Creator/showrunner Eric Garcia doesn’t care if viewers start watching him Netflix the heist Kaleidoscope show from a random episode in the middle—the truth is, he designed it that way.
“I said, ‘I believe with all this batch delivery [of episodes on streaming] there is no such thing as a reason why you’ve to observe the show so as. Why cannot we watch this out of order? Garcia told The Post. “And heist stories, which have all the time been my favorite genre, are all the time about loyalty and who’s really on whose side and changing identities.
“For a show that’s alleged to appear in numerous characters at different times and see them in numerous features, it felt like a clever method to mix two things: heist and non-linearity [storytelling]”.
Premiering January 1 and executive produced by Ridley Scott, “Kaleidoscope” follows a gaggle of heroes who come together to perform a high-stakes whim. There’s the brain of Leo Pap (Giancarlo Esposito); weapons specialist/attorney Ava Mercer (Paz Vega); explosives expert Judy Goodwin (Rosaline Elbay); secure cracker Bob Goodwin (Jai Courtney); smuggler Stan Loomis (Peter Mark Kendall; and driver RJ Acosta JR (Jordan Mendoza). All of them need to rob former thief turned security titan Roger Salas (Rufus Sewell) and his protégée Hannah Kim (Tati Gabrielle).
Each episode has a color as an alternative of a number (e.g. “Yellow”, “Green”, etc.) as an alternative of “Episode 1” or “Episode 2”. Each Netflix viewer will receive the episodes in a distinct order (aside from the finale, which is at the end for everybody).
“The one canonical place can be ‘White’ at the end, which mainly acts as a skeleton key as a kind,” said Garcia, who also wrote the novel on which Ridley Scott’s 2003 film Matchstick Men is predicated.
“Hopefully, everyone could have a distinct point of view on the characters and the plot… The show really lives on in conversations between people and on second viewing whenever you watch it in a distinct order.”
Each episode takes place at a distinct time; for instance, one is about six weeks before the robbery, one the next morning, one other seven years in the past. The grand finale is the attack itself.
Garcia said he had several influences, including classic heist movies reminiscent of the 1955 French film “Rififi” in addition to other non-linear stories including “Pulp Fiction” and “Memento”. To perform this unusual structure, he established rules in his writers’ room and likewise filled it with “Boards on White Boards. We probably broke the board budget for the show. There was something like “A Beautiful Mind” in there, he said.
“In a traditional time series, we now have our tricks as writers to accumulate the drama and suspense. We shouldn’t have it. We give back the structure of the audience,” he said. “But at the same time, you’ve to have the ability to introduce people to the characters in a way that holds their attention, irrespective of after they’re watching.
“We checked out every episode as a pilot. One of the questions was, “For those who saw the episode first, what do you think that the show is about?” We made sure that irrespective of what you watch first, it appears like… a distinct show. There’s an episode that starts 24 years ago and also you see this origin story. There’s an episode that starts with our FBI agent and if you happen to watch it, you think that it’s about her.”
Garcia said he isn’t apprehensive viewers may be confused.
“I feel like we will trust the audience today. There’s a lot on TV and I believe people want something different,” he said. “Some people were like, ‘I’m going to search out the order and watch it chronologically.’ That is fantastic, I don’t have any problem with that. There isn’t a perfect order so far as I’m concerned.
“There is a percentage of individuals who will just watch it as a heist show, and that is great,” he said. in alternative ways and discussing it with friends. There are also people – and I’m one of them, normally – who go deep into the woods and begin searching for Easter eggs and clues, going surfing and on Reddit.
“I hope they exist too.”