Kaleidoscope Mini-Series Review

Kaleidoscope (2023)
Mini-series - 9 episodes

Watch Kaleidoscope on Netflix
Created by: Eric Garcia
Starring: Giancarlo Esposito, Rufus Sewell, Paz Vega, Rosaline Elbay, Jai Courtney, Tati Gabrielle, Peter Mark Kendall, Niousha Noor
Rated: TV-MA
Watch the trailer

Plot
A master thief and his crew attempt an epic heist worth $7 billion, but betrayal, greed, and other threats undermine their plans.

Verdict
It's ultimately satisfying enough, but the draw is that you can watch the episodes in any order. The problem with that is that it's unlikely you will ever watch this again. In the end, everyone's experience is largely the same and most people are likely to have binged it before discussing. It's a viewing concept meant to be discussed that would work a lot better if people didn't have the ability to watch the entire thing first. The heist itself employs a lot of the standard genre trappings. There is backstabbing, betrayal, vengeance, and surprises. The heist itself is quite fun, but there's nothing that really sets this series apart other than the concept of watching this in any order. That's more of a facade than a unique experience that changes this story. If this was more like a choose your own adventure, this could be a much more interesting experience.
It depends.

Review
A show you can watch in any order sounds fascinating. This concept has been done with anthologies, but how does it connect in a serialized show? Each episode is at a specific time, either years or weeks before the heist, and then a couple of episodes after the heist. My order was yellow, green, blue, orange, violet, red, pink, and white. I've read white is the final episode regardless of which random load out users get.

Giancarlo Esposito plays Leo Pap

This starts with Leo Pap (Giancarlo Esposito) setting up a heist and bringing in old friends. The crew pulls off a smaller heist to fund the main heist before we jump back in time for backstory on Leo and how he got to this heist. This heist isn't about the money, he's out for revenge. Of course it's extremely complicated and requires many people with various skills.

Rosaline Elbay, Giancarlo Esposito, Jai Courtney, Peter Mark Kendall play Judy, Leo Pap, Bob, Stan

As this gets closer to the heist, trust is stretched, issues arise, and obstacles form. This is an elaborate plan to bypass multiple security features and get the prize. They manage to scan the face of the safe's owner, Roger Salas (Rufus Sewell) and create a really cool mask. I wish the heist was more than just one episode as it had a few really neat ideas.

The cool thing about this show is the out of order viewing concept. Other than that this is a basic heist tale. It's a fun idea, but my experience wouldn't drastically change if I watched this in a different order. I'm not going to watch this again, but the only difference to my experience would be the order in which I learn information. What I saw jumps around in time a bit, but by the end of the season it's all in the wash. I give the creators credit, that this kind of presentation makes the series vastly more interesting, but it's a facade. It doesn't really change anything. This feels like a precursor to a choose your own adventure. That is what this needs, something that could drastically change your experience, but that's difficult logistically.