Undone, Amazon Prime Video’s new eight episode animated series is a wildly entertaining and emotionally complicated triumph. Created by Raphael Bob-Waksberg and Kate Purdy, the team behind Bojack Horseman, each of the series’ brief, 20-odd minute-long episodes packs in a wealth of depth and wit.
Undone begins with Alma (Rosa Salazar), a woman in her late twenties leading a passionless, meandering life until a severe car accident leaves her hospitalized and comatose for weeks. Following the accident, she begins to see the ghost of her late father, Jacob (Bob Odenkirk), who informs her that not only does she have the ability to travel through time, she must use her newfound ability to go back and save him on the night he was murdered. Though the setup sounds like a typical sci-fi mystery, Undone uses this simple structure to explore Alma’s character and her fracturing psyche, and how her strange and often worrying behaviour is affecting her family.
Undone’s visual style allows the show to stand out within the cartoon genre. Rotoscoping, a process in which live action scenes are shot and then traced over by animators and, in the case of Undone, combined with original background paintings, makes the series’ aesthetic as unsettling as it is beautiful. This kind of animation allows the show’s creators to orchestrate spectacular, trippy scenes, while also keeping most of the footage grounded in reality.
While Bojack Horseman juxtaposes its focus on depression with a deceptively wacky cast of characters and visual humour, Undone allows its distinctive art style to complement its unspoken concern with schizophrenia. The issue may not be explicitly addressed until much later, but it lingers just behind every frame: Is it all in Alma’s head? Has she genuinely discovered her purpose in the universe, or is she suffering from a mental illness that has caused her to distance herself from her family while becoming increasingly connected to her imagined father? Alma’s mental wellbeing is the most crucial and fascinating theme of Undone, and touches on issues that are seldom confronted in such a nuanced fashion.
Regardless of whether she can truly traverse time or not, Alma’s work and social life suffer as her father urges her to escape her normal life and focus all of her attention on him and his death. Her growing disdain for the mundane is mirrored in the art style; the exciting time travel moments flourish with vibrant colours and thrilling mystery, while the scenes where she discusses marital plans with her sister are drab, the only signs of life coming from the characters’ remarkably detailed and emotive faces.
None of this depth would be possible without Rosa Salazar’s performance. The rotoscoping causes every facial expression to be exaggerated, and Salazar takes full advantage of a style that some actors would surely despise having to work with. Bob Odenkirk, despite his talent, appeared not to have grasped the style as well as his costar; his character often falls flat. It can be difficult for actors to transition from working exclusively in live action to acting with motion capture or voice work, and this transition is more apparent in Odenkirk’s performance.
Undone’s strange animation and narrative profundity combine to create one of the best television shows of 2019, and its ambiguous ending will surely have people talking long after the credits roll.
