For anyone here who has seen Unorthodox on Netflix, I’m curious what you think the first driver is.
For those of you who haven’t seen it, there is a lot of flashback in the story, and I’m curious what our guts tell us about where the story begins. In the now or in the before.
Ooh, it looks like the kind of show my wife would like. We’ll give it a try.
I assume, based on what you said about flashbacks, that I should watch all the episodes before trying to answer the First Driver question?
It’s only 4 hours, so it’s worth getting through it all regardless.
My question (today) is mostly about feel, and then the follow-up question: does it actually start in the place we feel like it starts?
(I’m trying to hide some comments but the function isn’t working, so I’m deleting them for now.)
Wow, what a fantastic show!
Okay, for anyone else reading along, there will obviously be BIG SPOILERS from here on out.
Before getting into Driver, a note about the RS. There were definitely two RS relationships (one with the mother and Esty, one with Yanky and Esty). The mother-daughter one, though it had a lot less screen time, really got me.
In terms of First Driver, I’m not sure whether it’s:
The second one feels better, and drives some big decisions. Her escape of course, and even Yanky telling her he wants a divorce seemed driven by her “morning sickness” symptoms forcing her to leave the family gathering.
But the first one has some legs too. After her escape, she’s not in any of the same scenes with Yanky until the very end, and he’s a great candidate IC (two sides of same coin), or at least shared IC. So putting the first Driver earlier has more potential for IC and RS signposts. (Not saying you can’t have IC or RS signposts without them together, but it does make it easier.)
Do you feel the Driver is Action or Decision? I’m leaning towards Action because I felt like her song was the Final Driver. The scene with Yanky afterwards, where she tells him she can’t go back, could maybe be seen as a decision (?). But that felt more to me like wrapping up the RS, and maybe IC Resolve, than the Final Driver.
I could be wrong about any of this though. We only finished watching it last night, and I find less than 24 hours of space after finishing a story is dicey for analysis.
And I find a week is also dicey! Let me revisit!
Quick thought: I think the Driver is Decision.
My gut is telling me that it’s the Decision to leave for Berlin. And the Decision to stay.
Alt approach is something like “We’ve decided it’s time for marriage.”
Included in there, “I’ve decided we’re going to see this sex thing through.”
Okay cool. I could see the final scene with Yanky as illustrating that decision to stay. Along with the dialogue-less closing scene where she’s walking through Berlin and her face and the music slowly warm up to the city so that by the time the credits roll, you feel like she’s home.
So to double-check that, we should see some other act turn drivers inside the story. One might be the family leaders deciding to send Moishe and Yanky to Berlin to fetch her…
That’s a good option.
There are some other “unmotivated” decisions: to go for the scholarship is maybe the one that stands out the most, but it doesn’t strike me as something that is an act change.
FWIW, she is a clear do-er to me, and for the longest time I thought that Moishe was the IC because he was the best developed character beyond her.