“Violet,” for instance, takes place 24 years before the heist occurs, setting up the backstory of our characters but without involving any heist planning. Part of this issue may be that Kaleidoscope is more interested in its characters than its heist and that each episode is locked into its own time period, meaning we only get brief glimpses of what’s going on. The mysteries unpack and all is eventually revealed, but it never feels rewarding on the whole. There’s just too much jumping around because of the series’s concept, and it leaves the actual heist planning and emotional build-up to it feeling flat. There may be a way to view the series so it feels like a better-executed heist tale, but even shuffling episodes around in my mind, I couldn’t find it. Its random episode presentation means there’s no control over the pace or plotting, leaving each episode to do its own work instead of delivering a satisfying heist tale. However, a good heist story builds itself so that, in the end, you get a fantastic moment of catharsis as the heist occurs. (L to R) Jai Courtney as Bob Goodwin, Rosaline Elbay as Judy Goodwin in episode ÒBlueÓ of Kaleidoscope. In fact, many great heist films jump around in time a lot, so doing it for a series out of order should let people discover different twists and characters in a different order, unpacking how the heist played out and why. A heist story, with all its twists and turns and double-crosses, seems like a good tale you could tell in any order on paper. Without the flashy concept around it, Kaleidoscope is a pretty standard heist story executed in a pretty poor fashion. The reasons why both the concept and story are subpar are intertwined. Now that we have an understanding of the basic genre plot and functionality of the concept, we can talk about how it pulls it all off - it doesn’t. As such, the series doesn’t fully commit to its shuffling concept, meaning everyone experiences a beginning, middle, and end in the same order, just with those aspects jumbled up. “Blue,” “Violet,” and “Orange” play out after that at random, followed by “Red” and “Pink” at random. Everyone will watch “White,” the actual heist episode, last, and you’ll get one of the first two episodes (“Yellow” and “Green”) in a random order but always one after the other. The episodes are all named with a color, and each one is set in a specific time period before, during, or after the heist - but they are not entirely shuffled around at random. However, how you experience it will, obviously, vary. That is the semi-chronological telling of the basic story. (L to R) Paz Vega as Ava Mercer, Giancarlo Esposito as Leo Pap in episode “White” of Kaleidoscope. The team sets about pulling off the heist, all while FBI agent Nazan Abassi (Niousha Noor) is obsessively hunting them down. He pulls together a team to execute his daring plan consisting of chemist Judy Goodwin (Rosaline Elbay), her husband and safe cracker Bob Goodwin (Jai Courtney), driver RJ (Jordan Mendoza), fence Stan Loomis (Peter Mark Kendall), and money / munitions person Ava Mercer (Paz Vega). Giancarlo Esposito leads the cast as the master thief Leo Pap, who is hell-bent on stealing $7 billion in untraceable bonds from a vault owned by Roger Salas (Rufus Sewell). ![]() Kaleidoscope is a classic heist plot line featuring an impregnable safe, a team of thieves, and a twisting, turning plot line that unravels differently depending on how you watch the series. The concept could be revolutionary, providing a series that delivers different experiences and opinions depending on the order that the viewer watches in. It is probably the boldest step away from traditional TV that the platform has taken since deciding to release entire TV seasons to binge instead of on a weekly schedule as broadcasters (and some other streamers) did. The concept is simple for the nascent anthology series: Each viewer is presented with the episodes in a different, randomized order by Netflix. No, not just a new series, but an entirely new concept that could only be executed on a streaming platform. ![]() ![]() Kaleidoscope is something new from Netflix.
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