This week had more plot-forwarding and less conspiracy theorizing
and thus felt less frenetic than the past two weeks, even while the actual events were as much or more all over the map. While being easier to follow doesn’t necessarily make for a better episode, it does give
one less whiplash.
It also allows for more time to process how bloody gorgeous this
show is. In the only directly-consequential upside to a huge
production load for a smaller order of episodes, they’re killing it
with individual shots: the composition and colors of Mark in the
cornfield; the green and steam in the scene with Art and Sarah in the
diner; the orange-and-teal thing all too prevalent nowdays, but here
accomplished with mostly naturally occurring objects (jeans, a barn,
corn, sunset) and without wildly over-saturating colors until it
tints everyone’s skintone orange. A couple fewer lens flares would be
fine by me (and that’s not a thing I say often outside of JJ Abrams’
Star Trek), but you can’t deny they’re effective. The set
dressing, – from the Confederate flag in our Canadian redneck’s
shed, to Felix’s bead-rope bathroom door – is wonderful.
The Alison / Donnie storyline doesn’t tie into any of the other stories right now, but considering the plot compactness and the growing incidences of ‘coincidental happenings’ and 'just in time arrivals’ in the intersecting Leda/Castor plots, that’s rather welcome. This bit is basically David Lynch meets Weeds with a dash of Battlestar Galactica. It’s a perfect exploration of modern suburban
politics and darkness, but with a motherfucking clone. I love it so much.
And is it just me or are they totally setting up Alison and Donnie
to melt down their nemesis Marci Coates and make her into soap, aka
the best metamorphosis of suburbanite-to-supervillain ever. No seriously. It will top the Walter-White-to-Heisenberg transformation. Please for the love of all things holy, let this happen.
Another thing I would like is Moar Cosima. A tiny part of me
thinks that they’re being pragmatic with using her sparingly, since
she’s the character who takes the most time in HMU. If I had to
guess, I’d say in order of most time to least for transformation:
Cosima, Helena, Rachel, Alison, Sarah.
How many nicknames was Scott given this episode? I think at least
5. It’s fun how Orphan Black takes characters you think are one-offs
or peripheries and make them into small yet crucial elements of the
plot. Relatedly, there is something compelling and presumably innate
about the Leda clones which causes people to help them. Some people
naturally inspire sympathy/empathy/feelings of compassion or love or
helpfulness from strangers. In this universe, all the Leda clones do.
We see it with Art helping Sarah (even though he has Other Motives,
which … meh, did not need). We see it with Scott and Cosima. Even
with Paul and Helena, this episode, you get the feeling Paul is as
sorry as a poor automaton can be. Rachel would probably inspire these
feelings in others if she weren’t completely hell-bent on alienating
or subjugating them, and she had in fact seemed to elicit plenty of
angst and care from her adoptive parents.
We actually see some of this in relation to the Castor clones as
well, but from more warped people and motives. The Castor clones and
their interactions with others are basically a Looking Glass version
of the Leda clones. Where Sarah and then other clones have Mrs. S and
Felix (and Art and Delphine and Cal), the Castors get Mother and Paul
(and Mark gets a supportive wife and also Prolethean parent-types who
end up trying to kill him). Speaking of Mark, he’s an interesting
outlier in several ways, which seem to support the show’s latent
argument for nurture over – or at least with more influence than –
nature. Following the idea of a clone who has later in life broken
out of a military upbringing, and how he diverges from his brothers,
is possibly the most interesting aspect of the Castors, including
trying to contrast a strict militaristic upbringing with the Leda’s
wild varieties of childhoods.
Instead of really delving into that, we’re getting an examination
of hard-bred machismo and how that leads to violence and a whole heap
of problematic interactions with women. All which could be
interesting in other shows, but which to be honest in Orphan Black
are fairly boring, comparatively. The Castor story is not as
interesting, full stop. It’s not as well acted. It’s not as well
developed. It’s a bunch of macho white dudes with homoerotic
undertones and mommy issues. We can and have gotten social commentary
on how women are objectified and their agency denied and their bodies
co-opted, without the contrasting Castors.
To be fair, the Castor plot hasn’t gotten the same amount of time
to develop. But, that’s the thing: the show doesn’t have the luxury
of that sort of development, if it wants to fully showcase the story
it began telling and the actress it was built around. If the seasons
were 22 episodes, sure, go to town. But you have this other really
compelling story/actress, and you’re sidelining her.
It doesn’t help Ari Millen that his characters are more physically
and sartorially similar, and so he has to overact a little to
compensate and help viewers distinguish. I’d argue the range of
haircuts and other physical traits are already too different. I get
that you’re giving them distinct hairstyles because you need us to be
able to differentiate. Other than Mark the outlier, that visual
shortcut actually defeats the purpose of your storyline. They were
bred as stormtroopers. They should be All The Same and you should
only know who is who if one bonks his head on a bunker door.
One
could argue the show is making a counterargument that nature will
trump nurture and personalities will differ, but that’s not what’s
happening; even completely unrelated humans look very much
indistinguishable when they’re put in the army mold. It’s by design.
So if you’ve been so molded and weaponized since you were born,
you’ll look the same. No, it’s a shorthand for distinguishing the
characters, even when it stretches past believable; the military does
allow pornstaches, but hardly fauxhawks* and noose-ready scarves like Styles**.
Speaking of, Cosima would have pulled her dreads back during that
bathtub scene. Cosima would never let her well-maintained fashion statement get soaked in clone blood. That’s an egregious oversight for a show usually so
into details, including giving Helena underarm hair in her cell
scenes.
I feel the season is finally settling in. Killing off the Castor
clones (though who’s willing to bet Mark lives on) will help, as it
results in less to deal with. They’ll keep a couple around,
especially with the 'revelation’ of the Castor/Leda groups being
siblings, which felt like it was fairly obvious. Not just because it
makes sense and makes for drama, but it’s something sci-fi
conventions set up, and this show has gotten more and more into that
genre as it goes. In prior seasons Helena’s storylines were the ones
leaning more heavily into horror and sci-fi, but this season the
episodes are drenched in it. Which actually dilutes some of the
show’s power: as it gets more and more convoluted and sci-fi-y, it
loses some of its best feature, IE some of its grounding in reality.
You could become instantly immersed in Season 1’s story because it
was easily happening right now, in our world. Recent developments
have made the show more explicitly sci-fi and much more
soap-operatic-y.
All that said, with Alison and it looks like Felix and Cosima next episode, we do have some more everyday-life sort of plots coming back in, which are welcome as we spend time with characters but also to help us continue to relate to this world as a possible near-future, and that’s a good thing.
Speaking of, I cannot wait to see Cosima and Felix out and about with Tindr. I would watch an entire spinoff called Cosima and Felix Take Toronto.
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Stray Observations
*I’d like Styles’s hairdo on a Leda clone. Sadly,
you can’t do that short a hairstyle on Maslany on this show. But one
day, in a different role, it will happen. The universe basically
demands it be so.
**It is a bad sign for the Castors’ character distinctiveness that I just had to go google that characters’
name. ETA: Except wait, Rudy? damnit. see. this is the problem.
fotzepolitic said:
You just summed up all my problems with the Castor plotline so far. It’s too much seemingly going nowhere. How does that even work? Guess we’ll see.