Little things can have a big effect on your enjoyment of a show. This one instantly alienated me with the opening song, which had a kind of sensitivity-indie-schmaltzy vibe. In general I'm not a fan of using songs to convey emotion, because it's usually a cheap trick, and starting the series like that was offputting.
But I pushed on through that initial dislike, because it seemed well written and was clearly trying for something interesting.
But then I kept getting distracting by the feeling that it was just checking a lot of "Emmy-award" boxes. Let's have someone hugely overweight because it's an underrepresented group. Let's have someone black because the series has this super-white cultural quality ala shows like thirtysomething and a little color will ameliorate that. Let's get in some tears and laughter and tragedy right off the bat and make everyone really nice because we're going to be positive and uplifting.
All of which is fine - good even - but kind of bugged me.
There were moments that were terrific, like the guy's inability to say no to the father he thought he hated, or the super charming guy who hooks up with one of the main characters at the OA meeting.
Then I thought the ending was really clever. In fact, five minutes before the end of the episode I thought I wouldn't watch another, but in the end I thought I might, because I was curious where they would go from that end. I'm not certain I'll get around to watching another episode - a few years ago I thought the ending of Those Who Kill made it worth checking out another episode in spite of being underwhelmed, but I still never got around to watching it again. So we'll see.
Maybe I've just seen too many of these thirtysomething-ish series. I used to love them, and maybe if I were thirty I'd love this one. But so far I'm stuck on the fence.
31 out of 77 found this helpful