Have you seen THE OA? If not, you might want to skip this post, because I'm about to ruin its ending. And honestly, it is not a show whose ending you want ruined. It really really isn't.
Okay, here goes: when Zal Batmanglij and co-creator Brit Marling wrote the first season of their I Don't Really Know How to Describe this Series, But Stay With Me, Because That's Sort of Fitting Netflix drama THE OA, they came up with what is to my mind an entirely unpitchable idea for their finale: that the season would end with a completely unexpected school shooting scenario that The OA's friends avert by way of the series of physical gestures and movements The OA had learned in captivity. No words, no gunplay (or not much anyway)--just the group standing and beginning their strange and a propos of nothing dance. Seriously, from an exec's point of view Marling and Batmanglij might have said, "And then the kids stand and do the FOOTLOOSE dance, but as though choreographed by space aliens in another dimension, and it saves the universe."
Even more insane is the fact that the idea absolutely works.
As you can see from watching the sequence below, part of the power of the moment lies in the courage it takes them to stand and risk their lives like this.
But it's also very much the choreography itself, which is passionate and gorgeous and brave and somehow so fucking tender that even without any context the scene can still make you weep.
(Have I mentioned finales make me weepy? It seems to be a theme of the week.)
Even having built up the importance of this strange series of movements in various ways throughout the season, still it took tremendous courage for Batmanglij and Marling to climax the season with us finally seeing the full sequence performed by our cast. If the audience didn't get it, there was nowhere else for them to turn for understanding or a satisfying payoff.
Also, despite the fact that TV is a visual medium, the fact is 99% of the time it relies not on images but on words to convey meaning, feeling, significance. So the chance that the audience would not get it also seemed very very high.
But the creators trusted their cast and team to get it right. And they trusted their audience to be capable of more than what most TV assumes or gives them credit for. Much like David Lynch in the third series of TWIN PEAKS, Batmaglij and Marling trusted their viewers to be able to go beyond being passive consumers to active partners and co-creators of the experience.
Honestly, if you haven't watched THE OA it's worth it just to get to that finale and experience that finale as audience. Watching the series is like listening to astronauts talk about how much they learned about life and the universe after a year on the International Space Station. You walk away realizing you can dream so much bigger than you might have believed possible. The audience can handle so much more.
NEXT WEEK: GENTLEMAN JACK & EUPHORIA!
IN THE MEANTIME, HAPPY PRIDE!
