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Originally Posted by Poe969
I just watched the OA. Wtf? Did anyone else watch it and if so, can you please tell me what it was about.
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I think it was kinda pseudo-deep, meaning that it was strange enough to make you think that maybe there was all this hidden meaning and connection behind everything, but I'm not convinced there was anything deep.
Spoilering just in case:
Spoiler!
It's essentially the sci-fi cliche of where aliens come to earth to save humanity, but they only tell a few people the key to this salvation, and nobody really believes them (Cassandra complex). Except these may not be aliens in the conventional sense or some sort of interdimensional mystic force. But rather than focusing on the big picture, it focuses on this study of imprisonment and victimization. Another cliche: the scientist who wants to understand, but simply can't because he is a person of fact and not of faith.
All of which would be okay, that could be a refreshing take in the focus on the intimate rather than big picture; except that the pacing sucked. Is Prairie going to get her peeps together this episode so she can continue to spend the whole night telling them another chapter of her story in which she's still imprisoned? Yup. Midway through it really started to bore me, which is too bad because I think there were some interesting ideas.
I think there's a difficult thing in superheroish origin stories of which this is one: it's an awful cliche to show someone's powers right away. (I don't remember what it was but there was another series that came out around the same time and the hero discovered in the first episode after returning from an apparent abduction that he could throw cars around and alter the path of bullets. Boring arc. ) It can be really rewarding to take the viewer on this long journey of the hero's self-discovery of their powers. Here, there's the opposite problem: Prairie's journey of discovery is surrounded by dull and depressing elements.
Fringe nailed this problem better than any other show I can recall. The self-discovery was a really long arc, but the show was still telling great stories at the same time.
Anyway, I'm hopeful that now that they've got all the backstory exposition out of the way, season 2 might be better.