jamesononline
Plot: Fascinating premise - the OA ("Original Angel") has near death experiences that give her a glimpse at the other side and secrets of how to get to other dimensions. The final episode is so unexpected, with an intensely emotional event that will definitely definitely leave you crying and wanting more!Themes: Love, paranormal, sacrificeActing: The leads are amazing. Prairie (the OA) has a fascinating face that looks "blind" even when she can see again. Her mother and father are great. The team she assembles is great. A+ actingSetting: nondescript suburbs for the most partSoundtrack: Haunting, memorable classical music mixed with indie rock
kadjunn
Binge watching this series was like having sex without coming, like going to the concert with earplugs...arty, but often made me feel like I was watching a amateur schoolkids play with awkward pauses, looks and movements that felt exercised, practiced and dry. Mixed with some excellent episodes that kept me going but at the end left still wanting more. Unsatisfied. Besides acting, the story was intriguing, confusing, not spoon fed which is fine but there was too much hanging in the air at the end. I felt fooled. But then again, perhaps that was the point. Everyone did at the end in a way. It's a show torn between two minds, full of pencil sucking, compromises, unnecessary twists, unfinished characters. lacking in confidence to truly draw out the main character. Shame, so much potential but the writing was just not there all the way. Not sure was there too little or too much of it. But something was off. To lure the viewer into certain mystical track and spitting them out to a mundane school canteen floor, is annoying to say the least. Foreplay for nothing.
bilgepumpmaniac
This show is beyond stupid.It's different, yes, and different can be good. I like different, in fact. But this show isn't the good kind of different.Let's say we're at a cook-out, and it's "different," and all the dishes are like TV shows or movies. The hot-dogs with wasabi mayonnaise? That might be Memento; different, but tasty, effective and probably ready for consumption by the general public. Next to it is a grilled steak that's been pulverised in a food processor and subsequently packed tight around a dollop of sour cream and shaped into the form of a baked potato; that would be Paranoia Agent (or any Satoshi Kon film). You thought you were eating one thing, then another, and then gave up entirely on figuring out what it was and just enjoyed it. Next to it on the table is a remote-controlled robot somehow made up entirely of hamburger meat. That's Eraserhead (or any David Lynch film). You don't really want to eat it (and wouldn't even know how), but it's an amazing accomplishment by the creator, and wow! Hamburger meat??Then, at the end of the table, is a huge gingerbread cookie baked into the shape of the mathematical symbol for pi, with a mountain of melted marshmallows piled on top and sprinkled with an entire bag of jelly beans, and a brass statue of Buddha crammed down into the center of it just for laughs. Which might be ok if you started eating it, until you reached the center, where they hid a severed goat penis. And then you get mad. That's The OA.The main character "Prairie/The OA," played by waify, mewly Brit Marling, is clearly intended to be Profound, which is already a bad start. She dispenses pearls of wisdom at every opportunity like a Jesus Pez dispenser, only it's not wisdom at all. "But that's you, what about your invisible self," she quietly asks at one point like she's talking to an incredibly tiny person five-inches from her face. Most of her lines read like something out of a self-help book co-authored by Tony Robbins and Yoda. Given that Brit Marling wrote this material, I imagine that if I met her she would be wearing oven mitts made of astroturf, and if I asked her why, she would reply that the air is greasy, and proceed to describe to me how she spent five months learning how to crochet just so that she could make herself a blanket with Suzanne Vega's face on it.There are a bunch of teenagers occupying half the cast, whose only purpose in the show is (quite literally) to serve as a narrative device. They all have side-stories that no one cares about, because none of them are believable. Why? Because Prairie (a complete stranger to them) asked them all to come out in the middle of the night, every night, to an abandoned house to be regaled with her acid flashbacks with no compensation whatsoever, and they all agreed.Uh-huh. Sure.The plot... well, it's an unholy mess. I won't go into details because that would take up the rest of the space IMDB provides for reviews, but let me just say...SPOILERS...it involves being able to achieve extra-planar travel through the power of interpretive dance.I'm not kidding.The only reason I gave it three stars instead of one is because there is some good acting in it, and at times the writing does pull you in. Until it asks you to kindly remove your brain from your head while it pours dandelions and chickens into your head.To say that this show is full of itself is an understatement, and I can't begin to fathom how so many people got duped into thinking this is quality television. Run away. Run far, far away.
