Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Carmen Sandiego: To Steal Or Not To Steal’ On Netflix, An Interactive Special Where The Viewer Directs The World’s Greatest Thief

Netflix is starting to roll out its plan to add interactive specials to their most popular kids’ series. First it was Captain Underpants: Epic Choice-O-Rama, whose manic energy and self-referential humor was perfect for the format. Now there’s an interactive special starring Carmen Sandiego. Does the more witty, wry and cool writing on the show play well with interactivity?

CARMEN SANDIEGO: TO STEAL OR NOT TO STEAL: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Master thief Carmen Sandiego (Gina Rodriguez), with the help of her team — computer genius Player (Finn Wolfhard) and ground team Ivy (Abby Trott) and Zack (Michael Hawley) — case a skyscraper in Shanghai, hoping to steal a V.I.L.E. treasure and bring it back to its rightful home. In the interactive special Carmen Sandiego: To Steal Or Not To Steal, the viewer has to make choices for Carmen on how she’ll interact with people or escape a sticky situation. And you’re given the first choice right away: enter the building from the top or the bottom?

When she gets into the vault she’s targeting a little too easily, she knows something’s up. She gets a communication from V.I.L.E. — specifically, Professor Gunnar Maelstrom (Liam O’Brien), Coach Brunt (Mary Elizabeth McGlynn), Dr. Saira Bellum (Sharon Muthu) and Countess Cleo (Toks Olagundoye) — that says they’ve captured Ivy and Zack and if Carmen doesn’t steal for V.I.L.E., Dr. Bellum will wipe their memories via a device that she renames a number of times. Right there, you’re given the choice of whether Carmen should attempt a risky rescue or if she should do V.I.L.E.’s bidding while she and Player figure things out.

You’re eventually dropped into three capers, the order of which will be up to you: In Xi’an, China, she has to steal a terracotta warrior for Coach Blunt. Along the way she encounters Tigress (Kari Wahlgren), with whom she’s had a frenemy relationship with since they were both in V.I.L.E. crime school. There are a few minor choices, but a big one is whether Carmen helps Tigress out of a pit or not. That has implications later on.

In Monte Carlo, Carmen has to steal rare caviar for Countess Cleo. There, she runs into A.C.M.E. agent Julia Argent (Charlet Chung), and leaves it up to you to decide whether to trust Julia with why she’s there or trick her. Again, this choice has consequences. The third caper is in Hell Gate, Montana, where she has to steal a T.Rex bone for Dr. Bellum, because she can use the soft tissue found on the bone to clone a new T.Rex.

Different choices take you different places, and when you’re not successful, A.C.M.E.’s leader, The Chief (Dawnn Lewis) pops up and redirects you. Can Carmen save her buddies and foil V.I.L.E. at the same time?

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Not in style, but in interactivity: Black Mirror: Bandersnatch and Captain Underpants Epic Choice-O-Rama.

Performance Worth Watching: If you get to a successful ending, you get a bonus clip: Ivy and Zack leading a hip-hop version of the theme “Where In The World Is Carmen Sandiego?” The entire cast gets involved, and it’s a fun reward for getting to a successful ending.

Memorable Dialogue: The most fun of making choices is, of course, seeing where they lead. But it’s also fun to hit another name for Dr. Bellum’s mind wiping machine.

What Age Group Is This For?: As we said when the Carmen Sandiego series debuted last year, it’s a pretty sophisticated show, more likely appropriate for kids 12 and up, or for particularly sharp 9-12 year-olds.

Our Take: Like the Captain Underpants interactive special, Carmen Sandiego: To Steal Or Not To Steal tries to make the interactivity fun and useful to the story while trying to stay true to the canon that the Carmen Sandiego series already established. It mostly succeeds, though it feels weird to have endings where Carmen fails at her job, which results in Ivy and Zack getting their minds wiped. There’s even a more dire ending than that, though we won’t go into it here.

There are 8 endings in all, as we hear from The Chief at the very end of the show, and we think we hit at least 6 of them during the runs we made through the show, picking the options we didn’t pick the first time around. All of the negative ones prompt you to either circle back to a crucial choice that sent you down that path or start over. But there’s also more than one positive ending, so it’ll be worth it for viewers to circle back and go through it more than once.

Plenty of the choices just lead to alternate footage that lands you in the same spot, but even there it’s fun to see how Carmen handles a particular situation. We did think it was clever that in two cases, your choice has implications later on, and the viewer is clued in, with a statement like “XXX will remember that Carmen xxx’ed her” popping up after the choice is made.

Because of all the choices made, the educational component and the story are a tad thin, but making those choices (or going back to previous choices and changing them) is so much fun you don’t really notice.

Our Call: STREAM IT. We love the sophistication and wit of Carmen Sandiego, so the interactivity of To Steal Or No To Steal is a fun addition to an already fun series.

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.com, RollingStone.com, Billboard and elsewhere.

Stream Carmen Sandiego: To Steal Or Not To Steal On Netflix