My Viewing Guide for Netflix’s “Kaleidoscope"
I started with Yellow and I couldn’t be happier. I mean, sure… you could start with any episode and enjoy the ride. But hear me out on why Yellow is the best place to start.
In case you haven’t heard by now, Netflix recently release a new experiment in non-linear television storytelling. Kaleidoscope is a heist story told in eight episodes that can be watched in any order. Each one is titled after a different colour and tells what happens at different times before and after the heist.
Viewers can choose their order or select where to start and let Netflix shuffle what comes next. The only exception is the episode showing the heist itself, titled White. It serves as a finale containing many of the series reveals. Left to its own devices, Netflix will always show White last.
Each episode conveys different pieces of the mysteries, secrets, and schemes of each character, so the order you watch changes how you experience each part. For example, once you watch Violet, you’ll never look at the relationship between Leo, Roger, and Hannah the same way.
MY EXPERIENCE
Here is how Netflix played the series for me:
Yellow (Six weeks before the heist)
Green (Seven years before the heist)
Blue (Five days before the heist)
Violet (Twenty-four years before the heist)
Orange (Three weeks before the heist)
Red (The morning after the heist)
Pink (Six months after the heist)
White (The heist)
I learned after the fact this is the stock sequence if you simply press play.
I loved this order for three main reasons:
Yellow is an insanely good episode to start with.
The jumps around the timeline feel balanced and well-placed.
This leaves the latest parts of the timeline to the end, more heavily freighting the fallout with the narrative weight of everything that has gone before.
Here, I’ll only unpack reason #1.
Yellow, the episode set six weeks before the heist is essentially the recruitment episode. The ringleader assembles the team in a way that introduces all the major players and cultivates an emotional investment across the board. It also successfully outlines the scope of the heist, showing the event around which this whole story orbits. Yellow helps a viewer get their bearings on what the story is better than any other episode.
ENDLESS OPTIONS
That said, film and television has recently grown more and more fond of increasingly disorienting openings. So long as a mysterious introduction to a show is entertaining and suggest that answers will be forthcoming, audiences have acquired a taste for disorientation.
If you prefer an especially disorienting opening, start with Red, the morning after the heist.
If you like a good backstory before entering the main narrative, choose Green or Violet.
If you enjoying knowing information before the characters find out, cut right to the chase and play White (e.g. my friend Meagan who will read the last page of a book first, smh).
If you crave a linear approach watch it in chronological order:
Violet (Twenty-four years before the heist)
Green (Seven years before the heist)
Yellow (Six weeks before the heist)
Orange (Three weeks before the heist)
Blue (Five days before the heist)
White (The heist)
Red (The morning after the heist)
Pink (Six months after the heist)
MY RECOMMENDATION
The stock sequence is very strong! I actually recommend it highly… with one possible adjustment. I’d be tempted to swap Pink to play after White. Watching White in any position earlier than last lets some significant cats out of the bag, but Pink is both falling action and epilogue. It would bring things to a close perfectly.
If you watch it that way, please let me know! To know what the characters do not while watching Pink would make a head-spinning difference!
For more recommendations, read this People’s article with suggested watch orders, including watching it in rainbow order!