Hacker Cinema
The OA
2016 · TV series · 2 seasons
Created by Brit Marling, Zal Batmanglij
Science FictionFantasyMysteryDrama
Seven years after vanishing from her home, a young woman returns with mysterious new abilities and recruits five strangers for a secret mission.
14 positive9 negative1 mixed8 neutralfrom 32 commenters
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35 comments on Hacker News
> Imagine a bunch of Marvel fans mad over the last few Thor movies
I'd imagine a more likely scenario would be a bunch of fans of a cancelled Netflix show generate another season. There's already been a bunch of scripts for The OA Season 3 generated by ChatGPT.
You mean well, but this is Hollywood-grade advice for close quarters encounters.
Arms extended gives you the least possible leverage. Like when cops in movies run around with gun drawn at arms' length (the Weaver stance is for target shooting). To disarm a gun-wielding opponent, you want to get in close, grab the weapon from both sides securely (hug it) and do a dead drop. Unless you're fighting The Rock, they can't hold both you and the weapon.
Don't do this for knives. Just stay two arms' lengths + 1 beer bottle away from them.
The zig zag thing is a myth. It works in Counter-Strike, but you'll just end up dying an embarrassing death in reality. The only zig zagging you should be doing is from cover to cover. Get to cover as directly as possible. This isn't The OA...interpretive dance won't save you.
Feels like (IME) there's a rather high incidence of discontent over decisions "from above" among the shows listed: The OA being cancelled, 13 Reasons having three seasons too many, speculation(?) that Dark's wonky pacing at the end was due to being approved for too limiting a number of episodes...
> Are you really that shocked if we reframe this as you not enjoying a game that started out as a niche Half-Life mod, but enjoying a television show made by the most popular television network amongst young adults?
No, I am okay with that :). There are some niche things (the OA, Dishwasher vampire smile) I definitely like and some popular things I really dislike (GoT and Stranger things come to mind). On that note: no one around me (IRL) seems to like Rick and Morty :(.
> That the only stuff you like is American, while the stuff you dislike is entirely foreign, shouldn't come as a surprise, either. Pop culture isn't global, not yet.
Well, for what it's worth I am neither American nor living in the US :). At the moment I am into scifi german tv shows (Dark and Tribes of Europa) (buuuut also waiting for the new Star Trek Pike TV show while snobing Star Trek Michael).
This habit of cancellation is, for me, the biggest failure of the lot. Some of their shows were very high quality and quite unique: One Day At A Time, The OA, The Baby-Sitter’s Club. You know what else all of these shows have in common? They were cancelled at the top of their game.
People forget that many huge shows, e.g. Breaking Bad, Battlestar Galactica, only became hugely popular several years into their run. The Wire is even more extreme: it only really became huge after the last episode was broadcast. But in each of those cases, someone made the call that a high-quality show was worth running, either because they hoped it would find a wider audience or because they believed it enhanced their brand.
Can you give some examples of what type of movies to produce?
And what’s wrong with Ozark? I thought it’s one of the better shows on Netflix.
In my view they need more creative risky shows like the OA, Altered Carbon, Love, Death & Robots, Dark Mirror and more old HBO style content… quality and like you said not this mass produced stuff trying to satisfy the lowest common denominator, because then you will satisfy no one.
Maybe they have good shows I just don't know about. Their recommendation system seems to be crap. I browse for 20 minutes and then give up frustrated, because I can't find anything interesting.
I was just looking to downgrade my plan. Basic only gives you SD quality, which I'm OK with but only allowing one device at a time is taking the p!ss.
Streaming services truly flip the "economic calculation problem" [0] on its head: the stakeholders would supposedly gain more reliable information on the value of different IP licenses if we all made purchases a la carte. As it is, they have little idea which program I'm hate-watching ironically, vs what's good enough to convince me to stay on the service (Midnight Mass), vs what I'd pay for exorbitantly out of pocket if I could (OA season 3).
Yet clearly market forces have spoken: the desirability and convenience of the "club goods" model is strong enough to overwhelm any advantages of the transaction model; and the streaming services clearly believe their usage data and analytics are good enough to give them reliable correlations with subscriber acquisition and retention, so they can decide what to license and produce. (While telemetry surely helps, it's worth noting that HBO made this model work for decades based solely on surveys and brand cachet.)
See also: https://www.versobooks.com/books/2822-the-people-s-republic-of-walmart
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_calculation_problem
It's a shame The OA was cancelled, it could have sprouted to be a new genre of Sci-Fi. I loved the season 1, and the season 2 had so much fun ideas.
The OA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_OA, Tales from the Loop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tales_from_the_Loop, Maniac https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maniac_(miniseries), Utopia (2014 British TV series) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8Vu3Hyv_Vk&list=PL_jIDr2tZiuRHlp-bLwYNgWaFAp6dR7_Y
We know you must be thinking that Netflix made it pretty clear that The OA Part 3 will not see the light of day but why the speculations of a new season have started? Well, that’s because a series of mysterious posts by Zal Batmanglij, co-creator of the show, are creating a buzz over the OA season 3 rumors. These posts do not clearly say that a new season is coming but they signal a possibility.
> I've watched the first, and consider it to be 13 hours of my life completely wasted
I really enjoyed the first season. I've "trained" myself to enjoy TV / movies that "get nowhere" as long as they manage to keep my attention. And "The OA" does that.
> Does it get better in the 2nd season?
Regarding the 2nd season, I'm my opinion, there are _a lot_ of scify TV series that start more or less well /interesting (Colony & Falling skies are 2 examples of this). But - I take it to get people interested fast - make big bets in their first season, and then keeping that rhythm proves an impossible task. Falling Skies, for instance, was a complete disappointment. It's like you get people to invent nukes and in the next season they go back to fight with bows & arrows.
I want to keep this spoiler free, but let me tell you this: The 2nd season of "The OA" gets effing weird. Like, really. It's not as hardcore as "Legion", where you need to grow a 2nd brain to understand what the heck is going on, or high fantasy tune as "American Gods" but I found it really entertaining - although at points the story drags a little - but they managed to build / invent a rather interesting universe, that unfortunately we'll never get to see again.
This might be related to the fact that at least one of her books is "hidden" in a scene in "The OA" [1] that happens to be, in my opinion, one of the most interesting science fiction TV series made in the last years (Netflix. Unfortunately, cancelled after the 2nd season).
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_OA
The OA, season 2.
I mean personally I feel The OA season 2 was better in many ways and I was quite excited for Season 3. If only Netflix would be required to release some basic popularity numbers :/
Many shows run too long, yes, but that feels orthogonal at best to the reasoning for Netflix cancellations. Especially as they go and do the opposite with many longer shows that they deem "worth" running into the ground.
Basically, your reasoning seems like a discussion to be had, but I simply don't think that's the conversation happening within the Netflix content team.
FYI Another Earth is directed by Tim Cahill not Zal. From what I can tell Brit Marling is the main common thread between that movie, The OA, The Sound of Her Voice.
These three I've seen personally are all good and have a lot of overlapping themes and premises, like mysterious charismatic figures in a slightly off kilter, ambiguously fantastical world convincing people to believe and follow them and their reality.
It's almost comforting to know that The OA is a third or fourth shot at that kind of premise by Brit and her collaborators. Maybe that's why it felt so beautiful and out of nowhere and perfectly formed.
wtf was the octopus about. This was a bunch of spooky concepts all mashed together without any clear theme. What was the main theme or central concept of season 2? Season 1 was clearly about the movements & what they did, whether they're supernatural or what. Season 2 was like "Silicon valley! Rhizomes! Time travel! Talking sea creatures!" just sort of a throw everything at the wall approach. Anyway it didn't work for me especially with how fantastic and cohesive the season 1 story was.
Check out the notes here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_OA#Production which make clear that the season 1 story was a cohesive, beginning to end story that the creators refined over a series of years (and it shows). Then "hey lets add a season 2."
Plenty of shows can be good with just one or two seasons, and more is worse. Freaks & Geeks: 1 season, amazing. Ditto UK The Office. Fleabag: 2 short seasons, amazing. The OA: AMAZING first season with a complete coherent ending, then they had to make a bizarre, scattershot second season. Ditto Killing Eve (how many damn times can she get killed lol). Downton Abbey: PLANNED for 3 seasons (pre, during, & post wwI) but it was so popular they just rambled on for ages until it looked like the scripts were being pulled directly from tumblr ("beloved character came back from america! for a wedding episode! plus: PUPPIES!!" literally).
So I don't totally get the "cancelled too soon" argument. The OA should have not run to even 2 seasons.
There's a trend of not producing art or even something original, but producing "content." For example someone asked me if The Mandalorian is good. "It's star wars Content" I replied. "If you like star wars, and want Content, you'll like it." Is the plot novel? Is it original or compelling? No, but boy it's fun to see yoda puppet and more Content from the SW universe you've come to know and love!
A lot of these series may have run their creative course & while megafans want more "Content" it's the same thing as something being cancelled too soon, and most people aren't megafans.
Like many, I subscribed to Netflix during the pandemic, and one thing the pandemic permits (especially when the cold season comes around) is binge watching.
With that in mind, I was sucked into The OA and I was annoyed to find out that it was halted.
ImHo, tell a complete story and then halt. A catalog & graveyard of half-completed shows will be Netflix’s undoing.
Because why would I want to risk getting sucked into a story that won’t ever be completed?
> I'm sure there are more but they all circle around a common theme. Loss of trust.
Users failing to recommend shows on your platform to possible new users because they were canceled without a resolution. “The OA” is perfect example. Netflix won’t make another dime off that show because anyone that has seen it will adamantly steer people away and anyone that googles it and sees it was canceled on a cliffhanger will have zero interest.
Shows don’t need to run forever, but they need to finish them. If that is 1 season, fine. If that is 6 seasons and a movie, great. But I’m not interested in a show that just stops airing without an ending, just like I’m not interested in reading a book where the publisher just stopped printing chapters at some random point.
Honestly really struggling to justify paying for Netflix anymore, think there has been maybe one thing I enjoyed watching on it the past 4 months and I look through the listing every single day.
I also don't think the way they make shows is very smart, it's all optimized for trying to cause a binge watch in the realm of 10+ hours. I did watch the first 4 hours of that OA show and honestly the level of content felt about enough for a 90 minute movie just stretched out at a glacial pace and I just couldn't stand the navel gazing required to drag it out into a 10 hour long series.
> Can somebody tell me a new Netflix serie that comes close to House of Cards?
I enjoyed HOC, especially the earlier seasons. A few shows (none of them new though) available on Netflix that I found equivalently good, each got better as they went:
Bloodline[0] - starts slow & builds, I didn't expect to like it as much as I did. Very under the radar, very good.
The OA[1] - similar to bloodline, in that I didn't expect to like it & it got better with each episode/season as the story progressed.
Colony[2] - got cancelled so ends on on cliff-hanger (an exhilarating one), but if you like sci-fi/aliens it'll deliver.
[0] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3520702/
[1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4635282/
[2] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4209256/
As others have said it’s part of Yerba Buena island, essentially a landfill project built initially for Golden Gate International Exposition (Worlds Fair like) as a celebration of the recently opened Bay Bridge and the Golden Gate Bridge. It sits between the two sections of the Bay Bridge between Oakland and San Francisco. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Gate_International_Exposition
It was used by the Navy during the war and up to 1997. After that management, and I think now ownership, of the island was transferred to SF. It’s been used as lower cost housing for the City, as well as other things. I saw a recording of Battle Bots there once for example. If anyone watched the show OA, the psychotherapy ward scenes (season two I think) were filmed in one of the cool looking buildings there.
I had friends who lived there after college, I’d say it feels very isolated. Before the new eastern span of the Bay Bridge opened, the only way on or off Yerba Buena and Treasure Island was by car or bus (Bus to SF, car in either direction). Today there is a foot/bicycle path across the Oakland side. There is a plan, yet to be funded, for the western span to get a foot/cycle path connected to SF. https://mtc.ca.gov/our-work/plans-projects/bicycle-pedestrian-planning/bay-bridge-west-span-bike-path
I had hoped Netflix would usher in another golden age of film: throwing small budgets at innovative content creators (like Binging with Babish), up-and-coming auteurs (think like early 80s David Lynch). That didn’t happen. The data driven approach regresses content to the mean and I worry stifles creativity.
Netflix doesn’t seem to get that I’m not going to invest my time in a show that likely won’t get a second season, and if it doe almost certainly never a third. I find it mildly heartbreaking when I get invested in characters just enough and then I never get to see their archs finished. I’m still so sad they canceled The OA.
Are you saying Netflix hasn’t made quality shows that will last through 2039? I’d like to know which company you think has made close to the amount of quality shows Netflix has since 2014. Here’s part of a list I have for a content project. No company comes close to this output in recent history.
House of Cards launched February 2013 (7 seasons, finished)
Orange is the New Black launched July 2013 (7 seasons, finished)
Stranger Things launched July 2016 (3 seasons, 1-2 more)
—
Dark (2 seasons, 3rd is last)
Glitch (2 seasons, 3rd might never come)
Russian Doll (1 season)
Haunting of Hill House (1 season, anthology)
American Vandal (2 seasons)
Black Mirror (anthology, last season not that good)
The Crown (3 seasons)
When They See Us (mini-series, 2019)
Unbelievable (just came out)
—
Glow (3 seasons)
Kimmy Schmidt (4 seasons, finished)
Arrested Development (they tried, hard to get it all back together after years of being done)
Sex Education (1 season)
Bojack Horseman (5 seasons?) #animated
Mindhunter (2 seasons)
The OA (2 seasons)
Maniac (mini-series)
Wet Hot American Summer (2 seasons, but season 1 is the top notch one)
F is for Family (3? seasons) #animated
Big Mouth (2? seasons) #animated
—
Documentary mini-series
—
Staircase
Making a Murderer
Evil Genius
The Jinx
Wild Wild West
——-
There’s more I’m missing and I didn’t include a number of shows Netflix helps finance but isn’t the main financier or producer or original place of distribution. Shows like Glitch.
Yes, this is what I'm finding with many Netflix shows, they are extended movies. The problem is that each episode isn't really an episode, it has no "arc". Like when you watch NCIS for example, there's resolution after an hour or so. There's sometimes a bigger plot line if you watch all the episodes in a series but you don't have to.
..and because its better for them once they've hooked you to keep you there, the series usually provides a cliff hanger, but many times the series isn't renewed so the risk/investment in time is high. If it is renewed then they really have no new idea so they just rehash the first series and do it again (e.g. the OA, I guess, I stopped after the beginning of the second series). So you never get the closure you get from watching an old school tv series or movie, there's no high's or low's of a good story, there's just time used up.
If they fail, they could always open a movie studio. I mean Netflix originals are some of the best shows and movies around... Dead like me, Stranger Things, Haunting of hill House, The OA, Sex Ed, etc just to name a few...
Even deadpool? I'm getting marvel/dc fatigue as well, but damn I can't get enough Deadpool -- fucking hilarious.
As far as depth, I can't think of a Netflix film I really remember as standing out, now Serials --I can name a bunch: The OA, Stranger Things, Haunting of Hill House, etc -- they may not have found a groove yet w/ movies but they sure have w/ original series -- though they did hit a few snags too, their Marvel world sort of fell apart, and some characters were good, some totally were lame (Iron fist esp.).
Mad Men didn't even have an audience when it aired (<2 million viewers most episodes), and airs on a network that likely won't exist in 5-6 years (or at least won't be producing new content), so it's not super clear to me what your point is about those shows as evidence of how a network grows. The way a network grows is by producing content people want to watch, whether that's disposable content made to last a minute or content made to last the test of time. HBO isn't growing because people are subscribing to watch Sopranos re-runs.
Past reporting suggests churn in most subscription content services is very low, so your Netflix cancellation may be unusual. I'd also add that exclusive content is one part of the story, but there's also a lot of licensed content that's very good on Netflix as on other services.
But for what it is worth, I would rank the following Netflix originals to be "top tier" within their genre -- some of these genres lend themselves more to rewatching than others, and some are closer to my taste than others, some held up in quality through their run more than others, so in a sense I am ranking shows based on their peak quality --
Orange is the New Black; Bloodline; Stranger Things; The Crown; Gilmore Girls AYITL; The OA; A Series of Unfortunate Events; Mindhunter; The Haunting of Hill House; Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt; Master of None; Love; Lady Dynamite; Santa Clarita Diet; GLOW; American Vandal; Maniac; Bojack Horseman; F is for Family; Disenchantment; Hilda; Dark; The Rain; Elite; Chef's Table; Making a Murderer; Shot in the Dark; Wormwood; Wild Wild Country; Salt Fat Acid Heat; Queer Eye; The Curious Creations of Christine McConnell; My Next Guest Needs No Introduction; Lilyhammer; Terrace House; Alias Grace; The End of the Fucking World; Collateral; Wanderlust; Longmire; Black Mirror; Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee.
In addition to these, the following shows are Netflix originals in my region, indicating that although someone else initially funded them, Netflix bought them for exclusive distribution here, and also meet the above requirements:
Babylon Berlin; Bodyguard; Casé; Crashing; Cuckoo; Derry Girls; The Great British Baking Show; Happy!; Happy Valley; The Investigator; Peaky Blinders; River.
I have pretty broad taste in TV and watch a lot of TV while I am programming or running data analysis, so maybe the breadth of stuff I include here is surprising to most. But to the extent your post is a useful anecdote about how Netflix has no great shows, I'm responding to your challenge to "Name one show" that would meet that criteria.
(These are TV shows only, not films. I haven't really liked many Netflix original films although there are a few I would say are great, like Okja and Roma)
Someone recently commented elsewhere that they were tired of paying for streaming access to a bunch of shows nobody wants to watch, and they wanted access to the most popular movies/network shows/whatever.
I didn't comment then, but FWIW: some of the best shows available are now streaming originals from Netflix, Prime, etc. If you haven't checked out specifically any of the Netflix originals, you're missing out. It's a complete replacement for the non-sports watcher.
As posted in response elsewhere below, here's a list of Netflix's best work:
- Stranger Things - Narcos - The OA - The Haunting of Hill House - Marvel series. All of them! - GLOW - Ozark - Altered Carbon - American Vandal - 13 Reasons Why
Also good:
- Atypical - Love - Flaked - Maniac - Master of None - Chef's Table - Making a Murderer
This is by no means a complete list, you can find that here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_original_programs_distributed_by_Netflix
I tried to skim through it and provide my own short list of what I really liked, so this is just one person's opinion.
Netflix has created some of the best TV shows I have watched in the past few years.
Strangers things, Maniac, The End of the F*ing World, Narcos, On my block, Master of none, El Chapo, Ozark, Glow, Disenchanted, Black mirror, Dare Devil, 13 reasons why, Jessica Jones, The Punisher, A series of unfortunate events, The OA, Orange is the new black
Those are just some of the ones I can recall at the moment.
Only other shows that I use popcorn time to watch are Game of thrones and Homeland.
I have to concur with this 100%, most true crime shows from Netflix have felt padded, something where I feel like if the podcast Criminal can make an enthralling episode about an event, the TV versions should be adding a lot more for the 10 hour version. In fact, the only "true crime" series I can think of actually completing is American Vandal, which was not only engaging but laugh out loud hilarious as it mocked itself. I'm truly curious to see if they can capture it in a season 2 without it being a repeat of the same. Of course, there could be some personal taste and behavioral patterns that endear the audible versions of that format more compelling (I usually listen to podcasts during times when I'm not able to be distracted with a phone, articles and texts, such as when I'm driving, yard work, or walking the dog). It could just be that the format for TV relies far more on imagery and visual cues when produced for the screen. I do know that I really haven't seen a real true crime TV series keep me engaged beyond an episode or three, which probably just means I fall out of a different "taste cluster", but there are just some shows that can use visual imagery to enhance a non-fictional topic (Vox's Explained comes to mind here). Unless there is a lot of in-depth information, and a way to make it salient to the story, it's hard for me to value the time commitment.
Likewise, even fictional shows with short seasons can feel tedious at times, which for me, many happen to be British shows, though not all (I enjoyed Safe, but got really bored during Collateral and The Fall, both of which I've heard great things, but much of the storylines just ended up feeling as if scenes were there to "enhance the tension", but served some other purpose). Again maybe super personal and cultural, but I do love long format television, just please give me a reason to keep caring about the outcome without having to wind down some plot rabbit hole).
I might just be impatient and a typical American who is affixed with getting "a hook" somewhere in the first 3 episodes, or I'm probably going to give something else a try. And there are quite a few really good foreign series that I enjoyed, (such as The Rain and 3%) and then some domestic and international shows that put me in the same taste cluster as shows like Dark, The OA and Sense8 that really just never connect. I'm not sure if that's a padding issue per se, but I guess anything that you're not really getting into just feels tedious after a while.
As a UI font, this is pretty great. Almost a mix between Circular and San Francisco, it should work well.
However, most disappointing and worrying part of font presentation is applications to different movies and TV shows. With the same typeface, they completely lose their identity.
Strong, condensed typeface of House of Cards. 80s-inspired typeface for Stranger Things. Minimal and geometric typeface for OA. Cyrillic alphabet inspired treatment of R in Icarus.
They all were different and appropriate, and here they are all very 2010's generic sans-serif, losing all personality.
I'm happy to see Netflix Sans in UI, but sure hope it doesn't go deeper, into actual show branding.
I go to movie theaters pretty much all the time for that reason. I wanna go where people are and not sit in my house. Plus usually Netflix doesn't have any shows i care that much about watching except for oa or a backstreet boys documentary
The OA did the whole "TV series as novel" thing very well. It was very disorienting for me (but in a good way) when the opening credits played almost 60 minutes into the first episode, with about 10 minutes to go.
What do you mean by to fit their format?
I've started watching The OA and it's the first series that I've noticed each episode is a different length. Some episodes are around 30 minutes, others are more than 60.