Orphan Black

If you are lucky enough to have no idea what Orphan Black is about, don’t hit the jump. But do tune into the inevitable marathon that will take place before season 2 kicks off April 19. Orphan Black is one of those shows that, the less you know about it going in, the better. When I first watched, I hadn’t heard anything more than one little tweet about it, and even that contained what I now consider a spoiler.

I love a pilot that surprises you and makes you go, “Where is this going?” If you’re into suspense, amazing acting and East London accents, you’ll like this show.

We meet Sarah (Tatiana Maslany) asleep on a train, startled awake at the announcement of her stop. She makes a call from a pay phone, letting the person on the other end know she’s back in town. Then she notices a woman standing a little way down the platform, stepping out of her high heels. The woman looks like a more posh version of Sarah. She moves slowly, building suspense, then calmly and deliberately steps off the platform into the path of an oncoming train.

Beyond that, I won’t recap the plot, since you’re better off seeing for yourself. On re-watching the pilot, after seeing the full season, I noticed a few things I didn’t the first time. For just a second, as  Sarah grabs Beth’s purse from the platform, we see her through the “eye” of the security camera. I didn’t remember that she was caught on camera until Art finally views the footage about a million episodes later — which made me wonder then, and even more now, why didn’t anyone look at that footage sooner?

Another thing I noticed is that the name Maggie Chen is repeated several times. We’re thinking that it was the act of shooting a civilian that’s important to Beth’s story, not who she shot. We still don’t know much about Maggie by the end of the season, but it becomes increasingly clear that Beth shot her for some specific reason.

Learning about Beth the first time around I, like Sarah, was dazzled by the possibility for Sarah to take over the life of this Beth. Beth was apparently doing well financially, had a gorgeous home, a gorgeous boyfriend, and you know, firearms. Watching again later I noticed Felix noticing the hints of a dark side to Beth, or as he puts it, “She’s well dodgy.” For a good portion of the episodes I was so concerned about what would happen to Sarah, and then to the other living clones, I honestly sort of lost track of Beth’s role in the whole thing… which is awesome.

Speaking of Felix’s delightful brand of dry, English humor, I love this:

Vic: I keep seeing her face.

Felix: Yeah, me too.