Welcome to the inaugural episode of the OA - Analysis Podcast. Spoilers ahead.

For this podcast we’re going to be looking at some of the storytelling techniques, philosophical implications, and the impact on the wider world of the great Netflix show, The OA. There will be spoilers for this show, the Harry Potter films, the Star Wars films, Breaking Bad, and others. And we will discuss some of the magician’s tricks, and explore how good stories make emotional connections to their fans. Some people might say I’m ruining the magic, but I disagree. It’s more like getting to watch a painter at work. Sure, the final product can be beautiful and compelling, but if you understand the care and thought that went into it, that doesn’t detract from the painting’s beauty. Bob Ross’s paintings are fine, but if we watch him create them then they become far more interesting. Without seeing him work and understanding his techniques, his paintings would be a lot less compelling. And over the next few months, I hope you’ll enjoy seeing some of the ways the producers of The OA worked their magic.





The first technique that the first episode introduces us to is the “hook.” People mean a lot of different things when they talk about a hook. Sometimes they mean the 2 sentence long pitch you use to interest someone. Here, I’m referring to something unusual that is introduced to the audience very early, often within the first 30 seconds, that gets their attention. It’s an important technique. The audience has no idea what story you’re telling, and there’s plenty of media out there to distract them. The hook helps show why your’s is different. Breaking Bad used an iconic, and in retrospect bizarre, shot of pants flying through the air. The OA uses a smartphone video of a woman looking sickly thin, wearing ragged clothes, in stopped traffic on a bridge. Then she runs to the edge, and jumps over the side. What a hook! What a way to get the audience engaged. The hook in this case is a video. As an aside, I really appreciate this shot. Too often, movies, tv shows, and books try to give the impression that they’re real. That I’m not watching a work of fiction that someone came up with, but somehow I can spy on a whole other world and be completely unseen. That always bugs me. When I’m watching a movie, I never forget that I’m watching a movie. I never think that I’m spying on someone else’s life. Seeing a video shot on a phone is a symbol of that. This does not look like real life, it looks like a viral video. It emphasizes the fact that we’re watching a show. This also does a great job at setting tone, an often overlooked term in storytelling. The video we’re hearing is being shot and narrated by a young girl, which we can infer from her voice. Right there that implies that innocence is going to have something to do with the story. Then we see a suicide attempt, implying that death and dark themes are going to play a heavy role as well. The fact that we have no idea where this woman came from also let’s us know that there will be mystery elements as well. Just from this one, brief, introductory scene, before we meet any characters or hear any dialogue from them, we learn a tremendous amount. The producers have set the tone. They’ve gotten our emotional attention. Let’s dive a little deeper into the first episode and take a look at the goals the producers set for themselves, and the challenges they face in doing so.





To start off, let’s very briefly summarize the first episode. It starts with the video I already mentioned. We learn that this woman is Prairie Johnson, who went missing 7 years ago. She was blind when she went missing, and now she can see perfectly. She’s reunited with her adopted parents, but refuses to discuss what happened to her. She meets up with 5 strangers, and tells them that one of the most common question that she’s been getting, how she regained her sight, is the wrong question. They need to start at where she lost it in the first place. So she begins to tell them her story, telling them that they will help her travel, and help complete strangers, but she is very vague about what she means.





There’s a lot more to the first episode, but we’ll start from there.





A good way of starting to understand the remarkable nature of this particular work of art is to look at the sheer difficulty in setting up the first episode. The writers set a very high bar of what they wanted to achieve, and then hit it. In no particular order they had to:

1) Introduce Prairie and reintroduce Prairie to her parents and home.

2) Introduce her to 5 strangers in very different walks of life.

3)Introduce the strangers as fully fleshed characters, and set up all their relationships to Prairie.

4)Introduce Prairie’s goals that she’ll be striving towards for the rest of the season.





This is a lot. Most of the time, when a show or a movie wants to introduce a new character, they do so in a way that the audience already understands as plausible. Breaking Bad started with introducing Walter White and Jesse Pinkman. They don’t spend a great deal of time on the beginning of their relationship, because they don’t have to. All the audience needs to understand is that Jesse used to be Walt’s student in high school chemistry. We don’t need to see Jesse going to class everyday. They then build on that pre-existing relationship. Everyone has had teachers, and poor students like Jesse are common. So the nature of this relationship is clear, and the audience has a solid foundation on which to understand them. A parallel relationship is between Prairie and Steve. This is another mentor/mentee connection. But how do you build this type of relationship completely from scratch? Well, they’re neighbors, so that’s a start. But other than that there’s nothing in common, not even their age, a fact which becomes critical later. There’s no reason for these two to have the in-depth connection that this story requires. In addition to that, for the relationship to be plausible, she needs to be interested in him as much as he is in her. To accomplish this, the writers seamlessly blended important themes, tropes, and plot points.

Their first “meeting” was Prairie on a walk with her adopted mother, Nancy. Prairie sees Steve doing acrobatics on his roof, and is interested. While she sees him, Nancy is talking about the abandoned house they’re walking by. She reminisces about how it was supposed to be a big neighborhood, but the builders ran out of money before they could finish even the first house. Right here we see an important philosophical point that The OA will comment on more than once. A community was supposed to be built, but wasn’t because of economic reasons. The thing people need as much as anything else, community, is abandoned because it was too hard to create. The only reason Prairie even sees Steve is because of important character elements this scene emphasizes. Steve is courageous, reckless, dangerous. Had he been a more typical suburban teen, he would probably be inside, and she never would have seen him at all. They emphasize this in a single shot of him doing flips on a roof. We also meet Jesse, shooting video of Steve performing.





The next meeting is face to face. Steve is a drug dealer, selling out of the abandoned house Nancy had pointed out the night before. This is a role that we’ve seen many times before. Steve is a capitalist with power over his customers. There are examples of this character all over media. The evil banker, the uncaring corporation. The first role that comes to my mind is from the old movie, “It’s A Wonderful Life.” The evil banker, Mr. Potter, has power over most of the town. Potter loves that power, and cultivates it. Steve is trying to be that guy, with some level of success. Roughly a half dozen people are waiting their turn to talk to Steve, and for him to dole out whatever substance they need to live their lives.





Prairie needs something, an internet connection. Steve is completely mistrustful, and sics his dog at her. This is the next important philosophical point that season one hits upon. Here an apparent helpless woman, with no weapons, no allies and in dangerous territory, and she is attacked viciously. Bystanders let it happen. But she overcomes this dog attack with as little violence as she possibly can. She pushes her arm into the dog’s mouth, which, incidentally, is a good way of dealing with an animal bite. Pulling away will tear your skin and muscle, but pushing in forces the mouth to open wider, relieving some of the pressure from the teeth. In order to do this, though, you need to overcome very basic human instincts to flee danger as quickly as possible. Then she bites the dog, not hard enough to injure it, but enough to cause pain, and then it releases her. Then she strokes and reassures the animal. Not only does he release her, but the animal is now bonded to this remarkable person. The philosophical point of this moment is that pain, fear, and danger can be overcome, and we don’t necessarily need violence in order to do so. That point will become very important later on.





This is also an important character moment for Prairie. So far, we’ve seen her hide from crowds, seem lost constantly, cry for someone she misses. We haven’t seen strength. But we have to ask ourselves, who is this woman who can challenge a dangerous drug dealer, who can overcome the incredible pain of a dog attack, and can walk away with everyone in awe of her?





This is what I mean when I say the producers set a high goal for themselves, then hit it. They needed to develop a relationship between two characters who would normally have nothing in common. In this single scene, they build the foundation for a powerful connection unlike any other in either of these characters’ lives. Not only do they do so, they accomplish this by exploring important themes that will come up again and again in the story, and further developing these already fascinating characters.





I’m not going to go into every detail of the first episode. But I do want to point out that by the end of the episode you have Prairie in a mentor role over 5 people who had no prior relationship with her, and no deep relationship with each other, either. And it makes sense. The writers and producers made this happen not only by just telling us plot points, but by showing us characters growing, showing us themes they will explore, and using old story tropes in new, creative ways.



