Streaming Spotlight by Cindy Summers
Undone (Seasons 1 & 2) – Amazon Originals
Breeze rating from 1 to 4 palm trees, 4 being best.
In Undone, Alma Winograd (Rosa Salazar) was bored with the repeating patterns of her everyday life as a preschool teacher in a comfortable relationship with her boyfriend who was obviously more committed to a future life together. Her sister Becca (Angelique Cabral) was soon to be married, and while hanging out at a bar they had a fight and Alma left crying. Strangely, as she was driving home she saw her father Jacob (Bob Odenkirk), who had passed away, standing on the corner which caused a serious car accident that had her in a coma for two weeks.
Alma woke and saw her dad Jacob in the room, though no one else could see him. Jacob told Alma he caused the accident to trigger her special abilities and help solve issues around his death. Jacob was persistent, and Alma eventually became aware through her father’s help that she had the ability to time travel. Her new found abilities became disruptive to her everyday life, finding herself frequently popping back and forth in time. Alma, like her grandmother, had been diagnosed with schizophrenia but Jacob believed many like this mom and daughter actually had special gifts to bend the rules of space and time.
At the end of Season 1, Alma travels back to the night her father died to try to change the past only to discover her father’s actions were intentional and that her mother was at her father’s lab that night though she had always denied it. Unfortunately in real time, Alma ran into a mirror on the wall at the preschool she worked at in front of all the children and was kindly let go from her job. This compelled Alma to go to Mexico to connect with her dad, but her boyfriend Sam called her mom Camila thinking her actions were due to her not taking her schizophrenia meds.
Becca went to Mexico to find Alma, sharing she had told Reed on their honeymoon about her indiscretion and that his family was moving to annul the marriage. Alma was convinced her dad would emerge from the cave and that Becca would be fine because their timeline would be adjusted. They stayed all night and as the sun rose in Season 2, Alma went into the cave after Becca went back to the car hoping that she had changed time and would find her father.
When Alma emerged from the cave, Becca was gone and when calling her learned she was on her honeymoon with Reed in Bora Bora and that her father was alive. Alma could also now play the piano and speak Spanish in her new timeline, but there was no Sam or preschool from the past. Jacob said his abilities were more limited now that he was in a physical body again, and shared that his wife had concerns about him being schizophrenic so he had to stop his previous research though help counsel Alma with her time travel abilities.
Season 2 also reveals that Becca has special abilities as well allowing her to move through time into memories, and also discovered she could bring others with her. Her grandmother Geraldine (Holley Fain), who was in a mental care facility, also had similar abilities and they seemed to be inherited genetically. Alma and Becca realized that they could repair issues that they found in the past and teamed up to find family secrets that had damaging results in their futures.
Undone uses rotoscoping animation where animators trace over real images of actors, which creates a show that looks like a hybrid of animation and live action that feels both realistic and contrived. The animators did line drawings of each of the characters frame by frame, then the footage went to their studio in Amsterdam and those performances were hand-painted onto oil-painting backgrounds. Each episode contains 150-200 oil paintings that provide backdrops.
Seasons 1&2: 8 episodes – 25min
