Favorite Characters: Alison Hendrix (Orphan Black)

While I immediately liked Sarah, adored Cosima, and was fascinated by Helena, it took me a while to warm up to Alison (admittedly, it helped a lot when she started interacting with Felix more – as I’ve said, those two are gold together!)  But even though the affection developed more gradually, I’ve come to really enjoy Alison (some Alison-related spoilers.)

As far as first impressions go, Alison seems initially to be the least-appealing member of clone club.  Cosima welcomes Sarah with open arms and a mouthful of technobabble, and at least with Helena, you can’t really look away, but Alison?  Alison is presented to us as a suburban housewife with a stick up her butt who’s short with Sarah anout the whole clone business and, more than anything, feels a little detached from the proceedings. 

However, the layers start peeking through almost right away (Alison improves a lot for me on rewatch.)  She’s brusque and unwelcoming to Sarah, yes, but we quickly see her reasons for that.  1) By the time they meet face-to-face, Alison knows that Sarah has been impersonating Beth, who’s now dead.  Alison can’t share her grief with anyone but Cosima, so those pent-up feelings get directed at Sarah, along with some resentment and distrust along the lines of “how dare she waltz in here and act like she can just be Beth?”  2) Alison takes the rules of clone club seriously, and that involves major secrecy.  It’s true that part of it is down to appearances – whatever would the neighbors think if they knew? – but more than that, it’s about the safety of her family.  She has a husband and two small children, and she doesn’t want anything jeopardizing her life with them.

This last point is also a big part of the reason why Alison often feels off in her own plots.  So much of Alison’s arc through the series is about her attempts to keep her house in order and cling to some semblance of a normal life.  And so, she throws herself into neighborhood potlucks, community theatre, and school trustee elections, because she doesn’t want to be defined by Dyad or Proletheans or whatever insane thing is happening in the clones’ lives – of course, it doesn’t take her long to find plenty of craziness all by herself.  Her sisters (especially Sarah) have a tendency to call her out on this, arguing that she needs to pull her weight more and getting wrapped up in her own stuff is selfish when there’s so much important crap going down, but really, she’s trying to get on with what they’re all fighting for:  the freedom to make her own choices and do what she wants.  It’s also worth mentioning that she helps out more than Sarah gives her credit for.  In addition to providing a lot of money for clone-related goings-on (and clean urine samples to any of her sisters who ask, no explanation necessary,) she steps up when she’s needed.  Whether that’s impersonating Sarah in a pinch, opening her home to Helena, or poking into Brightborn, Alison’s no slouch.

And honestly, Alison spends a lot of time just keeping her head above water.  I know that our introduction to Beth involves her suicide and Helena’s all kinds of messed up from being abused and brainwashed by the Proletheans who raised her, but Alison is a great ongoing example of how the revelation that one is a clone can shake a person’s sense of self.  She has a really hard time reconciling who she is, whether she’s even “real,” and we can see how these doubts fracture the “perfect” suburban life she tries so hard to maintain.  She leans too heavily on pills and alcohol, she feels herself going crazy with paranoia about monitors, and no matter how hard she tries to right the ship, everything seems to keep going wrong.  I appreciate that the show explores this side of things through her character, the difficulty of being a clone even before you get into shadowy conspiracies and assassination attempts.

A Few Helena Thoughts (Orphan Black)

This is another musing I made the last time I rewatched Orphan Black, looking at Helena this time.  Note:  I’m not attempting to woobify her – her past has some seriously heinous stuff in it, and being on the side of the sestras now mostly means her loose cannon is pointing towards the bad guys – but this particular thread I’m pulling does delve into what I feel is a rather tragic aspect of her character.  A few Helena spoilers, along with the inevitable Orphan Black premise spoilers.

The life of a clone seems filled with people who want to own them and/or want to kill them.  Dyad sequenced copyrights into their DNA, uses monitors (often their lovers) to collect information on them, and has been known to perform a bloody clean sweep when a group of clones strays too far outside the bounds of the experiment.  The folks over at Project Castor want to study the Leda clones in hopes discovering the key to repair Castor’s genetic defect.  Brightborn doesn’t want any pesky clones meddling in its business and will go to great lengths to keep them out of it. 

Helena is no exception to this (although, aside from Olivier’s “white whale” comments in early season 1, Dyad doesn’t seem too interested in her.)  She spends some time as a belligerent lab rat for Castor, and she draws the particular attention of the Proletheans.  A follower of the anti-clone cult takes her at a young age and brainwashes her with Prolethean dogma, raising her to assassinate her sisters to cleanse the earth of unnatural creations, and she’s later kidnapped by a Prolethean group sending some pretty contradictory messages; Helena is somehow an honored guest and an abomination at the same time, and the leader does her the “courtesy” of marrying her in a sham wedding before drugging her and artificially inseminating her with his own sperm.  Shudder.

What strikes me, though, isn’t just the people who’ve abused her, who’ve lied to her, violated her, or used her for their own personal gain (not that that’s not terrible, because it absolutely is.  The image of Thomas caging her like an animal is haunting, and my heart breaks for her after she escapes the Prolethean compound unable to fully comprehend what they did to her as she explains it to Sarah.)  It’s the people who are allegedly on her side that still care so little for her.

When other clones find themselves in someone else’s grasp, it’s because they’re captured or exchanging themselves to protect a loved one being held as leverage, or the nefarious party has something they need so desperately they can’t turn away.  After Helena’s initial abuse at the hands of Thomas, however, she tends to be traded by a purported ally.  Paul is technically Team Dyad through much of season 2, but even though he’s at Rachel’s side, his ultimate loyalty is still to Sarah.  And when he and Mark run into each other while both tail the twins, Paul so casually offers Mark Helena in exchange for leaving Sarah unharmed.  She’s taken by the Proletheans because Paul’s not interested in fighting for her the way he fights for Sarah.  And it’s Mrs. S. who outright gives Helena to Castor in season 3, swapping her for intel and not even telling Sarah about it until pressed.  (To be fair to S., Helena caused the family tremendous grief in season 1, and at this point Helena is still very new to the fold.  But still, S. – cold.)

This is where the sisters – especially Sarah, but the others get there as well, along with extended family members like Donnie and Felix – are the saving grace.  Because they gradually learn Helena, figuring out how to trust her and vice versa, and that means they go to bat for her when others won’t.  They’ve seen the intense (volatile) loyalty Helena displays to those who let her be their family (Alison calling her their “avenging angel” is so sweet,) and they’re not about to condone those they love treating her like a bargaining chip.  I love when, after all the awful Prolethean stuff that goes down, Helena is finally introduced to Cosima and Alison, and Sarah’s righteous anger and immediate proactiveness when she finds out about Castor is beautiful.

When you think about it, part of this is Helena falling victim to Sarah’s Protagonist Syndrome.  Both the twins are fertile (and immune to the clones’ defect,) meaning both of them are the top prize for most of the people who are after them at any given point.  And to be sure, Sarah gets into plenty of dicey situations of her own.  But Sarah often tangles with the bad guys of her own volition and then has everyone who loves her fighting to help her out of the situation, whereas some of those same people are willing to hand Helena over to get them off Sarah’s tail.  What is this, Paul, S.?  All clones are created equal, but some are more equal than others?

A Few Thoughts on Rachel (Orphan Black)

On rewatch, various things about Orphan Black naturally jumped out at me that I didn’t catch the first time:  threads of themes, seeds of foreshadowing, and of course, all manner of subtle, awesome acting choices by one Tatiana Maslany (I love how you can always tell something’s off right before it’s revealed that one clone is posing as another.)  Today, I want to muse on an idea I had the second time around regarding Rachel (some Rachel-related spoilers, along with, as is inevitable with Orphan Black, basic premise spoilers.)

Rachel Duncan.  Pro-clone.  Ice queen.  High bitch in command.  Corporate nightmare.  She’s been the thorn in the sestras’ side ever since she was introduced on the show, and of the various baddies they’ve gone up against, she’s one of my favorites.  It’s always so much more twisted when it’s one of their own coming after them, and I like how Sarah and co.’s meddling can crack Rachel’s chilly exterior. 

Today, I want to think about Rachel and sex.  It’s revealed in season 2 that Rachel is into BDSM, and Sarah is quite unprepared for the eyeful she gets of Rachel straddling Paul (tied to a chair) with a belt-turned-whip in her hand.  Since then, we’ve gotten glimpses of the games Rachel and Ferdinand play, including dom/sub talk, bondage, and a cane.

Now, as far as TV trends go, this doesn’t seem entirely unlikely.  Villainness with a thing for rough sex, uptight bitch with a secret kinky side, domineering woman who needs to be the mistress of her bedroom – take your not-especially-inspiring pick.  However, I think Rachel’s sexual proclivities get interesting when you think about her position within Project Leda as a clone who was specifically raised to be self-aware.  (Note:  I’m not saying there needs to be a “deep, dark” origin for Rachel’s kink, and I’m not suggesting that kinks in general are rooted in damage.  In this particular circumstance, I just think the possible ties are intriguing.)

By and large, an adult clone’s monitor has been carefully introduced into her life as a potential lover.  What they actually know about clones vary from monitor to monitor, but they spy, they inform, and they take biological samples from their lover without her knowledge.  If a clone is between monitors, Dyad is likely to court several possible new ones to put into her life, giving the full-time gig to the one she enters a relationship with.  As we’ve seen with Alison/Donnie and Cosima/Delphine, real love can grow out of a clone/monitor relationship, but when the clone knows what’s up, there has to be a serious reframing of the relationship and new trust established before that can begin.

So where does that leave Rachel, who’s known she was a clone ever since she could understand the word and has always known the precise role of her monitors in adulthood?  A naïve clone with a lover as her monitor is a perfect fit for Dyad, since the relationship gives the monitor intimate access.  Since Rachel knows what the deal is, there’s no need for that sort of pretense, but I kind of love that Rachel decides she’ll jolly well have it anyway.  Other clones who’ve just figured out that their lovers are their monitors are horrified and incredibly wary about sleeping with them, but for Rachel, it suggests a kind of power to know exactly what’s going on and still pursue a sexual relationship with her monitor.

But at the same time, it’s a vulnerable position to be in.  While we’ve seen numerous instances of monitors’ ultimate loyalty being to their clone lovers, I don’t imagine the naturally-suspicious Rachel would see it that way.  I imagine that, in her mind, her monitor will always side with Dyad when it comes down to it.  So even though he spends most of the time doing whatever she tells him to, she can’t fully trust him.  Could her practice of bondage have begun as a way for her to feel safe enough with her monitor to enjoy having sex?  Was her use of a whip or a cane a way for her to assert control in a sexual encounter with a man working at the behest of the institute that created and now studies her?  I’m not saying, “Of course!  It’s so obvious!  That’s Rachel solved!”  Nothing like that – just pondering.  Makes interesting food for thought, I think.

Top Five Impersonations: Orphan Black

Orphan Black is an endless source of acting amazement from the wonderfully-talented Tatiana Maslany.  A perennial favorite of mine on the show, an instance of her pushing that talent to places a little bit extra, is whenever one clone masquerades as other.  These sequences are always terrific; I love seeing the little (or enormous) ways the actual personality/mannerisms bleed through whoever the clone is pretending to be.

Alison as Sarah

Considering that Alison is Clone Club’s resident “actress,” it’s surprising that she doesn’t do more sestra impersonation.  Watching her as Sarah is fun (and I love that Kira isn’t fooled for a second,) but I especially get a kick out of watching her prepare for her first outing as Sarah, with Felix helping her pull a reverse Eliza Doolittle.

Sarah as Cosima

I believe I’m correct in thinking this is the only time anyone ever impersonates Cosima, and it’s as slapped-together as it is dubious.  Delphine, upon kissing who she believes to be her girlfriend, figures it out instantly, but it’s amazing how much automatic trust everyone else places in the idea that it’s really Cosima.  The impersonation itself is okay, if a little inattentive.  But this is an obvious rush job – Sarah’s hair isn’t even in clear braids, just sort of twisted to look like it sort-of is, and no one questions it!  That’s interesting, how even people who know about the clones take for granted that the one they’re talking to is the one they expect.

Sarah as Rachel

This is a cool one.  Since there’s so much bad blood between Sarah and Rachel, watching Sarah impersonate the pro-clone is plenty charged in its own right, but it’s further exacerbated by the deadly stakes involved with Ferdinand and Helsinki.  Kudos to Sarah for how smartly she plays Ferdinand, figuring out the history between them on the fly and doing what she needs to maintain the farce.

Cosima as Alison

We very rarely see Cosima impersonating other clones (in fact, is this the only instance of that happening?), but it’s fun because, while taking on the role of Alison, it’s clear that she is not good at it.  She’s not especially invested in it, to be fair, and her attempt is definitely half-hearted – though she might do better in a higher-stakes situation – but it’s just laughable.  She nearly outs “Alison” as a lesbian in the middle of a school board campaign speech and has to (badly) cover it with “…supporter.”  Ha!

Helena as Alison

Like Cosima-as-Alison (although in a very different way,) this is an impersonation that isn’t good, just fun.  Any impersonating on Helena’s part is always incredibly lazy, with barely any attempt to act or sound different; she’s just lucky in that, whenever she plays Alison, she’s with people who don’t know Alison and this don’t realize what a ludicrous impersonation this is.  Nearly the only concession she actually makes to “being” Alison is pretending Donnie is her husband, which is endlessly entertaining.