Undone centers on Alma, played by Rosa Salazar (Alita: Battle Angel), a 28-year old going through the motions with her boyfriend Sam (Siddharth Dhananjay). Alma starts becoming restless about her boring, seemingly predetermined future when her sister Becca (Angelique Cabral) gets engaged. After a blowout fight with Becca, which once again circles back to the untimely death of their father Jacob (Bob Odenkirk), Alma gets into a serious car accident. When she awakes, Alma finds herself not only with the ability to communicate with Jacob, but with the power to move through space and time in nonlinear fashion. If that sounds hard to understand, then you’re in the same boat as Alma, who struggles with being able to experience her life and memories repeatedly, out of order, or from a new perspective.
However, the trippy visuals are just the tip of the iceberg. Salazar is a dynamic live-wire, funny and infuriating, the most three-dimensional character since Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Fleabag. After being the clear highlight in Alita: Battle Angel, perhaps someone will finally give Salazar a meaty role that doesn’t require her face to be obscured by animation or CGI. Alma is prickly, but compelling, barely holding things together as is, then thrust into inexplicably bizarre circumstances. Odenkirk is also dependably great as Jacob. Warm then stern at the drop of a hat, Jacob is trying to help Alma hone her abilities so she can dive back into the past and solve his murder, yet there’s a duplicitous air to Jacob that suggests he’s hiding something big.
Just like Bojack, Raphael Bob-Waksberg and Kate Purdy’s writing packs a wallop. Purdy mines personal experiences with mental illness and her interest in mysticism to give Alma’s journey emotional weight and intrigue. Alma fears settling down with Sam because she knows her paternal grandmother suffered from schizophrenia, which was exacerbated after she had children. Alma is afraid that she’ll suffer the same fate, however, Jacob suggests that his mother’s condition and its qualities were no different than the characteristics that make shamans and mystics valued members of their indigenous communities. Alma has to determine whether she’s tapping into special, mystic abilities or whether she’s suffering from a mental breakdown.
