Netflix’s Kaleidoscope has a random episode order, but it’s still boring

Whether it’s a movie or a series, it’s tempting to believe that great heist stories are like great jazz.At least, that’s the hope behind Netflix’s new heist series. kaleidoscope, giving each viewer a randomized episode order. Unfortunately, the show never really becomes a tune worth listening to, and in whatever order it’s in, it almost always feels like a roar of out-of-tune instruments.

kaleidoscopecreated by Eric Garcia (repo men), followed by Leo Papp (Giancarlo Esposito who seems to pick a new voice at random at the start of each episode). A former thief is looking to get back into his life for his last job.

Depending on the order of your episodes, when we meet Leo, he’s either trying to escape from prison, or he’s vengeful via the biggest job he can think of… The Tech Underground Vault. To get the job done, Leo hired Ava Mercer (Paz Vega), Judy Goodwin (Rosalyn Elvey), Stan Loomis (Peter Mark Kendall), RJ Acosta (Jordan Mendoza) and Bob Goodwin. Assemble a crew that includes (Jai Courtney) — I’d love to tell you more about the characters, but the show doesn’t care.

But again, the order in which we learn about this is pretty much in no particular order. You can start by introducing the crew, or by introducing Leo. Getting the advance robbery as a midpoint also has several episodes’ worth of flashbacks about Leo and his ex-partner, or the surprisingly inept FBI agent tracking him and his crew. Even if the show is layering irrelevant details in these episodes, they’re really just relationship dramas between two or more members of the crew. , instead of things you might care about them, you’ll get fun facts about the first day of class, such as a character who likes to play the drums and another who wants to retire to the beach.

One interesting thing about the randomization, though, is that there seem to be some restrictions on which episodes appear where, and everyone ends up with the same two heists and their aftermath.

This format is mostly interesting at first glance, but a little more thought reveals its problems. There’s nothing fundamentally interesting about learning things in random order. kaleidoscopewas wrong all along. Robbery is the clock, not jazz. No improvisation, just carefully crafted precision and problems that only an expert can solve.

Photo: Clifton Prescod/Netflix

Non-linear storytelling is a hallmark of the heist genre, especially in the Oceans movies and reservoir dogBut for those stories to work, they need clockwork precision. Like any great heist, great heist movies require perfect timing. Reveal characters at the right time, know when your story needs new complexity, and throw in shocking twists at the right time for maximum impact on your audience. kaleidoscopegimmicks make such fully guided fun almost impossible.

But that doesn’t mean the release format is the show’s fundamental problem either: it’s boring no matter what order the episodes come in.

Rather than delaying the build-up of Leo’s crew, kaleidoscope Throwing them all together quickly and mostly over the course of one episode — this is not to say that group dynamics are the highlight of the show, but rather a major miscalculation regarding the cast of characters and their chemistry. It has been proven that there is

Each character is drab and boring on their own, but together they turn into a mess of screaming and confused motives. Worst of all, it’s not even clear why any of them are here.Leo Papp is said to be a master thief many times, but all we see is him busting out a few low-level jobs early in life. All of the side characters seem to have more trouble than they’re worth, with everything from safe cracking to explosives feeling at best one Google search smarter than the audience.

Photo: Netflix

And when it comes to the show and its characters, it doesn’t even have the ounce of charm it takes to follow them through a Byzantine shuffle of non-drag episodes. You’re supposed to walk to your next location, so you can’t find an exciting and clever way to do it. It’s a set of plans we’ve never discussed or acted on, and we’ve seen very few twists.A fixed point means the show knows exactly what information is coming in, so it can be full of twists that contextualize each episode or understanding of groups and plots. Instead, it’s yet another missed opportunity kaleidoscope.

None of these glaring problems can be attributed to randomized order. They can all be attributed to plain old bad TV. is not. Netflix’s binge model still works for certain shows, but it’s outdated as a whole. retirement When white lotus (Or half the world is waiting for the next episode with bated breath house of the dragon) These are all good indicators that people don’t mind waiting a week to see what happens next. But if Netflix insists on continuing to release most of its shows at once, why not experiment with some of them in a way that gets people talking?

And it might just fit a different genre. How the semi-random order of the mystery series leads fans to compare notes along the way, and how complex dramas told from multiple perspectives can change one character or another, depending on who you first become attached to. These are all interesting ideas, but they require these genre idiosyncrasies to work.

Image: Netflix

More than just a vehicle to ride, the big mystery turns into a puzzle for the viewer. Mystery stories leave clues to be solved, allowing you to follow in the footsteps of fiction’s greatest detectives. Robbery is the exact opposite. It relies on characters who know more than us, and to get the perfect hand, they hide an ace in their sleeve that’s hidden even from the spectators.

kaleidoscopeThe pacing of feels pointless. This may seem like an obvious drawback of random ordering. But given that it’s true for each of the show’s eight individual episodes, it’s possible that it’s the result of a pasted show rather than a random order. I just don’t know the big or small. in order or not.

Feels like the intended effect of Netflix’s randomization kaleidoscopewas meant to encourage friends to continue with the show so they could get to the next big episode or moment. But the show’s key moments never come and by the time you realize the show is random or why it matters, your friends probably turned it off long ago And honestly, good for them.

All 8 episodes of kaleidoscope Season 1 is streaming now (in any order) on Netflix.