That said, Tabula Rasa is playing with tropes in ways The OA did not. The OA, much like Prairie, presented itself as wholly new and therefore brilliant. Tabula Rasa is frustrated with tropes, much like Mie is exasperated by her own devolution. The characters slyly poke at the tropes — in the pilot, when Mie is shown moving into her grandparents' old house, she jokes with her daughter that there's a "big ghost" who lives in the attic of the home. Her husband Benoit (Stijn Van Opstal) gifts a pre-accident Mie with a "panic button" gadget that will help her call for help if something goes wrong. She doesn't need it, she tells Benoit. Why would she need a panic button when there's nothing to panic about? Everything about her pre-accident life suggests an awareness of the horror tropes and trends. And then, when things do go wrong, Mie and her family insist there's been a ruckus about nothing. Thanks to Mie's suspicious narration, even we don't know if there's something going on, really. It could all be in our heads — but wait, isn't that another trope?