Summary
Undone Season 1, Episode 3, “Handheld Blackjack” highlights various strands to the story without really progressing it, but it’s still intriguing.
This recap of Amazon Prime Series Undone Season 1, Episode 3, “Handheld Blackjack” contains significant spoilers. You can read the recap of the previous episode by clicking these words.
Episode 3 sees Alma (voiced by Rosa Salazar) now out of the hospital, adjusting back to her life before the accident.
The most uncomfortable scenario in “Handheld Blackjack” is the controlling nature of her boyfriend Sam, who has not told her that she broke up with him before she ended up in the hospital. Alma keeps on noticing specific changes in their home; the order of portraits, the location of the furniture — Alma believes Sam moved things on purpose to play with her mind. The truth is, Sam moved everything back in as soon as he realized she did not remember.
It’s fragrantly noticeable that Alma’s control on non-linear time is dependent on her emotions; if she becomes angry, upset or anxious, she begins flitting to different moments in her life. Alma has agreed to find her father’s (Bob Odenkirk) killer, but she wants assurance that she can enjoy a linear lifestyle. At her work, which appears to be a pre-school, Alma is on edge, seeing visions of the time she tried killing herself and observing a moment in time where one of the children drown while in their car. Alma wants a solution.
As part of Alma’s training, mostly using building blocks from the school she works at, Alma’s father suggests that she secures an anchor which is a holding variable in her life that keeps her consciousness in the present day. Her father gives her an electronic blackjack device from her mother’s loft. She spends the rest of “Handheld Blackjack” buzzing away at the game, annoying her employer and her sister while trying out a wedding dress. At one point, Alma nearly slips away from the timeline, but she grabs the blackjack device and returns to where she needed to be. Conveniently, this happened as her sister was about to reveal that she broke up with Sam.
Undone Season 1, Episode 3, “Handheld Blackjack” ends with Sam concerned that Alma is not next to him in bed. He enters the living room and sees loads of boxes; it’s from Alma’s mother’s loft, and she is continuing to investigate the death of her father. Alma tells Sam she will join him later and takes out her hearing aid.
You can read the recap of the fourth episode by clicking these words.
