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Parallels

Parallels

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Reviewer

Paul Asay

TV Series Review

Time flies, right? One day you’re in school, dealing with homework and first crushes and (ugh) parents, and the next you’re an adult yourself, wondering where all the time went.

Technically, we know where it went, of course. We’ve got photos and birthday cards and memories to tell us. But Sam and Bilal, Victor and Romane? They’re not so sure.

Time After Time

One chilly March evening in 2021, the four friends were down in their clubhouse/bunker, celebrating Bilal’s 14th birthday. They were dancing and laughing (as teens with their own party bunkers do), when suddenly the lights began to flicker.

“You should’ve paid the electric bill,” 13-year-old Victor tells big brother Sam.

And then, just seconds later, Victor’s gone. Poof! Romane is, too—and it’s just before she and Sam were about to share their very first smooch. And Bilal? Seems as though he’s been replaced by a very confused 30-year-old man.

Or so it would seem from Sam’s perspective. In another reality, Victor and Romane are the ones who are left, and it’s Sam and Bilal who’ve vanished.

Seems that time in this French mountain town—time that typically traipses in one steady direction—has decided to take its leave. People get older or younger or land in entirely new alternate realities. Creation’s many multiverses are becoming less stand-alone crackers and more like plates of leftover crumbs, meshing and molding and jumbling together.

Clearly, the friends must somehow find each other and work together to bring their disparate realities back to some normalcy.

Of course, one man’s preferred reality, may not be preferred by all.

The French Connection

Parallels, Disney+’s science fiction series, has taken its own trip—not through time, but space. It’s a French production, made by Daïmôn Films and Empreinte Digitale for Disney and which premiered worldwide March 23, 2022.

But while the action takes place in France and all the dialogue has been (for English-speaking audiences, at least) dubbed, Parallels still feels at home on the Mouse House’s streaming service.

While the main characters are in their teens (at least to begin with), they’re pretty good kids. Sure, young Victor can be a little disrespectful at times, and the teens try (unsuccessfully) to drink a little champagne for Bilal’s birthday. But for the most part, these kids respect their parents, work hard and don’t say anything much worse than “dang.” This is a show where a kiss between characters comes with a great deal of gravity. That puts Parallels in a different reality than most of CW’s tawdry teen shows. (And it’s in an entirely different multiverse from HBO’s Euphoria.)

But the show still carries a TV-14 rating for some of its episodes (others are rated TV-PG). While parents seem mostly loving, some are clearly flawed and make terrible mistakes. Characters that seem mostly innocent at 14 can turn jaded in their new timelines, lashing out in discomforting ways. And the show’s malleable timeline can make for some awkward romances as well. If two character of the same age kiss, that’s one thing. But when a 30-year-old man smooches a teen girl, that feels like quite another—even if they’re both, somewhere, the same age.

Parallels has enough problems to give parents a bit of pause before letting their kids watch. As the characters themselves might tell you, it’s nice to consider things for a bit of time. Because you never know where the time might go.

Episode Reviews

March 23, 2022—S1, Ep1: “Hard Awakening”

Friends Sam, Romane, Bilal and Victor celebrate Bilal’s birthday with candles and song. But the power suddenly flickers and Sam watches as Romane seems to rapidly toggle through ages. Then, when the anomaly stops, Sam discovers that all of his friends have vanished: It’s just him and a 30-year-old man who hadn’t been there before.

The man is actually Bilal—just one who has suddenly aged about 15 years. After a terrified Sam flees the bunker, Bilal takes stock of his new self and examines his newly defined abdominal muscles. (The camera gets a glimpse of them, too.) He then reaches into his pants to see if other parts of his body have also undergone a change. (He smiles when he discovers they have.)

Before the anomaly struck, Sam had asked Romane if he might kiss her (taking the advice of his younger brother, Victor). She says yes, but the lights start flickering before their lips touch (dousing the mood, apparently). Sam and Romane bat eyes at each other elsewhere, too, and other characters talk about various crushes and would-be loves. Bilal discovers he’s wearing a ring that a woman apparently gave him in 2031, but has no memory of who that person is.

Victor swipes a bottle of champagne from he and brother Sam’s house to celebrate Bilal’s birthday with. But when Bilal tries to open it, the bottle falls and smashes, ending any would-be underage drinking. Romane’s mother swallows some pills, which look like medication of some kind.

After the anomaly, Bilal climbs into his mother’s car to talk with her. She doesn’t recognize him, of course, and—mistaking him first for a thief, then possibly someone more dangerous—she locks Bilal in with her and starts honking the car horn to draw the attention of security. Bilal smashes out a window in order to escape. Sam freaks out when he sees a spider crawling on his shoulder. We hear that he has a burn mark on his chest.

Sam and Victor’s parents scold Victor for his grades, telling him that he’s “always on the phone or playing games”. A man—apparently the father of Romane’s younger sister—shows up to become part of the family again. Romane’s not happy to see him. We don’t know exactly what he’d done in the past, but the man promises to do better. “People change, Romane,” he says. “Let’s hope so,” Romane tells him. We hear the word “dang” a few times.

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Paul Asay

Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.

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