Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Chambers’ On Netflix, About A Teenager Who Gets A Haunted Heart

If you’ve heard about Chambers because Uma Thurman and Tony Goldwyn are in it, you’re getting only part of the story. The show is really about a teenager who gets a heart transplant and starts taking on personality traits of the heart’s teenage donor. Intrigued? Read on for more…

CHAMBERS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: We push in on a window staring at a desert landscape. A girl gets out of the shower and dries herself off.

The Gist: Sasha Yazzie (Sivan Alyra Rose) is going out for the night, and she tells her father Frank (Marcus LaVoi) that she’s going to study. But what she’s really doing is going out with her boyfriend TJ Locklear (Griffin Powell-Arcand), with the intention of losing her virginity. TJ takes her to a mattress shop and they start getting it on. Then her heart starts pounding and she passes out.

Months later, we see the massive scar that runs from Sasha’s sternum all the way up to her neck. She’s had a heart transplant after a heart attack, and she’s pretty miserable about it. She’s missed so much school she has to repeat her year. TJ treats her like a porcelain doll, and she resents having to take anti-rejection medication for the rest of her life.

Then she walks into Frank’s aquarium shop and meets Ben Lefevre (Tony Goldwyn), the father of Becky (Lilliya Scarlett Reid), the girl whose heart Sasha received. She’s deeply creeped out by the meeting, and at first she balks when Lefevre invites Frank and Sasha to dinner. But Frank convinces her because he is empathizing with how the family who lost their daughter must feel. But once Sasha sees a picture of Becky, she can’t get her face out of her head, as we see when she dreams that Becky is sleeping right next to her.

When they go to the Lefevres’ massive house for that dinner, the Yazzies meet Becky’s mother Nancy (Uma Thurman), who peppers her with questions about her ambitions, and Becky’s angry brother Elliott (Nicholas Galitzine). The Lefevres tell Sasha and Frank that they’re establishing a scholarship at Becky’s high school in her name, and they’d like Sasha to be the first recipient. She’s reluctant, and during an Arizona dust storm that keeps the Yazzies at the Lefevres’ house, Sasha has more visions, especially one where she walks out in the storm and sees Becky having sex in a car.

She reluctantly accepts the scholarship, and during her first day at the new school, which has “nap rooms” and “life coaches” among other amenities she’s not used to, she finds out from Becky’s friend that she was electrocuted by an old radio that was fell into the shower. But when she talks about that with her buddy Yvonne (Kyanna Simone Simpson) later that night, Yvonne tells her that organs can’t be donated by people who die from electrocution.

Our Take: Chambers has a bit of an odd, stark, foreboding tone, which you can see from the first scene, establishing that this is taking place in a mostly barren landscape. Creator Leah Rachel (Audrey) is definitely not subtle in some of the messaging we see in the first episode, between the stark landscape, the fact that the Lefevres seem to have it all while the Yazzies are working class, the snooty high school that makes Sasha a big fish out of water. It’s all there, and it seems like things we’ve seen before.

Two things, however, will keep us watching. One, of course, is the mystery behind Becky’s death. The other, though, is Rose’s understated performance as Sasha. We just have the feeling we’ll find out what else she’s gone through in her life prior to her heart attack, given the fact that she seems to have a very old soul — she even jokes about it. But, instead of having a “stop and smell the roses” outlook, she almost resents getting this new heart, which is what happens when you have a heart attack at 17, we guess. But it’s that attitude, that desire just to be a normal teen again, that will carry the show, even as Becky’s personality starts to seep into Sasha’s thought process.

As you might imagine, Goldwyn and Thurman are standouts in their supporting roles as Becky’s parents, but we get the feeling there’s more to them and their involvement in their daughter’s death than we know after the first episode, which will be a big-time factor later on in the season.

Sex and Skin: When we see Sasha’s scar, she is topless. Also, right before she accepts the scholarship, Sasha and TJ finally do the deed.

Parting Shot: Sasha takes off her makeup for the evening, then looks down and sees different products, then looks in the mirror and sees Becky screaming back at her.

Sleeper Star: We like LaVoi as Big Frank Yazzie, because he’s not playing your typical single dad; he has a connection with Sasha and wants the best for her, of course, but also gives her room to be that old soul, while still being able to guide her to do things like take the scholarship.

Most Pilot-y Line: Lots of storms in the first episode, including one coming over the horizon in the very last scene. Yes, we get it: There’s a storm brewing inside Sasha. Do we have to see it in the sky, too?

Our Call: STREAM IT. Chambers tries to stuff too many tropes into one story, but the acting overcomes this, as does the show’s stark look.

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, VanityFair.com, Playboy.com, Fast Company’s Co.Create and elsewhere.

Stream Chambers on Netflix