I saw the third episode last night. This show is so fantastic. Everyone on the internet seems to hate the ending, so that’s fine, but it’s still worth experiencing. There’s nothing this good in the whole first season on Jessica Jones, for example.
I found the show quite compelling – I binged the whole thing in two days. But the predictably unsatisfying, ambiguous ending left me cold.
I didn’t mind the ending as long as there is a long game to this storyline. Unfortunately you never know with these sort of things.
My advice to anyone who hasn’t started watching yet is wait for them to finish the whole thing first, if they finish it.
Ran across this interview with Brit, which doesn’t really tell us anything. Who’s surprised? But I thought it was moderately interesting to read anyway. And she says that she wants to do season 2, if Netflix decides to pick it up. I’d be willing to try watching a second season, in the hopes that it’s like the first 7 hours of this season.
Hm…is there any indication that the current episodes don’t represent the full scope of this story? I don’t think this is meant to be a series.
Edit: ok, so the writer wants to do a season 2, but these 10’episodss are a full story.
I’m only up to episode 4 and while I have my doubts it’s still more interesting than The Man in the High Castle (season 2 has a very good finale but overall it was a lot worse).
But to those who liked this I suggest a couple of movies that have the same narrative style, and a lot more substance:
- Upstream Color
- Another Earth
Of course these get A LOT weirder than this.
So, I liked the ending. I think it had to have an ending like the one it had. You had two separate themes that came in to play for the ending, there were more in the show. The first was the idea of forming a family. The second was the idea of faith. In captivity Prairie was able to survive by the bonds she formed mentally with the other prisoners. One of the main ways she formed those bonds was by the learning of the movements.
Faith came into it with the idea that the movements would rescue them. They had no real reason to believe that. They just accepted that the visions they saw were true, and if they acted on them it would help them. The boys listening, and the audience, are accepting the stories she telling as truth, purely on faith.
Prairie is using the stories, at first, then the movements, to bond with her listeners and form a group like she had in captivity. The important part is there was no narrative pay off to the captivity part of the story. She was just kicked out. Add to this her dreams that she believes are premonitions. The first she acted on and it saved her life. The second she got wrong and it could have ended her life. As she’s telling the stories, she’s having the third, and she can’t figure it out.
Narratively then, they set up a situation where the movements are supposed to help save Prairie’s found family. It didn’t happen before. She’s having the dreams again, clueing the audience in that somethings coming. She has her new found family. The story is mirrored. They know the movements.
At the school then they have the incident occur. Her new found family show faith in what she’s shown them, and use the movement. Whether or not the movement’s work isn’t relevant. What’s important is they believe in her, and what she’s shown them. At that point the audience is supposed to realize the whole story has been about faith. It was Prairie’s faith in her dreams that caused the main plot points. It was her fellow captive’s faith in each other that got them through. It was her new found family’s faith in each other and Prairie that caused the positive changes in each of them.
I do think the end was rushed, and they could have explained some of this better. It’s entirely possible I’m reading to much into as well.
I saw episode 5 last night. I love how all the little comments from her in the first episode are all starting to make sense now and fall into place.
There’s so many little things I love about this series. I love their use of audio. I love how they transition between scenes sometimes. In Episode 2, I love the scene where the unknown man from the story steps off the train in NYC and hears Prairie’s violin playing. I love that we’re there with him as he goes first one way and then another, trying to find the source of the sound. I love the way even though we know in the audience that he’s big trouble because of the OA’s story, when in the moment he never breaks. The look on his face is always sincere even when though she’s blind and can’t see if he did break. I love this touch because the story is told from her perspective. So as the story teller, she has no way of knowing what face he was making. We only have her perspective at the time, which was that this was a helpful scientists.
Another touch I just love is how they amplify certain sounds and mute others. Early on they use this very effectively when she’s blind. And later, in Episode 5, they use the technique of starting the guitar playing in a scene before the visuals have changed. He’s still in his lab and we hear the guitar, and so there’s this expectation build-up in that scene that we’re going to transition back to Cuba. But no, they transition to a different scene.
Anyway, there’s too many little things like that to mention them all. I just love the acting, the directing techniques, the audio, the expert filmmaking touches that really make each episode of this so special.
Another Earth is also by Brit Marling and Zal Batmanglij, the main people behind OA. In fact, that’s how they got their start. It was a little film that, I think, got picked up at Sundance and got their feet in the door.
But, really, as I alluded to above, you guys can save yourselves six and a half hours by just watching The Sound of My Voice, which is a much more concise, focused, and – in my opinion – less ridiculous version of what they’re doing in OA. And it plays up the mystery much better by telling you the story through the eyes of an outsider rather than Marling’s character.
Also, they didn’t go full on with the interpretive dancing. Sound of My Voice just has a funny handshake instead.
-Tom
I was actually more curious about this one: I Origins - Wikipedia
I’ll see that one you suggested, for me it’s Upstream Color that does all things better.
Oh, you know what, HRose, you’re right! Another Earth is NOT Zal Batmanglij, the guy with whom Marling did Sound of My Voice and OA. It’s Mike Cahill, who collaborated with Marling for Another Earth and I, Origins, which you linked. I got my names/movies confused!
For what it’s worth, I Origins is really bad. Ugh.
And Upstream Color is so far above any of these movies, it’s not even funny. I can imagine Cahill, Marling, and Batmanglij seeing Upstream Color and thinking, “Oh, man, that’s the movie we’ve been trying to make, but we’re not good enough!” :)
-Tom
I hated I, Origins too. I can appreciate these kind of movies as sci-fi fantasy, but when they get preachy they lose the plot and become BS.
I’m 4 episodes into the OA, and liking it so far, but I’m wary about the ending or that it will get preachy.
It’s not really preachy, just clumsy and dumb. The rest of the series is pretty good though.
Garbage waste of time, thank god I can stream while gaming. The OA is above things like dimensional Demigorgons to fight when its got the MEANING OF LIFE to solve. I thought The Leftovers was bad, this is worse. And Sense8 at least was colorful and had some cool places to visit.
If you did not love it, you don’t get it. Pity you. This is the best thing since sliced bread of slice of life drama with pretentious mumbo jumbo dancing Russian movements. You don’t get it? Kids dying in a bus don’t mean anything to them. Its all about the dance dude. let me do more jesus christ poses, it means im deep.
Maybe my angry sarcasm meter is broken, but this thread is hardly an echo chamber of unmitigated love for this show. It’s perfectly reasonable to dislike it. Voicing those reasons is even encouraged.
Watching this was kind of like taking my dog to the vet. My dog loves to ride in the car. We start out and he going “this is cool, having fun!” but we get to the end of the ride and he realizes its the vet, hes like “Are you frikkin kidding me?!”
I watched through the end of the 7th episode tonight. Spoilers follow.
Such a great series. And now I’ve reached a tipping point. The end of the story doesn’t really matter, since by the end of the 7th episode, the story told so far about different strangers coming together and sharing a strong bond together has been told, and told so well. We’ve seen this in the story within the story, this bonding, this powerful sharing. Doing physical exercises together, being each other’s emotional rock. We’ve seen the unreliable narrator relay her emotional tale about blood flowing back into someone and them coming back to life. We’ve seen the kids and teacher around OA help each other and really show ties that you normally only get with really strong friends. And that’s what this journey has been about.
The ending was particularly lovely, bringing it back to Prairie’s parents. Her friend pointing out to her that she tells them about her father, her bonds with fellow captors, and yet, she still can’t bond with her parents. We saw her mother lash out, unable to understand, just like she reacted with fear when she was a girl by medicating her. We’ve also seen them react positively to her new FBI therapist, who prescribed something other than drugs to dull her senses. I love that relationship the most. The parents that love the child, that rescued the child, that wanted the best for the child, and yet, end up alienating her.
It’s a beautiful story, but most importantly it’s really well told. The camera work and music and the way scenes are filmed is just brilliant.
But of course, having reached this point, there’s the final scene, where The OA says she’s reached the end of her story, and that she’s going to tell them the end. And I can feel that tipping point. The point where this story is suddenly about to become something else. And I don’t want that. So, I’m going to try my best to ignore that 8th episode, and let the beautiful ending I just experienced just be.
Dude. You are my hero. It really was just a seven episode series anyway. That rumored eighth episode is just like watching Fuller House.
Note to self: steal this metaphor.
-Tom