The OA “Champion”

I get the impression there’s a lot going on with The OA as a series.

But does it add up to anything?

See, the backstory The OA is dishing out to her team of five is rather fascinating, but the stuff around her as she relates the story seems more…baffling than anything else.  What’s up with Ms. Broderick-Allen, the older teacher in her group, finding a dirty drawing of herself on the whiteboard in her classroom and drawing a cube around it?  How well do Steve and Alfonso get along?  Why did Steve seem to make a pass at Prairie?  Why did she rebuff him besides the obvious age difference?  That classroom Steve is sent to as a punishment for whatever he’s doing, that girl in there is worse than he is, so does she come back later?

Point is, I’m not sure the series can or will answer these questions so much as give the actors a chance to do some stuff in character that may expand their characters over time or it may just add up to little if anything.

As for the flashbacks, besides showing Prairie is not alone in Dr. Hap’s basement, I’m still not sure how he does his experiments.  The other three are locked in their cells all the time.  There’s Homer, Scott, and Rachel.  Homer’s got a kid somewhere.  He believes it’s a son.  Scott is a burnout that Hap nabbed while he was high.  Rachel has a great singing voice.  Prairie, on the other hand, gets out of her cell from time to time as Hap doesn’t find the blind girl a threat.  She does chores for him, and sometimes that means the others don’t get to eat glorified human-sized hamster pellets.  Prairie’s trips upstairs have her trying to kill Hap with crushed sleeping pills in a stew she made.  Too bad he was allergic to tomatoes and had to use an epipen.  That does allow Prairie to get her hands on a bill and Homer’s stashed class ring in an attempt of the captives to mail a rescue note.  There’s a stream of water that runs through the cells for cleaning purposes, and though Prairie can get the note to Homer, she and Scott both fail to catch it in the fast-flowing water as it comes back.  I’m not sure how they could have mailed Homer’s ring without Hap noticing, but there ya go.

By the by, what was Hap doing while the captives were trying to write a note?  Burying the body of another girl he’d captured.  There’s stuff with gas, too.  When Prairie asks about the gas, Hap just says not to worry about it.  There are always casualties with any work.

That would be when Prairie pushed Hap down the stairs to the basement, broke a window, and made a run for it through the woods.  Even if she weren’t blind, the fact that Hap’s property opens up on a large canyon and the group are clearly in the middle of nowhere means she’s not going anywhere.

Then someone knocks her out with the butt of a rifle.

Methinks she lost her upstairs privileges.