Orphan Black: Endless Forms Most Beautiful, review
The Season Finale already? Can't we have another ten episodes first? Please BBC?
Goodbye Sarah, you jumbled up bunch of brave angst.Goodbye Alison, we will miss your suburbanly sassy way of macing and hot gluing people.Goodbye Cosima, we will miss your glasses and dirty science talk.Goodbye Helena, we will miss um your… um… please don’t hurt me.Goodbye Beth, no one can catch a train quite like you.Goodbye Felix, you scampy little fabulous sex cake.
So here we are at the end of Orphan Black, an unexpected goldmine of tense drama, horror, sensuality, comedy, and gutsy storytelling. Graeme Manson and John Fawcett have created a rich world filed with overwhelming beauty and intense ugliness to tell the story of a group of cloned women, each trying to find the truth about their creations while overcoming their own personal demons. As has been covered ad nauseum but always with mentioning again, is the stunning work of Tatiana Maslany, who honestly feels like she is five or six different entities every episode.On to this week’s episode, which saw the continuations of each clones’ story arc, one which ends in an abrupt and violent fashion. This episode saw the climax to Helena’s story at the hands of Sarah. It was revealed last week that Helena was actually Sarah’s biological sister, with both being carried to term by their newly revealed surrogate mother, Amelia. Helena, raised under the auspices of religious zealots, considers clones to be abominations and believes herself to be the original. When she finds out she was just another unholy creation of science gone mad, let’s just say she doesn’t react well, and in one of the show’s best twists so far, violently confronts Amelia, who came to see Sarah with a warning about Mrs. S. This leads to the final showdown between Sarah and Helena. The confrontation with Helena is one of the great character defining moments for Sarah, as she only recently found out she has a sister. From the beginning, even when Sarah was a woman who existed primarily for her selfish appetites, the only thing that seemed important to Sarah beyond the self was her family. She was defined by her love for Felix and Kira, and here she was, in a situation where she had to destroy her sister. But, Helena made the mistake of harming Sarah’s birth mother, a woman she had always dreamed of knowing. Helena’s tale is one of tragedy as it was random chance that put her into the hands of her religious tormentors. Amelia gave one child to an organization that saves refugee children and the other to a convent in the Ukraine. Sarah could just have easily been Helena, yet now, Sarah was tasked with destroying Helena. Exit one clone, enter another, as this episode introduces Rachael, a clone working for Neugenetics which is reaching out to help the clones financially, medically, and emotionally in return for periodic medical testing. Sarah is tempted to join Rachael, as is Alison and Cosima for their own reasons. Sarah wants to protect her daughter, Alison wants to put an end to being watched and protect her children, and Cosima, tragically, it is revealed Cosima is infected by a serious lung ailment predicated by the experiment that created her. After her decisive confrontation with Helena, Sarah actually goes to join Rachael and her company. Until, Cosima makes a startling discovery with the help of the woman who once betrayed her, Delphine. Cosima and Delphine discover that if the clones agree to join with Rachael and her company the company will legally own their genetic coding, including Kira. This is something Sarah can never have, and backs out, which causes Rachael to make a mysterious phone call, presumably to Sarah’s watcher. When Sarah returns home, Mrs. S is gone, her apartment in shambles, and Kira is missing. Viewers are led to believe, through Amelia’s warning, that Mrs. S was a watcher.Sarah is now left at a crossroads, as one of the few women she trusted has taken what is most precious to her. Trust issues are consuming another clone, as Alison tries to figure out whether to join Rachael so her family will be left alone. Alison, thinking herself free, notices her neighbor Ainsely, who she assumes to be her watcher and whom she had a violent confrontation with a few episodes ago is moving. Alison goes over to make sure Ainsley is really leaving when the two continue their verbal sparring. Suddenly, Ainsely gets caught in her trash disposal unit and chokes to death with Alison watching on. Alison, so paranoid about the idea of a watcher, willingly lets her supposed watcher die. This finally frees Alison from the scrutiny that so paralyzes her, until her husband goes for an uncharacteristic jog and meets with Dr. Leakee, revealing himself to have been the watcher all along.The show leaves viewers with a crossroads for the three remaining clones, more than one for Sarah actually, as she is still the target of a police investigation by her former faux partner, Art. Sarah’s daughter is gone, Alison is essentially a murderer, and Cosima seems to be dying. Sarah has gone from selfish con artist to beleaguered heroine, a new status that will be tested by the abduction of her daughter, and it seems Alison and Cosima won’t be in any condition to help her.It will be a long year before viewers find out what happens to our darling clones, but while they wait, they can take solace in the fact that the BBC has done it again and given fans a new and daring sci-fi experience. The sci-fi and genre TV scene is crowded, but Orphan Black stands out as one of the elite, smartest and ballsiest shows on television.
The Good:
Another clone, another look for MaslanyI was so right about Mrs. SAinsley will finally shut the f*** up
The Bad:
I can’t oogle Cosima for another yearNo more Matt Smith. What, it’s BBC, it’s relevant!
Written by
Marc Buxton is an English teacher/private tutor by day,and a super-hyper-uber geek by night. Marc spent six years on the frontlines as a comic retailer before…