Orphan Black - Season 2 Discussion

Discussion in 'Science Fiction & Fantasy' started by tomalak301, Apr 17, 2014.

  1. Ar-Pharazon

    Ar-Pharazon Admiral Premium Member

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    This interview (spoilers if you haven't seen episode 210) with the creators doesn't make any guarantees, but they seem to be leaning towards season 3 (on page two).
     
  2. teacake

    teacake Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Oooo!!

    From the above link:

     
  3. neozeks

    neozeks Captain Captain

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    I enjoyed the dance scene a lot more on rewatch. I think the problem I had was that it felt oddly placed into the episode - the first half was all high stakes high tempo stuff with some pretty big and traumatic things happening but then it suddenly abruptly stopped and immediately transitioned into this mellow happy-ish scene without enough time to reorient (at least for me). And it was maybe slightly too long, I wish we instead saw more direct interaction between Helena and the others before she got whisked away again. I don't know, it was a bit too neatly happy for me, but I'm a critical grump. :rommie:

    I wonder if and how they'll manage to integrate Allison into the story next season (please, please, let there be a next season). The mystery/mythology angle really blew up this season and now with the male clones, it seems that's going to continue next season. Can't be easy to tie a soccer mom into all that.
     
  4. Morpheus 02

    Morpheus 02 Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    And best supporting actress...and maybe best supporting actor, too?
     
  5. tomalak301

    tomalak301 Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    That would be hysterical. Best supporting actor for her portrayal of Tony, a character much criticized on the inter webs. :lol:
     
  6. Aldo

    Aldo Admiral Admiral

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    Something I don't understand. I thought Tatania's portrayal of Tony was superb, it's not like she was playing a Male character (even though I know that's what they prefer to be called). In fact i'd love for Tony to show up in Season 3 as a regular character, just to piss off all those fans who caused a stink about him.
     
  7. bigdaddy

    bigdaddy Vice Admiral Admiral

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    That's from here...

    http://tvline.com/2014/06/21/orphan-black-season-3-spoilers-male-clones-rachel-alive-dead/
     
  8. teacake

    teacake Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    WHY would they not renew it :(

    I suppose this happened in 1968 too.
     
  9. Ar-Pharazon

    Ar-Pharazon Admiral Premium Member

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    But, from the interview I posted-

    Again, it isn't a guarantee, but the plan is in place.
     
  10. bigdaddy

    bigdaddy Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Yeah the plan is in place, the plan is always in place. They didn't say anything different in the interview I posted, they are moving ahead but haven't been given the go.

    Why wouldn't they renew it? Why hasn't it been renewed by now is the better question. Season 2 was given the go after only a handful of episodes and during season 2 the ratings have grown.
     
  11. Vendikarr

    Vendikarr Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    I found this on YouTube and just had to share. I never really noticed the characters fascination with food before.

    [yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ioMKD0bJ-Bg[/yt]
     
  12. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

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    Well, it worked for me. I was really scared about her and really relieved when it turned out she was still alive. Yes, it was a fakeout, but it's the kind of fakeout that resonates with very real human fears; when someone is seriously, perhaps terminally ill, you're afraid they may die at any moment, and any setback makes you think "Is this it? Are they going to die right now?" So aside from the silly "Delphine in the light" thing, this was very real to me.


    But Cosima had no idea that Marion was going to help. And it would've made no sense for her to do nothing to try to help Sarah. It wasn't about shock or revenge. This has become a show about family, about sisters doing whatever they can to help each other. Sarah and Kira made enormous sacrifices to try to save Cosima, so of course she had to try to save them too.

    And of course, without this sequence, we wouldn't have had "You won science!"


    They're used to her being erratic and independent, I guess.


    But she's someone who was made into an unhinged killer by men who did terrible, abusive things to her. Sarah has discovered that there's someone in there worth loving, someone who's been victimized worse than any of them and deserves to be saved, and who in a way is more innocent than any of them. And she's no doubt shared that understanding with Cosima and Alison. Cosima accepts Helena readily because, well, she's Cosima. And Alison is a little more wary and hesitant, but these days she doesn't exactly have the moral high ground from which to be judgmental of a killer.



    They couldn't have known all that, but the idea was to give Sarah a fighting chance. They didn't have the resources to mount a guaranteed rescue, so they improvised what they could and hoped for the best.

    Depending on Scott to "take out" Rachel would've been a terrible idea. It's easy to say, but attacking another human being is a more difficult thing to do, both emotionally and logistically, than TV and movies tend to show. It's something most people need to learn how to do, both in terms of the necessary skills and in terms of overcoming the natural human reluctance to inflict harm on other people, and thus it's not a job you'd place in the hands of a friendly lab geek if you could help it. Sarah is a survivor, used to getting by on the streets, and thus she has the edge of a fighter. It makes far more sense to put the weapon in her hands.

    If Rachel hadn't cleared the room, Sarah could still have taken the opportunity to free her hand and fire the shot, and that could've created enough confusion and distraction for her to free her other hand and feet (maybe with Scott's help) and take further action as necessary. It was just a fortuitous chance that it came down to her and Rachel alone.


    Marion may have her own agenda, but she's still part of "Topside" and is probably acting against their wishes in some ways. So maybe she couldn't show her hand too openly. Or maybe she tried to get Sarah freed, but Rachel ran interference and kept the paperwork from clearing.


    But that was nowhere near the finale of that storyline. As I said, hiding a body in their own backyard is a terrible idea, especially when they've got Vic peering in the windows and Angela already suspicious -- and Donnie basically spilling the whole clone thing to Angela. That was very, very far from a resolution -- it was a complication. It's bound to have a lot of consequences next season. So I would've liked to see a bit more acknowledgment that this is far from over.
     
  13. Mr. Adventure

    Mr. Adventure Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Sarah tells Art to use food to get in Helena's good graces and to keep her docile.
     
  14. Ar-Pharazon

    Ar-Pharazon Admiral Premium Member

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    From the first time Sarah met Helena in that restaurant, Helena was an eating machine. Probably due to being raised in a Ukranian orphanage by sadistic nuns.

    When Art called Felix and said someone had shown up and Felix asked who, all Art said was "she's eating". We all should've known who he was talking about before the camera panned over to her and she said "hello sestra brother".
     
  15. Morpheus 02

    Morpheus 02 Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Someone i think here said it might be a timing strategy..so when it's time for Emmy nominations, people will see this news, and actually consider her for voting. And if it gets a 2-season renewal -- that might help A LOT.

    We'll see...i still think John Noble should've gotten an Emmy for his work on Fringe...
     
  16. neozeks

    neozeks Captain Captain

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    It was mostly the Delphine in the light vision that bugged me. Perhaps exploitative was the wrong word but that felt like something added only to please the shippers and combined with the fakeout (which I probably wouldn't have minded that much on its' own) and the possible vague hint that Kira has healing powers (hope not!), it just didn't sit right with me.

    I understand it completely from the PoV of the characters and I enjoyed Cosima taking initiative to help Sarah. I'm looking at it more from a writing angle. Like I said, my problem was:

    1) That it was a needlessly implausible plan. Even if she's sick, Cosima is still smart, have her devise something actually clever and workable!

    2) That it didn't actually contribute much or at all to Sarah's escape. Sarah would have gotten out without that whole part of the episode being in there or not. It feels like it was constructed just to get the scene of the hated villain getting her shocking comeuppance. Which is OK, but Rachel deserves a more meaningful and plausible comeuppance that isn't just "OMG, she got shot in the eye!". ("You don't deserve me any more" was already pretty brutal, even if less flashy. But I guess they also needed something that came directly from Sarah.)

    I loved that scene between Kira and Cosima. I just wish it was a more clever and believable plan.

    I love Helena, she's become my favorite character this season and I want her be happy. So I agree with all of that. I just wish more was explored and shown when it comes to sharing and building that understanding with the other clones.

    I appreciate this line of reasoning but I don't agree with the conclusion. If their goal was to give Sarah the best chance to escape then I think depending on Scott wouldn't have been any more risky than depending on a series of implausible events and an underwhelming contraption. So we come back to that damned thing. Why couldn't it have been some kind of smoke bomb or something more useful like that? Maybe a silly thing to get hung up, I know, but so far OB has been relatively good about not sacrificing story logic too much for cool/shock moments.

    Marion outright said to Sarah: "She's ready. I was just about to get you. You don't have to run. Cal is waiting for you downstairs". She clearly has the power to just let Sarah walk out in plain sight. So it's awfully convenient that she was just a tiny bit late to release her so Sarah could "escape" on her own first. Or that she didn't know or care that Sarah was about to have one of her ovaries removed (wasn't Paul's condition that Sarah doesn't get harmed?). Yeah, it can all be sort of explained in-universe, but why did the writers make that choice?
     
  17. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

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    I don't see that. Since Cosima and Delphine are already in a relationship, I don't see why including a beat reinforcing that relationship is a response to anything or anyone outside the show rather than just an acknowledgment of the relationship that actually exists.


    I didn't get that impression. Granted, Kira's own body heals with amazing speed, but that could be a plausible medical advance; the ability to heal others by the laying on of hands would be a level of fantasy I wouldn't expect from this show.


    But that's exactly what I'm doing. Writing ideally starts from character, not from plot. Plot is formulated to serve character. The writers needed a plot that would give Cosima a role in helping Sarah (and Scott a role in helping Cosima) while also bringing the Rachel-Sarah conflict to a climax and establishing Marion as a possible ally. Yes, perhaps it required some contrivances to serve all those character beats and plot beats in a single sequence, but that's the way it happens sometimes, because the characters' needs shape the plot.


    It's only implausible if you assume that Cosima planned for every detail, and I've already explained the problem with that assumption. It's more likely that her goal was just to give Sarah a weapon, an edge she could then use to get herself out of the fix.

    After all, that's Sarah's characteristic role and the reason she's the lead character: She's the problem-solver, the one who takes the initiative and handles things and gets things done. She's strong and resourceful and adaptable in ways the others aren't. Cosima is an invaluable brain trust, but not a fighter like Sarah; and Alison panics and makes terrible decisions about anything outside her narrow comfort zone. Sarah's the strong and resourceful and adaptable and effective one, so it's reasonable that Cosima's plan would just be to help Sarah help herself.


    It wasn't just about that. It was about giving all the characters a role and a payoff. If Cosima hadn't helped Sarah, her role in the story would've been far more minor and passive, and that would've weakened her. It also would've removed the beat of Kira having a role to play in helping her mother, and that would've been wrong, because Kira has never been a passive presence here and never should be.

    And there had to be a climactic confrontation between Sarah and Rachel, not because of some generic "hated villain" whatever, but because of how these two characters have defined their own conflict. Last season was about mirroring Sarah with Helena, her "evil twin" whose goals were directly opposite her own, and that conflict came to a head in the climax. This season, Helena was pretty much redeemed and Rachel took her place as Sarah's opposite -- mainly because Rachel herself defined it that way. Sarah saw Rachel as the clone who'd been given everything she lacked, but Rachel was the one who was envious of Sarah for having the one thing she couldn't: motherhood. Rachel became obsessed with taking that from Sarah and claiming it for herself. So naturally the climactic confrontation was about the mother whose daughter had been stolen fighting back against the abductor.

    And no, I don't think it was about hate and comeuppance. The show has certainly done much to establish that Rachel is broken and needy in her own way, that her upbringing has warped her as much as Helena's did. And I don't think the injury was chosen to be shocking so much as to be something that could plausibly take her out of action in a fairly decisive way while still allowing for her survival next season.

    Although there is a symbolic aspect of it. Rachel is defined by her precisely calculated facade, the perfect mask she always wears. We've seen the show using fantasy cuts to show the fierce, erratic emotion she hides beneath her prim and proper surface. That appearance of perfection is all-important to her. Scarring that flawless surface is an act that therefore carries a lot of dramatic and symbolic weight.


    A pretty wild dancer too...


    Again, you're totally off-base here. The plan was to depend on Sarah. They didn't know what would happen -- they just tried to get a weapon into the hands of the one person they knew was most qualified to use it effectively. It's no different than if they'd smuggled her a knife. They couldn't predict exactly how that knife would be used, but it would give her options she wouldn't otherwise have had.


    Would that really have been useful? It would've made visibility and breathing as hard for Sarah as for everyone else, so it wouldn't have given her much of an advantage. And Cosima might not have had time to rig something more elaborate than this.

    Although actually I was expecting that the rod itself would be the projectile (with the pencil as just an analogy for it) and that Sarah would use it to break the window and get out. But now that I think about it, I see that that wouldn't have worked, because a device of this sort needs a long enough barrel for the pressure to accelerate a projectile to a high enough speed, so the rod had to be the barrel with a projectile inside.


    Actually I kind of like the idea of a group of characters organizing an elaborate escape and then just running into someone who was going to let them out anyway. It's rather subversive. Not everything in real life is neatly coordinated and meshed, so sometimes you go to great lengths to do something and then discover you didn't have to do it at all.

    (Heck, you might as well ask why they had Rachel defy her orders and let Leekie live if he was just going to get killed a few minutes later anyway. This isn't the first such fakeout the show has done.)

    Indeed, maybe that was the whole point, thematically. Sarah and Cosima and the others assumed that Dyad was the enemy and they had nobody to rely on but themselves -- so it's a big deal when they realize that somebody on the inside is trying to help them after all, that they didn't really need to do it all themselves. I agree that could've been played better, though; the audience had already seen Marion agree to help Sarah, so it wasn't as big a surprise moment as it could've been.
     
  18. neozeks

    neozeks Captain Captain

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    I don't think it's very likely either, indeed that would be far too fantastical, but I've already seen some people speculate about it.

    I have no problem with that at all. I just think Cosima would have been able to come up with a better weapon and a better edge to give Sarah, one that doesn't fall apart under all except the most specific circumstances.

    Ok, not "just that" but I still feel like the writers started with "wouldn't it be cool if we impaled Rachel with a pencil" and then worked backwards from that.

    Again, no problem with giving Cosima agency. My problem is that Cosima and Kira didn't actually help (or need to help) Sarah in the end at all, at least not without some huge contrivances about Marion's actions. And that's why I feel like that was only a secondary concern.

    Agreed that a Sarah/Rachel confrontation was a logical choice for the story. But I specifically said a meaningful confrontation because I found it so underwhelming. Basically, Sarah just pulled the trigger and got incredibly lucky. In contrast to that, their confrontation in the first episode was awesome because it required incredible skill and bravery on Sarah's part and because its' climactic point was Sarah beating Rachel at her own game - dominating her by showing her resolve and strength of will. In contrast to that, this was just a moment of pure "take that!" violence.

    I don't see how a billion other possible injuries wouldn't have had the same effect. Say, if it was a smoke bomb/explosion as I suggested earlier, she could have gotten burned or something. This seems like far too specific a choice.

    This, I like. And agree with. And it comes back to the whole "nobody lays hand on me" thing from their first confrontation.

    Yes, they depended on Sarah but they also depended on Sarah being able to successfully use a highly impractical weapon (a knife would have actually been way better!). And my contention was that the likelihood of that was smaller than the likelihood of Scott being able to overcome his natural non-fighter nature in order to incapacitate Rachel himself. We already saw he successfully smuggled a weapon inside the room (and smuggled himself in too, was he even supposed to be there?) so he's clearly capable of subterfuge and being cunning.

    In a room full of people, which was the likely scenario, yeah, I'd say it would be a LOT more useful. It would certainly have created way more confusion and commotion and as you yourself said, Sarah's strength is that she's more resourceful and adaptable than others, especially in complicated split-second situations. And it's not like Scott couldn't have slipped her a mask or something. As for time, Cosima could have had as much time as the writers wanted to give her.

    I actually thought at first that Kira would use whatever Cosima had made to break that window/mirror in her room, crawl out, find Sarah and help her escape. But maybe that's a bit too implausible for a child character. Then again, Kira's been shown as very capable, much like her mother.

    That's a good point. But I think the constructed/too-convenient nature of the event undermines the subversive character too much. At least for me.

    I think they should have explicitly shown that Marion was trying to get her out but Rachel was stonewalling her in order to get just enough time for one final act of revenge on Sarah. And Marion should have helped Sarah just as Sarah was about to get caught and done it in a way that was more hidden and subtle than just "oh, just walk to the lobby, take your time". That way Cosima's and Scott's contribution would be meaningful (they would help save Sarah from Rachel) but Marion's actions wouldn't seem so convenient and illogical.
     
    Last edited: Jun 24, 2014
  19. Mister Fandango

    Mister Fandango Fleet Captain

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    I just dig eye-patches on my villains. So I'm glad they went that route. And if she does end up with a false eye instead, I will be quite cross. Quite cross, indeed.
     
  20. neozeks

    neozeks Captain Captain

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    Maybe she becomes a Neolutionist and gets a fancy cybernetic eye?