3 out of 5

Created by: Benjamin Avila

A valid idea for an anthology series – 30ish minute entries focused on “the world of the caged,” which just means finding situations in which to isolate people and letting various version of a narrative play out – that rarely, unfortunately, amounts to much.  There’s a lot of promise in the first episode, which finds a man “caged” both by his I-hate-this-job-but-I-need-the-cash phone sales job as well as by the unseen man with a high powered rifle that has him sequestered from afar by telling him he’ll get a bullet in the head unless he cancels his cable service.  This is a winky stab at cable providers in general, for sure, but the lead actor’s response to the terror (and the script providing that response) are more believable than this setup normally goes.  It loses a bit toward the end, where it seems like the writers are trying to tack some other point onto things, but that the ep ends rather bleakly redeems this.  Promising.  Episode 2 has three ladies of different backgrounds locked in their building’s laundry room, and all of this promise filters away.  There’s no edge to this episode, and then it delineates into, like, a porn setup.  I don’t get what’s going on there.  Episode 3 ditches the porn but is otherwise the same thing: locked room, bickering.

And so it goes.

Here and there, Encerrados surprises by going surreal: a stage-like open setup for a husband and wife “caged” by their routine; a pitch black void in which three time-loosened folks find themselves.  The problem here is that there’s no conclusion to these snippets.  I’m not sure how much we should let a show get away with along these lines: providing emotional or dramatic fodder, sprinkling details on top… and then rolling the credits without a conclusion.  A few key episodes, while not fully escaping these flaws, keep things interesting: an episode on an agoraphobic writer is taut and excellently performed; two rival MMA boxers getting stuck in an elevator is a great little cat-and-mouse baiting conversation and resolution.

Overall, while I can’t say I felt particularly satisfied by any given episode, I liked that (for the most part) there was a wide range of approaches, and I was always interested to at least see what was going to be next.  The addition of those notable episodes helps to keep the series’ nose above water, not to mention the slim half hour runtime which keeps things moving along.