Maybe I missed something, did she do anything that would've given any of them a shred of proof that her story was real? Yet, all of them drastically change their behaviors due to it.
She won them over to it in more subtle ways... like when she went to talk to BBa the first time and seemed to be able to know just what she was thinking/feeling.
Real proof, though? No. And that's actually sort of the point of the first season. She was asking them to have FAITH.. to believe in impossible things, to cross a border that's hard to define.
Also, season 1 is definitely a study in the Unreliable Narrator. it's actually why i like it so much, because at that point we don't really know, so we have to decide if we're going to believe her, or write it all off as bunk--just like the choices the five had to make. remember french in particular didn't buy all of her story. After he found the books on angels, The Illiad by HOMER and others, he suspected she was conning them.
Why did they have to leave their front doors open when they went out to see her? This was made such a big deal out of "to let me in", then just completely dropped. Never explained and never mentioned again.
It's mentioned again... in season 2.
For the purposes of season 1 it could be used to symbolize keeping an open mind, but after the events of season 2, there is MUCH more to it.
I asked before about the subtitles in the first episode, what was up with that?
Dunno... could have been a programming glitch. When I watched it the first 3 times, i had no subtitles..so technically i had no idea what roman and Nina were saying. But I caught the feeling of it instead.
Prairie gets her sight back by a knock on the head? Come on!! That is soap opera and cartoon science. In fact, what was the point of her blindness anyway? It served nothing in the story except to maybe give the Mom a reason to adopt her. Then it seemed like "okay, no need for this anymore, let's just knock her on the head to get rid of that plot point." And you are telling that after all that time Hap wouldn't have picked up on her being able to see? I can understand her maybe faking it if she was still going upstairs to clean and cook, but this guy has 24/7 surveillance on these people. She lived in the cell for several more years doing all kinds of stuff and he never noticed this? How smart is this chump?
The point of her blindness was that Kathun told her that each time she received and went back it would cost her. Again this is addressed more in season 2, but the concept is that The OA is in fact an Angel, and she is learning through deaths and rebirths. each time she is given a hardship, and when she has learned what she needs to learn from it, the circumstances change and it's on to the next stage of the lesson. Making Prairie blind not only served to make her adoptable, but also positioned her to be vulnerable to HAP's trap.
And while he had video surveillance, he was not necessarily monitoring what they were saying to one another. He was always striving to "remove the human element" from his experiments. i think that often led him to miss cues he should have seen.
He constantly drowns these poor folks, over and over, God knows how many times over seven years and not once is CPR called for. He drowns them, they die, he releases the water, they cough and come back to life. That simple. Sure, he says people who have had a NDE have a better chance of coming back, but it doesn't make them invulnerable.
except for Scott brown. He died upon his final NDE. It was the movements which brought him back from the dead.
They have a greater chance of coming back because in their NDEs they made the CHOICE to come back. Kathun offered to let OA stay in that place if she wanted forever, but she CHOSE to come back. It's the will that makes it possible. again, elaborated on in season 2.
Hap just lets her go? So confident that no one will be able to find him? He just murdered three people, one of them a local cop! No one is going to come looking for them? And that stupid cop! He just believes Hap's cockamamie story right off the bat like that? This guy should not be allowed to carry a gun! He must've just watched The Green Mile. And his wife just happens to have the fifth move? Wow, that is convenient!!!
Hap wasn't concerned about anybody looking for him because he intended to jump to another dimension with the other 4. He... wouldn't be around anymore for anyone to find him. He would have left this dimension.
The cop believed him because he wanted to believe Hap had a way to heal his wife.
His wife happened to have the 5th movement because the five were in the right place and had gained all of the other knowledge they needed so they were ready to receive the 5th movement.
His wife told Prairie that it was given to her by a little blonde girl in her own NDE. It is strongly hinted that this was in facr Prairie A.K.A. Nina Asarova as a child which did it. not a child in the physical sense, but in the astral Angel sense.
The note: The Mom is really so stupid to hide this knowledge from her beloved husband for all this time? She lets him think their daughter could be kidnapped and killed instead of just telling him about it? Granted, she was kidnapped, but the Mom did not know that.
I once had to tell my parents something that was a very big life changing thing. i wrote them a letter, and my mom read it and hid it from my father until she thought he was ready to hear it.
These things happen.
The Five Moves: Okay, I'm just going to skip the part about that being the corniest looking thing ever, but what was the point of them doing it during the school shooting? Yeah, seeing a dancing flashmob during a school shooting, that really looks cool. What did they think it would accomplish? Would it turn the shooter into a good guy? Make him disappear? Make them bulletproof? Why would they even attempt that? By this time they had already learned that Prairie's story was probably false.
They hadn't.
Except for French, they all believed it. They *felt* doing the moves was what was called for in that instant. They *felt* it was providence.
As it turned out, what it did accomplish was to distract the shooter long enough for someone to tackle him and take him out.
And how did the red head guy even get back in school? They were shipping him off to military school. The teacher bribes those guys, they leave and he just goes back to his school. His parents and the school administration don't notice that?
Steve wanted to be with the others. having been the most skeptical to begin with, he became a true believer, and wanted more than the others for The OA to take him with her to the other dimension.
That's about all I can think of at the moment. I'm not saying the show is bad, in fact I really enjoyed it. Just seems like some lazy writing....Unless, like I said, these points are cleared up later on. I'll probably do part 2 next weekend. I'm assuming that it where the black guy from the 'poster' comes in? Is part 2 still about Prairie or is this 5 parts about 5 different people?
Oh, and one other thing....Who else noticed this show was written by Batman?
I totally did. LOL.
MANy questions addressed and answered in season 2. MANY more posed, as well. it opens up more, and gets even weirder.
You sound as if you're about where I was at after my first watch.
See part 2. watch it again.
take the door. go deeper.