“Orphan Black” hasn’t been around long, but there are a few certainties we can count on when it comes to the clone-intensive show starring Tatiana Maslany.
We
know Maslany will inhabit each clone identity so thoroughly that we’ll
forget one woman is playing half the cast. We know each clone will have a
male friend or lover -- think Alison’s husband Donnie, Sarah’s hunky
boyfriend Cal, Cosima’s science pal Scott -- who will be simultaneously
impressed and a little afraid of each woman’s boldness and bravery. One
of the smallest but most welcome subtexts of this energetic BBC America
show centers on the idea that men find the sisters, who stick by each
other and fight hard for their autonomy, attractive as either friends or
lovers. “Empowerment is sexy” isn’t the show’s tagline, but it could
be.
We also know that Felix, the continually exasperated brother
of the tough grifter Sarah, will always leave his loft in a state of
glorious, inviting disarray. And the one inescapable fact that we learn
and re-learn every season: Felix really needs a better lock for his front door.
All those sure things give “Orphan Black” a very sturdy base to build
on. That said, the tangle of factions, agendas and players the show
built up in its second season looks like a dozen strands of DNA put
through a blender and then bedazzled. There’s Topside, the Dyad
Institute, the military, the police, the LEDA Project, a few lingering
Proletheans, and then, the various female clones and their friends,
enemies, lovers and relations. If you put a gun to my head and made me
describe how all those factions relate to each other in 100 words or
less, I would fail that test. I’m not even sure a super-genius like
Cosima could remember it all.
And this season, the show has added
male clones played by Ari Millen to the mix. The good news is, Sarah,
Cosima and the other clones retain most of the real estate in this
gorgeously grimy biothriller, and watching the established characters
relate to each other is still a lot of fun. It’s an unrelenting joy to
watch Maslany find new ways to differentiate the clones; this season, I
noticed just how much she changes the timbre and intonation of each
character’s voice, and to see her as one clone playing another is still a
joy to behold (though I hold that last season’s clone dance party took
the concept of fan service too far).
The beautiful disaster named
Helena remains my favorite part of the show, and she even gets a new
companion this season, one so suitably batsh-t that it makes me smile
just thinking about it. Another reliable aspect of “Orphan Black”: No
woman on screen has ever enjoyed food as gloriously and unashamedly as
Helena, who remains impervious to every attempt to mine her for
information or anything else.
Ideally, the role of the plot on
“Orphan Black” is to serve as the background machinery that unites
various combinations of these characters for reasons I can at least
halfway understand. From that perspective, the start of the third season
is encouraging, in that I can often more or less follow what’s
happening, even if I’m not 100 percent sure about who wants what from
whom and why.
In any event, it’s in the asides and digressions
that “Orphan Black” tends to excel. Kristian Bruun has emerged as the
show’s secret weapon: He serves up razor-sharp comic timing in the
Alison-Donnie scenes, and he is responsible for my favorite moment
in last year’s overstuffed season. The suburban scenes could tip over
into overwrought satire quite easily, but they remain on the right side
of the reality-parody divide because Bruun and Maslany make the couple’s
perky, twisted bond feel palpable and real.
Scott (Josh Vokey)
has also emerged as a stealth delight: Now that Delphine (Evelyne
Brochu) is off doing something or other for Dyad, Scott’s dorky
wonderment has become an entertaining addition to the world of Cosima
and her crunchy-granola celebration of science. As the mysterious Mrs.
S., Maria Doyle Kennedy has always brought a grounded, practical warmth
to the sometimes outlandish “Orphan Black” proceedings. The drama is
something of an advertisement for alternative families, and Mrs. S.
serves as the conflicted but loyal anchor for several of them.
Felix
(Jordan Gavaris), of course, remains the essential emotional glue of
the show, but as was the case with Paul (Dylan Bruce), last season, the
show doesn't consistently know what to do with him. In the first two
episodes of the new season, however, both have some excellent moments.
If “Orphan Black” can shed a little of the narrative tangle that built
up last season and keep supplying heartening, humanistic glimpses of the
connective tissue in its very strange but fiercely loving core family, I
will gladly retain my membership in the clone club.
Season 3
of “Orphan Black” debuts at 9 p.m. ET Saturday on BBC America. Note:
IFC begins a marathon of the first two seasons of "Orphan Black" at
midnight E.T. Friday.
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