I was watching Russian Doll, and for some reason, the first episode I saw was episode 2. I have no idea how it happened, but it did. After watching episode 2 and 3, I noticed my flaw and rewatched episode 1 – but all in all, it didn’t feel like I missed too much.
It gave me an idea about a show with a similar concept as Russian Doll. But the primary difference is that all the episodes could be watched in any order. It would work a bit like this:
- You would watch the first episode
- You log back into Netflix and are shown that you actually watched episode 6, and now there are a few other episodes.
- A user can choose any of these, and the story doesn’t get messed up. This works by ensuring that there are 10 mini-plots within a 10 episode series. Each mini-plot connected to one other one no matter the story you’re presented.
- So… you’ll be watching some items in order and some out of order, but there will always be 1 storyline progressing one step forward.
Confusing, I know. I tried to make a little diagram to show what this would look like – but it was even more complicated.
The key here is it would play with the concept of time and how you can perceive different elements of the future. For instance – you know you have a higher likely hood to get a good job if you go to Harvard and you’re more likely to work at McDonald’s if you drop out of highschool – *but that may not be the case*.
By watching these episodes in any order you’ll be making predictions on what character is involved in what storyline, but you won’t know exactly what got them there. That is until you watch the entire series to be sure.
I’d love to see this get made, but alas I cannot do it. And I doubt too many people can read through the rubbish above and understand my intent.