Line #22 Series/KeepBreathing


1	[[quoteright:250:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/keep_breathing.jpg]]
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3	''Keep Breathing'' is a 2022 Creator/{{Netflix}} limited series. It premiered on July 28, 2022.
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5	Liv (Creator/MelissaBarrera), a sharp American Latina who's an attorney, gets stranded while taking a trip to Canada. Hitching a ride on a private plane, she then gets stranded out in the wilderness after it crashes in poor weather. With the only other survivor, Sam, dying soon afterward Liv is left alone to survive. Using skills she picked up long ago during her time as a Girl Scout, Liv struggles not only against hostile wilderness but also baggage from her own past.
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7	!Tropes:
8	* AbusiveParents: Liv's mom was pretty cold to her as a girl, treating her as a nuisance usually. It really messed up Liv, leaving her fearing intimacy and thus pushing away Danny although he's a good man who's loving toward her while desiring a relationship. It's also indicated to be why she's leery of being a mother herself after she's gotten pregnant by Danny, afraid she'll be bad at it given her experience.
9	* ActionSurvivor: Liv is a fairly average urban professional woman who's stranded out in the wilderness, but survives due to skills she picked up long ago as a Girl Scout along with sheer force of will.
10	* BearsAreBadNews: One shows up in the second episode and devours the last of Liv's rations. It also shits on the beach, to rub it in.
11	* BeautyIsNeverTarnished: Liv is scuffed up with her hair bedraggled as a result of her time in the wilderness, along with getting injured, though it's not that visible. She's still good looking, with only minor bruises that are hidden under her clothing.
12	* ChekhovsClassroom: ZigZagged with Liv reminiscing on her Girl Scout activities. She is clearly incompetent in the present - and not because she is misremembering things. ''The lectures themselves'' are pretty useless, like the way of making an improvised compass by rubbing a needle over ''an industrial-grade magnet'' - something that Sam instantly mocks.
13	* CityMouse: As Sam points out, Liv is not exactly the outdoorsy type. While she does manage to figure out numerous solutions for her situation, in general she is completely out of her element, and even the most trivial camping and hiking things are beyond her. Keep in mind she used to be a Girl Scout, so she ''shouldn't'' be this clueless.
14	* DaddyHadAGoodReasonForAbandoningYou: Liv's hallucination of her mom claims she left to spare her more pain since she'd been a terrible mother to her.
15	* DaddysGirl: Liv was always closest to her dad, as her mom mostly neglected her. Though it was a relative thing, as we see she also had many spats with him as a girl and is pretty callous when he's hospitalized after she's an adult. He in turn withheld postcards which her mom sent her as a girl. It's made clear she always loved him dearly though despite this.
16	* {{Determinator}}: Liv just won't quit, even if she's close to dying from exposure.
17	* DidntThinkThisThrough:
18	** Liv ''routinely'' does something first, only to face (often obvious) consequences right after that, setting her back to square one. This includes the most banal things, like trying to grab a piece of metal put into a bonfire with her bare hands. There is also the fact how often she leaves behind blatantly useful objects.
19	** Sam opening the hatch and flooding the plane. Even if he was unaware of what depressurising the cabin would do, there is the fact that he ''jumps into the water'' right after loudly announcing he can't swim. He would drown if Liv didn't haul him to shore.
20	* DueToTheDead: Even after learning Sam was a drug smuggler, half the reason she's in the mess she is since no-one's looking for her, Liv still buries him so he wouldn't get devoured by bears.
21	* EarnYourHappyEnding: [[spoiler:Liv survives multiple dangers in the wilderness and is finally rescued apparently without lasting harm at the very end.]]
22	* FromBadToWorse: [[spoiler:Liv escaped the crevice only to fall down an entire mountainside into forest below, bruising her torso and spraining her leg while she lands there, then gets swept down a river in which she nearly drowns.]]
23	* TheGimmick: It would be a regular, run-of-the-mill, 90 minutes "survive in the wilderness" ''movie''... except Liv has a bunch of hallucinations to talk with and a plethora of flashbacks to further expand on her backstory. All of this serves two purposes: pad out the story and also provide means of having dialogues of any kind.
24	* {{Greed}}: Sam and George are hauling an entire duffel bag full of Franklins, which measures millions, along with a second bag full of oxycodone... yet agree to give Liv a ride after she offers them two thousand dollars. Even if they were mere mules, it was well below their potential pay-off.
25	* {{Hallucinations}}: After she's left alone in the wilderness, Liv hallucinates that Sam is there and he criticizes how she'd dealt with it. She also hallucinates herself as being in previous situations from her life prior as well at times, sees herself as a girl running around, her mom, entire situations etc.
26	* HelloAttorney: Liv is a skilled, successful lawyer who's also very beautiful. Her business attire is not revealing, though it doesn't matter-she's attractive enough without doing anything more.
27	* HelpfulHallucination:
28	** Once he dies, Liv keeps getting visions of Sam, fully aware he's a figment of her imagination to deal with the situation around her. While real Sam was kind of a dumbass, the hallucination, while caustic, always has spot-on insights and comments to offer.
29	** Subverted with the hallucination of Liv's mom, who's [[ParentalNeglect just as useless]] [[AbusiveParents as the real person]], and all she has to offer to Liv is telling her to just overdose and end her suffering.
30	* ImperiledInPregnancy: Liv is stranded in the Canadian wilderness with no one to help and facing the perils which this brings when in the early months of pregnancy. [[spoiler:The most dire situation is when Liv falls into a crevice where she gets trapped, then falls down a mountain and goes in the river on a log where she nearly drowns.]]
31	* INeverGotAnyLetters: Liv's mom actually sent her many postcards after she had left, reaching out to connect with her again, but her dad had gotten rid of them before she saw. Her dad claims the words weren't for Liv, but her, as she knew where they were but never came to visit. As a result, he didn't want Liv hurt by her any more. Liv insists it wasn't right to decide that for her, and she left but didn't forget at least as shown by the postcards. [[spoiler:It turns out this is why she went out into an isolated region of Canada-her mom's last postcard was from there, and Liv wants to reconnect with her.]]
32	* LifeSavingMisfortune: Before the events of the series, Liv got ''extremely'' drunk and overlooked a fire hazard. When the firefighters pull her out of the blaze, they had to pump her stomach since she was almost dead of alcohol poisoning. The nurse remarks that she was lucky like that.
33	* LingerieScene: Liv goes into the lake in her underwear to try and dive for the plane, but doesn't last long as it's very cold.
34	* MeaningfulName: Liv strives all she can while in the wilderness to survive.
35	* MoneyToBurn: One of the few good things to come out of Liv getting onboard a smuggler's plane is she has a lot of cash to keep warm at night.
36	* MySecretPregnancy: Liv didn't tell Danny after she got pregnant, which likely stems from her fear of intimacy as she rejected a relationship with him before, while having a baby would draw him closer. She also is very unsure she'll be a good mother or wants to have a baby at all initially.
37	* NegatedMomentOfAwesome: At least once per episode, Liv does something to better her situation, with swelling music in the background (to the point even the subtitles note it)... only for it fail soon after or simply getting a reality check.
38	* NiceGuy: Danny is a very nice man who wants a relationship with Liv, but she continually pushes him away due to being afraid of intimacy. [[spoiler:The hallucinations she has near the end, including showing the two with her having their baby, indicates Liv does care for him, she's just afraid to get close.]]
39	* NotStayingForBreakfast: Liv continually resisted getting into a real relationship with her on again/off again lover Danny, rejecting his offer to make breakfast the morning after they slept together. It's made clear from her past that she fears intimacy due to her mom abandoning her, thinking he'll just leave her as well later so she avoids it this way preemptively, despite Danny's protests.
40	* ParentalAbandonment: By the present, Liv's mom has left years ago, while her dad's dead.
41	* ParentalNeglect: Liv's mom was an artist more interested in her painting than her. We see that she once forgot to pick Liv up from school for instance and this made her have to walk home in the rain, which her dad berated her mom over. It doesn't help that she was also bipolar, but this was on top of ''regular'' neglect, so it can't be even blamed on her mental illness.
42	* ParentsAsPeople: Liv's father cared deeply for her and raised her after her mother ran away. However, he could be temperamental and controlling, and made the questionable decision to hide the fact that her mother was trying to reach out to her by hiding the postcards.
43	* PregnantBadass: Liv, who's pregnant when she gets stranded out in the wilderness, proves herself very capable (partly due to having been a Girl Scout years before). [[spoiler:She even manages to get free from being trapped in a crevice through her sheer determination, survives falling down a mountain afterward (splinting her leg when it's sprained) then goes down a river on a log.]]
44	* SecretlyDying: Sam. There is a piece of metal in his tight, and he's bleeding profoundly - something that Liv only learns when she already hauls him to the shore. After she manages to stop the bleeding, it turns out Sam ''also'' suffered from ''internal'' bleeding, which Liv only finds out when he wakes up the next day and complains about chest and stomach pain.
45	* SurprisePregnancy: Liv definitely didn't intend to get pregnant, and isn't sure whether she's cut out to be a mother after the poor relationship she had with her own. She's also not told the father, Danny, as she fears intimacy and realizes this would draw them closer in spite of her wishes.
46	* SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome: Every single NegatedMomentOfAwesome is first presented as a success. Only then does the actual, real outcome of such action happen. Best exemplified with how Liv has an ImagineSpot about getting clean, fresh water from a mountain spring... and then ''another'' about animals pissing into it, carcasses rotting in the water, bacteria multiplying, and what not.
47	* TitleDrop: The phrase is used as part of a meditation technique Liv uses to aid her in the wilderness.
48	* TooDumbToLive: [[TheMillstone Sam]], despite being unable to swim, instantly rushes to the plane's hatch and opens it, jumping into the water. Result: he starts to drown, while the cabin loses the pressure and floods within seconds, which dooms George and nearly kills Liv, too.
49	* WeHardlyKnewYe: George dies within the first 15 minutes, and unlike Sam, he doesn't appear as a hallucination. All we ever learn about him is that he was a pilot smuggling drugs.
50	* WintryAuroralSky: The series takes place in the Northwest Territories of Canada, and Liv's original destination, Inuvik, is well beyond the Arctic circle. The series even toys for a while with a CruelTwistEnding, where Liv sees some distant lights and decides to head toward their source, only to observe the aurora borealis, but ultimately, it's there solely for scenery and she continues going toward civilisation.

Context Series / KeepBreathing