SOME SPOILERS AHEAD.
The first thing I noticed about this show – because it’s the most obvious – is how it is shot and coloured. I love it. The style is a familiar one; it’s the kind you see in smaller budget, sometimes indie, films that tend to be deep, philosophical and serious. Maybe even a little pretentious. So that gives me certain expectations about this show.
I was wondering why there were no opening titles and assumed that it may be like some anime that don’t use their opening until the end of the first episode and/or at the beginning of the second. When the opening happened near the end of this episode I fully understood immediately why it was done that way; that was the real start of the story. It was a very interesting, stylish and creative way to incorporate the opening titles and I very much like how they did it.
Despite Prairie being the main character, she wasn’t the one that stood out to me. It was Steve.
He was a real asshole and unlikable when he was introduced. While he still is an asshole by the end of the episode, he’s a lovable one. I quickly grew to like him as it progressed. Patrick Gibson, the actor that portrays him, doesn’t at all look like he is high school age (his age isn’t on IMDB or Wikipedia). I thought Steve was an adult when he first appeared on screen and I continued to up until the moment we saw him in his high school.
Another instance in which I was confused about a character’s age was when Prairie went to the school posing as his step-mother. Before that little tid-bit was revealed – that she was pretending to be his stepmother – I thought she was there as his mother which, by the looks of her, she didn’t look old enough to be. In fact, I thought she was in her early twenties.
Prairie’s meeting with Betty took a really strange turn. I’m glad it didn’t take the usual route of Prairie’s strange rambling – especially about Betty forgetting her first reason and having lost someone – didn’t just somehow unlock this thing within her that made her soften and break down and promptly change her ways. It did by the end, but when Prairie said something that would be sensible to someone not on her wave length; that Betty should focus on the student who isn’t succeeding instead of the one that is.
It went fairly realistically, I think, and still came around to something meaningful that was a real revelation and change.
I don’t buy that the press showed up at her house one day and one day only. Interest in her story would not have died that quickly. Unless a significant amount of time passed and that wasn’t made exactly clear.
It seems like dying – or at least having a near death experience – is important to whatever it is that Prairie is a part of. It looks like it involves obtaining a deeper understanding of the world or the universe (dimensions?). It makes sense that dying would somehow be linked to that considering the myths etc surrounding death and what happens when you die.
This was an amazing first episode. I’m hooked and I’m intrigued and I need to see more.
Random thoughts:
- What’s with her feet?
- You can’t send your dog to attack her and then tell her not to bite it.
All episodes of The OA are currently available for streaming on Netflix.
