There are people who go camping, and there are people who do not, under any circumstances, go camping. The desire to flee into the woods can stem from the curiosity or the challenge; the desire to see something new, find something peaceful, or experience something separated from modern society’s day-to-day standards. Meanwhile, staying away from the woods can sometimes be a bad thing. It can come from a lack of curiosity or an unwillingness to be challenged. But it can also be rooted in self-awareness and assurance. Maybe those who do not want to sleep in the cold have already slept in the cold — when their camp-eager friends promised they remembered the blankets. Maybe they’ve already hiked the hills, crossed the rivers, and started the fires, gleaning enough from doing it before to know they don’t need to do it again. Maybe they’re allergic to grass, or dander, or any number of other natural elements that then spoil their attempts to commune with nature.
Those with good reason not to want to venture outside are typically people who know themselves and know themselves well, so even non-campers should be able to identify with Penelope (Megan Stott), a 16-year-old girl who — in the YA series co-created by Mel Eslyn (who directs and showruns) and Mark Duplass — abandons civilization to better understand who she is, what she wants, and where she should go in the future. Although we’ve heard similar stories countless times before, it’s typically an adult ditching the city life for an excursion through the wilderness. A mom who’s lost her mom. A dad who’s lost his dad. An adult (parent or non-parent) who’s been laid off. For them, it’s a mid-life crisis, so with Penelope, call it a pre-life crisis. She sees the path in front of her, and it doesn’t feel right. Or, as she says in the pilot episode, “I just don’t feel right.”
Now, the young woman who once played Reese Witherspoon’s daughter gets to follow in her off-trail footsteps with a “Wild” all her own. But the self-financed series that premiered at Sundance (and is streaming now on Netflix) is also slightly more than that, and our protagonist’s youth becomes a key differentiator. “Penelope” is an unusually meditative, slow-moving drama, especially for streaming series and especially for a streaming series aimed at teens. Having screened all eight episodes, I’m sure many incurious, obstinate viewers will fall back on their go-to complaint that “nothing happens.” But a) it’s refreshing to see an indie TV series forge its own identity, rather than try to ape the standard studio formula, and b) for those who’ve ever dreamed of sleeping alone under the stars, fishing for their dinner, or building their own lodging out sticks, “Penelope” not only indulges those daydreams with a keen sense of wonder, but it also invites audiences — young and old — to ask more questions, instead of merely doing what they’re told.
And can you blame today’s kids for wanting a different future? Penelope never explicitly complains about the anxieties prevalent among modern adolescents, but the pressures of school and the distancing effects of constant connectivity are clear in her decision to set up camp, by herself, hidden within a national park. She’s isolated in groups, like when we first see her dancing with her peers at a silent disco. Instead of taking selfies or scrolling her phone, Penelope closes her eyes and sways to her own beat. When she opens them, there’s a wolf staring back at her, just off the dance floor, ready to bolt back into the forest all around them.
Penelope wants that, too. The next morning, she gets up early and — careful not to wake the dozens of other sleeping campers — heads out for a solo nature hike. Her mom texts her that they’ll be leaving soon, but that only spurs her forward, farther away, deeper into woods.
Then, she’s running. The final straw seems to be the threat of returning home for SAT prep courses on a Sunday, but while Penelope’s decision to leave at that exact moment may be impulsive, her decision to leave in general has been long gestating. “It’s not you,” she says in a voicemail to her mom. “I’m not running away. I’m running toward something. It’s like I’m being called.” Later, after she’s purchased emergency camping supplies from a sporting good store and hopped a train like Charlie Chaplin’s Little Tramp, she meets a like-minded boy named, Sam (Austin Abrams). “I just don’t feel right,” Penelope says. “I feel like I need to take things out before I can put them back in.”
Most of the series plays out like a literal interpretation of that analogy. One episode is devoted to Penelope making fire and learning to set up a tent. Another watches as she plans out and builds a full campsite. Another puts her in survival mode, treating injuries and coping with the unexpected. Eslyn’s direction isn’t super meticulous or montage-heavy, but a happy medium of the two. You don’t watch Penelope slot every stick into place, but you see enough of the construction process to appreciate how her miniature cabin came to be.
A selective approach to Penelope’s lived experience also helps skirt a few leaps in logic during later episodes, when her PG-rated adventure ventures away from emotional development and into a starker, darker reality. Frankly, the shift is unwarranted and may push the eight-episode season too far afield for disengaged viewers, but it doesn’t undermine the internal growth or the poignant moments that came before.
Plus, for as much as “Penelope” is about Penelope, she isn’t the only teen looking for an alternate path through adulthood. Sam isn’t just strumming his guitar in local coffee shops to meet chicks. He prefers playing open mic nights for 10 people to building up stats on YouTube or Spotify. “I did those things, sort of,” he says, “but even when I did, it was still just me sitting in my room hoping people listen. [With live music], there’s a sharing that’s taking place. We’re actually connecting with each other. It’s something tangible.”
Later, she comes across a group of Christian school friends who are similarly searching for something real. Peter (Rhenzy Feliz, also starring in HBO’s “The Penguin”) says he and his two pals were “on the path” — high school graduates, college-bound, guided by God — but they grew uncomfortable with the ways religion has been “co-opted” by nefarious causes and people. Now, they’ve left the church and bailed on college. Like Penelope, Peter feels “there’s just got to be a better way.”
“Penelope” doesn’t need extra characters or artificial action. It’s most compelling when Stott, whose organic screen presence carries so many silent scenes, is immersed in nature. But each additional voice expands the series’ inquisitiveness beyond a single point of view, into the generation she represents. A generation shaped by a pandemic. A generation who only knows life on (and through) the internet. A generation given ample reasons to be afraid of what they’ll inherit as adults.
There are people who go camping, and there are people who do not. But what “Penelope” is looking for, out there in the wild, is less binary thinking. The answer doesn’t always have to be one or the other. Sam doesn’t have to make a living as a musician to enjoy how his music affects other people. Peter doesn’t have to follow Christ the same way his pastor does. Penelope doesn’t have to be like all the other kids, obsessed with their phones, their parties, their predetermined futures. She wants to change her fate. They want to change their fate. They’re just getting started early, before half their life is gone.
Grade: B-
“Penelope” premieres Tuesday, September 24 on Netflix. All eight episodes will be released at once.
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