'Undone' Season 1: Rosa Salazar's Alma struggles to face each day with fear of settling down to a monotonous life
Spoilers ahead for Amazon Prime Video's 'Undone'
Alma's story begins with her concern over monotony. She wakes every morning in the same bed, eats the same breakfast, drives her car through the same commute to her workplace, comes back home to the same person and begins the next day with the same routine. Rosa Salazar's Alma finds herself struggling to face each day with enthusiasm or even will for that matter. Everything she does is tainted with her worry of settling down in a rut.
'Undone' follows Rosa Salazar as Alma, who, after a near-fatal car accident, starts seeing her dead father Jacob (Bob Odenkirk). These visions, at first, are extremely confusing - not just for the audience to latch on to what's happening in the series but also for Alma, who is dabbling in between the living world and the dead. Being stuck there gives her the ability to change things with the power of her mind alone - provided she is rooted in her reality.
'Undone' is Amazon Prime's first adult animated series. Using the rotoscope technique of animation, the show is a unique exploration in the spectrum of time and space travel. At the same time, the show explores interpersonal relationships in a similar fashion that creators Raphael Bob-Waksberg and Kate Purdy do in 'BoJack Horseman'. Alma's life had changed after her father left her on the sidewalk one Halloween night promising to return but never did. Her abandonment issues leak into her other relationships. Following the death of her father, Alma's relationship with her mother is also strained.
Simultaneously, her relationship with her boyfriend Sam (Siddharth Dhananjay) is also ailed by her fear of settling down in monotony - a crisis not too uncommon for the millennial today. She loves him dearly, but the thought of "being on those couples who get married and settle down" is an unsettling notion for her.
Throughout the first five episodes that we were given access to, Alma is trying to stay on top of things to keep falling in a rut. Once she (kind of) gains an idea of how to navigate the realm without losing her mind, she desperately tries to stay rooted in reality.
Alma's character tells the story of the millennial who is scared of living a monotonous life but even more scared of settling down for that monotony. The series constantly asks us a question - are we stuck in a loop or is there more to life?
'Undone' releases on Amazon Prime Video on September 13, 2019.