The OA (Season 2)

I’ve been thinking about what level of spoilers I want to put into this review.  On the one hand, talking too much about Part II would reveal a lot about Part I.  If you haven’t seen the series at all, it might be unfair to ruin the experience.  (Note that I will be discussing the first part here, so be warned if you haven’t seen it yet.)  It would also entail a lot of reading.

On the other hand, it’s not the kind of show where spoilers would necessarily turn you off.  The first part was known for being a bit supernatural.  If you’ve seen it, you’ve probably already made up your mind whether or not to come back.  I will say that the show has turned up the strangeness, leaving behind any doubt as to the nature of the storyline.  (If I mentioned that one episode featured a telepathic octopus, would you even care?)

I imagine that there are a few people that have forgotten about The OA.  Part I was released December 16, 2016.  Part II was released a few days ago on March 22, 2019.  We’ve been hearing hints and rumors during the intervening years, hoping that the new episodes would live up to their predecessors.  If you let your Netflix membership lapse during that time, you might want to consider renewing.  Part II has taken the story to the next level.

It starts right after the end of the first part.  However, the first half hour deals with Karim Washington, a private investigator that was hired to find a missing teenager.  It isn’t until the second half that we get any continuity.  Prairie finds herself on a ship, having some sort of chest pains.  She wakes up in a hospital to find out that her name is still Nina Azarova.  (She was adopted by the Johnsons and renamed Prairie.)

She comes to realize that she’s in an alternate dimension, where many of the same people exist.  Joe Biden is the president, for instance.  Hunter Aloysius "Hap" Percy is there, too, and it’s the version of him from the main dimension.  So, her story was real.  And several characters made it over.  So, what does that mean for getting back?  That much, I don’t want to give away.  It is discussed, but is a minor point.  Instead, it focuses on the mysteries of an unnamed game and a strange house meant to guard psychedelic spring water.

In case you may have been on the fence for Part I or reading about the show for the first time, Part II seems to have refined the writing a bit.  It is a much better narrative that doesn’t really drag as much.  There’s no ambiguity.  We know what’s going on.  It takes on the metaphysical aspect head on.  Instead of asking if there’s another dimension, we wonder what that means.  There’s even a traveler who has been to many dimensions.

This isn’t for someone who likes simple stories.  This isn’t Law & Order or the Hallmark Channel.  This is full-on Twilight Zone/Outer Limits stuff.  (Did I mention the telepathic octopus?)  I would recommend starting from the beginning.  I do recommend it for people who are looking for something different.  Netflix took a risk on such a strange show and it paid off.  I look forward to Part III.  Unfortunately, we’re left with another ambulance-chasing cliffhanger which promises to be interesting.  I just hope we don’t have to wait another 2½ years for it.

IMDb page

The OA (Season 1)

I’ve always found flashbacks to be cliché.  Usually, it comes off as a way of padding a movie or TV episode.  You could just as easily show what happened.  Sometimes, it’s effective.  It can be used as a way to raise questions or cast doubt.  Such is the case with The OA.

It starts with a woman jumping off of a bridge.  She’s known as Prairie Johnson, but she wants to be addressed as The OA.  Her parents, who we soon learn are adoptive, have no idea what happened to her in the intervening seven years.  She simply ran off one day.  Oh, and it takes Prairie a moment to recognize her parents.  You see, seven years ago, she was blind.  Now she can see.

Prairie gathers five people in an uncompleted house to hear her story.  One is a teacher; the rest are students.  (They are all from the same school.)  She was born in Russia as Nina Azarov.  Her father was a rich man, but became a target.  As such, Nina was in danger.  She was injured in an attack, resulting in a near-death experience and blindness.  Her father eventually sent her away to a boarding school until his death.

She is eventually adopted by an American couple, the Johnsons, and renamed Prairie.  She’s brought to the United States and raised until she runs away.  It’s approaching her 21st birthday and she has a dream that her father will meet her at the Statue of Liberty.  Of course, he’s not there, but she meets Hap, a guy who has a plane and a plan to help her.  Of course, by help, he means abduct.

The narrative alternates between Prairie telling her group of five about her ordeal and their respective lives in the present.  Prairie is seeing a counselor from the FBI while her five protégés/disciples have lives of their own.  Prairie and her parents try to get her back to normal.  The problem is that her story is anything but normal.  Hap is doing research into near-death experiences.  All of the other captives that she tells the group about had similar experiences.  In fact, that’s what she needs help with.  Her plan is to teach the others to open a portal so that she can go back and save the others.

If you think that this sounds a little weird, it is.  Prairie’s story comes off as what you might expect from someone who escaped captivity.  It sounds very much like a coping mechanism.  She desperately tried to find a way to save herself while in captivity and is having a hard time coming down from it.  How much of it is real, though?  Were there really others or were they figments of her imagination to help her cope?  Was she really having near-death experiences or was she just hallucinating from being held captive for so long?

There’s the issue of her regaining her sight.  I’m sure such things happen.  However, is it possible that she was conditioned to play blind so that she would be adopted?  She was able to fool Hap for a while.  Could she have been playing her adoptive parents for sympathy?  If this is the case, what really happened during those seven years?

Even if we take her story at face value, there are questions.  Each of the captives are shown wearing the same clothes the entire time.  There’s no mention of their clothing being washed or changed, nor do the clothes seem to get dirty.  Also, Hap seems to be able to record the captives’ experiences while they’re on The Other Side.  How is this possible?  Speaking of seemingly impossible, Prairie and another captive, Homer, are able to write the movements, in code, on their backs.  How did they do this, given that they were separated?  The markings are on their backs in an area that’s difficult to reach and there are no signs of any sort of tool.  Also, why split the markings between two captives?  Why not write all the movements on all of the prisoners?

The big issue is that there doesn’t seem to be much proof of her ordeal.  The prisoners managed to get a bill with Hap’s P.O. Box number on it.  It seems like such a simple thing to remember.   Yet, when Prairie returns, she can’t seem to tell which city she was being held in.  You’d think that if they could encode movements on their backs, they could have memorized or encoded a simple address.

As much as I enjoyed the series, I had a sense of being let down at the end.  It looks like there’s going to be a second season.  However, we’re not left with a cliffhanger, per se.  We’re also not left with much of a resolution.  There’s not that decisive moment were it either all comes together or forces that one unresolved issue upon us that will leave us hanging until next season.  Instead, you get all of these uneasy feelings that only become questions later on. 

IMDb page

Another Earth = Hah! No Retreat!

Note:  This review was originally posted to my Epinions account.

One of my pet peeves about movies is how a driver will often have a conversation with a passenger and, in the process, totally ignore the road for entire seconds at a time.  Being a driver, I know that it’s impossible to take your eyes off the road for more than a fraction of a second.  Another Earth starts with such a situation.  Rhoda Williams is driving home from a party after being accepted to MIT.  On the radio, a DJ announces that an Earthlike planet has been spotted and can be seen from where she is as a small blue dot, which she immediately starts looking for.  She has hit the trifecta of being 17, drunk and distracted.  It’s not long before she gets into an accident, putting the driver, John Burroughs, in a coma and killing his wife and son.

Cut to four years later.  Rhoda is getting out of jail.  She’s picked up by her parents and brother, who take her home.  She gets a job as a janitor in a local school.  It’s not the scientific career she once might have dreamed of, but it’s something.  (Her trying to find this job is the only time someone seriously tries to persuade her to go into something academic or intellectual.)  Rhoda still feels guilt over what she did.  She manages to find out where John lives.  He’s since recovered, but has no idea who she is.  (Since she was a minor, her name was withheld from the public.)

She makes it all the way to his door.  She knocks, but when he answers, she can’t do it.  She instead claims to be from a cleaning service offering free trials.  She pushes just hard enough to make him refuse.  He does call her back because of that “free” part and has her clean part of his house.  She does it because she’s not quick enough to get out of it.  This begins a strange, if ill-advised, relationship.

You’re probably wondering where this second Earth comes in.  It’s constantly in the background, but plays a very minor part in the story.  Rhoda and John talk about it occasionally.  John has a telescope and looks at it, seeing familiar landmasses.  Rhoda even enters a contest to go to the other Earth.  Mostly, the movie is about the two of them and how they get along.  It is eventually discovered that the inhabitants are basically duplicate versions of ourselves.  It looks like their lives may have diverged from ours the moment that the two Earths came close to each other, so it’s possible that the other Rhoda never crashed into the other John.

Because of this, the movie seems to drag a lot.  At least, it did for me.  After the accident, Rhoda can’t really resume her old life.  After the coma, John seems to lose the will to do much outside of a bottle.  There’s a slow progression of John getting off the couch and Rhoda starting to find a new purpose.

The movie does call for a good deal of suspension of disbelief.  There’s no explanation of or speculation on how the other Earth came to our solar system.  It’s implied that the planet somehow was moved, which would require a great deal of energy.  If a planet were moved in such a fashion, I don’t imagine the inhabitants would enjoy it .  It would probably be a very rough ride and would begin and end with everyone being thrown around.

Even ignoring that, a second Earth would undoubtedly have an effect on our planet.  There’s no mention of any effect on our orbit or tides.  I did, however, notice a very conspicuous absence of our moon.  (It looks like the other Earth brought its moon, though.)  Also, how is it that the alternate Earth ended up being far enough away from both our Earth and the sun?  It would have been a shame if it got too close to us and crashed or was too far away from the sun and everyone froze.  They do talk about the effects of going over, such as solar radiation and being in zero gravity.  The writers did at least have some sense of the need for research.

I know, I’m a stickler for scientific details.  As I said, it‘s mostly about the relationship between Rhoda and John.  Rhoda’s family doesn’t even seem to ask her why she’s coming and going at all hours of the night.  I remember first hearing about the movie, thinking that we were going to see a lot of people meeting themselves or about some great culture shock or something.  I was hoping that there would be more about the other Earth.  I wonder how many people won’t rent this thinking that it will be some science-fiction movie.  I was kind of let down that it wasn’t. 

Official Site

ANOTHER EARTH Official HD Trailer