What was your kelidescope order?

[payn]

Greetings,

Have you had a chance to catch Netflix limited series Kelidescope? Overall, I thought it was a great idea that doesn't reach its full potential. Folks may ask themselves why Oceans 11 wasnt a series? Well, likely because some characters are just not that interesting to get their own episodes. Also, a few red herrings make the chase seem fun, the more herrings though, the more dead-ends start to feel tiresome. I still enjoyed the ride despite the gimmick and some weak writing at times. I will say one episode in particular (can you guess?) felt like Guy Ritchie meets the Cohen Brothers and if the series could have been consistently executed that way it would be one of the best. I give it 3 out of 5 stars.

What was your episode order?
Mine;
Green
Orange
Blue
Yellow
Red
Violet
Pink
White (same for everybody)

 

[Stalker0]

Green
Yellow
Blue
Violet
Orange
Red
Pink
White

 

[Stalker0]

It was a fun little show, and an interesting experiment. It will be interesting to see if the order really changed people's experiences about it.

My few notes:

Spoiler

The biggest problem in the show is Bob. He is the main plot driver for a lot of action, and he makes no god damn sense. For a heist as tight as this, where every piece has to work flawlessly together, it was clear from day 1 that Bob was never going to work. He could never follow the rules, never work with the team, he was so laughably antagonistic that he should have either been given the boot or straight up killed right at the beginning. But there is no way in HELL people would trust him for a high pressure heist like this, not for all the money in McDuck's vault.

So from my order, I had RJ as my top pick for betrayer, as he was the quiet one and I saw almost nothing from him in the last quarter of the show. Hannah was my second pick, either working with her dad or independent. Ava was my dark horse third, I thought it was clear that she was "working" with the feds only to throw them off, but I left it open the possibility of the triple cross.... it was a long shot though as she seemed to genuinely love Ray and I couldn't see her betray him. Stan to me was always rock solid, Bob was always going to betray, and Judy was either going to be innocent or go along with Bob.

I can say that my order worked pretty well. The story flowed decently well, nothing felt out of place.

 

[payn]

It was a fun little show, and an interesting experiment. It will be interesting to see if the order really changed people's experiences about it.

My few notes:

Spoiler

The biggest problem in the show is Bob. He is the main plot driver for a lot of action, and he makes no god damn sense. For a heist as tight as this, where every piece has to work flawlessly together, it was clear from day 1 that Bob was never going to work. He could never follow the rules, never work with the team, he was so laughably antagonistic that he should have either been given the boot or straight up killed right at the beginning. But there is no way in HELL people would trust him for a high pressure heist like this, not for all the money in McDuck's vault.

So from my order, I had RJ as my top pick for betrayer, as he was the quiet one and I saw almost nothing from him in the last quarter of the show. Hannah was my second pick, either working with her dad or independent. Ava was my dark horse third, I thought it was clear that she was "working" with the feds only to throw them off, but I left it open the possibility of the triple cross.... it was a long shot though as she seemed to genuinely love Ray and I couldn't see her betray him. Stan to me was always rock solid, Bob was always going to betray, and Judy was either going to be innocent or go along with Bob.

I can say that my order worked pretty well. The story flowed decently well, nothing felt out of place.

Yeap, got notes of my own.

Spoiler: spoiler

I agree with you on Bob, but then again every character is just like Bob. I felt at times, every character fit perfectly, and also every character fit poorly. Also, the writing was good and somehow bad too.

FBI agent and her drug addiction was actually a good lead into why she was so addicted to the case. However, Ava sets her up and the FBI doesnt even suspend her (with her background???) and she instantly flips it on Ava. The entire lost custody kid story is a toss away feels bit.

Ava is this slick super smart and resourceful fence, armorer, lawyer, whatever you need. Yet, she decided to F with the FBI and not protect her Te-Te? A plan for everything but what seems to be most important to her??? Seems like a shoehorned weakness for the feels bit.

Ray perhaps biggest of all. The mastermind that somehow goes from low level cat burglary to Top 5 safest vault in the world thief. I get that he had an inside source but nobody was like "hey Ray isnt this out of your pay grade?" Isnt he a safe cracker? Aparently he isnt anymore. How did he hook up with Ava? He goes from a dedicated husband to jail to Ava's squeeze? Ray's issues are not that bad they just suffer from a lot of off screen assumption.

Speaking of off screen assumption we have Roger. He is 90% of the time this slick man of the industry type. He too goes from simple con man (who is deep in debt) to top of the world somehow in a matter of 15 years. We get these few tender moments with his son and working with Ray to see hes not all bad. A theme that goes on with many characters.

I could go on but I probably made my point by now. Kelidescope is hardly the only victim of this writing style. These heist movies have a formula thats designed to trick the viewer in ways that often are contradictory and make no sense, until they do through contrivance. It just sticks out in particular in Kelidescope because you get 8 hours of it instead of 90 min.

 

[Stalker0]

Yeap, got notes of my own.

Spoiler: spoiler

I agree with you on Bob, but then again every character is just like Bob. I felt at times, every character fit perfectly, and also every character fit poorly. Also, the writing was good and somehow bad too.

FBI agent and her drug addiction was actually a good lead into why she was so addicted to the case. However, Ava sets her up and the FBI doesnt even suspend her (with her background???) and she instantly flips it on Ava. The entire lost custody kid story is a toss away feels bit.

Ava is this slick super smart and resourceful fence, armorer, lawyer, whatever you need. Yet, she decided to F with the FBI and not protect her Te-Te? A plan for everything but what seems to be most important to her??? Seems like a shoehorned weakness for the feels bit.

Ray perhaps biggest of all. The mastermind that somehow goes from low level cat burglary to Top 5 safest vault in the world thief. I get that he had an inside source but nobody was like "hey Ray isnt this out of your pay grade?" Isnt he a safe cracker? Aparently he isnt anymore. How did he hook up with Ava? He goes from a dedicated husband to jail to Ava's squeeze? Ray's issues are not that bad they just suffer from a lot of off screen assumption.

Speaking of off screen assumption we have Roger. He is 90% of the time this slick man of the industry type. He too goes from simple con man (who is deep in debt) to top of the world somehow in a matter of 15 years. We get these few tender moments with his son and working with Ray to see hes not all bad. A theme that goes on with many characters.

I could go on but I probably made my point by now. Kelidescope is hardly the only victim of this writing style. These heist movies have a formula thats designed to trick the viewer in ways that often are contradictory and make no sense, until they do through contrivance. It just sticks out in particular in Kelidescope because you get 8 hours of it instead of 90 min.

Spoiler

The Ray stuff made sense to me considering the time. He has had years and years to plan a lot of this, and his drive for revenge has made him insanely focused. Its literally 8 years after he gets out of jail, a person can do a whole lot in that time.

The Ava Te-Te thing I agree with you. That seems an absolute kryptonite of a weakness she does nothing about. Ok not citizenship, but not even a Green Card? She's a high profile lawyer, even beyond her criminal stuff people are going to know her and look into her for much more mundane reasons, so the fact she has an illegal immigrant living in her house is kind of a thing.

For the FBI agent, yeah you make a good point. If she was working "officially" I could see her getting away with it, as she was there on official business. Would it have looked REAL suspicious sure, but she seems to have been kicking butt at the role in the last several years so I could see a liiiittle bit of leniency (though obviously it would trip some alarm bells). However, she was there unofficially, yeah no way that goes away without some kind of thing happening.

 

[Aeson]

Do you pick the order? If you have multiple people on one account do they each get a different order? Are there tacos?

 

[payn]

Do you pick the order? If you have multiple people on one account do they each get a different order? Are there tacos?

It picked for me. I’m assuming every account and/or user gets a different order.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Violet-Blue-Green-Yellow-Orange-Red-Pink-White.

I agree that Bob was a bit over-the-top problematic for such a high stakes / high precision heist. I mean, the chemist was really good, but it should have been possible to get someone without Bob. Especially if Ray had planning this for so long and possibly even gotten better at the whole thing - he should have a few more connections than just the 3 people from the prison...

Te Te was also a bit too big a weakness. It can't be that hard to get her into the country so it doesn't blow up in your face the first time someone official looks at her.

A scene I liked in Pink was Judy asking Stan what they thought how much money they needed, and then admitted that the most she ever got from a single job was actually their diamond heist, and before that the most succesful bank job she did was about less than 20.000 $ (before splitting). It was a neat little bit of "reality" in the show - crime doesn't pay that well normally at all.

In Violet, young Hannah asks what a loophole is, and gets it explained by Roger - I was kinda hoping this to come back later, where she might exploit some "loophole" to finalize Ray's revenge plan.
I must have missed it - but who was actually the father of her baby? I kinda expected this to be some secret connection as well - maybe J.C., or the FBI guy as another inside man, or something like that.

Still, I had some fun. It probably could have been better, but it was a nice experiment to tell a heist story.