Can you really watch Nicolas Winding Refn's Too Old to Die Young in any order?

Polygon

The Drive director made his new Amazon show -- starring Miles Teller, William Baldwin, Jena Malone and John Hawkes -- with the intention that viewers can easily drop in and drop out. That's why critics were only given the fourth and fifth episodes for review. "Now that the entire series is streaming on Amazon, it seems worth asking: Does the order of the episodes really make no difference?" says Karen Han. "The short answer is that you would be best off watching them in order. The long answer is that if you start in the middle or otherwise mix things up, you could probably put things together through context clues — just as you could with pretty much any other show. It’s not recommended, but it’s not impossible. Ultimately, Refn’s statement as to how to watch his series seems to be more about how he feels entertainment has changed than necessarily how Too Old to Die Young is structured."

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• Too Old to Die Young’s most obvious point of comparison is David Lynch’s Twin Peaks revival: "Like Lynch, Refn is a master of framing, someone whose devotion to painterly composition in his shots means countless individual scenes are gorgeously staged and lit," says Alex McLevy. "But unlike Lynch, there’s no warmth or humanism to break up the endless wallowing in the despairing nihilism of Refn’s perspective."
• Nicolas Winding Refn has "made the too-frequently-made mistake of thinking a TV show can just be a really long movie. It can't."
• The debate over Too Old to Die Young seems like the only way to squeeze anything savory out of this lemon of a product
• Why Nicolas Winding Refn doesn't care if you watch all the episodes: “What’s interesting about streaming for me — because television is dead as a doornail — but streaming is like a whole new opportunity,” he tells Indiewire. “And if it’s a different concept, in a way, because it’s uncontrollable. You just log on (and) log off. It’s a coexistence now. Episodic television was designed when television was once a week on an analog channel. Why do we still retain the same narrative and constructions from a time that doesn’t even exist?” Why give only Episodes 4 and 5 out for review? "It’s how my kids watch entertainment," he says. "They’ll find something and they’ll drop in. If it interests them, they’ll stay. Plus it was a great way just to get into the heart of the show. I’m an entertainer, at the end of the day — I’m here to give you a spectacle.”