‘Undone’ Remains One of the Most Innovative Shows on TV

There have always been two shows living in Undone, Raphael Bob-Waksberg and Kate Purdy’s animated Amazon original. The first is about a woman and her sister reaching through time and space to fix their family’s generational trauma. The other questions if all this talk about time and unopened doors is actually evidence of a psychotic break. What’s left in the chasms between these two extremes is one of the most insightful examinations into what may be considered mental illness brought to screen. That was true of Season 1, and it’s especially true of Season 2.

It feels odd to use the term “mental illness” because Undone makes a great case that Alma (Rosa Salazar) isn’t ill at all. Last season followed Alma as she discovered her powers alongside her deceased dad, Jacob (Bob Odenkirk). As Alma argued and laughed with this man who has been dead for years, it was easier to write off her mental stability and side with her worried mom and sister. Yet Season 2 changes that dynamic in a major way. After managing to crossover into another reality where Jacob is alive, Alma starts to go on her spiritual adventures with her dad and her sister Becca (Angelique Cabral) — two alive people who can confirm what’s happening on screen.

On the one hand, these adventures feel grounded in the spirituality of Alma and Becca’s shared past. Last season, the series took great lengths to explore the shaman ancestors on Alma and Becca’s mother’s side. This time around it’s Jacob’s mom Geraldine (Holley Fain) who’s front and center, a woman who survived the holocaust as a child and was later institutionalized for her psychic abilities. Because of these people, Alma and Becca’s claims feel more than believable. They feel expected, another link a familial chain of higher understanding.

But there’s a ghost haunting Season 2, even in its most fantastical moments. As ambitious and hopeful as this Alma is, you can never shake the image of last season’s finale: Alma as a broken, desperate woman sitting in front of a cave, waiting for a miracle. It’s impossible to know which Alma is the “real” one, the woman fixing her family through time travel or the one who fled to Mexico. Maybe they’re both the real Alma. Yet it’s this constant questioning that makes Undone so profound.

Does Alma really have powers, handed down to her by centuries of clairvoyant ancestors? Or are we truly witnessing a mentally ill woman buy into her own delusions? As long as Undone is releasing new seasons, it will likely never tell us. But by creating this confusion, Bob-Waksberg and Purdy brilliantly and beautifully illustrate the fog that exists for people questioning their own mental health.