After the megasuccess of this summer’s Stranger Things, Netflix is giving sci-fi fans another look into the unknown with The OA, the new series debuting Friday. But while Stranger Things crossed over and became a surprising delight thanks to its open-hearted embrace of ‘80s genre conventions, The OA’s oddity tends, over the course of eight episodes, to read as pretension. It’s a winter binge suited for die-hards, but the viewer who needs a boost (character development, clear storytelling) to enter an imagined world will find the series a tough sit.
It’s difficult to summarize the plot. Part of that is the show’s dependence on surprise; part is that so much of the show’s story moves from incredible to just plain not credible, and putting it into print, or even thinking it through, diminishes it. In brief: Prairie (Brit Marling, the independent-film actress and writer who co-created this series) has been returned home to her adoptive parents after a lengthy absence, during which she has somehow, miraculously, regained the sight she lost in childhood. The show, in flashback, tracks her period of Room-like imprisonment by a monstrous man (Jason Isaacs) who seems to have motives beyond pure sadism; it also follows her coming into a set of powers that seem to extend into the paranormal.
If someone told you all the twists of The OA and then all the twists of Stranger Things, the Stranger Things plot points sound way more realistic for a top-secret, highly acclaimed genre Netflix. Even if the eye color thing has you doubting OA's honesty, we at least remain certain that her Russian heritage is real. In episode two we see a flashback of Abel recording Prairie/OA while she sleepwalks and speaks Russian. In the pilot, OA finds this tape and plays a snippet of it — you can hear the Russian again.
Marling and Isaacs are both strong, as is Emory Cohen, one of Prairie’s fellow inmates in her terrarium-like prison. The scenes in which Marling is interacting with either actor are the series’ best, as in a deeply tense scene during which she feels her way around a kitchen to make a sandwich for her captor, pushing through her inability to see in order to prove her value as a prisoner. In these scenes, the strangeness of Prairie’s situation is given tight, rigorous focus—the sort of control that imagination needs in order to keep from losing its balance. Outside captivity and in the present day, The OA is burdened with too many characters (including The Office’s Phyllis Smith, ably pushing against the limits of an underwritten role) working sometimes against each other and sometimes in concert. They are pushing toward a goal that’s confusingly opaque, until, with a thuddingly unsatisfying conclusion, it’s revealed all at once. Scenes with Prairie’s parents coming to terms with what their daughter suffered are, as they were in the movie Room, emotionally wrenching. But here, they’re surrounded by impenetrable interdimensional dross (in episodes that are frankly too long). And so they come to feel like manipulation, reminders to jolt the audience rather than expressions of curiosity about Prairie’s plight or ways to build out her world.
What Marling and co-creator (and frequent movie collaborator) Zal Batmanglij have created is a work that’s so enraptured with TV’s potential to endlessly embroider—pushing deeper and deeper into a mythology that may not be fully thought-out—that it neglects the basics in a way a film cannot, really. Each episode seems to kick the can a little further, procrastinating on meaningful insight. The things on The OA that work, like Isaacs’ and Marling’s toxic chemistry, cast into relief just how little the stuff in the present day, with Marling serving as a tutor of sorts on the mysteries of the universe to her team of cosmic avengers, has been thought-through. Alternately lugubrious and rushed, the revelation of Prairie’s imprisonment and her powers has more in the way of shock value (wow, they’re actually doing this?) than meaning or artistic nourishment.
It’s worth remarking on the show’s unique release schedule. Netflix announced The OA’s release only a few days in advance and with the barest-bones level of detail, as close as any television broadcaster has come in recent years to dropping a genuine surprise series and “pulling a Beyoncé” without actually pulling a Beyoncé (give or take the HBO broadcast of Lemonade). The strategy makes life a bit more exciting for TV fans but does little more than that—ultimately, the show is the show, and will be watched by people on Friday or two years from now. Judged outside the excitement of this week, The OA has some great sci-fi elements, but it fails to transport to another dimension in the way the best—and most carefully, thoughtfully made—art can.
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EDIT POSTJoJo Whilden/Netflix
What happened to Prairie Johnson? What does 'O.A.' stand for? What are the five movements? These are some of the questions raised in the first season of Netflix's bizarre 2016 sci-fi series — and they're questions fans may want to revisit the answers to by recapping The OA Season 1 before Season 2 premieres on March 22.
There's this phenomenon that seems to happen every time a new show hits Netflix. For one weekend, it seems like everyone in the world is talking about it. But when you watch an entire season of television in one sitting, you can find yourself forgetting some details after marathoning the next big thing on Netflix, no matter how diligently you watched. And when a show aired as long ago as Season 1 of The OA — which premiered over two years ago, way back in December of 2016 — anyone can be forgiven for needing a refresher course. (Let's be real, I already need a refresher course reminding me what happened in the holiday special of Chilling Adventures Of Sabrina, and that only aired three months ago.)
So practice your modern dance and polish up your movements, because it's time to travel to another dimension.
Gone Girl, Found
Season 1 started when Prairie Johnson, a girl who had been missing for seven years, turned up alive and well. Making her case even more unusual was the fact that she had been blind when she disappeared, but was found with her sight inexplicably restored. Although her parents Nancy and Abel were thrilled to have their daughter returned to them, Prairie was more preoccupied with recruiting a new following: angry drug dealer Steve, sensitive jock French, choir singer Buck, lonely stoner Jesse, and mousy teacher Ms. Broderick-Allen (aka BBA). Once assembled, Prairie told her five new friends her life story.
Girl, Interrupted
It turns out that Nancy and Abel are Prairie's adoptive parents. Prairie was actually born in Russia, the daughter of an oligarch. Her birth name is Nina Azarova. When the mafia targeted a school bus full of the children from upper class families, Nina was the only survivor. During her near-death experience (NDE), she met an angel named Khatun, who returned her to life without her sight. Nina's father sent her to a boarding school in America to keep her safe but, after her father's death, she ended up adopted by an American couple, who renamed her Prairie.
As Prairie got older, she started receiving premonitions and visions of her father. On her 21st birthday, she ran away from home, convinced that she was supposed to meet her father at the Statue of Liberty. After he never showed up, she wound up bumping into Hap, a scientist interested in NDEs. He convinced her to be a part of his study, but he ended up kidnapping her and locking her in his basement along with several other test subjects. During an escape attempt, Prairie was knocked out by Hap; while unconscious, she met Khatun again, who restored her sight and sent her back to the world of the living.
To Infinity And Beyond
The Oa Plot Summary Season 2
Prairie and her fellow subjects, including Homer, had no idea what Hap was subjecting them to, given that he would knock them out with gas before taking them up to his lab for experiments. But Prairie discovered that they could team up to suck the gas out of each other's cages, allowing Hap's designated subject for the day to remain awake, feigning unconsciousness, during the procedure. It turned out that Hap was drowning them to find out what happened to them during their NDEs — and, more specifically, where they were going.
Based on sounds he recorded during their near-deaths, Hap became convinced that Prairie and the others were traveling somewhere near the rings of Jupiter. Meanwhile, Prairie and Homer started coming back from their NDEs with 'movements.' When fellow test subject Scott was killed during an experiment, they performed their movements in sync over his body for hours… and Scott miraculously came back to life.
Oa Plot Summary
The Missing Piece
Eventually, Prairie became convinced there were five movements that, when performed by five people, would open a doorway to a new dimension. Although she and her fellow subjects received four of the five movements during the NDEs, they were still missing one. Then a local sheriff discovered them in Hap's basement — but Hap convinced the sheriff not to turn them in, telling him Prairie and Homer could heal his comatose wife. When they performed their movements and the woman awoke, she brought with her the fifth and final movement.
Hap then killed the sheriff and his wife and took Prairie away, dumping her on the side of the road. He said he didn't need her anymore; with the fifth movement, he and the rest of the subjects could travel to a new dimension without her. So Prairie made her way back home, determined to recruit and teach the movements to five new people who could open a doorway and allow her to save Homer.
Mission Accomplished…?
Back in the present day, Prairie was once again receiving a series of premonitions she couldn't quite decipher. She told her friends and her adoptive parents that her new name, OA, was an abbreviation for 'Original Angel.' But doubt was shed on her story when French stumbled upon a box of books that could have inspired Prairie's far-fetched story, Keyser Söze-style (like The Iliad by Homer). Or were the books planted by Prairie's shady FBI counselor, Elias?
Any doubt, however, was forgotten when a shooter walked into the kids' school one day. Desperate to prevent a tragedy, they and BBA stood up to the armed intruder and performed the five movements flawlessly. At the same time, Prairie realized her premonition was of the shooting, and ran to the school to help. The movements distracted the shooter long enough for him to be taken down, but one stray bullet went through the glass and struck Prairie. As she was taken away in an ambulance, she told Steve that the movements had worked; that he and his friends had opened a doorway, and that she was on her way to meet Homer. The ambulance drove off, with Steve running after her, asking Prairie to take him with her.
Oa Plot Summary
Was Prairie's story true or a fabrication? Did the movements really work, or did the season end with Prairie's death? The fact that the show is back for Season 2 implies that there was at least some truth to Prairie's story, but there are still plenty of questions left to be answered. Dive back into the mystery when the episodes drop on Netflix on Friday, March 22.