The OA Season 1 Review

The OA (2016-)

Season 1 - (2016)
Watch The OA on Netflix
Created by: Zal Batmanglij, Brit Marling
Starring: Brit Marling, Emory Cohen, Scott Wilson, Phyllis Smith, Jason Isaacs
Rated: TV-MA

Plot
A woman returns, having been missing for seven years. She was blind when she disappeared, but now can see. She recruits five people with whom she shall share her story.

Verdict
This is a series steeped in mystery, but it's easy to start picking it apart. This show ignores even basic logic just to get to the next scene. It focuses on what looks cool, rather than I people would logically act, worrying about how the show got from point A to point B, you're going to find holes.
The first episode presents many questions and few answers. It's a great hook that will keep you watching, but the rest of the episodes don't live up to the first. What follows are six episodes of flashbacks that provide a few answers before a finale that gives us even more questions.
The show creates so many questions that you feel compelled to watch for answers, but there is no way everything can be answered. You will learn what OA means at least.

This show can do virtually anything next season because it has no grounding. It's a fun watch, but it's purpose is entertainment, not crafting a tight narrative.

Watch it.

Review
The first episode is a great hook. A girl jumps off a bridge but doesn't die, she used to be blind but now can see, and has strange scarring on her back. In just fifteen minutes I'm wondering how big this mystery gets before the show starts providing any answers.
It's a bit far fetched, and it's easy to find gaps in logic and reality. Like the characters in the show, you just have to go with it. After seven episodes of OA recounting her story, I fully realize what I thought this show would be based on the pilot and what it is are starkly different. It's more of a strange hostage/survivor story than it is a sci-fi mystery.

What are you looking at?

This doesn't quite deliver on the premise of the pilot. I expected it to be OA helping people out in her subdivision as her backstory is revealed, her death(s) having given her powers to cross dimensions. The only time we see her exhibit anything that could be construed as a power is when she's telling the group her story. We don't see her exhibit any powers in the present timeline, unless of course being strange is a power. I expected this to focus a little bit more on her five member posse, but most of what the kids do happens off screen. She recruited four high school students on the fringe and a teacher. They will be the five strong, flexible people she needs.
This show leaves you puzzled, searching for answers.

The OA and the gatekeeper.

The first episode hits you with question after question. Based on the previews we know NDE (near death experiences) play a part in this. The show goes to length just to craft these mysteries. Why doesn't the OA, formerly the blind girl Prairie, tell anyone her story? She doesn't even make up an excuse for the FBI investigator, it's a mystery for no real reason, and that's the foundation for this show.

Her parents see a video of her jumping off a bridge and somehow locate her from that. She tells the cops she jumped off the bridge to get back to where she was held and they treat that as normal. The OA finds a Youtube video of Homer Roberts just to prove to herself she didn't make him up. At this point we have no idea who that even is.
There's a teenage drug dealer, Steve, operating out of a partially built house. Why is there no one working on this house in this upscale neighborhood? I was waiting for the OA to use telepathy or some kind of power in her first encounter with Steve, instead she bites a dog.

It seemed she might have extreme hearing or mind reading powers, but then the show never comes back to it. She wants five strong flexible people because she's going somewhere, some other dimension.They need to leave their front doors open to invite her in, yet she doesn't go in their homes, they all go to the partially built house. This show creates mystery out of nothing.

This is all the first episode! The most impressive thing might be the title sequence. Fifty-seven minutes into the first episode we get the title card and credits. Now that is an introduction! It set the stage for what this isn't, but it really was novel placement. It signaled the end of the introduction perfectly.

The episode doesn't answer much of anything, but with all the questions it's a good hook. I don't even know what I just saw, but I knew I wanted to see more.

Riz Ahmed had a great year, appearing in The Night of, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, and The OA.

The episodes following the first are all backstory. It makes the narrative disjointed. The present day story is static, with them visiting this abandoned house and all of the action happening in the past.  The entire season is not about where OA is going, but where she's been. It's not until episode eight when something notable actually happens in the present day.

Hap's favorite pick up line? You play that so well you must have died.

We discover that OA was abducted by a scientist and imprisoned with four other subjects. Hap (Jason Isaacs) explores near death experiences, continually killing his subjects, which he discovered possibly by attending dive bars looking for musicians.

So much of my thoughts are directed at trying to explain away the logic gaps in this. There are so many little things that just don't make sense. At first you think it may be a clue, but it turns out the creators were not concerned with details. It's just poor story telling. They just wanted to get to the next scene or create a moment. Episode six mentions alternate realities because this show isn't already complicated enough.

It's a portal, the limbo between worlds.

The conclusion is vague, too vague. Did the movements work? Did OA travel to another dimension? You could argue yes and no. What's Hap the Angel Killer up to these days? Tune in next season for more confusion.
I don't know if this show is getting another season, but it certainly didn't wrap anything up this season. I'm curious as to what plot point it comes up with next; all a dream, alternate dimensions, doubles, who knows? Scroll down for spoiler discussion.

SPOILERS

OA and her hapless friends held hostage had to die to learn the five movements. After OA's jump off the bridge in the first scene didn't result in entering another dimension, she needs five people to perform the movements to open an inter dimensional tunnel. While it took her and the hostages years to not only discover the movements, but learn them her new team gets them down in a couple of weeks.
OA is going to use this to reconnect to Homer, though we have no basis as to how that would work and if Homer is even alive.

The rings of Saturn are also involved, who knows why. NDE's and the rings of Saturn sound similar. The show decided to just throw it all in. Will they make sense of it later? I doubt it.

OA even recounts how Hap murdered a colleague. How is she privy to that information? Did Hap tell her? Did she see it in a vision? It could be a clue that she's making stuff up, but this show could literally make up any story line and use what we've been given to bolster it. So much of what we've seen is incongruous that you can't believe or disprove anything.

Episode seven finally reveals that OA means Original Angel. At least the show answers one thing.

Hap assumes that if you can play a musical instrument really well you must have died at some point. No ordinary human being could play so well. Hap has an underground bunker perfect for hostages. The fact that his lair even exists is bonkers. He's determined that people that have died and come back have better chance of coming back to life. He drowns these people all the time and they just keep coming back.

Alphonso is sneaking around in OA's house trying to determine if her story was real or not. He runs into Riz Ahmed's character, an FBI psychologist counseling OA who is also sneaking around in the house with the lights out. Alphonso isn't alarmed at the encounter and believes the guy completely despite the lack of identification. Alphonso believes, based on the books he found, that OA made up the entire hostage story.

Is OA crazy? Even if the lab experiments didn't happen, she existed for a reason. The sum of her experiences brought her to a cafeteria and in turn she affected a group of five that all happened to be in the right place at the right time and prevented a potential mass killing. Did the group of five open a portal? It's possible, though any other time the movements have defied physics, it was clear. People were healed or were brought back to life, sometimes the lights flicker. We get no external indication in the final episode.
Though maybe the movement did work. The gunman fired multiple rounds per what we heard, but there is only one bullet hole in the window, though I doubt that's what the show was after.

We do know death is a way to glimpse the portal. She has experienced this before. The fifth movement was supposed to open a door. It's too vague of an ending.