Kaleidoscope

Are you fed up with stories? Aren't they all becoming way too predictable, with their structured beginning, middle and end and cliched character arcs? Don't you wish for something novel, something that captures the unpredictability and 'chaos' of reality?

'Kaleidoscope' attempts something which, on the surface, appears quite revolutionary - the viewer is able to watch the episodes in any order and is encouraged to experiment - but is this merely a cheap tacked-on gimmick thought up at the last moment to try and inject some interest into an otherwise generic 'heist' drama?

Or is it something well thought-out that is intrinsically connected to the theme, plot and characters?

I'd say it's the former.

There was certainly nothing here that would entice me to ever watch the whole thing again in a different order. All the novelty of this approach achieved was a sense of dissatisfaction, distraction and a feeling that maybe it would have been better in the 'proper' order - whatever that was?

As for the drama itself - it was mildly entertaining nonsense.

The pacing was reasonably handled, it has a pretty decent cast and the heist itself was quite fun - all of which lift it just above average.

On the negative side, there was some terrible 'de-ageing' employed in one episode and I feel for the viewers who end up watching that one first. Also, none of the characters were particularly believable, there were multiple plot contrivances and the character arcs were limited and predictable. In other words, the story wasn't very well written - putting it in a different order isn't going to fix that.

I can't say which order I watched it in without delving too much into spoilers, on the other hand the whole concept means spoilers will occur for some as a consequence of the order they watch it in. All in all - a failed experiment.

For any other budding writers - master the basics before you mess with the formula.

It's a gimmick to get you to buy the cereal, but once you get to the toy at the bottom of the box, it's just a cheap useless piece of plastic, and not worth buying the cereal you normally wouldn't buy, just for the toy. This is the case here, a gimmick that does work, but not worth the eight colorful episodes that are basically a two-hour movie spread thinly to make a series, and really not offering up anything revolutionary that hasn't been done before, and much better. If you enjoy this genre and haven't seen Money Heist yet, watch that instead of this, it's 1000x better.

But if you are still curious about this series, then I suggest to watch this in the following order: yellow, violet, orange, green, blue, red, pink. If you leave out white, your imagination would probably be a better resolution. If you're binging like I did, wait a week to enjoy your imagination's of heist day, then watch white to compare your ending to the finale... you'll get the most enjoyment this way. The other more obvious and probably makes the most sense for simplistic viewing is to watch this in chronological order - violet (24 years before), green (7 years before), yellow (6 weeks before), etc.

The main draw for this show is that you can watch any episode in any order. Although, the majority consensus is to watch the WHITE episode last as it provides all the answers.

Now, the way this is written is to have episodes without cliff hangers. Meaning you get a snapshot of the story, you have questions and some of them get answered by another episode.

In fact, you should credit this for giving it's viewers some intelligence.

It's watchable, interesting and always revealing.

I did figure it out before the WHITE episode (well most of it except I got the motivation wrong).

Look it's not like you couldn't episode shuffle with other competent shows. Where action had already taken place, you get an idea of what happened then you watch the actual episode where all the action took place and go oh I get it.

As heist movies go, it's ok. As novel storytelling ideas go, it's ok.

As a full 8 episode season goes, yes I would say it's fun, enjoyable and worth watching. It's always engaging which is the key to keeping the audience on your side.

A good binge worthy show.

For the most part I enjoyed the story but the random playback of episodes that was the hook by Netflix didn't work in my opinion. I personally feel I would have given more stars and be invested in the characters and story if it had unfolded based on timeline. I'm not a fan of series that use flashbacks in general and with the episodes playing in a non linear order felt jumbled at times.

That being said the characters were well flushed out and the actors cast did a great job. The final episode ( which is the same for everyone) did close a lot of gaps in the story and was a satisfying end to the limited series.

Despite this being a so called non-linear series (you can watch the episodes in any order and it still makes sense), I decided to watch them in chronological order and I'm glad I did.

If you would like to do the same, here is the episode order by timeline.

Violet - 24 years before the heist.

Green - 7 years before the heist.

Yellow - 6 weeks before the heist.

Orange - 3 weeks before the heist.

Blue - 5 days before the heist.

White - The heist.

Red - The morning after the heist.

Pink - 6 months after the heist.

The non-linear format : A nice idea but I would have been disappointed to end the series on certain episodes. Just my opinion though.