Despite misgivings, I’m continuing my binge watch of Orphan Black’s first season. After three more episodes, my opinion of the show has improved significantly, but there’s still a lot to take issue with.

“Effects of External Conditions”:

For me, this is the episode where the series really starts. The first three episodes were clogged with filler and could have easily be condensed into a single episode without losing anything important, but with “Effects of External Conditions,” things finally start moving forward.

This episode focuses on Sarah and the police attempting to track down Helena, the clone who has been killing all the other clones.

Yo dawg, we heard you had too many clones, so we sent a clone to kill some of your clones.

Ahem.

Cosima identifies religious iconography on Helena’s dagger and theorizes that Helena represents a group of fanatics who see the existence of the clones as an affront to God. Sarah comes to believe that Helena is under the impression she was the original of them all, and is trying to eliminate those whom she sees as perverse copies of herself.

Interestingly, Sarah notices that the symbol on Helena’s dagger matches a tattoo on the body of Maggie Chen, the woman Beth gunned down before her suicide.

There are still a fair few aspects of this episode that feel unnecessary. There’s still too much of what feels like filler involving Sarah’s life as a pretend cop and her relationship with Paul, Beth’s husband.

I’m on the fence about Sarah’s troubles with her daughter. It is an important part of Sarah’s arc as a character, but on top of everything else, it’s another distraction from the only interesting thing about this show: the clone mystery.

The best part of this episode is that it apparently puts an end to Orphan Black’s existence as a pseudo cop show. The clone story can now get the full attention it deserves.

Overall rating: 6.9/10

“Conditions of Existence”:

“Conditions of Existence” begins with Sarah realizing that doctors have been coming to examine her in her sleep, further reinforcing the idea that the clones are all part of some bizarre and far-reaching scientific experiment.

This is, unfortunately, another prominent example of how far-fetched this show can be. We’re expected to believe that all of those clones have been being regularly examined in their sleep for God knows how long, and none of them have noticed it before now.

Orphan Black tries to present itself as an intelligent thriller, but it’s just not. It’s one of those shows that’s only good if you do your very best not think about anything.

“Conditions of Existence” also sees the very unwelcome return of Vic, Sarah’s deranged ex-boyfriend. While Orphan Black has by this time done a lot to cut down on unecessary side plots, Vic clings on with all nine of his fingers. It’s just not an interesting story, and the sooner he’s gone for good, the better.

But it’s not all bad news by any stretch of the imagination. For the most part, “Conditions of Existence” puts the clone mystery front and center, and that makes this the best episode of the series to date.

Sarah’s discovery of the nocturnal experiments causes Cosima to speculate that every clone has a monitor in their life whose purpose it is to observe them and report the results of the experiments to whoever is behind them.

Suspicion immediately falls on Beth and Allison’s husbands, Paul and Donnie. Meanwhile, Cosima encounters a new student at her school, Delphine, who seems eager to become fast friends. There is a conspicuous lack of plausible options for Sarah’s monitor.

The race is then on to determine who these monitors are working for, while trying not to arouse suspicion.

Despite still suffering from significant problems already mentioned, this is an example of Orphan Black starting to live up to its potential. This episode is full of intrigue, mystery, and suspense, and the closing scene is downright intense.

Overall rating: 7.3/10

“Variations Under Domestication”:

This is a really weird episode.

Orphan Black suffers from this constant clash where it seems to be trying to be an intelligent thriller, but it’s actually quite ridiculous a lot of the time. “Variations Under Domestication” is a great example of this — I honestly can’t tell if I’m laughing with this episode, or at it.

Much of this episode deals with Allison as her paranoia boils over. Convinced her husband, Donnie, is her monitor, she proceeds to duck tape him to a chair and torture him with a glue gun in an attempt to get him to confess.

Of course, she happens to pick the day she’s supposed to be hosting the neigbourhood potluck. She has to enlist Sarah to help her keep order, while desperately hoping no one notices there’s two of her running around or that her husband is screaming for help in the basement.

Cue insanity.

Then add to that appearances by Paul and Vic, and things just get increasingly screwed up.

I don’t quite know how to rate this episode. It’s not bad, and it’s got a lot of interesting story developments, but it’s a complete farce, and it feels way out of place with the deadly serious tone Orphan Black seems to be shooting for.

I will grudgingly admit that Paul is starting to get pretty interesting as a character. I didn’t like him at first as he wasn’t contributing much, and I find the actor a bit stiff, but his role is getting increasingly ambiguous, and that’s interesting. Just whose side is he on? Even he doesn’t seem to know anymore.

Also, while I’m still utterly sick of Vic, at least he didn’t feel like such a distraction from the important story this time.

And it is a bit amusing how much he’s become the show’s whipping boy. He’s had his face bashed in by Sarah, he lost a finger to a drug dealer, Allison tasered and maced him, and Paul beat the snot out of him and nailed his hand to a chair. How much more punishment can this guy take?

“Variations Under Domestication” is also noteworthy for giving Cosima by far her biggest role to date, but unfortunately, this had the effect of her losing her crown as the only clone capable of common sense or good judgement.

Cosima is not only aware of monitors, she’s the one who suggested they existed in the first place. So when some mysterious stranger suddenly comes along to sweep her off her feet, you’d think she’d be suspicious. Not only does she not see anything odd about Delphine’s behavior, she becomes very testy when Sarah suggests something fishy might be going on.

What is going on with these clones? Donnie’s obviously not a spy, and Delphine couldn’t be a more obvious spy if the 007 theme played every time she walked on screen, but yet it’s the former who finds suspicion falling on him.

As an aside, I think the writers are playing with fire a little by making Cosima a lesbian when the other clones all appear to be heterosexual. That seems to be making a firm statement on the nurture side of the nature versus nurture debate, and that’s treading dangerously close to saying being gay is a choice.

It doesn’t bother me. I don’t think the writers had any ill intent in mind — I don’t think they even think that hard. But I could see some people getting pretty offended by it, rightly or wrongly.

Overall rating: 7/10

* * *

I’m starting to enjoy Orphan Black, and I’ll probably keep watching, but I can’t say I’d recommend it to others. It takes entirely too long to get started, and even once the plot is rolling, there’s a lot that just doesn’t hold up under any kind of scrutiny.

Along with movies and smiling, TV is one of those things that I’ve been having trouble finding time for lately. As a result, I was only vaguely aware of the existence of Orphan Black, and I knew barely anything about its premise. Sci-fi show, something something clones.

However, I was on Space’s website looking for an update on the second season of Defiance (still a few weeks off), and I noticed they had the full first season of Orphan Black, so I decided to give it a shot.

Since I’m binge-watching this show, my reviews may have to be a little truncated for brevity’s sake. I will also be relatively loose with spoilers.

“Natural Selection” (pilot episode):

Our story begins with Sarah Manning, a con artist and general screw-up of the highest order. While waiting for a train, she notices a distraught woman lingering near the tracks. Moments before the woman commits suicide by jumping in front of a train, Sarah notices something startling: the woman looks exactly like her.

Being who she is, Sarah’s first instinct is to steal the woman’s purse and flee the scene. Sarah comes to learn the woman’s name was Beth Childs, and she was living a fairly comfortable life.

Sarah decides to take advantage of the situation by convincing society that Beth was in fact her, effectively faking her own death, and by briefly taking over Beth’s life long enough to steal all her money and ride into the sunset.

Sarah also displays a startling lack of curiosity about the fact that Beth was apparently her long-lost twin.

As you might expect, this scheme proves far, far more complicated than Sarah hoped. Pretty much everything imaginable goes wrong with this scheme right out of the gate — Beth was married, and a police officer, for starters. And just to make life more interesting, Sarah encounters another of her dopplegangers, who is promptly murdered before her eyes.

I was not impressed by Orphan Black out of the gate. My main early concern is that this will be one of those stories that just strings people along, providing lots of mystery but few answers. I’m all for mystery, but a good mystery will provide a steady stream of answers and new information while constantly opening new questions. A bad one will just keep piling on the questions.

Despite an almost absurd number of complications being thrown Sarah’s way in the first episode, essentially nothing happened. We learned nothing of value beyond the fact that there are a lot of people who look like Sarah. It just leaves you thinking, “Huh?”

I’m not a big fan of Sarah as a character, either. I’ve kind of got a chip on my shoulder regarding mothers who abandon their children, but even without that little blotch on her character, she’s just not a likable person. She’s a walking train wreck: selfish, erratic, and irresponsible.

Her writing is pretty inconsistent, too. She often comes across as a complete moron  (You really thought you could just bluff your way through the life of someone you never met? Really?) but in times of great duress, she suddenly morphs into a criminal mastermind who can think her way out of anything.

With that being said, the premise of the show has a lot of potential, and this would hardly be the first show I’ve seen that got off to a rocky start only to improve later, so I decided to keep going.

It was also interesting to discover Orphan Black is filmed in Toronto. Some scenes took place within walking distance of where I used to live.

Overall rating: 5.9/10

“Instinct”:

The second episode picks up immediately after the pilot’s conclusion, with Sarah fleeing the unseen killer who sniped her German doppleganger (as opposed to her Canadian doppleganger). She receives a phone call from a mysterious woman who (believing her to be Beth) is desperate for some information the German was supposedly in possession of.

However, this is once again complicated by Sarah’s ongoing efforts to continue posing as Beth, which once again dovetail into every kind of bad you can possibly think of, and her family issues, as she struggles to keep her “death” a secret from her daughter while her distraught boyfriend makes life miserable for her foster-brother.

Like the pilot, “Instinct” manages the impressive feat of being incredibly eventful and almost absurdly complex while still advancing the plot in almost no meaningful way. At this point, Orphan Black seems to be the epitome of going nowhere fast.

Sarah also continues to show a bizarre disinterest in the fact that she has stumbled into a deadly web of intrigue involving a large of number of women who all share her face. If it were me, I’d be freaking the Hell out.

This episode is mainly noteworthy for introducing two more of Sarah’s duplicates: a prickly soccer mom named Allison, and a geeky eccentric named Cosima.

Overall rating: 4.9/10 I finished watching this episode only a few hours before writing this post, and I’ve already forgotten most of it.

“Variation Under Nature”:

At last, in the third episode of Orphan Black, things start moving forward. Sarah meets with Allison and Cosima, who reveal they are all clones — though how they know this is unclear — and that someone has been killing them off one at a time.

It’s around this time that I came to another conclusion about Orphan Black: All the clones seem to be nuts. Sarah is, as noted previously, the poster child for screw-ups everywhere. Allison appears to be irritability incarnate. Beth was a mentally unstable junkie.

Only Cosima seems at all sane or likable. Unfortunately, she seems to be the clone getting the least amount of attention right now.

In general, Orphan Black has a real problem where all of the characters seem unhinged or just generally unlikable. At this point, the only character I have any real fondness for is Felix, Sarah’s brother, and even there, my feelings toward him are lukewarm at best. He’s an incredibly one-dimensional and borderline offensive stereotype.

Still, his baby-sitting gig has to have been the best moment of the series to date. “Look, Mom, we’re cross-dressers!”

Brilliant.

“Variation Under Nature” also features the already strained plausibility of the series taking a nose-dive. I’m used to TV cops behaving not at all like real cops, but then you’ve also got the fact that Sarah is still somehow managing to pass herself off as someone she knows essentially nothing about, and really crazy stuff like a woman just getting up and walking away after being impaled.

Oddly, the thing that bothers me the most might be the fact that Cosima is the only clone who wears glasses, even though they’re all genetically identical. How’s that work?

On the plus side, I’m growing increasingly impressed by Tatiana Maslany, who plays the clones. I may not be particularly fond of the characters she plays, but she does portrays them all convincingly, and does an excellent job of distinguishing them. Her speech patterns and mannerisms change radically from one clone to another, and they all feel very much like separate individuals.

I particularly like subtle details like how she occasional lets subtle elements of Sarah’s British accent slip through when Sarah is pretending to be Beth.

Ai, so many clones.

I’m also enjoying the Torontonianism of it all, which was on full display in this episode. Driving down the Gardiner, visiting the suburbs of Scarborough, chasing a suspect through Parkdale.

Mmm, nostalgia.

Overall rating: 6.1/10 Feels like the series is only now getting started. If they’d cut out the filler and condensed the first three episodes into the pilot, I’d have enjoyed it a lot.

* * *

I want to like Orphan Black. I really do. I’m starved for some decent sci-fi, and it seems to have a lot of potential. The main plot about the clones is quite interesting, the lead actress seems very talented (and, to be honest, is also quite easy on the eyes), the production values are high, and it feels good to support a Canadian production.

But as it stands now, I’m just not enjoying it that much. The plot rambles, seemingly doing everything in its power to avoid advancing its most crucial points. The characters are uniformly unlikable. There is much that strains credibility or just flat-out doesn’t make sense.

As it stands now, I’m on the fence about whether to continue watching. I want to give it a fair shake, but after three episodes, it still seems a long way from finding its footing. If no more reviews appear on this blog, you’ll know why.