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    TV Review: Negatives Outweigh the Positives in “The OA”

    Netflix quietly released The OA in mid-December, and if you haven’t watched the show yet, read carefully. This review covers all eight episodes.

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    The series was impressively created by friends and frequent collaborators Brit Marling and Zal Batmanglij. If you’ve seen any of their previous projects like Sound of My Voice, you might have a good idea of what to expect with The OA.

    When the pilot episode begins, you can hardly get a grip on what you’re watching. A blind woman (Marling) has been missing for seven years. She suddenly returns home with the ability to see, mysterious scars on her back, and a mission.

    An hour into the episode, the credits roll and the show really starts. It’s a very clever trick to alert you to the fact that The OA will be very different from anything you’ve seen. The episode takes on a different feel after the credits roll, too, with dreamy cinematography, shot from above to give you a feeling of floating over the landscape.

    While the concept of the show is enthralling, it’s hard for the proceeding episodes to compete with the pilot. As we are introduced to Prairie’s five new friends, their lives seem as bleak as the unfinished suburban neighborhood where they meet. It’s especially depressing when we’re following Prairie’s captivity as she dies over and over again, year after year.

    Prairie’s mission is mysterious, but it can’t be to save the remaining captives, because there is absolutely no sense of urgency to rescue them or seek justice for the man responsible. To complete her mission, Prairie needs five “strong, brave, flexible” people to help her. The members of the motley crew (four high school kids and one algebra teacher) are all broken in some way, and are more than ready to dive down the rabbit hole with her. They all seem to relish this time in the abandoned house, and don’t question when Prairie asks to be called OA.

    All of the actors in this series are impressive. Even the teenage actors play their confused, angst-ridden characters subtlety.

    OA is an excellent story teller. She tells a spellbinding tale to her new friends about her early life, as well how she became a captive. As she played her violin in a New York subway, she is approached by Hap (Jason Isaacs). As they talk, we learn that many NDE (near death experience) survivors come back with amazing abilities. It’s a fascinating concept that Marling and Batmanglij continue to delve into throughout the series.

    Isaacs is superb as the soft-spoken, disturbed doctor. When he calmly lures Prairie down into her new cell, it is a hypnotizing scene. Although we are able to see what Prairie can’t, we still don’t get a glimpse at much more than their bodies as they move through the basement. We’re suckered into the cell right along with her.

    Eventually, OA tells her new friends the secret she has learned in her NDEs: five people are required to perform five movements to open a portal to another dimension. It’s insane, but we’re already on board this crazy train and we can’t wait to see what’s next.

    OA teaches the movements to her friends and even though the idea is bizarre, the movements are visually powerful. Choreographed by the gifted Ryan Heffington, the movements evoke patterns we have seen in nature, you can’t help but be riveted.

    Our first glimpse at the power of the movements occurs after Homer (Emory Cohen) and Hap return from Cuba, and Hap has accidentally killed Scott (Will Brill). Hap drops Scott’s body in the basement for the rest of the captives to see. Prairie stands up and begins her movements, feeling too frustrated to do anything else. She performs her movements directly at Homer, in anger at Scott’s death and Homer’s infidelity. Homer then starts to do the movements with her, but with regret and shame. It’s moving to see them communicating this way. They do the movements all night, and as the lights turn on the next morning, they discover that they are healing Scott.

    While The OA does so many things right, it also does many things wrong.

    Prairie/OA’s character is overthought. While many of the other characters seem minor, OA’s clothing is riddled with overt symbolism. Her look morphs from angelic (braided hair and white dresses) to prophet (with a blanket drawn over one shoulder as she speaks to the five friends) to astronaut (in her hooded reflective jacket in the last episode).

    In a ridiculous scene in the final episode, Alfonso (Brandon Perea) sneaks into the Johnson home to look for…we don’t know what. He eventually discovers a box full of books, with subjects that directly relate to Prairie’s story. This seemingly blows the storyline wide open, and we all feel like we got the rug pulled out from under us. But then Alfonso carries the evidence downstairs and finds…Prairie’s counselor/FBI agent (Riz Ahmed)? What is he even doing there? The whole situation feels thrown together, and it should be assumed that a sophisticated audience would see right through it.

    At this point, I was already disappointed in how the show was wrapping up. Suddenly, so many things seemed glaringly obvious: After Prairie returned home, it’s incredibly unlikely that she would get away with just some light questioning from the FBI. It’s too convenient that no one is asking her the tough questions, or at least demanding answers. And would Nancy (Alice Krige) and Abel (Scott Wilson) really give their daughter so much freedom after her seven year disappearance?

    Stripped of her credibility, OA returns to her home and her medication routine. There is one thing we do know for sure: OA has premonitions. In the final scene, we realize that Prairie’s most recent premonition predicted a school shooting. Which feels like absolutely the wrong call. It’s contrived somehow, like Marling and Batmanglij are throwing all possible traumatic experiences into one series.

    During the trauma, the five friends perform the five movements and distract the shooter long enough for him to be obtained. One of his stay bullets flies through the cafeteria window and right into OA’s chest.

    The season concluded so that it could either be a finale, or it could continue into another season. In that sense, The OA is almost better conceptualized as a long movie. The kind left unresolved, so it’s up to you to decide what was real or intended. It seems like Marling and Batmanglij are attempting to expand the concept of storytelling (tv series vs movie), but in reality, what this story could have used is some serious editing.

    Unfortunately for The OA, all of the beautiful, poignant moments are overshadowed by plot potholes. If Netflix orders another season, I’m not sure I’ll watch it. Marling and Batmanglij have lost my trust now, and it will be difficult to dive back into the story.

    Grade: B-

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    Martha Trydahl
    Martha Trydahlhttps://columbusunderground.com
    Martha is a freelance TV critic for Columbus Underground. You can find her on her couch, preferably drinking wine, watching TV with her husband and two children.
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