"The OA" on Netflix, with spoilers

everyone kept saying this should have its own thread so here you go

i heartily enjoyed this show, bc while it was fairly "tasteful" in terms of acting and look etc etc it was not afraid to be ridiculous. the reveals in the first three episodes just get crazier and crazier and i respect that

thanks!
https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*wJR2xpSTqFeS41xfVqLJpw.gif

my wife read some fan theories online and the most interesting one to me was that the FBI agent (riz ahmed) planted the books in her house, i guess to discredit her for some reason. i'm not sure why he would be doing that but also there was no reason for him to be in the house when alfonso broke in.

I'm only on episode 2, so I guess I'll steer clear of this soon, already prepared for some let-down ending but I love this so far. I've never seen Brit Marling's films but I'm really intrigued after watching this.

I greatly appreciated Marling & co.'s willingness to take risks and engage in the movements like nobody's watching. Totally respect the show's lack of concession to any audience that would demand ironic remove. For reasons I am completely unable to articulate atm but will think about more, it reminded me of Tree of Life.

As I said in another thread, best new show I've seen since Enlightened (another show that kinda refused to allow the audience to maintain an arch, ironic remove for long).

i didn't have any problem with the ending, personally. i'm not sure what people were expecting.
i liked "sound of my voice" a lot.

xxxpost Hadn't read that theory, NA, but that was exactly my take.

I'll only have a problem with the ending if they don't get a second season and it becomes the de facto actual ending of the story.

i like how the gestures in that gif remind me of the monster of stranger things. they should team up.

In the first episode when Prairie finds the video recorder you can hear the audio of the video Abel recorded of her sleepwalking and speaking russian.

xxxpost Hadn't read that theory, NA, but that was exactly my take.

― DJ Untz Hall (Old Lunch), Tuesday, January 3, 2017 12:55 PM

yeah books were brand new and in an Amazon box

the main thing that i've been puzzling over is why alfonso saw himself as homer when he looked in the mirror after finding the books

was he seeing himself as the inspiration for the homer character in her story?

so the f.b.i. guy must have been secretly taping her at that abandoned house. because i didn't think she told him about homer and all that stuff. if he left the books there.

still got a whiff of shyamalan at the end there. they didn't do anything to the gunman with those yoga moves. they just distracted him.

the moves also didn't open a portal to another dimension
also there was no need for prairie to be there, not sure why she was rushing to get there just to get shot since there were already five people at the school to do the moves
the scene with all of them doing the moves in the gym was oddly affecting though

not gym, cafeteria

death is the 5th portal

death is the 5th portal. sorry

I enjoyed the first episode of this (where everything was weird and unexplained) much more than I liked the rest. Though I liked it enough to watch the whole thing, for what it's worth. For me, the plot fall-apart at the end is annoying, though I get that it won't bother others -- e.g. how is Steve just openly back in town -- don't his parents find out that he didn't actually show up at reform school? Isn't it kind of weird that Alfonso just decides the whole story was made up when it's definitively true that Prairie used to be blind and now suddenly isn't blind? Why are the books supposed to be some sort of smoking gun when it would be pretty reasonable for someone in Prairie's stated situation to want to know more than she does about Russian oligarchs and people's view of angels?

Also bothered by the way that a) the "Amazon box reveal" basically reiterates The Usual Suspects and b) the "school shooter dance routine reveal" basically reiterates Prayer for Owen Meany. Not in an interestingly intertexual kind of way but more in a "my sense of what a story is basically comes from other stuff I watched and thought was cool and I am not going to complicate those borrowed stories but rather just rehash them" -- there is real satisfaction in watching a quality cover band of course but it's not the same as seeing somebody play their own stuff. And I just felt like reaching for "school shooter" as last-ep big bad was lazy hackwork.

I don't really understand why the character of Rachel exists. Does she ever get a movement? In general, the unclarity of the rules bother me. Prairie consistently seems worried about Happ knowing all five movements; OK, so can he do all five himself and dimension-travel? Or can he do the first two himself and raise the dead? If so, why does Prairie need five people in the model house? If not, who cares whether Happ knows all the movements? Also, why would Happ abandon Prairie on the roadside and not kill her? Isn't that obviously an immense danger to him? I mean, every question of the form "does the captivity narrative make sense" can I guess be answered by "none of that really happened so it's not supposed to make sense" but I find that unsatisfying in its own way.

Also was bothered by Prairie being "OA" and the teacher being "BBA" but none of the others getting alphabetic epithets, I thought they were going to spell something at the end!

This show started poorly, peaked in the third episode, and ended worse than it began.
But that that one episode was incredibly tense and well done i thoiught. even if the overall "story" is ridic.

my only thought is that MAYBE it is intended as a critique of television -- people who become sucked into a story to the detriment of their "real" lives.

#DEEPTHOUGHTS

my fave part was just the credits rolling in the first episode. i don't know why i thought that was so cool. it was very dramatic!

i just wish that they would let science fiction writers write t.v. it's so sad that they don't. there are so many amazing writers out there who would write scripts for a dollar. they are very used to not getting paid much. t.v. SF is rarely as compelling as good written SF by professionals. i said this somewhere else but one of the reasons why people still remember old star trek episodes is due to the writing talent they had on that corny two dollar show.

Working backwards thru eephus!'s concerns:

Hap abandoned Prairie for the reasons he explicitly stated: she has no idea how to find him, and he's planning on moving the other subjects anyway. And I'm fairly certain he wasn't using his real name. So he figured he wasn't in much danger. Plus he clearly had feelings of some sort for her and didn't want to have to put her down.

Apparently you need at least five people to open the gateway, and at least two to revive the dead. The latter is why Hap attempted to make a deal with Prairie. But ultimately I think they were trying to beat him because if he figured out the entire sequence before they did, he didn't need them anymore and clearly wasn't above disposing of them once they'd outlived their usefulness. Rachel...who knows. There may be an actual reason why she was never shown a movement but that we haven't seen yet.

The box of books didn't strike me as anything but a ham-handed attempt by an outside party to discredit Prairie in a way that would only work on a short-sighted high school kid. And which clearly didn't take.

I feel like it's very significant that we haven't seen the shooter's face. I don't feel like it was a random act.

Steve being back in school...I'll give you that one. Not really sure how to explain that except that some time had clearly passed at that point. Possibly his parents had second thoughts about sending their kid to a school staffed by people who have no qualms about selling their charges to random strangers?

it's definitively true that Prairie used to be blind and now suddenly isn't blind?

they sort of explained the away as a result of her getting hit in the head.

The more time goes on the more I'm convinced OA's stories were fake or re-interpreted. I mean, how could she tell a story about what Hap is doing in Cuba in one scene without actually being there? If that's creative license, sure, but it's not feasible at all. I like the theory that the OA disappeared for seven years and the prisoners were all patients in a psych ward.

As Britt has stated in interviews, it's up to the viewer to decide whether they think the stories are real or not. I've expressed before that seems like a cop-out, but maybe it's more about how we create our own narratives despite the facts/lack of facts.

Addendum: Even if the stories are fake, the sharing of trauma with others can be a beautiful release.

Regardless of the veracity of Prairie's story, the element I responded to the most is the level of profound empathy she seems to have tapped into as a result of whatever she went through. Her ability to shut down her ego and bring out the humanity in a character that was initially presented as fairly loathsome and to consistently bring these disparate people together in spite of their differences was really affecting. And the extent to which that ability can easily be faked and abused (my initial assumption about the direction of the show was that she was basically starting or perpetuating a cult) lends some ambiguity to the proceedings and her ultimate objectives.

Related to that, another element that really hit home was when French forced Prairie to confront the fact that she shares so much of herself and is able to form these deep connections with pretty much everyone but her parents.

^ OTM Old Lunch. I was really moved by the banding together of the group.

Regarding her parents, perhaps she resented them for putting her on meds? Her parents always had her best interest in mind, despite that maybe forcing Prairie to want to run away.

the guy who plays Happ was really good imo, made him believable/human without necessarily going all the way to sympathetic/antihero

Oh, for sure. I often have no idea what people are talking about when they complain about bad acting (particularly when there's such a surfeit of inarguable examples of bad acting out there to use as a metric) but I really don't get the complaints with this show. Homer was maybe a little weirdly intense at times but overall I thought the cast was great. Particularly given the fact that this was material that could've easily fallen to pieces in less skilled hands.

I think this is one of the most beautifully realized series I've ever seen.

I may be a sap but I found the ending incredibly, profoundly touching, to the point where I almost cried.

Yeah, this show got to me a couple of times.

I've been reflecting on my initial reactions as I was watching the first episode, and Steve's douchebaggery was so off-putting and it seemed like such an 'edgy' choice that I really doubted that I'd want to continue but mine was clearly the intended reaction and his arc ultimately played out so beautifully.

My gf was desperate for another Net-fix after finishing this so, despite my misgivings, we started Sense8. I'd seen some reviews comparing the two shows, but man, they aren't even in the same ballpark. I was completely absorbed in something else entirely by about fifteen minutes in.

To expand on my Steve thoughts: I appreciate that he wasn't ultimately redeemed or reformed (he's still engaged in assholery by the end) but that he's more engaged in self-reflection and willing to accept responsibility for the way he lashes out. Compare/contrast to the much less convincing change in the asshole Steve of Stranger Things.

the season of Sense 8 was ok but that recent two hour special episode they put out was hot garbage, don't even waste your time.

the only real contemporary comparison I have for this show is the Leftovers

in fact I think they both have 'bathroom afterlife' scenes

it reminded me a lot of the leftovers, that's not a good thing imo. it had a sort of unearned spirituality to it - like it demanded you just gave up your inhibitions just because here's some music and some emotional scripting. didn't really do the work to get you there in the first place.

people coming back is the weirdest fad. so many people coming back shows.

i'm pretty open to any form of supernatural plotline but i dunno, i resent when things go for profundity without having done the necessary grunt work to make me care. profundity is like the end point of every other good thing in a show, imo.

It felt to me like faith and what you do with faith when you're on the receiving and the question of how much credulity you're willing to extend for the sake of faith are underlying themes of the show. In a way, Prairie's motives are as ambiguous as Hap's. They both gained the confidence of followers without providing much evidence to back up their stated motives. The audience is being taken on the same ride as the OA's new crew, and there's always that question of how reliable a narrator she is. It's less about whether or not it's earned than it is whether you're willing to take the leap and trust that it's worth it.

'when you're on the receiving end'

Old Lunch, that's a good read of it. I found this show profoundly touching. Without going into specifics, I went through a period of trauma and rehabilitation and OA's sharing and transformation of her pain via the group sessions was deeply affecting.

people coming back is the weirdest fad. so many people coming back shows.

this reminds me that les revenants is way better than any show discussed in this thread

it is very good but the second season is deadly slow

Just finished. I liked this a lot. I really admired its boldness. It felt really uncompromised, for better or worse. The movements were just the uncoolest loveliest thing.

I felt kind of vindicated when they dropped the blatant "garden of forking paths" reference about halfway through the series because I had already been thinking about borges with this show and even more about bioy-casares.

Amazing acting across the board, really the thing that made it stay aloft, but Hap, Prairie, Homer and Steve were particularly awesome.

I thought I was going to open this thread to find ppl tearing it to shreds. <3

her parents really started bugging the hell out of me and i was kinda hoping they would be abducted. all those sad wet-eyed looks....ugh. so glad they aren't my parents. this was true of dad on walking dead too. just got so tired of his sighing disapproving ass.

that's the only shreds i'm gonna rip though.

borg queen alice krige would be AWESOME in horroe movies though. a la carrie's mom. does she do any? i could totally see her with a big knife in her hand creeping down a bloody staircase.

She was the evil woman spirit in Ghost Story!

Series 2 is out....very little talk or hype about it this time. Watched first three last night and it's great, though some of the mystery is def. removed this time. Also took a while for me to remember everything about series 1.

yeah i put on the first episode and i wasnt sure what the hell was going on with Method Man and the vietnamese lady

well they're completely new.

also that is not method man

I finished the first episode of season 2 ready to nitpick it to death, but then I watched the following episode and am firmly on board, like wOAh.

Ok soundtracking a pivotal scene to "Lightning Crashes" is rmde.

Homer really likes "Ordinary World". I love this show.

Hahah I had no idea what the fuck was going on with this as I'd never seen S1 and happened to be in the room when bf binged S2.

I do recall the general mirth at the stupid dance in S1.

That dreadful Live song aside, actually this ended in a rather entertaining WTF manner, I liked the rug being pulled out.

One thing I've noticed this season is that the episodes written by the showrunners are weaker than those written by others. I wonder if there are many other shows like that -- Chibnall Doctorb Who comes immediately to mind.

And that was a wholly unexpected finale!

That was amazing. I really hope this show keeps going.

episodes written by the showrunners are weaker than those written by others. I wonder if there are many other shows like that

I mean, the most obvious/famous example of this is The X-Files, plenty of Carter-written garbage but a handful of consistently great other writers working on it

Also, while this shows draws legitimate comparison to other crazy things (the Leftovers, Stranger Things (they even reference the Upside Down in this season; Twin Peaks....there was one scene with red drapes that seemed fairly explicit, and the 'communing with the tree/octopus' reminded me a lot of the conversations with Bowie Teapot in Season 3), what this series really reminds me of are David Mitchell novels. Particularly the Bone Clocks and Slade House.

What was the deal with that telepathic octopus anyway!? It just casually got introduced and then turned into sushi.

I don't there there is more to it other than it's a giant octopus that can talk to her and she can understand it. Really with about 30% of this show I just take it as it comes and don't try to wonder 'why'.

I'll also say that the movements remain completely thrilling to me. Like, chills and spine tingling when they begin doing them, every time. Even the robots were kind of thrilling. There's something about the synchronous nature of those incredibly complicated gestures that honestly seems to tap something.

I did think the way they got robot arms to replicate the dance was very cleverly done.

I'll also say that the movements remain completely thrilling to me. Like, chills and spine tingling when they begin doing them, every time.

Yeah, the actors commit so fully to the movements, it could've easily come off as terribly derpy otherwise.

I loved the the first four episodes of Season 2. I just watched Episode 5, which was one of the worst hours of television I've ever endured in my entire life. There is no way that two people in the weird house like OA and Karim would suddenly run up opposite sides of the staircase. This was Lost levels of sheer offensive stupidity.

really? that's where this show tipped over to implausibility for you?

It's where the show tipped over to, "I'm getting jerked around by bad writers who need to move plot in volume." I thought I was watching someone play a scratched CD-Rom of Myst.

i just finished bingeing both seasons - i really liked this show! i can see the problems people have with it, but it kept me hooked all the way through. i have a lot of questions though.
why is there so much purple in the first season
how did hap build those giant robots so fast - elodie left him with the 5 tiny ones, then suddenly they're enormous??
who tf is elodie??
who tf is the fbi counsellor?? why did he suddenly understand what was going on??
THE FUCKING OCTOPUS????????????????????
how did steve catch up with the group on treasure island so quickly? he literally turned up minutes after they did. he didn't even have a phone anymore!
i didn't really get the brain seed/blossom thing either. or how hap got scott into the tunnel from treasure island??
really, though, the fucking octopus.

the whole meta tv show/real actors thing was a bit much for me

last scene was very Holy Mountain

and still no clue why young nina has hazel eyes, while adult nina has blue eyes. it's def not just 'we can't find a russian speaking blue eyed blonde girl', since they make such a point of her eye color. nancy looks directly in her hazel eyes and refers to them as 'blue as the prairie skies'.

i just go with the stuff that doesn't make sense (octopus, tree). I think this show is seond only to twin peaks in making its preposterous assertions and set pieces somehow believable...at least, you want to believe them.

Yeah! We just rewatched the first season in preparation for the second and I was also thinking that it reminded me of Twin Peaks while being somehow completely unlike Twin Peaks and not something that I would necessarily recommend to fans of Twin Peaks.

It damn well holds up, though. Nuts to the haters, this thing is gold.

I ended up enjoying Season 2 a lot, with the exception of Episode 5 shenanigans, which felt like the writers moving pieces on a chessboard. I love that she went for such a WTF ending. If there is a Season 3, it’s got to be very warped.

who tf is the fbi counsellor?? why did he suddenly understand what was going on??

I think he's supposed to be similar to Elodie? Someone with at least familiarity with the whole traveling concept.

The twin peaks comparison is apt I think- at times it reminded me of a more literal-minded take on The Return

Just finished and, yeah, think this is still safely in my top three of the decade (along with Enlightened and The Return, so clearly Marling just needs to go ahead and recruit Laura Dern ASAP).

So Homer jumped into Patrick 'actor who plays Steve in the Real World' Gibson's body, right?

not reading the previous posts as I'm only partway through but I love how earnestly batshit this show is.
was thinking of quitting after ep 3 (the kids and the mirror with the too-close-to-the-bone Stranger Things reference) but the next episode with 'old night' was just beautiful.

I couldn't remember what happened in s1 so I read a recap and it sounded like the biggest load of old bollocks ever but I remembered enjoying it so pressed on.

I'm very, very glad that I rewatched s1 before s2. Not a commitment I generally make but it was worth it in this case.

ep5 was pretty nonsense until the teeny robots doing the moves omg!

haha wow "I'm Jason Isaacs"
Inland Empire vibes there although with Inland Empire I predicted that part.

This whole series leaned waaay too much on characters remembering/being told by mysterious strangers/ being told by fckn octopi/ having a feeling that someone is nearby but can't quite tell who or why but let's just go over there/ having a dream that they need to go somewhere but they don't really know why - JUST ENOUGH to get them to the next bit then into the "The Cell starring J-Lo" house. Homer remembering important pieces at exactly the right time (or wrong time I suppose) really pissed me off, nothing really made it happen other than Nina being convincing?

Why did eating a bit of the brain flower make Perd Hapley /Hap Percy hear the first few moments of the next dimension and why did he think that 'omg call an ambulance' sounded like a good place to go and could he even choose to go to someplace else? How did he get all the kids into the pool in that dimension? Also wtf at the start of ep6 or whatever with his dream of licking ye olden days back for the price of a bunch of sticks?

also excited to see who's president in this dimension

:(
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/oa-canceled-two-seasons-at-netflix-1229215

Bull. Shit.

NOOOOOOO

THR's chief TV critic Daniel Fienberg called the mysterious drama a "failed, but not wholly worthless, experiment in TV autoerotism.

For all of its goofiness, I really loved this show, and if they truly had it all plotted out, I'm bummed that we won't get to see where it was going.

we should do the movements and see what happens

ugh terrible news, I loved this show, both seasons of it.

https://www.instagram.com/p/B0ykCdLJYD5/?igshid=i1eh6h5w4d7q

I thought this show was very special even if most people would probably be inclined to ensconce that sentiment in scare quotes.

You know, I would have been OK with this after the first season, but now that they've proven that (to my surprise) they can pull off "just set up some new weird thing which will be weird in a similarly OA way but different" once, I feel like maybe they could pull it off several more times, and I'm sad they won't get to.

This sounds like some major wishful thinking, but who knows?

https://www.insider.com/the-oa-cancellation-fake-netflix-fan-theory-2019-8

Paddy Gibson as Steve as "Paddy Gibson" on the final scene of "Part II."

Aces.

that would be fucking awesome and it makes sense. I'll hold out hope.

Can anyone else imagine some sort of 'we want sauce' Rick and Morty bullshit from OA fans?

https://www.reddit.com/r/TheOA/comments/cmmhrr/what_if_it_is_our_responsibility_to_save_the_oa/

Forgive the thread spam, but I wanted to note that this show's 2019 season is nominated in the 2019 ILX TV poll:

ILX's Best Television of 2019 Poll / VOTING AND CAMPAIGNING THREAD / Voting Ends January 31

If you like this show and you'd like to see it have a good showing in the poll (running in February) all you need to do is submit a ballot including it and your other favorites (4 minimum, 25 maximum, organized by your favorite to least favorite) to forksclovetofu at gmail by end of day today. It'll take five minutes; get to it!