Season Review: Undone Season One

 

 

Overview:

Undone follows the broken path of Alma Winograd-Diaz, a twenty-something woman who’s life unravels following the events of a near-fatal car crash. With an overbearing mother, a failing relationship, and a sister about to be wed, Alma struggles to stay connected to reality. The accident has resulted in her being visited by her deceased father, hoping that she will be able to uncover the mysteries of his untimely death. Training to master an untapped spiritual ability to travel and manipulate time, Alma struggles to maintain her life in the real world. A world that does not accept her own reality as her visions may be a result of genetic schizophrenia.

 

Our Take:

Undone is a revolutionary, thought-provoking, masterfully done animated series that premiered on September 13th. Fitting, as not only was it a Friday, but a full moon as well. By no means is the series terrifying. Instead, it is a deep dive into the mind and spirituality. The very idea of reality as we know it is shaken to the point that you don’t know what to believe by the time the final eighth episode ends. This is a show that goes beyond simple entertainment and gets its viewers to question their lives, their world, and their mental capacities. It is challenging to associate Undone with anything that you have seen before, but imagine a mix between Donnie Darko and A Scanner Darkly. Stretch that out over 180-minutes, done with artistic flair and impeccable care, and you may just have one of the best new shows of the fall season.

Simply put, this show is ground-breaking. Not for its modern development of rotoscope animation, though it is the first time the technique has been fully adapted for a complete television series (we’ll get back to that). Undone is breaking ground in its storytelling and the way we look at mental health. The story develops in two paths linear of one another, and the plot unravels to allow for both paths to be as tangible as the other. Alma is undergoing extreme spiritual and paranormal events with the return of her father. At the same time, her family and friends are witnessing her mental health become problematic to her everyday life. Neither of the stories contradicts or undermines the other. Instead, they are blended in a way that helps us to understand the reality that is Alma’s psychosis. Witnessing the world from her eyes, the viewer cannot even differentiate what the truth is. It opens the idea that schizophrenia is beyond someone just being ill, but facing a world we cannot understand.

The creators of this show did an astounding job of balancing the two worlds happening through the series. Despite the incongruencies, time travel presents, there is a fluency throughout that holds the story together. When Alma awakes from her coma, her reality is morphed in such a way that we are witnessing events that don’t happen for five or six episodes or months in real-time. However, as the series progresses everything lines up, while the line of her mental health becomes more blurred.

There are even moments throughout the show that sway us in one direction over another. At one point Alma receives a handheld electronic blackjack game which helps her to ground in the tangible world around her. A discussion with a psychiatrist helps to tip the line in favour of the idea that Alma is just unwell. However, at other moments, she is bringing up events of the past that she would have no other way of knowing without the abilities that her father has been training her in. Even the blackjack game itself was given to her by her father. Did he show her where to find it as the show suggests, or did she stumble upon it herself and hold onto it as an attachment to her dead father? These answers are strategically never answered, and even as the series concludes, there are no definitive reveals. This is not like Fight Club, where at the end, we are able to see how Edward Norton enacted everything he thought Brad Pitt was doing.

Back to the impressive animation, the unique style truly aligns with the story itself to create this binary world. Rotoscope animation is not itself original. It has been adopted as far back as animation itself. It involves animating over live footage to create more life-like imagery. Rotoscope has been used in films like Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, The Wizards, and American Pop, to help accentuate more flowing, natural movements. Even The Simpsons have used the technique for a couch gag in the past. But, Undone is redefining what the process is capable of in modern animation. The show utilized not only live-action and 2D but also incorporated CGI to help flesh out the world. The results are breathtaking. The settings are very much grounded in reality, while at the same time illustrated. The contrast is a mirror to the commentary that the story is providing.

Beyond creating an eye-catching world, the animation method proves to be invaluable in moments where reality is skewered. The scene can fall apart like broken glass in an instant. Characters can appear fluidly out of nowhere. Alma can be floating the depths of space or having a conversation with herself, and the animation never pulls you out of it. It is as accurate as a dreamscape as is possible. These paranormal events can occur seamlessly and carry you forward just like our own subconscious does while we are dreaming.

To top it all off, Undone gets some impeccable performances out of a stellar cast. The most prominent being Alma herself portrayed by Rosa Salazar. The young actress already shook the animation world this year with her performance as Alita in Alita: Battle Angel. Salazar has bold quirks and mannerisms that make her ideal for transitioning live-action to animation. You cannot tell me that there are animators out there who didn’t fall in love with her eye rolls, sideways smiles, and flinches of her eyebrows as they repeatedly drew her out. These quirks come to life through animation, and the actress is powerful in her ability to perform under these unique circumstances. The rest of the cast is feeding off of her, and it’s a good thing because she elevates every scene.

The big question is: what is next for Undone? Is this a one-off season that is destined to be shuffled in the background of modern streaming only to be picked up randomly by a few viewers in the depths of Amazon Prime? Because that would be a shame. This show has so much love and attention gone into its creation. The story is rich and deep. And, the people who really should watch the show for its message really should. Unfortunately, we live in a time where ‘cult following’ of TV and film is nearly dead. Streaming means that we all have the ability to watch whatever whenever. It destroys the cult-ness of finding obscure programming like this late on television or hidden in the back of the video store. We live in an age where these shows either make it, or they don’t. And, that also means that the shows time to shine is right now because social media will be off to the next big thing within a week or two.

So, Undone has done more than enough to constitute a second season. And, we will presume that the viewership will be enough to finance the project. But, is the series open to continuing on what the first season did? The show ends off on a major cliff-hanger, but not with the intention of garnering viewers to return. Instead, it left things off for the viewers to interpret and fill in the blanks for themselves. A second season could throw off the delicate balance the writers have done and undermine everything that was accomplished.

On the other hand, there are also many places that this series could go and expand upon the topic of mental health. If anything, it would be my hope that should Undone be picked up again, it would be for two more seasons, not one, and not more. A trilogy would work ideal. This first season opened the doors for what schizophrenia could look like based in reality. A second season would need to play the ‘Empire Strikes Back’ part of going the other extreme. Alma would need to explore taking her medication and attempting to cure herself of her illness, only to question if she was doing the right thing. We would require a follow-up season to bring balance in once again, and leave us in the state of uncertainty just as the first season did with such grace.

Looking around at how this show is being received, the majority of viewers and critics are swooned by the beautiful animation and storytelling. And rightly so. This is not just blind entertainment. Undone is one of those shows that get your mind thinking, takes on serious topics, and expands our universal consciousness. It is a series that we will be thinking about for years to come, and should be referenced as one of the greatest examples of how to approach mental health in modern media. Shows like this only come around once in a decade. This masterpiece demands to be watched by as many people as possible. Watch it and recommend it to everyone, even those friends that are so sick of you recommending things and never watch anything you say. Tell them Undone is a series that they cannot afford to miss out on, it’s not just brainless entertainment, it is the art that can impact the way that they look at the world and interact with the people in it.