Kaleidoscope – “White” Recap & Review

White

So we end our Kaleidoscope recaps with the finale, which happens to be titled White. Here, we see exactly what happened during the heist which all the events have been leading up to (and spiraled out from). Our crew prepare to strike, each doing their own prep work before the big event. Our FBI agents are on stake-out too, while New York braces for the incoming storm. Oh, and Roger happens to be surveying the cameras at home too.

The first step of this mission comes from Stan driving his truck in through the front gates, passing security with Bob and preparing to storm the SLS vault, moving their gear after parking up. Meanwhile, guards are taken out to prevent the alarms from being rung and they head downstairs.

Ava and Leo gas the corridors which causes other guards to fall unconscious, while down in the sewers Judy starts leaving lights like a neon breadcrumb trail for Hansel and Gretel. However, this house isn’t made of gingerbread but instead reinforced with layers of security detail.

Leo prepares for the next stage of all this, complete with the face mask of Roger he obtained thanks to Stan’s eye exam.

Bees are fed into the system to disrupt the gait sensor. This, of course, wouldn’t show up on the CCTV cameras at Roger’s place so it looks like a simple electronic malfunction due to the storm. Dressed in a bee suit and with Roger’s face print on, Leo manages to break in through to the other side. The crew join him and Leo’s group access the vault.

The temperature is stable too, prompting the group to enact their next plan, which includes flooding the vault. The trio of Stan, Bob and Leo work on opening the vault as the place begins flooding, slowly transporting the bonds one by one.

Now, through it all the group are unaware that Ava is working with Nazan. She messages the FBI to tell them they need to get to the 59th floor immediately. She and Toby bust in, smashing through the glass and finding the heart of the operation hidden behind a fake wall. In doing so, they rip up all the electronics and it sends the feeds haywire.

This immediately sends Roger and Hannah racing to SLS with the whole operation on the verge of collapsing. In the pouring rain they race up to the building, while Nazan and Toby do the same. When Leo receives a message reading “Roger knows”, they hurriedly move to end the operation.

Ava moves the gear into the elevator, sending it up to the mailroom, where Hannah takes over. There, Hannah switches out the bonds and moves a whole bunch of coloured card in the boxes, explaining what happened there and how she ended up with the bonds.

Meanwhile, Stan loses his glasses in the scramble to leave. With the vault filling with water, Bob is the first to leave in a very uncharacteristic move, telling the others they’re greedy. That’s, of course, a far cry from his actions earlier in the series where he wanted the best diamond.

Meanwhile, Ava, Leo and Stan break into the vault while Bob tries to leave with Judy. He manhandles RJ but before he can shoot Bob (missing the first time), Judy shoots him dead. The pair dump him in the garbage and Bob even makes a quip that she’s a “hell of a shot.” Turning around, Stan is right there and sees them together and rushes off. Bob fires but it misses Stan.

When Bob stalks him through the streets, Judy shows up and chokes him out, deciding to switch her allegiance. The scar on his neck was, in fact,  from Judy choking him out. So, she’s responsible for choking his windpipe and preventing him from speaking but he wants her back and blames Stan?

Anyway, down in the parking lot Ava betrays the FBI and takes off with the bonds, unaware that they are the fake ones. Nazan fires and it hits Ava’s shoulder. She finds Bob in the middle of the road and decides to drive around him. When she does, Bob wakes up and clutches his throat in agony. He uses a pen to pierce his neck, given there’s blood in his lungs. It’s enough to keep him alive.

Through all of this, Hannah reveals to her father what she’s done. She did it for Leo and decides to give all the bonds back to the Triplets. In doing so, it allows them to still have the funds and write everything off as a financial loss. This way, the rich get richer and Leo can survive without having to be looking over his shoulder the whole time. She wanted to get revenge on Roger after what transpired between them in the past.

As a result of this chat, Leo decides to descend back into the waterlogged vault again and breaks in. Using the key, he opens the vault and places the counterfeit jewel there, hanging for the feds to find.

The Episode Review

So the final episode of Kaleidoscope works to wrap everything up and tie loose ends together, and we do get a nice little send-off at the end. The main narrative with Leo and Hannah is pretty well handled but the rest of the show seems to hang by its unique premise.

On the one hand, the show actually does well to make it so you can watch these chapters in any order and in doing so, you will get a slightly different experience. For example, if you go in and watch the episode that occurs hours after the heist (Red) as the first chapter and then mix everything up chronologically it gives a slightly different experience but at its core this show still has the same problems.

The heist is very straightforward and isn’t particularly memorable, especially given the litany of other heist and “great escape” adventures we’ve had over the years. Furthermore, the supporting characters are not fleshed out that well, with Bob’s bizarre sudden flight of fancy completely betraying his character. We know him to be selfish and greedy so why would he walk away and take the moral high ground?

This extends out to the other characters too, including RJ who has very little development and as such, his death really doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things.

Ultimately, Kaleidoscope is a nice experiment and definitely something Netflix hopefully tinkers with more in the future. For now though, this is a bit rough around the edges and unfortunately perfunctory when it comes to the narrative.