Written by Andreas Babiolakis

Binge, Fringe, or Singe? is our television series that will cover the latest seasons, miniseries, and more. Binge is our recommendation to marathon the reviewed season. Fringe means it won’t be everyone’s favourite show, but is worth a try (maybe there are issues with it). Singe means to avoid the reviewed series at all costs.

Warning: Major spoilers for Undone season 1 and 2 are in this review. Reader discretion is advised.

It naturally takes a long time to make a television series that is entirely rotoscoped (a process where live action footage is illustrated on top of, frame by frame), and that goes without saying. There’s a bit of an irony with Undone and the three years it took to animate the second season, particularly when you look at the show’s concept of the breaking of time and our ability to revisit that first season again and again in the streaming age (something Amazon could flaunt, of course). For many viewers, they’ve been waiting on that cliffhanger ending where Alma — an accident survivor that now has access to all of the extra components of the Earth both spiritual and metaphysical, including her father who died seventeen years before — was waiting in front of a Mexican pyramid for her father, Jacob, to emerge from a cave as he promised. Alma had worked hard to prevent her father from driving himself (and his assistant Farnaz) off of a cliff and keep him alive that Halloween night. This was meant to keep him alive, and have Alma’s present match up with Jacob’s new lease on life. Season one ends with an apparent disappointment. Jacob is nowhere to be found. It’s looking like everyone’s concerns that Alma is suffering from delusions is right, and she should now start taking her prescribed meds. Suddenly, a bright light washes over Alma’s face, which is now clad with a haunting grin. Something is there. We had to wait three years to find out.

Or you could have done what Alma does and destroy the lineage of time. An easy rewatch of Undone season 1 would direct you, and you’d see Jacob actually emerge from the cave right in the second episode. The answer was right there this entire time, and I’m personally glad that I caught it before season two arrives, because that’s basically what happens. Well, not quite. Jacob doesn’t literally walk out of the cave, but a bright light does flash. Alma feels like nothing happened. The plan failed. She is approached by a local who clarifies that Alma is alone. Her sister, Becca, is no longer there, and neither is mother Camila’s car (which Alma stole). The experiment did work, and Alma tries calling Becca — who is now on a honeymoon in Bora Bora with her new husband Reed (the first sign that this worked, because their relationship dissolved in season 1) — to find out if their father is alive. Surely enough, he is, and Alma’s entire life is different. She’s not a daycare worker in a relationship with Sam. She actually gives university-level lectures now. She can’t remember how she got to this point (but then again, can any of us?), but she’s happy to be here. That is until two things happen. Firstly, she goes through yet another mundane montage that is reminiscent of the first season; she is caught in a boring routine of work, responsibilities, and lifelessness that all make up this supposed life of ours. She additionally misses her time-hopping, reality-altering powers, and she quickly tries to get them back. Her father instantly tells her to stop. He had a second chance at life. He doesn’t want to mess it up. He has an opportunity that no one else ever gets.

And yet life isn’t looking too hot for him either. He is at odds with his wife. He, too, feels a disconnection from the world. He tries to appreciate everything, but he can’t make miracles every single time. Becca and Reed have a rough marriage, particularly when he discovers that she is continuing to take birth control pills (and he is adamant on having a baby right away). Of all things, Alma misses Sam, the very person she wanted to break away from time and time again; she begins to visit him outside of the restaurant that he works at just to make contact with him again. Everything has been fixed, but it also hasn’t. Life is always going to be full of disappointments, friction, and sadness. This is what Jacob promised Alma she could get away from, but here we are, back at square one (only a bit of a different square one than we initially had). Alma isn’t settling for this. She wants that second reality, where she can break how things are. We all do. Alma has the opportunity to show us what that’s like.

The biggest kicker here is the revelation that Becca also has her own powers: the ability to revisit memories like they are actual surroundings. It’s an element that Undone leaps to instantly, allowing Alma and Becca to bond rather quickly, especially when it comes to defying father Jacob’s reservations with changing reality. Alma fights to get her powers going throughout the start of the second season, because they aren’t what they once were before she saved her father. All of this is relatively futile, though, because the core theme of the second season is that the grass will always appear greener on the other side. No matter how you change reality, you will yearn for what you cannot have. Alma didn’t want to be with Sam, and now she does. Things were meant to work out between Becca and Reed, and now there’s this rift. Jacob was meant to live and be a part of his family’s milestones, but the Winograd-Diaz household hasn’t appeared this broken until now. Once we get comfortable, we strive for something else. We keep dulling ourselves. Life is boring, sure, but it’s our kind of boring. We get complacent when we should really be cognizant of what we’re fortunate to have every day. We lie to ourselves that everything is normal, when we are living abnormalities every day: the miracles of medical science and how Alma can now hear after a childhood of deafness; the ability to fall in love and get married; overcoming major adversities and becoming changed beings over them. That car we get stuck in amidst traffic on the way to and from work? That’s a miracle: we can operate massive machinery at high speeds. That phone we avoid when it vibrates? We’ve never had this much connectivity (albeit too much can also be its own problem, but imagine that we can converse with whomever whenever now). Being torn between different canned goods? We can afford these foods when so many others cannot. We’re choosing ways to feel incomplete. We’re being told we must be incomplete. Undone reminds us that we will always feel that way, and it’s an act of self deception that we need to stop encouraging.

Undone season 2 is much more symbolically abstract than the first go-around. We saw the usage of time and realities to figure out hidden secrets and perspectives. Now, Alma, Becca, and Jacob face fragmented memories, the usage of mementos, and highly symbolic meta-worlds (especially the door Alma tries to open again and again). While I loved the “explanation” of the first season’s ways, this is the kind of Undone I was hoping for: one that feels nearly limitless. The reality that we know doesn’t apply here, but maybe that’s because we are detached and are missing what’s beside us. Furthermore, the memories we revisit feel like vignettes of the separate components that make up our lives, especially when Jacob faces how his marriage slowly dissolved right from the point that he met the love of his life. What I said earlier was true. I do believe we find our own problems within normalcy. There’s also the inescapable curveballs of life where we cannot avoid the inevitable, and there is just too much going on in society (politics, the economy, our own personal goals and how our lives actually unfurl) that we will virtually never miss unhappiness. We are doomed to face heartbreak and the kinds of events that make us question what this is all for. It isn’t cursed fate. It’s just how things are. Undone can rewrite and rewrite history again and again, but we will always be broken people. Let us use routine regularity as the glue that keeps us whole. Viewing this cohesion as a curse will only make us fall apart once more.

Even though the first season is more about the breaking of time, season 2 is about the traversing through time, and we get to experience the entire lifetimes that season 1 only skipped through. It feels even more like an act of voyeurism to watch Undone this time around, as if we are staring at the personal moments and confrontations that people never intended on the world knowing (and now it’s all over a streaming service). We course through mother Camila’s deepest secret (a revelation that breaks her own reality in a more figurative way), and this is a blessing, considering she was a character that was more of an outlier in the first season. We had a chance to really explore the other lead characters (even Sam, to an extent). Now, it’s time to do some soul searching of the character that Alma felt the most alienated from (outside of her father, of course). There’s an analogy brought up by an artist (the woman that accompanies Alma at the start of the season outside of the cave) about Becca’s powers: that her branches are growing faster than her roots. Undone season 2 is all about exploring family trees as if they were literal vessels we could travel through. How can we change the course of the past when time is no longer a tool at our disposal (and we can only reflect on the past)? Undone examines this inquiry and more in its imaginative, touching second season. As per usual, Undone feels like a series of Pixar shorts blended with the mind of Charlie Kaufman, and it’s all thanks to the brilliant minds of Kate Purdy and Raphael Bob-Waksberg (of Bojack Horseman fame), both of whom continue to try to answer why human minds, hearts, and souls are the ways that they are; they may not have definitive answers, but their quests are exemplary nonetheless.

Where will Undone go from here? Who knows, because we likely have another three years of production to find out. I’m invested nonetheless. Undone will likely have its stratospheric second season like Succession did: it was rarely talked about, and it will likely become one of 2022’s most discussed series. It is easy to squeeze into a weekend (the whole series is, actually), and I have a feeling this season will spread like wildfire as a result (especially in an era where we are more confined to our homes than we were during 2019’s first season). People are looking for something different. Something brilliant. Something that will make us feel alive and full of spirit again. Undone does just that whilst trying to break down our psyches and existences at the same time. It is already a highlight of television in 2022 for me, and I have a feeling this will be the case for many TV fans as well.

Andreas Babiolakis has a Masters degree in Film and Photography Preservation and Collections Management from X University (formerly known as Ryerson), as well as a Bachelors degree in Cinema Studies from York University. His favourite times of year are the Criterion Collection flash sales and the annual Toronto International Film Festival.

Undone Season 2: Binge, Fringe, or Singe?

Written by Andreas Babiolakis