Penelope – Plugged in

Review of a TV series

Hello parents, are you ready for an anxiety attack?

Imagine this: You are camping in the forest with your family and friends. Everyone seems to be having a good time. The kids enjoy a quiet rave. There's a pretty nice campfire. At the end of the night everyone is safely settled into their bunks.

The next morning, your teenage daughter Penelope wakes up before you and goes on “a little solo hike in nature.” You text her when you wake up and she promises she'll be back in about 15 minutes.

Well, that time comes and goes. So give it a little more time. After all, she may have lost track of time or even taken a wrong turn. But there are clearly marked paths. She'll find her way back eventually, right?

You text her again, wondering where she could be. Then you get a notification that someone charged $500 to Penelope's Apple Pay account. After that, your phone will no longer share your location.

At this point, you can probably imagine about 47 different horror scenarios. Maybe Penelope is lost. Maybe she tripped and hurt herself. Maybe she was attacked. Maybe she was kidnapped. Maybe…maybe…maybe.

Or… maybe Penelope just suddenly felt the urge to spend $500 on camping gear, hop on a train, and head out without saying a word to anyone. Because that's what's happening.

“It's not you. I'm not running away,” her voice messages say.

Um, Pen – can I call you? Pen? – somehow it feels that way Exactly what you do. And I get it, you're on some kind of pseudo-spiritual nature journey à la Reese Witherspoon Wild. You feel like you need that for some reason.

But as an outsider, can I just say that this is the worst idea possible? always?

I'm just like you need to hear someone say that. Okay, boo?

Stupid teenagers making stupider decisions

If I were a young girl unsure of herself and her place in the world, I would probably look to Netflix for inspiration Penelope. For Pen, every obstacle is a challenge that needs to be solved. She is stubborn and smart. And I'll give this to the girl, She's got moxie.

Well, if Penelope were Really Smart, instead of wandering into the woods on a whim, maybe she should have done a little more research on how to survive in the wilderness. Instead, she's just lucky. She happened came across a wilderness survival guide before their first night in the woods. Friendly strangers offer to help her. And somehow none of the adults she meets bother to ask questions about her parents or why she's alone in the woods or why she doesn't seem to know how to do anything.

But that's all Luck.

Penelope does a lot, shall we say, bad advice Decisions. Decisions like jumping into the back of a train like an old-school tramp; try to befriend a bear; and flirt with a random guy and follow him back to the van where he lives at the end of the night. Luckily nothing bad happens to her. But it could have ended a much different.

Penelope really feels that nature is somehow calling her to this journey, she asks the trees to protect her and even hugs her. A woman describes trees as “social creatures.” She claims the government is wrongly trying to uproot protected trees. And she shares her own beliefs about nature and lineage that conflict with a biblical worldview.

These strange spiritual tendencies, the danger of wandering through the woods alone, and occasional harsh language (the F-word crops up every now and then) are all things parents should keep in mind when deciding whether it's worth it. families to watch this show with their children.

(Editor's note: Connected is rarely able to watch every episode of a given series for review. Therefore, there is always a chance that you see a problem that we didn't see. If you see any content that you think should be included in our review, email us at [email protected]or contact us via Facebook or Instagram and be sure to let us know the episode number, title and season so we can watch it.)