What I’m Watching: The OA

The OA: Season 1, Episode 4 “Away” (B)

Perhaps it’s purposeful, but I have absolutely no sense of time when it comes to the events of this show. It’s easy to forget since she doesn’t look any different that she was missing for seven years. Now that we’ve experienced two episodes of waiting and trying and failing and then going back to square one, the extent of Prairie’s captivity is clear. Hap has a remarkable ability to remain calm, and he’s extraordinarily manipulative in the way that he speaks to his prisoners, making them feel as if they deserve the worst and he gives them slightly better than that. It was impressive how all the prisoners worked together to figure out just what he was doing when he was sending gas into their cells, and the answer is not pleasant. Learning that it took them three years to really figure out what was happening is beyond disheartening, and though Prairie has now officially decided her new name (in hardly the most convincing way), they still seem to be very, very far from getting away. I’m also relatively certain that none of them are going to be alive anymore, since Prairie is taking plenty of time to explain what happened and doesn’t seem to be in a rush, at least not since her urgent convening of the five friends, to go back and rescue her friends. In the present, we’re seeing the most of Betty, who is finally dealing with the aftermath of her brother’s death, a fact that is complicated by the revelation that she turned him in, he went to rehab, and then he died. Enlisting her out-of-work colleagues to drive her there in their van was an interesting development, and if nothing else, Prairie is now helping to connect those who would otherwise not interact in the service of a common good.