I got
into this show far later than I should have.
I blame BBC America’s aggressive marketing campaign, which had me
fast-forwarding through inordinately long ads for it during every Doctor Who commercial break when it was
first premiering. I developed a “you can’t
make me!” chip on my shoulder against watching it, so when I started hearing
about how incredible it was, I ultimately had to face facts and admit my
wrongdoings. (Premise spoilers by necessity.)
Orphan Black kicks off when Sarah
Manning, a young grifter, witnesses the suicide-by-train of a woman who looks exactly
like her. On impulse, she swipes the
dead woman’s bag and seeks first to puzzle out who she could have been and next
to profit off their uncanny resemblance.
What she uncovers, though, is larger than any potential score: she’s part of a clandestine scientific
experiment, one of a number of illegally-cultivated human clones. The threads of who she is and where she comes
from pull apart as she meets clone after clone and gets entrenched in the many
mysteries and dangers that surround them.
From their shadowy geneticist creators to an extremist religious order
against the thought of anyone playing God, Sarah and her newfound “sisters”
fight the forces opposing them and try to understand what they’re for.
It’s
not a perfect show. The full-throttle
pace of the ever-evolving main arc, while an exciting ride, sometimes feels
unfocused. Newly-peeled-back layers of
the conspiracy don’t always seem to grow organically from one another, and on
the antagonistic side of things, there’s an occasional sense that the show is
constantly “leveling up” to bigger and bigger bosses, all but discarding the
Big Bads who’ve come before. However, it’s
still a gripping story with some nice twists and creative problem-solving from
the central ladies, and the breakneck speed means nothing gets drawn out into
oblivion, which can be a common problem in genre series.
When it
comes to the main characters, I have nothing but praise. The show does a fantastic job creating a
whole mess of clones, all of whom are wonderfully distinct, and the
relationships between them are as rich as they are entertaining. I love watching Sarah’s journey from “This is
impossible!” to “I can’t get involved with this!” to “If you hurt any of my
sisters, I will end you!” Tatiana Maslany, who plays the assorted
members of Clone Club, is every bit as stellar as the reviews say she is, and
the only reason she isn’t flush with Emmys is because the Emmys are snobs about
sci-fi. In addition to playing five
major characters and various other briefly-appearing clones, she also
beautifully pulls off numerous instances of one clone posing as another. And the show’s not a one-trick pony – there are
plenty of memorable non-clone characters as well. I especially like Sarah’s foster brother
Felix, who soon becomes something of a brother to all of them.
As if
being a great show replete with female characters weren’t enough, Orphan Black also includes well-fleshed
characters from each of the letters in LGBT (the T, alas, is the thinnest,
since the brief-but-impactful trans character has only made one appearance to
date.)
Warnings
Violence,
sexual content (including sex scenes,) language, alcohol/drug use, tricky moral
questions, and thematic elements.
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