Orphan Black Season 1
I'm in like with Orphan Black, but I'm in love with Tatiana Maslany. For those of you who aren't watching and/or haven't heard of it, it's a series about a grifter who discovers she's one of a series of clones. Maslany plays the grifter and she's fabulous. Each clone has distinctive body language; you can tell when one of them is pretending to be another one. The accents I can judge are also spot-on -- the American Canadian housewife and the American graduate student never slip, but the British girl pretending to be American Canadian gets most of it right, but has some tells; the only reason no one makes her is because they're not looking for her.
Also, Bechdel pass and only one of the major characters is a straight white guy. (Defining major characters as actors who appear in every episode and clones who appear in all or most: Two straight white women, two white women we never see in a sexual context, one white lesbian, one white gay man, one straight black man, one straight Latino man, and one straight white guy. Four of the women are played by one actress. Most of the clones are straight, one's a lesbian, it's never discussed. This makes me very happy.)
rivkat told me that if Tatiana Maslany had been the star of Dollhouse, it never would have been canceled. I am so glad Tatiana Maslany was not the star of Dollhouse.
I'm not sure how much of the plot makes sense.
Spoilers
So:
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Also, Bechdel pass and only one of the major characters is a straight white guy. (Defining major characters as actors who appear in every episode and clones who appear in all or most: Two straight white women, two white women we never see in a sexual context, one white lesbian, one white gay man, one straight black man, one straight Latino man, and one straight white guy. Four of the women are played by one actress. Most of the clones are straight, one's a lesbian, it's never discussed. This makes me very happy.)
rivkat told me that if Tatiana Maslany had been the star of Dollhouse, it never would have been canceled. I am so glad Tatiana Maslany was not the star of Dollhouse.
I'm not sure how much of the plot makes sense.
Spoilers
So:
- Can we just have a global moratorium on cliffhangers involving sexual violence or the endangerment of children? Thanks!
- It's not that I doubt that a corporation would try to patent human beings. It's that I doubt such a patent would be upheld in any court, at least not without a few more decades of attempts to patent individual human genes. To be fair, Evil Science, LLC seems to know this, as they're attempting to put the clones under contract. I have a lot more faith in unfair and/or inethical contracts being upheld than I do in the idea of slavery being accepted outright. I would just expect Cosima to take the patenting as a revelation that Evil Science, LLC is evil rather than as a plausible threat in and of itself.
Although the nonconsensual human experiments were already kind of a giveaway.
- Evil Science, LLC has lousy experimental practices.
I'm glad it turned out that some of the monitors have been watching their subjects lifelong and/or for decades, because it never made sense that the clones would only be monitored in adulthood. For that matter, it doesn't make sense that any clone would have only one monitor, either through a lifetime or during any individual period. I'm expecting multiple monitors to be confirmed next season. (It would be nice to think Allison murdered a spy instead of just her next-door neighbor, although I'm not betting on it. Outside chance that they'll do a plotline of Allison realizing Aynsley was innocent so they can do a double reveal, I guess.)
However, sleeping with, living with, or raising the subject in no way constitutes not interfering with the conditions of the experiment. Though that is assuming that Evil Science, LLC. is interested in behavioral results and not just superpowers.
- Wow, there are a lot of people having unprotected sex in this show. I hope that Chad and Paul are clean and that Sarah and Allison are on birth control.
- This show could kill Sarah off at any time, couldn't they? At least in terms of casting. Narratively it would screw things; she's definitely the protagonist.
- At first I thought that the ending was Mrs. S taking Kira to Rachel Duncan, but now I'm thinking the disorder argues for Rachel Duncan sending someone in to pick up Kira and tangling with Mrs. S. Mrs. S. could have been monitoring Sarah for Evil Scientists, LLC. all along; Leekie didn't know about Sarah, but we already know Leekie doesn't know everything. Sarah could have been the Leekie-free control. But Mrs. S. could also have been part of the project and turned against it, or belong to a rival project.
Basically, the only non-clone people I trust are Kira, Felix, and Art. Felix is a possibility, but I refuse to accept it.
- I like how much emphasis the show puts on adoptive family. Biology isn't irrelevant -- the clones do eventually bond, Sarah has feelings about her birth mother -- but Felix and Mrs. S are clearly Sarah's family just as much as Kira.
- I still don't like Paul. Even if it was a friendly fire thing and not murdering or torturing civilians.
- Given Kira's super-healing, it is possible Helena didn't die from the gunshot. I hope Sarah checked for a pulse.
- So what happened to the Evil Priest, anyway?
- Wouldn't it be safest for the clones to just go public now? No one would be trying to kill them to hide things from the public if the public already knew.
- The German's hair made Tatiana Maslany look disturbingly like my sister, a resemblance the other hairdos somehow block.
- I like Sarah a lot, but Cosima is my favorite.
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