylah is able to knock him out with a fire extinguisher, but if Ed was miserable before, I can’t even imagine what he’s going to be like now.
And Another Thing…
Elsewhere, Andrea goes to Professor James Alderman about her suspicions that Akram used her work to track down the House of Wisdom and then bombed an entire street to access it. And she’s right. What she doesn’t know is that Alderman and Akram are working together. Bogdan is their man, and they’re trying to acquire the prime finder by freeing Ed from Axiorn’s clutches.
Okay? Did anyone really care that much about Alderman either way? I can barely remember him. What this means is that Ed is going to inadvertently enter the lion’s den just as he thinks he’s escaping, but after Episode 7, Prime Target is going to need a lot more than that for its finale to be of any interest whatsoever.
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