The OA “Invisible Self”

Well, I think the show lost me there.

So, anyway, when I first viewed and wrote up this episode, I had no idea if The OA would be renewed by Netflix.  For that matter, I’m not even sure where a show like this can go from where it ended.  However, Netflix has since renewed The OA for a second season, so there’s something there.  As sci-fi goes, The OA is much closer to the artistic weirdness of something like Sense8 than the comparatively more grounded Stranger Things, and I suspect if I weren’t doing write-ups, I might have quit The OA before I finished it.  Or, at the least, I would have not tuned in all that regularly in the grand scheme of things and eventually finished some time after I started out of a sense of seeing it through.

But the show lost me here.  Prairie/OA finally finishes her story, she and Homer get the fifth movement, and then Hap dumps her in the woods alone for some reason, and that’s when she somehow wakes up and sees everybody’s parents (including her own) are somehow all there at once.

Uh, how’d they all know to go there?

And while the idea that maybe OA made up the whole story was intriguing, it still ignores the fact she somehow got her sight back.  That may be the only weird thing that we can verify happened outside her story, but it still happened without any sort of explanation.  The other problem is once the story is over, we’re back to the weakest part of the show, namely the lives of the five people she gathered, and after trying to prove her story and then having doubts about it, I ask myself…wait, why is Steve not back on a van to reform school?  And since he was spending time with these people, shouldn’t French have lost his scholarship due to that morality clause?

But hey, that shooter (whose face we never saw clearly) was stopped in his tracks by the movements because we are all stopped by the power of Interpretive Dance!

If it looks like I’m making fun of the show, I somewhat am, but there is a lot to like about The OA.  Brit Marling makes a compelling lead, and a credible cult/spiritual leader depending on how you see her.  It makes sense that the five would follow her.  There’s a lot of artistic goodness on display.  The flashbacks, whether Prairie makes all that stuff up or not, is compelling television.  I just couldn’t bring myself to feel really invested in Steve, French, Betty, Jesse or Buck.  Especially Jesse or Buck who don’t get nearly as much screen time or character development as the other three.  The more time the show stayed with the five, the less I cared what they were doing.

Net result:  when The OA comes back for more episodes, I am not sure I will be watching or covering them.  I don’t regret watching it, but I also have no interest in going any further at this time.  For now, let’s say eight out of ten fights over a waffle breakfast.

So that’s the end of The OA at least for now.  What will we be covering starting next week?  Well, let’s stick with Netflix and check out a new series, one full of rather unfortunate events.

We could all use a little more Neil Patrick Harris in our lives.