For some reason, streaming services and networks like HBO seem to think viewers have an insatiable thirst for shows about rich people being a-holes. How else do you explain the same-seeming shows in that genre being churned out in the last few years? Let’s just say we got that feeling while watching the Spanish thriller Oasis on Netflix.
OASIS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Opening Shot: Crashing waves and bucolic shots of the super-exclusive Oasis Infinity resort.
The Gist: As we see some flashes of good times that happen, we then see a young woman named Celia (Victoria Kantch), daughter of the resort director and the concierge, knocked out and dragged off, her cell phone sinking to the bottom of the pool. When the police arrive, one of the first people questioned by Inspector Ortega (Verónica Sánchez) and Subinspector Ginés (Paco Tous) is Dani (Tomy Aguilera), a guest who was seen swimming with Celia in the ocean the night before.
Two days earlier, Dani was riding into the resort with his mother, her boyfriend, and his daughter Sofia (Ada Molina) at the resort. Celia takes Dani around the resort and the two of them definitely have chemistry, while Sofi heads straight to the pool. There, she runs into Laura (Laura Simón), her old boarding school roommate, who introduces her to her friends Leo (Amanda Palomino) and Maca (Berta Castañé). Within a few minutes, Sofi finds herself drawn to Maca’s boyfriend Pablo (Manuel Duarte).
Dani isn’t like the other “rich kids” that come to the resort with their families, like Sofi; he and his family were working class, and he wonders what his late father would think of them being at a place like Oasis. So he’s not only attracted to Celia, but would much rather hang out with her friends on the staff. There’s Helena (Ana Garcés), who has a bit of a wild streak and is pissed that she was turned down for a scholarship for pre-med studies. There’s also Jaén (Alex Mola), a bartender who is Helena’s ex and provides the rich kids their preferred drugs. And there’s Oliver (Jan Buxaderas), a golf instructor that Laura has a crush on.
The rich kids and the staff don’t often mix and mingle. In fact, the rich kids pretty much think the staff is trash. So Dani’s desire to follow Celia to the beach to hang out with Helena, Jaén, and Oliver is seen with suspicion. But just as they accept Dani into their group — and Dani and Celia kiss underwater — the rich kids, led by Pablo come storming in and throw their clothes into the fire they had set up, leading to a fight.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Created by Ramón Campos, Oasis has a definite White Lotus feel about it.
Our Take: The story at the center of Oasis is that Dani and Helena are going to team up after Celia’s disappearance and dig up all sorts of secrets and dirt about the people at the Oasis Infinity resort, both the people who run it and work there and the absurdly wealthy guests who spend their summers there. While there’s nothing particularly wrong with that plot, and the cast is mostly appealing, we just got a big “so what?” vibe as we watched the first episode.
Like we cited above when mentioning The White Lotus, it’s not like we haven’t seen this kind of story dozens of times in the past few years. Whether it’s like White Lotus in that a mysterious murder or disappearance put the wealthy customers and the staff that they look down on at odds, or if it’s a show like Elite, where the rich kids and the “poor kids” are in conflict, it’s a dynamic that has been explored to death.
What may or may not save this iteration of the “upstairs-downstairs” trope is how Dani and Helena get along. We can see how Dani is a sensitive type; he misses his dad, is close to his mom, and really does not like his spoiled sister-but-not-sister Sofi. You can tell that he doesn’t at all feel like he belongs — nor wants to belong — with the rich kids. Helena is smart and ambitious, but is also tough and has a bit of an angry streak about not being able to break out of her working-class circumstances. The adversarial chemistry between the two of them is already evident in the first episode, but they may have more in common than either realize, which will come out as they try to find Celia.
Everyone else, from Celia and Helena’s friends to the rich kids to the mostly-faceless parents, feels pretty generic. And there are so many characters that we find it hard to believe that most of them will develop any futher than what we saw of them in the first episode.
Performance Worth Watching: Ana Garcés’ character Helena is the most compelling in the first episode, and the only character who seems to have any kind of backstory outside the confines of the resort.
Sex And Skin: Less than you might think in the first episode, though we see some brief glimpses of both in the first episode.
Parting Shot: Helena sees a flashlight in the woods near the resort, then someone grabs her and drags her off.
Sleeper Star: Laura Simón plays Laura, who seems to be a bit more mature than her other friends, has a crush on Oliver, and seems to be okay with her wealthy grandmother introducing her to handsome men her age with lots of connections.
Most Pilot-y Line: We do get a bit tired of voice overs at the beginning and end of shows like this, and we get one from Dani here that adds very little information to what we’re seeing on screen.
Our Call: SKIP IT. It’s not that Oasis is necessarily a bad show, but it seems like a formula we’ve seen a lot of, and the show doesn’t bring anything new to the table to make it even the tiniest bit distinct from other “rich people being awful” shows.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.
