Penelope is a unique blend of wonder and exploration of nature, with just enough grounding to keep the audience captivated. Megan Stott’s performance is nothing short of sensational. Penelope serves as a compelling reminder to disconnect from the modern world, regardless of age or reason, and explore the beauty of nature.
Feeling out of place in the modern world, 16-year-old Penelope (Megan Stott) finds herself almost cosmically drawn to nature. With no plan, she leaves her family behind for the beguiling wilderness, where she begins to establish a different kind of life for herself.
For people of a certain age *cough* mid-thirties and up *cough*, life without the internet is one that we remember almost fondly. Not stuck to a screen, be it a phone, tablet or computer, we would go on adventures outside and not feel forced to rely on technology. Of course, that reliance grows as we become older. Still, for those formative years, we had what we had technological freedom. Youngsters nowadays, though, are not as fortunate. Their entire life has been wrapped around screens of one form or another, and goodness, even as an adult, it can just feel so damn overwhelming, so how are teenagers meant to cope with it?
With Penelope, we meet her as someone who seems to have had enough of that life with screens and is almost captivated by the beautiful unknowingness of nature, which is hard to blame her once you get outside into a forest-like area as it almost always bewitches you with its mysteriousness. You see the cogs running through her head; the unknown of that wilderness is far more interesting than whatever people have to say online. That world out there is fascinating, so she makes the rather bold choice of buying a tonne of goods from a store and making a run for it.
Stott takes on the daunting task of leading the series in her stride here in Penelope. She doesn’t have too many other characters to talk to throughout the series as she goes on her exploration but gets by with her fantastic wordless performance. We know and feel everything she is feeling thanks to how wonderfully expressive she is. It allows us to know a little bit more about Penelope as a character so that we can gain these little insights about her without it having to be needlessly explained to us through dialogue.
Most of the pilot is wordless as Penelope gravitates towards her decision with a gorgeously shot sequence of her hitching a ride onto a train as darkness falls by cinematographer Nathan M. Miller. The gentleness that co-creators Mel Eslyn and Mark Duplass have tried to craft with Penelope permeates through the screen, be it from the sympathetic light we take with Penelope to how we never look down at her. She is new to this type of environment, but she is earnest and learns. Having that spine of understanding run through the series allows the viewer to cheer on Penelope’s successes and lean back as we also get wrapped up in the gorgeousness of the forest she is exploring.
Penelope isn’t really like any show I have seen in recent years. It’s young adult-focused, sure, but there is an indie charm to it that other mainstream shows wouldn’t be able to pull off nearly as well. It also hits you that Penelope doesn’t “away” out of any apparent angst; she just has this pull within her to do this and listens to it as it guides her. Any triggering reason slowly reveals itself as the series ticks along until the final episode.
It’s that almost whimsical, almost delicate nature of the pilot that wins you over, again something you don’t often see in a TV show. The balance of being swept up in the wonders of nature with the realism that this is still a teenager out in the wilderness for the first time. So, mistakes like leaving your water bottle behind are going to happen more often than not, so the kindness of strangers is integral to Penelope’s journey.
By the time we reach the fourth episode of Penelope, you are almost positive you could just go along and watch an entire 22-episode series of her adventures, even if she does go back home once in a while. There is such a charming joy filled through the show (in many ways, thanks to Stotts’s inquisitive performance) that you almost get lost in proceedings, even with the inclusion of noisy and troublesome black bear cubs.
However, there are some bouts of realism that literally strike you in the later couple of episodes of Penelope, and whether they work for you as an audience member depends on how you view the series. There are several moments spread throughout that give us an inkling of the grounded nature of the world our character is in. Tree protests, black bear cubs and their inevitable appearance of a protective mother. Yet, episode seven ramps up the dramatic side of proceedings to such a drastic degree that it is almost jarring.
At worst, it feels rushed, but in a way that we never wanted this point to happen in Penelope’s story just yet. We wanted to keep that feeling of escaping that reality for a bit longer than we and she needed to. We wanted more of that exploring and journey to continue. Still, practicality is always going to win out in a show like this, and that’s what makes it work so well. Even with a shock to the system ending, Penelope has you wanting more.
★★★★
Penelope is out on Netflix (US) now.
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