The OA

It is extraordinary. ... The whole experience is so absorbing that I now regret having made my top TV shows of 2016 list so early in December. The OA belongs, if not in my top ten, then certainly highly ranked among the honorable mentions.

If Stranger Things is an immediately yummy, nostalgia-inducing bowl of Count Chocula then The OA is a meal both fresher and more exotic, while still succeeding as a televisual page-turner.

The less you know about it before going in the better. This is a must-watch series and if a feeling of incompleteness should fill your cavity upon completing it, simply cleanse your palette and start over again.

Anchored by a spectacular central performance and a series of increasingly wacky ideas, The OA is frequently mind-boggling, but worth the effort.

A compellingly strange, eight-episode psychological thriller that the streaming service has more or less dropped on us without much advance notice.

Mysterious comebacks have become a TV genre in themselves, yet I haven't seen anything quite like The OA, whose twists were gripping enough to keep me going even in some moments when I'd otherwise have been rolling my eyes.

Whether her story is real or the byproduct of extreme trauma is one of many questions at the heart of this haunting, graceful and often frustratingly cryptic series.

Committing time to such programs requires a leap of faith. The OA mostly justifies that investment, even if the filmmakers couldn't quite stick the landing.

Marling and Batmanglij prove excellent storytellers, creating elegant, independent arcs crossing multiple genres; each of which are engaging for all the right reasons. It’s only when the mystery ends and a commitment needs to be made--to the exploration of its big ideas, to immersion in its science fiction, to a stance on the power of belief--that this ambitious story falls short.

I have to give Marling and Batmanglij credit: I don’t usually have much patience for humorless, convoluted hooey like this, but their narrative pacing, and some of the performances ... are enthusiastically committed and effective.

It unfurls slowly (so, so slowly, especially in its early episodes) into a cerebral sci-fi mystery not quite as compelling as it’s convinced it is.

It’s a winter binge suited for die-hards, but the viewer who needs a boost (character development, clear storytelling) to enter an imagined world will find the series a tough sit.

It is, on some level, more than enough that "The OA" tries so hard and with such sincerity. "The OA" is fascinating and adventurous, both with formal limitations like episode runtime and narrative experimentation. ... But "The OA" is offering a story that cannot be thought about too deeply without falling quickly to pieces.

You might be a match for the show if you have a high tolerance for New Age woolgathering, if you consider hokey dialogue and amateurish characterization a fair trade-off for luminous atmosphere, if you enjoy ordering the most exotic item on the season’s video menu for the experience of having tasted it.

After an enticing and somewhat infuriating build-up, The OA becomes something quite ludicrous as it stumbles toward a climax that is, if I'm generous, merely unearned and if I'm not being generous, a series of offensive overreaches.