The OA: Forking Paths
We're up to part six of my watch and review of the Netflix Original series 'The OA' with 'Forking Paths', which was a surprisingly short episode! But we're talking Dr. Hap, Buck, and Multi-World Theories based on what I just watched!
THE GIRL WITH THREE NAMES
We’re up to
episode six of the OA with ‘Forking Paths’ and there is no other
way to say it, this was surprisingly short at little over 30 minutes,
and this episode really felt more ‘transitional’ as if to get
certain elements in place for the final two episodes of the season.
The big thing here
is that HAP went to his mentor who is pursuing the exact same work he
is, proof of an Afterlife, and he’s even more further gone than
HAP, willing to kill him to learn what HAP has discovered, and HAP
has to kill him out of self-defense, but this encounter rattles him
to where he wants to just take Prairie and go somewhere and make
money with what is already discovered. If this was designed to have
the viewer sympathize with HAP, it certainly failed in a huge way
cause he’s still an unlikeable douche for what we’ve seen him do
prior to his episode. Still in sending Prairie though the machine,
HAP learns that she ended up around the ring of Saturn based on
background sounds that he’s been recording… which leads to HAP
being so engrossed with this discovery, he leaves his door unlocked
as he dozes listening to the ‘song’ of Saturn’s rings as the
Sheriff from the last episode walks in and sees HAP’s computer
screens, drawing his gun and aiming it at the back of his head…
this can only end in good.
This episode also
sees Prairie consider just looking for an easy way out, tempted a bit
by HAP’s offer to just ‘go’, she has a conversation with Homer
about failure and trying again until things turn out right, which
reenforces her beliefs that everything will happen in due time. She
does challenge HAP to get into his own damn machine if he wants
things to progress ‘faster’. As far as the movements go, the
group has four, with Renata getting the fourth, but Rachel hasn’t
received hers yet… and I wonder if maybe the fifth movement is
‘vocal’ and not ‘physical’, cause Rachel can sing and its’
established that Buck is a hell of a singer as well.
Which brings us to
Buck him / herself, we finally get glimpse of his home life and hear
his parents arguing about him and his transgendered status. It’s
not much to really go on, but we see him practicing the movements in
a nice bit of solo screen time. A nice quite moment for this short
episode that saw Buck running a bit late when meeting with Prairie,
Steve, Jesse, French & Mrs. BA.
On to the
‘many-worlds’ theory that was introduced in this episode and with
the title ‘Forking Paths’, this is something we see a lot in
comics as well as TV shows. I think was best described as such, with
every decision one makes, a reality where the opposite choice also
occurs… some realities are different in subtle ways, others in
massive, depending on the scale of the choice, but each reality is
slightly out of phase with the other… and jumping between the
realities is quite difficult.
Standout performance
in this episode will go to Michael Cumpstry who played Dr. Leon
Citro, HAP’s mentor. Until it was revealed his character was doing
the same research as HAP, I’d assume he was giving him advice on
just lab rats, but when the revelation is made and he turns on HAP to
kill him, the twist was really well told. Makes you wonder what if
Cumpstry’s character bumped off HAP and gone to his place… of if
he’d be able to find it out right, how the story would be
different.
Because this episode
was only 30 minutes, I’ll be back later with my thoughts on episode
7 later tonight!
