Netflix's "Unbelievable" and Amazon's "Undone"

Warning: This weeks episode discusses sexual violence and subject matter that might be disturbing for some listeners. If you or someone else you know is a victim of sexual assault or abuse call 1-800-656-4673 or speak to a trusted friend, law enforcement or trusted adult. For more information click here.

What Netflix has done with Unbelievable is… incredible.

Unbelievable follows the story of a woman named Marie (not her real name… more on this later) who was raped in her apartment. Marie, transitioning out of foster care went to the police with her story but (shocker) was not believed. The first episode of this eight part mini-series is frustrating to watch. We all know how this works, a woman reports an assault to a police officer, the police start to investigate, doubt sets in, police intimidate woman, woman recants, her life is ruined. Kaitlyn Dever plays this dance extremely well. And while we know how this works and we understand how this is going to go, we can’t help but hope she won’t crack under pressure. But she does because Unbelievable is based on a true story.

ProPublica published a story with the Marshall Project in 2009 about this entire ordeal. The woman in this story is called Marie, so they can protect her name. Netflix didn’t take many liberties in episode one, sticking almost line by line to the subject matter at hand. Sure parts of it is compressed, but that makes sense for a show that needs to be finished in an hour. The cadence makes sense for the subject matter. The show is raw and once the first episode ends, you want to know more, even if you’re not expecting the complete jump in time that the trailer calls for.

For most people, the show will be difficult to watch, even for an audience that is well aware of the Me Too moment. We know, for example, that the officers questioning Marie as a young woman are not handling the subject matter appropriately; they did after all coerce her into recanting her confession (true story BTW), but we also know a show like this is not going to give us all the answers we need to get a satisfactory ending either. Sure, it’s easy to think the producers are trying to tell us to believe women at all costs, but you have to remember, the sexual assault is only the foundation for the storytelling, not the entire house. Unbelievable is a story of two detectives who have to let down their guard to work together to solve a crime.

There was very little that I disliked about this series, the one glaring moment comes in episode three when Toni Collette spews out this “This is my case” bullshit that permeates every detective show ever. But not every show is perfect. But don’t let this one thing stop you from watching this show. My recommendation: watch episode one and two and then put the series down. Come back a week later and watch some more. Don’t binge this if you can avoid it, but make sure you watch.

Meet Alma, a woman whose life is going nowhere until she sees her dead dad and gets in a car accident. She wakes up from a coma and realizes she has the ability to travel through time and embarks on a mission to save her father from the accident the killed him, or maybe she just has schizophrenia. One of these two things is happening in Amazon’s Undone.

This show is freaking amazeballs! The art style is incredible, although it isn’t unique. For everyone who doesn’t have a film degree, they used a technique called rotoscoping where you cut an actor out of the film. Normally this is a part of compositing e.g. the actor is placed in a new scene or something is being added behind them. In this case, they filmed the actors in the studio, cut them out and shaded them. This way the subtle nuances each actor brings to the character is saved, something that would have been lost if they just made a cartoon to begin with.

This process gave the show so much freedom, from watching Alma’s mother turn into an older woman, crumble into bones, grow up and start over again, to launching Alma into outer space during a fight with her sister or her world literally breakdown and rebuild around her. What could have been just a gimmick is a vital piece of storytelling, that becomes a physical manifestation of what’s going on in her head.

Some parts of Alma’s character is reminiscent of the worst of Juno, but regardless Rosa Salazar gives a powerhouse performance. Bob Odenkirk plays her number two, her dead dad just trying to do right by her. The two are great together and have fantastic chemistry that translates through the cartoon shading of the series. The writing is powerful and thought-provoking. Creators Raphael Bob-Waksberg and Kate Purdy, both from Bojack Horseman, give us another character to root for as they suffer through a horrific and mind-bending time in their life.

If you like movies like Scanner Darkly, A Beautiful Mind and Eternal Sunshine on Spotless Mind then Undone is right up your alley.

The show did have a somewhat predictable ending, so here’s hoping for another season!