TV

Lost and Found: These series feature unsettled women to create unsettled reality

Three drama / fantasy series about women with mental health problems appeared on television almost simultaneously.

"Western Pasture" presents such a character in the most banal and exhausting way, the second season of "Unfinished" continues with a beautiful and brilliant psychological investigation, and "Glow" is a powerful allegory for dealing with trauma

Ido Yeshayahu

12/05/2022

Thursday, May 12, 2022, 12:00 p.m.

• Share on Facebook

• Share on WhatsApp

• Share on Twitter

• Share on Email

• Share on general

• Comments

  Comments

Trailer for the series "Shining Girls" starring Elizabeth Moss (Apple TV Plus)

A few weeks later, three series came to the screen, one of which is rooted in the real world and another in the realms of fantasy and the supernatural, and in all three cases it happens through, or at least with the help of, characters of women whose sanity is in doubt.

When the idea is well executed, the link between the mental appeal and the appeal of reality yields brilliant works, sometimes also very moving and beautiful.

When it gets bad, it's a big and frustrating miss.

Option B is the case of "Outer Range", the playwright Brian Watkins' first television experience - a series that is a combination of a contemporary Western, a family drama and an enigmatic supernatural creation that undoubtedly loves David Lynch very much.

Josh Brolin ("The Avengers" movies) stars as Royal Abbott, a farmer who lives with his family in a huge area he owns in the wild Wyoming, who suddenly discovers in one of his wigs a huge and strange pit that doesn't seem to have a bottom.

At about the same time, a backpacker named Atom arrives at the farm (Imogen Potts, "28 Weeks Later") and asks Royal for permission to shop in his area for a while.

We soon find out that she is taking pills regularly, and later when the nearby pharmacy offers her in their place only a generic substitute, her personality becomes more and more borderline.

More on Walla!

"Scandal Anatomy" presents sexual assault as something that happens to the defendant, not the defendant

To the full article

A strange girl for all the unbearable reasons.

Imogen Potts in an autonomous role, "Western Pasture" (Photo: Amazon Prime Video)

With all due respect to this characterization of her character, Atom's stumble in the directions of insanity seems like an oppressive extension of her manga traits as we have come to know them before.

Even before she loses her grip on reality, from her earliest moments on screen, Otom makes an impression of a strange girl for all intolerable reasons.

At first she looks like someone who hides more than she reveals about herself, and this feeling intensifies when already at the end of the first episode she bites the hand that fed her.

This is a surprising scene that at that moment makes us wonder about Otom's agenda, but the idea is thrown away shortly afterwards when her character is revealed only as another link in a long chain of female characters of the type known as "Quirky".

You know, the ones who behave whimsically and unexpectedly and are extraordinary and "special."

While yes, with the end of the eight episodes of the first season of "Western Pasture," which ended last Friday on Amazon Prime Video, there is an interest in secrets that Otom hides, as in a few other skinny characters;

But dubious creative decisions also overshadow what arouses curiosity.

Its slowness is tedious, it is painfully pretentious, and the photography in it is so dark that in night scenes it is almost impossible to understand what is happening in them even when the screen brightness is maximum.

More on Walla!

The "Pachinko" series is beautiful and moving to tears, but it lacks one critical thing

To the full article

How did he get into this thing?

Josh Brolin, "Western Pasture" (Photo: Amazon Prime Video)

Most of all, the sweaty endeavor of "Western Pasture" to be undeciphered, rich in enigmatic symbols and seemingly deep hints, or just its tendency to create drama out of nothing - comes at a huge price.

In doing so, she turns almost all of her protagonists into a mash-up of random and bizarre behaviors that simply neutralize any identification with them and their motives.

We have a young guy here (Lewis Pullman, "Catch 22," "Love in the Sky: Maverick") who for some reason sings loudly all the time - when he's home, half-naked in front of a mirror, at a funeral or at the bank.

His father (Will Patton, "Minary," "Yellowstone") is an eccentric guy who likes to have conversations with stuffed animals (and generally likes stuffed animals).

And as mentioned, there is an atom, whose actions are random and flowing, and she speaks like a tedious spiritualist who has just returned from an ashram in the desert and decided to inflate your head.

Two of these characters love to kiss with their full tongues and many milliliters of saliva.

And not only is the weirdness of "Western Pasture" too crowded because of characters who are themselves weird, but the normality also behaves unreasonably.

Headed by Royal, who insists he can not tell his family about the pit because they will not understand.

Why?

That way, both in the first place and in retrospect.

As soon as he is forced to tell, he realizes how fundamentally stupid his decision was indeed, and until then he is doing irrational things on her behalf in the coming ridiculous.

Throughout the season I did not understand how and why the hell Brolin got into this project.

In the end, instead of "Western Grazing" linking Atom's condition to the MDA elements in a way that says something meaningful about both, she applies the same exhausting characteristics and behaviors of her character. Like Ottom, "Western Grazing" is a faint echo For something old-fashioned - a kind of "bonanza" meets "twin peaks" - only with much less talent. Like her she is whimsical and unpredictable and unusual and "special"

More on Walla!

There was an accident therefore: the ideas in the last season of "Ozark" are good, but the execution kills them

To the full article

Wonderful and captivating.

Rosa Salazar, "Unfinished" Season 2 (Photo: Amazon Prime Video)

Women on the verge of collapse

In the same Amazon Prime video, the second season of "Undone", a series created by the people of "Bojack Horseman", Kate Purdy and Rafael-Bob Waxberg, also aired.

The protagonist of the series, Alma (Rosa Salzar, "Elite: Battle Angel"), is a descendant of a family suffering from schizophrenia.

Her grandmother was hospitalized several times throughout her life, her father Jacob (Bob Odenkirk, "Trust Sol") also began to lose himself and then died in a mysterious car accident when Alma was a child.

In the first season, Alma's late father was revealed to her and explained to her that she was special - their family members did not really suffer from insanity, but were endowed with abilities that allow their consciousness to move in time.

She herself has this ability too, and he will guide her in this so that she can go back to the past, to the day of his death, which he said was not an accident but a deliberate assassination in his life.

But of course, this whole story sounds like something a schizophrenic person would believe is really happening, while it all actually happens just in his mind.

Throughout the first season "Unfinished" is amazing to walk the fine line between fantasy and insanity.

We ourselves do not really know if what is happening is the fruit of Alma's torn soul, or whether she is indeed endowed with these incredible powers.

This premise is used by the series to dig into the past of Alma and her family, to flood the wounds that made her who she is.

On her mother's side she is Mexican and native, on her father's side she is Jewish - all this heritage is used in a mix that is nevertheless well-arranged and well-written and beautifully made;

"Unfinished" is made using the rotoscope method, in which the actors are really photographed and then become a unique animation, which reinforces the surrealistic feeling and blurs the line between imagination and reality.

More on Walla!

Beauty and Boredom in Tokyo, Suicide Squad Suicide and Surprising Soldier: Review of New Series

To the full article

Really bad gameplay.

Bob Odenkirk, "Unfinished" Season 2 (Photo: Amazon Prime Video)

Throughout the eight episodes of the first season the series allows us, the viewers, to decide what really goes through Alma, but in the second season it is already making the choice for us.

Alma manages to fix something in the past only to realize that it needs further repair.

Again she is accompanied by her father, and this time also by her sister Becca (Angelic Cabral, "In the Best Families"), and the three dig deeper and deeper into family history, trying to decipher another family mystery to alleviate pain after pain after pain.

The new season is less good than its predecessor.

Some of the plot lines this time look less organic, a sort of somewhat forced sequel to the story.

It's not clear if Odenkirk's restrained acting is his or the director's decision, but this season it is yielding a very bad display.

Even in moments when every normal person is supposed to express emotion in him - joy, anger, well-being - he is portrayed as indifferent and unconvincing.

Beyond that, the series' devotion to a specific of the two options - supernatural abilities yes, no madness - detracts from its power.

Despite this, "Unfinished" is still brilliant, beautiful and touching.

Salazar continues to be wonderful and captivating, the family history of her character is interesting and original on both sides, and throughout its eight episodes (all of which came up at once) she is dotted with several wonderful moments.

The last two episodes of the season are strong and enrich the way that preceded them, and by the way "unfinished" manages to make it clear that not everything may be as unambiguous as it seems.

Mostly, the whole series is a spectacular and clever metaphor for psychological burrowing: the stubborn attempt to get to the roots of personal and family traumas, in order to reach a more peaceful place.

More on Walla!

The opening of the sixth season of "Trust Sol" provides a thick hint at Kim's fate

To the full article

Relieve pain after pain.

"Unfinished" Season 2 (Photo: Amazon Prime Video)

A star shines above the heart

This is something that to a large extent also makes "Shining Girls", the new mini-series of Apple TV Plus, which also includes eight episodes - the fifth of which will go up this coming Friday (for review the entire series was sent in advance).

Elizabeth Moss ("Meter Man," "The Story of a Slave") excels as always in the role of Kirby Mazarchi, a woman who several months earlier had been the victim of a brutal murder attempt.

When another woman's body is discovered, Kirby is the only one who recognizes the similarity between the marks on the deceased's body and those she herself has experienced.

Or in other words, she understands that it is the same attack (Jamie Bell, "Billy Elliott," "The Spy of Washington").

With the help of Dan Vasquez (Wagner is a teacher, he is Pablo Escobar in "Narcos"), the crime writer in the newspaper where she works, Kirby tries to track down her attacker - a man who has not seen his face but recognizes his voice.

On her face "Glow," created by Silka Louisa based on a book by Lauren Beaux of the same name, is an ordinary serial killer-thriller.

There are the violent crimes here (minus the defeat in them for a shock), the woman who has to be saved, the assailant who in each of his assaults leaves the permanent hallmarks, the souvenirs he leaves and takes and so on.

More on Walla!

We Are We: The end of the first season of "Severance" left us breathless

To the full article

Powerful allegory.

Elizabeth Moss, "Glow" (Photo: Apple TV Plus)

What sets "Glow" apart, however, is the illusion at the heart of the protagonist's life.

The reality Kirby has experienced since the attack is constantly changing (and this is an element that the series invented and is absent from the literary source): one moment she lives with her mother in one apartment, the next she lives in another apartment with her husband - whom she has never married.

One moment she is working in one position and the next she is suddenly in another position.

Everything is updated around her at once, sometimes small details and sometimes large, without you being able to control it and without others besides her experiencing it.

Meanwhile, part of her abuser's abuse of his victims stems from his strange ability to fool them, to always be many steps ahead of them, sometimes over the years, thus paralyzing their souls even before he does so to their body.

This twist elevates the "glamor" above the familiar clichés.

At its core is a powerful allegory for the changing reality of assault victims, the being of the trauma, the way the whole world changes for them without others being able to understand even a little bit of what they are going through, and how their attackers are the ones repeatedly throwing them off balance.

The fusion between the two genres also works the other way around: it is interesting to see how a supernatural element is explored in a sober and realistic genre like a crime thriller, and another whose protagonists work in a newspaper system and are required to verify every detail before publication.

More on Walla!

Apocalypse Now: While the plague is hitting the world, plagues are hitting television

To the full article

Stars.

Filipa Sue, "Glow" (Photo: Apple TV Plus)

The shell that unites the components within it is brought to us in a way that reminds us of the secrets of the universe, which corresponds with the incomprehensible events that Kirby and we experience, and by the way gives a deep and eternal meaning to the heroines.

One of the main victims of the killer, Harper Curtis, is Ginny (Philippa Sue, "Hamilton"), a researcher who works at the Planetarium.

When Harper comes to talk to her as part of his foreplay, he tells her that what they are not telling the audience is that all the stars they see have long since died, but she corrects him: "Actually, this is only true for the most distant stars. Those in our galaxy live far behind us."

In the third episode Ginny lectures the audience about pulsar stars, who even after their death they continue to live - still emitting light and still maintaining gravity.

That is, in compassion and grace, "radiance" compares the hunted women to the stars.

This is exactly the difference between these three series.

The use of the image of an unsettled woman in "Western Pasture" is banal, worn and uninspired.

In contrast, "unfinished" and "glamorous" not only exploit the mental state of their protagonists in favor of an empathetic, fresh and intelligent work, but do so in a way that transcends trauma and hardship - empowering, rewarding and even purifying.

• culture

• TV

• TV review

Tags

• Josh Brolin

• Elizabeth Moss

• Unfinished - Undone

• TV review