orphan black seasons 1-3 musings

Next month starts a new season of Orphan Black so to jog my memory I rewatched the previous seasons. Just a heads up, I'm basically obsessed with this show. It fulfills all the Colleen Requirements for an Awesome Show- Female led, character driven, sci-fi, and while not technically a comedy, it is very funny and I love, love, loooooooove it. My friend Annie suggested this to me like 1 zillion years ago and I kept putting it off because I'm an asshole hipster when it comes to TV shows. "Oh you like a show, yeah I'm sure it's REEEEEALLY cool.*rolls eyes*" I have no idea why I'm like that, ESPECIALLY when all the shows I've watched from my friend's suggestions I've loved and enjoyed. So why am I such an asshole? (There's probably not enough time/space/energy in the world to delve into THAT question, so let's get back to this other shit.) I know not a lot of my friends have watched this and I want y'all to so I'm going to do my very best though not to spoil major plot points and be as general as possible as I write out this over the top love letter to a Canadian TV show.

I'm going to start off with the best part of the show, Tatiana Maslany. She is a goddamn dream. She is perfection in human form. She is the queen of the entire fucking world and we are not worthy of her bad bitch-ness. Over the past 3 seasons, she has played 10 completely different, unique characters and has completely slayed them all. The show is all about all these different girls and their stories and while the plot can get a little crazy (it is a sci-fi show after all), she is the thread that pulls it all back together. Maslany has the chops to make each of her characters distinct but where she REALLY, REALLY shines (because she is a shiny fucking dewdrop from heaven above all. of. the. time.) is when she plays one character pretending to be another character. That is some inception level acting and its fucking beautiful. How this woman hasn't won every single Emmy in the entire world is a goddamn human rights violation. I don't know how it is, I just know it is, okay? She is so fucking great I forget that the same girl that is playing Alison is also playing Helena (which BTW are my two favorite characters because they both cray and I love me some cray) and when you watch this (because you will, YOU WILL) you'll forget too. And then I'll remind you and you'll be like "shit Colleen you're right, which you always are because you are so smart and wonderful, and Tatiana Maslany is the greatest thing to ever grace our godforsaken planet". Just wait.

So besides Tatiana Maslany being the baddest bitch on the block, this show speaks to the depths of my feminist heart. All the ladies are wonderful- Alison the soccer mom is just as broken and complex as Helena the murdery Ukrainian woman-child and just as interesting as grifter Sarah or scientist Cosima. For some reason TV and movie writers have a hard time not just writing women but writing women's relationships with each other. It tends to be competitive or catty, talking or fighting over a man. So imagine my cold black heart melting while watching these women develop relationships, genuine friendships, fighting, supporting each other, like normal fucking ladies. HOW CAN THIS BE?

I could sum up most of the situations on the show as follows:

sister friend 1: Don't do the thing. 

sister friend 2: But I want to do the thing. 

1: But the thing is bad. 

2: Ugh, what do you know? 

*does the thing* 

2: I did the thing, it was bad. 

1: *unconditional support*

If that seems repetitive to you, then you must hate your fucking life, because that's human nature baby. We have a knack of choosing precisely the exact wrong thing for ourselves even though everyone else can see the danger ahead, we continue bumbling on blindly through. These girls are much of the same. Whether it's any of Maslany's characters or the questionable French Delphine, the HBIC Mrs. S, or Felix (okay, yes sure he's not a girl technically, or at all, he's a boy but hear me out, he's totes "one of the gals", ok?), they all have complex relationships with each other that grow and evolve with the story organically, with every bump along the road. Even Kira! I normally hate kids on shows/movies for the most part, because I don't like kids and I think they are annoying and when they think they are being precocious really all they are being is WASTES OF FUCKING TIME. So yeah Kira is a kid and she's not terrible! And she doesn't take up a bunch of screen time so thanks writers of Orphan Black!

On the flip side of this, probably the weakest part of the show is the men (exception of course being Felix, seestra brother). The dude playing Paul is a "meh" actor at best, with his main selling points being a plot device, shirtless, and flexin' dem abs. Dude playing Dr. Leekie is the same way, hes pretty much a stereotype "corporate-overlord-dudey-typy-thing". Alison's husband Donnie, Vic, and Cal are all pretty fun to watch, with Donnie and Vic really nailing the dark humor (sometimes REALLY dark and REALLY funny) and Cal being handsome and having good rapport with Kira. It's interesting to see a show where the men are supporting characters and underdeveloped to the women. Theoretically, on a perfect show, every character would be well developed and intricate but this isn't a perfect show, it's not Fargo, it's a Canadian sci-fi show sooooooo yeah.

Now without going into too much detail as to avoid spoilers, the plot can pretty much be summed up like this: Religion vs Science. And in that battle, just like in real life, no one is a fucking winner. The Neolutionists are nuts and so are the Proletheans (I mean, with names like that of course they are fucking batshit crazy, I mean come on). These two groups have their sights set on these girls, trying to figure out who they are and what they mean, both metaphorically and literally. I like how the show never picks a side between the two- both sects are evil and both have selfish motives, it never preaches anything (besides give Tatiana Maslany ALL OF THE EMMYS, it does preach that). At the end of the day, you don't root for them, you always come down on the side of the girls. #HoesBeforeFoes

Also, big ups to the costume and editing department, keeping that shit tiiiiiight.

****OKAY so the next paragraph is going to have some spoilers, writing generally about a show is not a lot of fun, so I'm going to write some SPOILERY stuff and then I'll let you know when its cool to come back okay?****

So much I want to say, but I'll keep it brief. Well, brief-ish. The idea I tangle the most with on this show is the fact that the girls are all barren. It reminds me a lot of the backlash that my Joss Whedon got with Black Widow on last summer's Avengers movie, people angry that Black Widow was upset because she was sterilized and couldn't have kids because "women are more than just baby making machines". NO SHIT! It was never, ever fucking about that and neither is this. It's about agency and the girls lack thereof. These girls' entire lives have been manufactured and molded and monitored and generated by scientists in a lab far, far away. The scientists/religious fanatics don't look at these girls as people, really. But they are. They have families and jobs, dreams and hobbies, people they love and want to protect. And yet, none of the girls have free will, not really, choices about them and their lives are constantly being made by someone else, down to the very moment they were created, without the ability to reproduce. Time and time again on this show, the girls yell "It's not your decision to make, it's mine!" and yet it continues to fall on deaf ears and the girls are forced to react accordingly. They are constantly on their heels, backed into the corner, so when there's a moment when one of the girls finally get to make their own decision it is sooooo fucking satisfying. One moment in particular sticks out, after Helena had been kidnapped by the crazy religious Proletheans, they take her eggs (without her consent, obvi) and then she escapes and when she is kidnapped by them AGAIN, they implant her with her own eggs that the preacher dude fertilized. She's all "NOT FUCKING COOL BRO" and when she is finally escaping for the second time, she takes a moment to stop and smell the roses take the insemination prod-y thingymajig and straight shoves it up the preacher dude's ass. It's one of my fucking favorite things I have ever seen on TV or movies or life in general. And on that note, I guess I should continue on.....

****SPOILERS ARE OVER GUYS!! DON'T YOU WORRY, YOU CAN READ FROM HERE ON OUT, YOU MADE IT!****

So let me ask you guys, what do you look for in a show? Family drama? Got it. Blood and murder? Check. Sexy, sexy, sexy times? Checkerooni. LGBT friendly? YAAAAAS! Torture w/ crafting supplies? You betcha! What more could you possibly want in a show? 

And with that, I'm going to leave with you this: Just one. I'm a few. No family too. Who am I?

*        *         *

So what can you expect in the future from Colleeny's bloggy writey ramblings? Well, how about a 3 part series on New Doctor Who, reviews on Orange is the New Black, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, the 100, Dollhouse, Fargo each season individually, The Americans, 11.22.63, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Firefly, Serenity (yes, it's a movie but it's a movie about a TV show and a Joss Whedon show at that so I will write about it and you will enjoy it or you will not read it because its your life, fucking live your life bro) and Parks and Recreation, among others and in no particular order. I'm having entirely too much fun doing this, one person out there reading this.