Netflix’s Kaleidoscope has a random episode order, but it’s still boring

It’s tempting to think that a great heist story, whether in a movie or a series, is like great jazz: a collection of seemingly disparate parts, each excellent but individually incomplete, are put together to create something transcendent . At least, that’s the hope behind Netflix’s new heist series kaleidoscope, which gives each viewer a random episode order. Unfortunately the show never really makes a song worth listening to and mostly feels like a din of out of tune instruments no matter what order they are in.

kaleidoscopecreated by Eric Garcia (repo men), follows Leo Pap (Giancarlo Esposito, who seems to randomly choose a new voice at the beginning of each episode), a former thief looking to return to life for one last job.

Depending on the order of your episodes, when we meet Leo he’s either about to break out of prison or he’s determined to get revenge with the biggest job he can imagine: beating his former partner, the now a security company with a high-tech underground vault. To pull off the job, Leo assembles a crew that includes Ava Mercer (Paz Vega), Judy Goodwin (Rosaline Elbay), Stan Loomis (Peter Mark Kendall), RJ Acosta (Jordan Mendoza) and Bob Goodwin (Jai Courtney) – I would describe the characters in more detail, but the show doesn’t bother me, so why should I.

Image: Netflix

But again, the order in which you learn about them is mostly up in the air. You can start with an introduction to the crew or simply Leo. You could get a preliminary heist as the focal point, or you could get multiple episodes full of flashbacks about Leo and his former partner, or the amazingly incompetent FBI agent stalking him and his crew. Even when the show glosses over extraneous details in these episodes, they really just boil down to relationship drama between two or more members of the crew. Instead of an actual personality for the characters or anything else that might make you want to care about them, the first day of class we’re given fun facts like a character who likes to play the drums or another who goes to the beach want to withdraw.

A slightly interesting note about randomization, however, is that there seem to be some restrictions on which episodes can appear where, and they all end with the same two, the heist and its aftermath.

While this format is almost interesting at first glance, its problems become clear with a little more thought: There’s nothing fundamentally interesting about learning things in a random order. kaleidoscopes basic premise was wrong all along. Heists aren’t jazz, they’re clocks. There’s no improvisation, just carefully crafted precision and problems that only experts can solve.

Photo: Clifton Prescod/Netflix

Non-linear storytelling is a hallmark of the Heist genre, especially for the more modern versions of it, like the Oceans films or Reservoir Dogs. But for these narratives to work, they need clockwork precision. Just like a great heist, a great heist movie requires perfect timing, character reveals at just the right moment, knowing when the story needs a new complication, and shocking twists at just the right moment to have maximum impact on audiences. kaleidoscopeThe gimmick of makes this perfectly guided fun almost impossible.

But it’s also not as if the release format is the show’s fundamental problem: it’s boring, no matter what order the episodes came in.

Instead of slowly building Leo’s crew, kaleidoscope throws them all together quickly, and mostly over the course of just one episode — which doesn’t prove to be a sign that group dynamics are the show’s highlight, but rather a major miscalculation about the cast of characters and their chemistry.

On their own, each character is shallow and boring, but together they degenerate into a mess of shouting and confused motivations. Worst of all, it’s not even clear why any of them are here. We’re told over and over again that Leo Pap is a master thief, but all we see is him botching a few menial jobs earlier in life. Meanwhile, every supporting character seems to be more trouble than they’re worth, with most of them feeling like they’re at best a Google search smarter than the audience when it comes to everything from safe crackers to explosives.

Photo: Netflix

And nothing about the show or its characters has even the ounce of charm needed to make following them through this Byzantine jumble of episodes anything but a compulsion. Even the heist itself, which dedicates an hour but is still mostly about going from one location to the next, can’t find a way to be exciting or sophisticated. It’s a set of plans we haven’t discussed or practiced, with almost no twists in sight – which is a waste considering this episode always seems to be the penultimate of the series. The fixed point means the show knows exactly what information we’ll have, so it could be full of twists that contextualize each episode or our understanding of the group or plan. Instead, it’s another missed opportunity for kaleidoscope.

None of these glaring problems can be attributed to the randomized order. They can all be blamed on old-fashioned bad TV. Experimenting with release strategies isn’t inherently a bad thing. Netflix’s binge model still works for certain shows, but by and large it’s become stale. And word of mouth hits like severance pay and white lotus (or half the world is waiting with bated breath for the next episode of house of the dragon) are all good indicators that don’t mind waiting a week to see what happens next. But if Netflix insists on releasing most of its shows at once, why not experiment with some of them with their form to get people talking?

And it could be perfect for another genre. It’s easy to see how a semi-random order for a mystery series might lead fans to compare notes halfway through, or how complex drama told from multiple perspectives might change our liking for one character or another , depending on who we got used to first. All of these are interesting ideas, but they need the specifics of those genres to make them work.

Image: Netflix

More than just rides to embark on, great mysteries turn into puzzles for the onlooker. A mysterious story leaves clues for us to solve, leaving us hot on the heels of fiction’s greatest detectives while feeling like the playing field is at least somewhat level. A raid is just the opposite. It relies on characters who know more than we do, holding the ace up their sleeve, even hidden from the audience, to get just that perfect hand.

kaleidoscopeThe pacing of feels nonsensical, which might make it seem like it’s the obvious flaw of the random order. But considering that this applies to each of the show’s eight individual episodes, maybe that’s not the result of the random order, but of the show it was inserted into. Maybe this show just doesn’t know how to tell a story. Big or small; ok or not.

It feels like the intended effect of Netflix randomization kaleidoscope‘s Episodes consisted of getting friends to push each other to continue the show so they can get to the next big episode or moment. But the show’s big moments never come, and by the time you realize the show is random or why that matters, your friends probably tuned it out a long time ago. And frankly, good for them.

All eight episodes of kaleidoscope Season 1 is now streaming (in any order) on Netflix.