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The Best (and Worst) of “Orphan Black”

We’re fast approaching that unfortunate time of year when television shows go into hibernation for a month and a half just when we need them the most. So that you don’t panic and accidentally end up settling on A Very Hunger Games Christmas Special (actually, I would watch that) consider stockpiling a few of the shows you may have missed during the year for emergency winter backup viewing.

If you haven’t become enamored of it already, I wholeheartedly recommend Orphan Blackas one of these shows. This BBC America production became the little-known critical darling of the summer season, but don’t worry, it has positive qualities too (jokes!) In case you missed the momentary cultural hoopla, Orphan Black stars Tatiana Maslany, Tatiana Maslany, and Tatiana Maslany as a series of clones who discover each other’s existences and are thrown into a deep conspiracy of genetic experimentation, religious fanaticism, and truly harrowing potluck parties.

It’s an immersing ten-episode morsel ripe for obsessive and excessive consumption over a series of midnight marathons. Still not convinced? Here are the five best reasons you should seek it out, along with one thing to keep in mind as you begin this excellent journey.

Top 5

5. Pristine special effects

Orphan Black

We’ve been trained to associate special effects with dragons and aliens and all the motion capture celebrations we love so much, but the effects on Orphan Black deserve a similar level of applause for their subtle excellence.

The relationship between Maslany’s various clones is so central to the show that two and three of them often must appear in the same frame, not simply standing together but actively interacting, touching arms and pouring glasses of wine. These scenes are so seamless and cleanly executed that it’s easy to forget that all the characters are played by the same person, which in turn makes becoming absorbed in the clones’ story an effortless experience.

It all could have gone horribly wrong. When we think of effects on a BBC America show, the expectations are low, perhaps even that-time-CNN-tried-to-do-holograms low, but we are never wrenched out of the moment by dumpy effects or awkward cutting between close-ups. The visual style is natural and unworked, which is what makes the effects so impressive. They disappear.

4. Didn’t you hear me? It’s a full-blown clone conspiracy

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The word conspiracy is thrown around on serialized genre dramas with the breezy inaccuracy of blindside on reality television, but Orphan Black has earned the right to call itself a conspiracy. It boasts multiple mysterious factions with competing secretive agendas and inscrutable masterminds presiding over minimalist offices, all pulling the clones in every direction at once.

It would have been fairly predictable to set up this series as a clash between the heroic clones and the evil scientists who created them, but while the early episodes veer that direction, the story ends up growing into something much more complicated and interesting. Though the characters often work together, every agenda is ultimately personal rather than organizational, which means there are as many threads to the conspiracy as there are characters. The sides are never clear, and it’s rarely as simple as good guys and bad guys because the spectrum of good and evil is constantly reshaping itself.

Like all the best conspiracies, we never know what’s going on until that information is already outdated, and this complex web of motives and allegiances, along with thankfully fast-paced plotting, renders the clones’ cuckoo world constantly surprising and completely addictive.

3. Your favorite clone is all of them

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In the menagerie of featured clones, second-tier clones, dead clones, and impersonated clones that populate this show, it would seem statistically inevitable that some would connect and others would be insufferable, barfy duds who must be endured, but there are no duds. They’re all equally the best.

I won’t overlook the role of Tatiana Maslany’s superb acting in all of this (we’ll get to her in a minute), but much of this is also down to the writing. The clones are never written simply as foils for each other to emphasize different broad traits. They’re all full characters whose moods and personalities overlap and evolve throughout the season. They often invert expectations so that we’re never sure where we stand with them from episode to episode. We may be prepared to despise Alison, the high-strung and judgmental conservative mother, but after a little affair with a glue gun in Auntie Alison’s Craft Room of Terrors, we realize she’s the greatest.

On the other hand, we may be predisposed to love Cosima, the dreadlocked bisexual scientist (because obviously), but then we begin to encounter her questionable decision-making skills. Much like the conspiracy itself, the characters are always unfolding, and every episode ushers in a new reason to love a different clone because they’re all as compelling as each other.

2. Felix is better than you (and everyone)

Felix Orphan Black(source)

When we meet Felix, he seems like just your average wise-cracking, cocaine-selling, sugar-daddy-having, funeral-faking, naked-painting gay brother (what, again?!) but as poor Felix is dragged into this insane chasm of clone confusion against his will and better judgment, he emerges as the necessary voice of reason.

Felix is the foster brother and accomplice of protagonist clone Sarah, supporting her, explaining to her that every decision she has ever made in her dreadful life is horrendous, and smoothing things over with foster mother Mrs. S. He is the only one Sarah trusts with the news of her shocking band of doppelgangers.

At first, the other clones are wary of having Felix around, but he eventually becomes shelter from the storm of crazy for all of themdrinkstrolley and always offers a bed to sleep in and a sarcastic reality check. While he may be involved only because of Sarah, it’s in his unexpected, often reluctant friendship with Alison that Felix really comes into his own, spending her intervention smirking on the stairs, braving the horrors of the suburbs to save her potluck, and (in most truly unfair fashion) even babysitting for her. The babysitting adventure elicits ones of Felix’s best moments, his dismissal of Alison’s son:

Felix: Do you want to dress up like a little girl?

Alison’s son: No.

Felix: Well, I don’t have anything for you then.

1. Tatiana Maslany is probably a witch

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I make this claim primarily because Tatiana Maslany is a great name for a witch, but also because she clearly concocted a brew or bewitched a precocious young mermaid out of her voice in order to play these roles as well as she does. Essence of toad liver must have been involved somehow.

In the chorus of praise that Maslany receives for her performance, much attention is paid to the various accents she employs, but that’s a shallow explanation of what makes her work so strong. It’s much more than being able to do a couple accents believably. The voices are secondary to the breadth and depth of characters she creates and the expert distinctions she draws between them.

Some of these distinctions are broad, like the wonderfully animalistic posture of the feral Ukrainian Helena, while others are quite nuanced. The clones are occasionally called upon to impersonate each other, and the subtleties of body language, expression, and tone with which she differentiates the characters from the impersonations of those same characters is quite remarkable. Sarah-as-Alison is just different enough from Alison to be believable in context yet always clear to the audience which character we’re seeing.

Her whole performance is a complex feat, but one that never feels like a technical accomplishment because it’s too compelling to waste time thinking about how much acting is happening.

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The slow start

Contrary to the impression this top five list might give, it was not love at first sight between Orphan Black and me. In fact, after the first episode I put the show aside, not really understanding what the fuss was about, and only returned to it several months later to discover the excellence I had so callously ignored. If you’re giving the show a shot, be sure to stick with it for a few episodes before forming an opinion.

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There is much to love about this show as it unfolds, but it buries the lead in the first episode or two by withholding the elements that make it so intriguing (the clones’ relationships with each other, the Neolutionists, everything about Helena) in favor of less engrossing fare. In particular, Sarah’s early attempt to steal Beth’s identity and convince Detective Art and Malicious Cheekbone Lady that she is a police officer lacks the complexity and imagination of the rest of the show and fails to do justice to the multi-pronged scientific, religious, and family intrigue that eventually makes Orphan Black so captivating.

Only when the clones start to influence each other’s lives and the conspiracy begins to evolve does the show reach its full potential, but that takes until about episode three. Give it time.

Now it’s your turn. Take this opportunity to share your clone experience with the whole club in the comments.

Orphan Black returns to BBC America for a second season on April 19, 2014

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