The OA: Away
December 18, 2016 1:29 PM - Season 1, Episode 4 - Subscribe

An agonizing dilemma gives OA a new perspective on the group's plight. Homer resolves to find out what Hap's experiments are really about.

Khatun: To exist...is to survive unfair choices"

In the present:
*Jesse goes home from storytelling to find his sister, Ali, watching tv and smoking a bong. We learn that their mother committed suicide.
*Betty meets Rod Spence to deal with her brother's finances. Theo died in rehab, after she turned him in to the police, but she learns that he still left her everything in the will.
*Nancy tells Abel she thinks she should go back to work. Abel takes Prairie to see the FBI counselor.
*Betty gets Steve and Jesse to drive her, in Ali's truck, to get Theo's things from the rehab facility.

In the flashback:
*Prairie has another NDE from being brained with the rifle butt. She finds herself on a strange green rocky landscape, goes into a little red shed and finds it to be the same star-filled expanse she saw during her first death, and the mystery woman, Khatun, offers her a trade. She can go join her father in peaceful eternity, or she can swallow the bird which is the seed of light and go back to the land of the living. She tells her that the 5 will fight a great evil.
*Prairie wakes up in Hap's room and discovers she has regained her sight. Once back in the glass prison, she tells her fellow captives that they're really angels.
*Hap interviews Prairie about her new NDE, using the heartbeat monitor. Prairie realizes that they have to figure out what Hap is doing to them under the gas.
*Prairie and Rachel suck the gas from the vent when Hap doses Homer to try to keep him conscious, and Scott discovers that the gas makes them compliant to command in addition to amnesiac.
*After a year of attempts, Rachel, Prairie, and Homer succeed in getting him out of the gassed glass prison still conscious and clear. Homer lets Hap strap him into a machine and clear helmet, but when the helmet starts filling with water Homer's heartbeat races and Hap doses him with more gas.
*After 3 more years, the captives try a new plan - Prairie, Rachel, and Scott make a ruckus while Homer is in the chamber, giving Homer a chance to examine Hap's video files. He realizes that Hap is killing them over and over and recording the landscape of their NDE's.
*Homer finally succeeds at staying conscious while Hap kills him. In his NDE he's in a crawlspace, then falls through the ceiling into a bathroom, then runs through a hallway away from the sound of voices chasing him. He sees an aquarium full of fish, and follows Prairie's advice of swallowing any living thing he can find.
*Back in the glass prison, Prairie tells Homer how she feels that there's a part of her waiting for its true name to be spoken, that it sounds like 'Away.' Homer tells her he doesn't feel different the way she says she did after swallowing the bird, but then he falls asleep and we see him make the clutching motions Prairie did.
posted by oh yeah! (7 comments total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
I'm trying not to get hung up on the unrealism of the show, but drowning has to be the most unsafe way to kill someone that you plan on bringing back. Presumably they picked it because it's cinematically interesting-looking, as opposed to using drugs or electricity, but, oy. And for 4 years of it?
posted by oh yeah! at 1:55 PM on December 18, 2016 [2 favorites]


So the scars on her back and the weird jumping jack comment and you are angels are all coming together. I'm really not sure what to make of this.
posted by Bee'sWing at 1:14 PM on December 19, 2016


Also, why are the captives speaking freely as if Hap cannot listen in? Why are they trying to figure out Hap's aim rather than trying to escape? Unrealism, as you say.
posted by Bee'sWing at 2:39 PM on December 19, 2016 [2 favorites]


Prarie explains that the way to escape is through figuring out what the experiments are. Without understanding what he's doing, his obsession, they can't get out. Considering Prarie's first two direct escape attempts failed, and she has been so far the most successful at escaping, the group switches to a new tactic.

Even if it's completely fruitless and insane, the project gives them hope and something that bonds them together, which is pretty useful considering their situation.
posted by miss-lapin at 6:13 AM on December 20, 2016 [1 favorite]


Didn't like this episode as much as the previous, just felt sort of weak and unearned. The thing I did like was the increasing parallels between the Unfinished House Storytime Club and the Transparent Wall Cave Club. In the present time The OA's pals are learning to work together to solve problems, just like in the flashbacks.

Agreed with Bee'sWing that the lack of surveillance on the captives makes absolutely zero sense. There's cameras and recording all over the place... except where the captives live? Perhaps that is the real experiment, observing them, and they're allowed to pretend like they have privacy.
posted by Nelson at 6:42 AM on December 22, 2016 [1 favorite]


drowning has to be the most unsafe way to kill someone that you plan on bringing back

Yeah, I kept wondering why none of them had chronic pneumonia....

Although the drowning scenes reminded me so much of this that I sort of forgave them.

I haven't finished the series yet, but this episode was the one where I decided I was just going to have to suspend my disbelief to within an inch of its life...
posted by biscotti at 6:15 AM on December 24, 2016 [3 favorites]


Agreed with Bee'sWing that the lack of surveillance on the captives makes absolutely zero sense. There's cameras and recording all over the place... except where the captives live? Perhaps that is the real experiment, observing them, and they're allowed to pretend like they have privacy.

For whatever reason Hap has no concerns at all about any of them escaping, but I do think he is worried about other people coming to his house and snooping around or getting suspicious (like maybe the delivery person who brings supplies once a month). That's why there are surveillance videos in the dungeon, so when he's down there he can still keep an eye on what's going on outside.

"Like, away, but it sounded more like... oh... oh-ay... O.A." is up there with "The Wizard of Oz... wiZARD of OZ ... ZARDOZ" as far as cheesy title reveals go.
posted by mama casserole at 6:59 AM on January 5, 2017 [1 favorite]


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