Kate Purdy sits upright, bespectacled and sensibly dressed, in a room containing an intimidatingly vast writing desk, completely unaware of how excited I am to see her. The second season of Undone, the mind-bending mental illness sci-fi comedy drama she co-created with BoJack Horseman’s Raphael Bob-Waksberg, has just come out on Amazon Prime. A few weeks ago, I was emailed a preview screener and clicked on it out of idle curiosity. I devoured the first episode. Then the second. At some point during the third, I missed a work deadline. But I carried on gulping down the episodes, slackjawed with amazement.
Because, while I liked Undone’s first season, the second is phenomenal. Every element has been honed to the point of high art. The jokes are funnier. The dramatic lurches are braver. The visuals – rotoscoped and fluid – are even more breathtaking than before. It somehow manages to be several things at once. It’s an exploration of mental health that plays out like a crime procedural. It’s a meditation on the psychic wounds left by decades of generational trauma, but it’s also a wisecracking, globetrotting romp. Almost as soon as our Zoom conversation begins, I start babbling about how quickly I gobbled the season up.
