Have a lot of feels about feminist clone drama Orphan Black? So do we! We’re teaming up with our partner-in-feels website, Head Over Feels, to recap Season 3. Here’s our review of the first episode…
The Clone Club is back, baby! Orphan Black launched its third season last night with “The Weight of This Combination,” and it was so nice to be hanging out with Sarah (Tatiana Maslany), Alison (Tatiana Maslany), Helena (Tatiana Maslany), Cosima (Tatiana Maslany) and their loved ones (aka the characters not played by Tatiana Maslany). Heck, I was even willing to go along with the Helena-Chats-With-Scorpion storyline this episode was peddling at me, so happy was I to see the faces of my favorite clones (and Rachel) again.
So how did the Season 3 premiere measure up? Well, much like the Season 2 premiere, I approached this season opener with tentative excitement. Orphan Black is a show that, so far, has managed to maintain its breakneck plot speed while also staying grounded in realistic character development and emotional beats. Frankly, most of the time, I can’t believe this show exists. It is too perfect. A show that takes on the monumental task of exploring the theme of the ownership and co-opting of women’s bodies and does it well? It’s a TV unicorn! I keep waiting to wake up from this feminist television watcher’s dream to discover that Orphan Black never really existed, that it was just a figment of my ambitious, optimistic, overactive imagination of what life as a feminist TV fan could be like without the qualifier — i.e. I really love Awesome Show, I just wish its representation of female characters was a bit, er, better.
Why am I going on this ramble? Well, aside from it giving me the chance to extol my love ofOrphan Black, it also allows me to place what is to follow in a context. For me, the beginning ofOrphan Black seasons tend to be a lot of set-up with not as much payoff. This isn’t a design flaw, nor does it make for boring television. Orphan Black trusts its viewers an incredible amount, and therefore spends its season openers throwing a heck of a lot of information at us. This can make for disorienting watching, but Orphan Black has rewarded my patience before so I will give it the benefit of the doubt again. I am willing to believe that what we learn in this first episode will pay off exponentially as the season progresses. That being said, I could have done with a wee bit more grounding in this episode. Here’s everything that went down…
Leave a Reply