I just watched the first two episodes to this new series, called Past Life, and just between the first and second shows, I’ve seen an improvement.
In watching the first episode, I had mixed—though generally positive—feelings about it. On the one hand, yes, it has lots of previously used tropes and such, but, really, in its defense, how else you gonna portray this stuff in a hour? You gotta keep things like this moving, and for attention-deficit viewers and those perhaps already “up to here” with this kind of plot/story idea, it’d be hard to do. But I liked that it tried.
And though I liked the first episode, things seemed a bit rushed to arrive at the conclusion. As I’d mentioned before in my first post on the topic, I sincerely hoped that the stories would be well done, even if not all that much of a surprise, because how much of a surprise can you make something like this within the structure of an institute that investigates past-life issues? The entire show’s about finding past lives, so unless they do progressions v. regressions, and even once they’ve done that—what next? Alien lives? The second episodes was much better and didn’t feel rushed at all. Without sitting down and thinking through how to do something like this, it will be interesting to see how they keep things “fresh.”
One thing of note is that in most of the research I’ve found is that reincarnational material usually—but not always—seems to make itself known before the age of six, and so far it’s all manifesting in the teenage and adult years. I guess that, too, would be problematic for a weekly TV show aimed at an adult audience. But I really like how it tackled drug use. I like it because it shows the program is trying to show how past lives may affect current lives to an individual’s detriment. It might help in giving a different point of view to illnesses, instead of treating everything solely through use of medication. I’m not saying that all illnesses are a result of this kind of thing, but I am saying that there may be other issues and methods that might better deal with some problems. But it can also give clues as to why we have certain inclinations and thoughts…why some things might unnerve us and why other things (and personalities and people!) might, for no seeming reason, turn us “on” or “off.”
Yes, the shows has so far been rather “cookie cutter,” but I’m willing to give it time and a chance to see how it develops and gets its “sea legs.”