NOW PLAYING: The OA.
Seven years after vanishing from her home, a young woman returns with mysterious new abilities and recruits five strangers for a secret mission.
Today on Now Playing we’re diving right in with the OA! I know little about the OA but wanted to cover it after seeing Brandon Perea’s profile on the New York Times following Nope’s release. In the article, he talks about Nope as a sort of comeback following the OA’s quick cancellation after two seasons, a shock for many fans following its cliffhanger ending. Although creators planned for the series to have five parts, Netflix only green-lit two despite it’s favorable criticism. I know very little about it outside of the fact it sounds like Sense8, with many supernatural, science fiction elements, but I’m eager to see what the pilot has in store!
I’m keeping this intro short N’ sweet since this first episode is ONE HOUR LONG.
Part 1, Chapter 1: Homecoming opens with shaky found footage of traffic on a bridge. A blonde weaving through crowded cars and bypasses the person filming to jump off the bridge. The kid filming this is freaking out but don’t worry, the next scene indicates Ms. Suicide is gonna be already. She wakes up in the hospital three days later a-ok because she hit the water feet first so she’s not all banged up. Unsure if this means she can’t walk anymore but that’s not the nurses concern, she’s just trying to find the family of this woman. She’s also wondering how this lady got scars on her body and what her name is.
Boom, title of the show. Blondie’s name is “the OA.”
Cutting to a house where a woman named Nancy lights a candle, the tension is thick. Nancy lights a candle in front of a photo of who I believe is the OA in question and Nancy’s sister Erica is asking her to log on right now to see a Youtube video of, you guessed it, Nancy’s daughter OA jumping off a bridge. I feel like I’m getting a lot of the facts wrong here and anyone who’s legitimately seen the OA would be laughing at how I’m translating this, since I HIGHLY doubt this blonde chick’s name is the OA, but I’m just reporting the facts as they come and the facts are OA’s mom is NOT stoked to see her daughter jump off a bridge on Youtube.
Nancy and her husband Abel go to the hospital ASAP.
The person leading them to OA’s room lays down the facts STAT. OA has some scarring on her back, she should be in the psych ward, things like that. These people are like hey, that’s all nice and cool, but we’re just trying to see our daughter right now and the nurse is like :’) Fine. OA sits up in bed saying “who are these people?” when they walk in the room which is an absolute vibe check. Wish I had done that to humble my mom after I tried killing myself and she had to come get me from the hospital, too. Her mom takes her hands and has her touch her face and that’s how she figures out it’s momma talking to her. We learn her real name is Prairie and the family is crying at this reconciliation. Even more wild, the girl went missing seven years ago and was blind back then.
The nurse is absolutely baffled.
They take dead name OA now Prairie back with them to her home as she finally sees her neighborhood for the first time. People are chasing the car waving because a video of this girl just went viral on Youtube and also this blind woman can see now. Reporters flank her alongside people with signs and she puts a blanket over her head as she walks back inside. Internally, Prairie is telling herself her name is not Prairie which I’m excited about because it’s a pretty hard name for me to spell. I keep forgetting there’s two I’s.
She feels the carpet under her feet and smiles before falling to the ground in her home.
Officers have shown up to ask her questions about her disappearance. They probe about the night she disappeared and she says I’ve been present for all seven years I’ve been gone. She says she walked for a long time to the bridge she jumped off of but wasn’t sure where she came from to get there. She tried to get a ride and got picked up by an old woman in a dusty car on her way where she was brought to a shelter with other presumably unhoused people. Once in the shelter, Prairie was like “not for me” and tried going back to where she was held captive only to find an empty place. The bridge she tried jumping off of was only a conduit to get “back to them” and the police are very confused on what this means. They’re like ma’m we are the only place people should ever go to for help why??? Not call??? Us?
Love that even in this fictional world the police aren’t helpful.
Prairie does drop a wild phrase that the captives she was with “died more times than she can count” and the police are like okay, we’ll drop this for now. Upstairs Prairie lies awake tossing and turning letting out the word “Homer” as she aggressively turns on her computer. Her computer talks at her with an automated voice to indicate what she’s doing on the computer, since she was previously blind. Trying to get into the Wifi, she needs the password but doesn’t know what it is to Google Homer. Searching around her house for the Wifi password, she eventually finds a video recorder carrying clips from her youth. She watches the tape for a bit before rifling through other shit. She finds an alarming amount of knives, stakes, can openers, and almost pierces her finger before her mom comes in to intervene. The two go on a nice late night walk and her mom asks why Prairie can see now. Prairie says she can’t tell her and mom moves on to a new subject about how the neighborhood ran out of money and couldn’t finish building all the new buildings they meant to finish. Prairie sees two neighbor boys on their roof doing back flips and filming each other before they spot her. “Shit that’s Prairie Johnson,” they say.
We cut to one of the roof back flip guys having sex with some girl the next day. I hope this girl sticks around because she pretty quickly leaves after having sex and is annoyed he wants to watch movies with her. She’s like “Steve, you’re hot, but we are just fucking. I like some guy in chorus,” to which, he punches a wall and cries after hearing lmfao. Steve’s dad opens the door to find him standing butt naked in front of his window and is completely unfazed which, incredibly realistic- my parents never knock as well when I am naked. We learn Steve is also in high school because his teacher emailed his dad about how he’s a big bully which tracks for some dude who punches walls.
Can’t relate to the bully part, can’t relate to the no boundaries in high school with my parents stuff.
Underneath the sheets, Prairie films a video for someone she was probably romantically involved with about describing beds to each other and missing sleeping next to whoever the fuck Homer is. She says there’s moments she thinks she made Homer up and honestly, maybe she did because I thought she was talking about legendary Illiad author Homer. Her mom opens her door because NO ONE CARES ABOUT KNOCKING HERE and Prairie’s annoyed since she still hasn’t gotten the password for the wifi. Her mom’s like “about that, we’re monitoring phone and internet usage” because the hospital said your child needs to be watched all the time. Wild, my parents let me watch scary movies in the basement alone after I tried yeeting myself off this Earth because I was like “I don’t feel anything” and then I didn’t sleep for a week.
Haunting of Hill House is fucking terrifying whether you want to live OR die.
Prairie sneaks out of her house in the day and hikes up to a house with her camcorder, letting herself in the back door. It’s unfinished, so there’s a couple different people just hanging out in this house, and she goes up to this guy asking for wifi. The guy is like this is? An unfinished house? There’s no electricity.. Maybe ask someone upstairs? And she goes upstairs to ask but is accosted by Steve, who’s selling drugs to some kids. He takes her camera and won’t give it back to her because he’s like uh, I’m selling drugs here. Worse, she’s not gonna get it back because there’s a dog he orders to fucking attack her. She bites the dog back and the dog starts whimpering before she says “you’re good, you’re good,” and the dog calms down! Good for her! She’d make a living being a pet trainer at Pet Smart. She takes the camcorder back from Steve and someone breaks the silence asking how she got her sight.
She shakes her head and walks home with a bloody arm.
Bathing herself back home, her mom watches over her in the tub and asks if Prairie will please just work with her a bit here. She’s trying her best and Prairie won’t tell her anything so she watched a video of Prairie looking for a Homer and ooo, Prairie is embarrassed about her mom knowing she’s got a little crush on the Illiad author. Her mom’s like are you hearing voices again? before going on a monologue about Prairie running or some other childhood memory for us to bond ourselves to the character. She tries inquiring about Prairie’s scars but Prairie pulls away. It’s not that she doesn’t want to tell her she just knows it would hurt her mom to know the truth. She asks for time because I mean, she’s in the bath tub. She deserves a little privacy.
No idea if Prairie is in high school but once again, very relatable. I’m 28 and my mom STILL throws the door open when I’m in the bath.
At school, Steve, who also looks like a thirty year old actor playing eighteen, gets pushed by the field hockey team and opens the chorus door to look in scoping out his competition. He sees the lead singer Miles, who has a very nice voice, and chases him after school to compliment him. Miles is like honestly, I don’t want to talk to you- you made fun of my friend for being gay and Steve’s like I get it :) and instead punches him in the throat.
If this is going to be one of those “he’s a bully because he’s in the closet” plot lines, I don’t care and don’t want to see it!
Shaky footage of dolls films the screen as Prairie pivots in to being an at home cinematographer, I guess. She films herself talking about a boy she met who she thinks has something to do with everything going on. These videos are clearly a diary for whoever Homer is but the filming gets interrupted by Steve climbing up to her window demanding she let him in. He bought her a mobile router which apparently will help her get internet. Of course, this is a sort of “I scratch your back, you scratch mine” scenario so I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop. He sets up this little router for her to be like I need you to get me out of going to this military school in Asheville and she agrees to help but on some conditions. She needs five strong people and is going to use the abandoned house as a meeting point.
They agree to be in cohoots for whatever it is the other needs.
Biking up the street together, they’re suddenly best friends going shopping talking about this girl Steve likes. She’s like “you don’t want to go there anyways until your visible self is more realized” and Steve is like that’s confusing, what does that mean is that like a thinly coded way of saying I have no desires? He gets defensive and makes a deep cut about her being a grown up who still lives with her parents. They’re still buddy buddy though as she tries on clothes and STILL gives him advice to just being a gentler person. She hears him whisper boring and he’s confused as to how she heard this, turning around to see her insane scars on her back before turning back. It’s a really awkward scene but she’s got everything she needs to go in now and pretend to be Steve’s parent to get him out of trouble.
A teacher recognizes her on her way in but she keeps her cool at Steve’s school, strutting in her high heels to Broderick Allen’s room to talk about Steve’s behavior to none other than PHYLLIS FROM THE OFFICE LMFAO. Phyllis lays in to Steve about how he’s costing hard working students the right to an education and has real psychological issues. She’s planning on removing Steve from the school and Prairie asks why Phyllis became a teacher? Maybe Steve can’t learn because Phyllis lost track of why she wants to teach. Boldly claiming it’s because Phyllis lost someone and that’s why she stopped enjoying teaching, Prairie goes on a monologue before Phyllis is like let me stop you there, your son punched someone in the throat and now he can’t sing so I don’t really care, I don’t want it here. Prairie keeps artfully gaslighting, saying “if you want to do your job, focus on the bully, not the angel singer. You can help him become a man,” which Phyllis mulls over. Walking out after this moving speech, Prairie once again says her name is “the OA” as she leaves.
Confusing, I’d still kick him out, honestly.
The next day, Phyllis winks at a smug Steve and I’m sorry, but we really need to remove the guy? I don’t want a redemption arc for him he fucking punched some guy in the throat. OA did her job though and is now logging on the internet to see if her love Homer is still alive. A story from Jefferson City plays about a news clip following a star quarterback ending up in a coma who wakes up from his lil’ near death experience to be interviewed on how he almost died. Despite the game almost KILLING HIM, he’s like I’m gonna return to football to win <3.
Assuming this is OA’s high school love, the clip came out in 2007. I will assume she’s in her mid twenties.
Her mom's like Prairie, there’s an important phone call for you, the FBI <3. Handing her the phone, Steve is on the other line to sing her praises but Prairie is like no no no no time, I need five people at midnight. Feels like Steve’s a man of his word but she’s asking a lot of requests including leaving their front doors open when they meet up in this abandoned house later on. Steve, rightfully, is like this sounds really sus, I got you a router, I think we’re even but she keeps pushing. She’s at the end of her rope and needs to help someone and plus, she “chose” Steve, whatever that means.
He ends up agreeing to bringing five people later that night.
Phyllis runs in to Steve’s dad at the grocery store to sing the praises of his “new wife” as his current wife saddles up to him. This isn’t about to end well as the Winchells go to knock on Abel and Nancy’s door with Steve in tow. Nancy invites them in to the living room and Steve comes clean about trading the parent teacher conference for internet. Overhearing this, Prairie runs upstairs to record herself asking for help on the camcorder while the adults downstairs wonder out loud if Steve and Prairie are gonna fuck, next. Steve comes to her defense saying they’re just friends and he says her help makes him feel better, he values her friendship. Upstairs, OA is panicking trying to upload this “I need help video” to Youtube while the downstairs brings up maybe OA should be committed. I mean shit, they’re sending their kid away, they should take care of OA too and follow hospital guidelines.
They take the camera and her BEDROOM DOOR AWAY.
Phyllis, who’s name in this show I refuse to learn, is on the phone talking to someone about how the situation was unavoidable, mistaking Prairie for Steve’s mom. She opens Google to look up OA and it autofills to Over Eater Anonymous before bringing up Prairie’s video, which prompts her to close her laptop immediately. Brandon Perea, however, also gets the video sent to him by a friend with the caption “Steve ratted her out.” Watching the whole thing, OA goes on to say “I need to crush an invisible border you can’t see, but feel.” She goes on about how though she can’t change their fate, she can help them meet it.
The kids who were at the drug trade earlier on where the dog attacked Prairie see this video and head out to meet up with OA at the abandoned house at midnight.
Jaye, the girl Steve is hooking up with, sees Steve walking drunk on the side of the road and asks why he punched this guy in the throat at school. She’s like you’re going to get kicked out of school and offers to give him a ride. As he loads his dog up in to the car, he sees a front door open before getting in. In the front seat, Steve asks why she doesn’t want to be his girlfriend and she says she wants to get good at sex so when she falls in love, she’s good at it. Plus, she sees Steve looking in the mirror at himself during sex so who cares. He’s also in it for himself. She drops him off at his house as he runs up his driveway clearly very excited to go meet up with OA at the abandoned house. Leaving his door open, he runs up the street as OA blows out the candles she left out for people to come.
Just in the knick of time, here they all come.
Steve’s like I’m getting Asheville so fuck it, let’s ball. She’s like I can’t, though, I need at least five. One of the kids asks where exactly she’s going and she’s vague once again, saying I need to go somewhere but it only works if there’s five people because I need to leave someone behind. As Steve insists she starts, another pair of footsteps radiate throughout the abandoned house and up walks PHYLLIS!!!!!!!!!
WOW!!!!
This is going to make me cry, she must just be like a lonely old woman.
OA tells them her story from the beginning about how they can all help people they’ll never meet but until then, they have to trust her. She asks them to close their eyes and go on this journey with her before detailing how she was born in Russia in 1987 to a very wealthy father who owned a mining company. He made a lot of money he paid to the Voi living in a very rich area in Moscow. At FIFTY SEVEN MINUTES IN TO THE FIRST EPISODE we get the title sequence:
Netflix Presents: The OA.
Let’s get it poppin, bitch.
She talks about losing her eyesight and how she was not born blind. It’s an aerial shot of Russia as people’s names play over the screen. Having the introduction this far in to the episode is definitely a choice and one of the executive producers being Brad Pitt is certainly another one. Sweeping shots of snowy terrain play and the episode certainly isn’t over seeing as there is twelve more minutes. OA goes on to detail how a new house was built on their land all the time, the man who drilled coal, the man who made cable. She grew up with the sons and daughters of oligarchs and her mom died in childbirth, leaving her father and her behind in a huge house. She had a lot of crazy dreams like one where she’s trapped in an aquarium and can’t get out. Waking up for comfort from her dad, she’s picked up by a big man and speaks fluent Russian to him. He calms her down and cancels his afternoon to console her on this. Driving out to an icy river, he gets out of the car and grabs a crowbar from the trunk. He then picks up his daughter and begins breaking the ice to what, put her in the cold water???
Yep, that’s exactly what it is.
She goes to the hole he made in the ice water and submerges herself, shivering as she goes. Looking back to check in on her dad, she says her dad taught her about bravery that day and the dreams of the aquarium never came back. Her nose didn’t bleed for an entire month and now, she was starting school, heading there on her special, nondescript, black bus. She says he wants to get off the bus as all these kids are talking about death and not feeling like they belong anywhere. Once again, her nose starts bleeding and the bus careens off the side of a bridge, falling in to icy waters. The kids scream as the car floods with water, slowly sinking to the bottom of the river. OA goes down to try to push open the car window and notices there is light beneath them so maybe they can break one of the windows. Swimming to the front windshield, she sees a hole and swims out of the car, swimming to the surface to see it covered in ice.
She says every kid died that day including her.
A hand reaches through the universe to grab her up out of the hole and it’s actually really beautiful, there’s lights everywhere and a motherly woman asking if she wants to go back. She says it will be very hard and she will suffer but personally, the woman wants her to stay with her. Nina, however, wants to go back, and the woman obliges. She says she wont watch for her, however, and closes her eyes making her permanently blind.
She wakes up on the shore crying to her dad because she can’t see anything at all.
Overall, this pilot deserves at LEAST a 9.5/10. I didn’t feel like any part of it dragged, the characters were given their due diligence, and the mystery surrounding the episode REALLY got me hype for what’s to come. With overhead shots of a snowy Russia the OA is not only visually stunning, it’s also compelling in terms of plot that is not too dialogue heavy but plants enough seeds to leave you wanting more. The protagonists were fleshed out, the story didn’t give away too much in the beginning, and the supernatural elements felt natural to any world. I get why people were upset this got cancelled.