Orphan Black on BBC America

Cafe Society
41

Very efficient story-telling at work here, the Maggie Chen shooting set up some great scenes early on when Sarah realized just what a mess her little scam had gotten her into (the inquest, having to memorize the case file), now it’s being used to deepen the mystery and advance the plot. Good stuff.

After confirmation of Alison’s kids being adopted, and her surprise at learning that Sarah’s was biological, and references to the status of “original” in Sarah’s last scene with Helena, I bet TBG was right and Sarah is the original, and the only fertile one.

And that was a very nice touch, a quick embellishment that really drove home how high the stakes had gotten. Nice, solid writing here.

42

I have nothing of substance to add, only that I’ve been absolutely loving this show, and I think everyone should be watching it. I’m extremely impressed with Tatiana Maslany, and I think the writers are doing a fantastic job of developing the plot and fleshing out all the characters. And as I write “all the characters”, I’m reminded that most of them are being played by one person, which is surprisingly easy to forget, because they’re all so well-defined. So far, it’s a near-perfect balance of fast-paced excitement and emotional depth, and unfolds in a very plausible fashion. After having nearly screamed myself hoarse watching The Walking Dead (“No! Nooooo! Wait, what? WHY?! Are you fucking kidding me? Who would DO that?! NO! Just fucking TELL them what you’re THINKING, fer chissakes!”) it’s a real relief to be able to just lose myself in the story, and enjoy watching the characters do more or less exactly what I would do if I were them.

43

It’s clearly Toronto. There is a red TTC street car in the background. She says “Scarbourough? That’s practically local” (Scarborough is part of Toronto, but was once considered a suburb). It is in fact filmed in Toronto (in front of my office at one point), and clearly takes place there.

44

I’m quite pleased that this is turning out to have better writing, acting, and more substance than I feared at first. I look forward to more episodes.

45

I don’t like this whole “boyfriends/husbands” are handlers (monitors, whatever) thing. Though I wonder if soccer dad is just a red herring. Maybe he was burning something other than clone stuff. On the down low, maybe? Seriously, who has that many copies of Big Boob Blowies laying around in the age of the intarwebs, other than someone trying to fake it?

46

I’m guessing red herring, but it could go either way. I think there was only one copy of Big Boob Blowies*. I’m assuming it was an obvious attempt to throw Alison off the track - he didn’t know she had already found his porn stash and thought by planting it with the lock conveniently open she’d be satisfied that was what he was hiding. But I’m still guessing red herring - planting a boyfriend is one thing, a husband would be fifty times more difficult. What agent in the real world would commit to such a thing for years with kids and everything?

More likely it is something prosaic like white-collar crime or a collapsing business or some such. Which is a cliche in of itself, but far more plausible than a husband-handler. Not to say the writers won’t go there. But they shouldn’t and so far they haven’t written stupid. Though for some reason I think it’d be a nice little twist if Mrs. S was a handler herself, if still pretty implausible.

  • Worst fake porn title ever. I’ll blame the writers for that one at least ;).
47

Very compelling episode, a choking atmosphere of paranoia settling in for Sarah, Alison, and even Cosima. The show continues to exceed my expectations.

A middle-aged guy, perhaps uncomfortable with the internet, and with a tightly-wound spouse who probably examines his browsing history might stick with well-hidden DVDs.

Failing business or some kind of fraud or scam was my guess as well. It is a cliche, but it supports the desperate paranoia that defined this episode. Also, it seems like Alison had always been a wide remove from the danger and chaos of the clone stuff, she kicked in money, but Beth handled everything else. Now, in a single episode, she’s frantically searching her house, trying to break into her husband’s lockbox, planting a camera, and having to deal with her clone’s agitated ex-boyfriend (laughed at loud at Alison carrying pepper spray and a stungun, and presumably one of her handguns. Girl is thorough!). She’s in the fray, now! I’d say Cosima is next, she’s also been comfortably detached, running bloodwork and suchlike. No one gets to be halfway in anymore.

48

german-katje
corn rows-cosima

wiki has an article up now and it discusses the nyc/britain/canada/where the hell confusion.

I think the likeliest explanation of her mimic ability and hand/eye co-ordination is she has obviously lived as a grifter, these are essential skills for such a lifestyle. It also explains her consistent attempts ro bail as beth (she would have quit right away had art not taken her money) first rule of a good con is get in and gtfo asap.

49

Also, confirmation that Beth was also infertile, so it appears that Sarah is special.

Another example of efficient writing: Sarah’s daughter isn’t just there to make her likeable and give a mechanism for redemption, she’s part of the plot as well.

50

Even soccer mom seemed incredulous at that title! :smiley:

51

Another strong episode, an appealing mix of comedy-of-errors with the Alison/Sarah switching; and desperate paranoia, with Alison interrogating her hapless husband, Paul seemingly deciding than anyone who knows anything that might threaten him needs to die, and Cosima being introduced to what appears to be transhumanist cult.

Happy to see Matt Frewer, always been a big fan of his.

52

Heh, I really liked the torture scene with the home-craft impliments. The Mom* holding up the multi-colored plastic scissors in a threatening manner.

Also the lead actress is really good at playing multiple parts. When Sarah was pretending to be the Mom, she really seemed to be Sarah pretending to be the Mom, instead of being indistinguishable from herself actually playing the Mom role, if that makes any sense.

*(I’m terrible at remembering character names, so I’m sticking with the capitalized job description naming scheme for the clones).

53

Yeah, she’s really good at making each character her own character, even when impersonating one of the others.

She does have help, though. When she was on the Nerdist she said something about having someone on set pointing it out if she does something as one character that is really more like one of the others. Makes sense, would be hard to keep all that straight by yourself.

54

I’m surprised Sarah gave Donnie a pass as a monitor. Clearly he’s Allison’s. Remember the scene with him burning stuff in the woods while talking on the phone? Maybe it was evidence of an affair, but clearly not the one he confessed to, so even if Al knew him since HS, he’s still under suspicion as far as I’m concerned.

Paul was ready to off Sarah until she told him about the clone program. Sarah saw how he reached for one bottle and then put it back for another in the closing scene. That was the one that was doped. And I’m sure the conversation with his boss (can’t remember the name) was to give him an out for her apparent suicide.

But now he can turn the tables on his superiors if he can get evidence of these experiments. I get the feeling that he’s a slave to them and wants out. If so, it’s an enemy of my enemy situation and Sarah may have an ally.

55

I assumed he just had a friend he’d confieded his affair to, and was talking to him about his attempts to hide it from his wife while he burned the letters. Its hard to believe he could’ve been recruited as a monitor as a HS student (recall Paul only started to watch Beth two years ago).

56

Yes, but Delphine is Cosima’s new monitor - or so we presume. If that’s right, it’s fair to assume that they’re open to rotating people in and out of the position.

However you may be right. I don’t recall the exact dialog but my guess is that if I went back to listen again it would probably be ambiguous.

edit: the point being that these people have probably been monitored for a very long time, possibly their entire lives. Which now makes wonder about Sarah. Clones don’t just slip through the cracks so to say - especially ones that are ‘special’ in some sense. I wonder if we need to re-assess the role of the step mother.

57

I suspect that multiple organizations are aware of and are taking an interest in the Orphans (what my DVR description calls the clones). There’s their creators, which included Maggie Chen, a radical religious sect that Maggie Chen joined and seemingly brought up Helena, and I assume that Delphine and the Neolution cult are yet a third.

Here it is:

And here’s what he confessed to Allison:

So, either he was talking to someone other than Jennie, or he’s lying about not knowing about her fate. He could be a monitor, but I doubt it. He’s very convincing as a shlubby husband, it would take some amazing commitment to stick with this for so many years.

I think we’ll find out that something changed recently, and the monitoring and such is all fairly new.

58

Thanks for the Donnie quote from the woods. I could have sworn there was more too it though. Now I’m going to have dl and listen again myself. Don’t be offended. I need to reconcile some internal accounting.

I flexible. However if you’re going to make the argument for recent monitoring, what is the rationale. What would be special about this stage of “clone life” that would require it as opposed to all of the previous stages where they could have permitted them such free reign that one of them - Sarah - even got “misplaced?”

59

I was fast forwarding with my DVR, if they intercut it with other scenes I might have missed part of it. I’ll double check.

We don’t know yet, but I suspect we will learn more about the creation of the clones soon, and the organization(s?) behind it.

The confirmed monitor, Paul, is wildly different from anything in Allison, Sarah, or Cosima’s lives. Paul is a) a recent addition to the clone’s life, b) a competent, trained handler, with a military background, and c) was unable to fool Beth. If one organization had been carrying out lifelong monitoring, I’d expect them to use similar strategies with every clone. Either monitors would be short-term like Paul, or life-long. Instead, we have either a mix (Mrs. S and Donnie = long term, Paul & Delphine= short term), or only Beth being monitored in that way. I vote for the latter, but we need more information.

ETA: Recall that Helena was ready to kill Sarah-as-Beth, but not Sarah, and told her that they had a connection. That supports the idea that the different clones are treated differently, by at least one agent of one organization.

60

HA: don’t waste your time. That was the only scene. I just have an internal accounting log that indicates more dialog. It would appear I’m wrong. Ha! What are the odds of that! (approaching unity most likely, but let’s not get into THAT discussion :wink: )

I don’t think you have to choose between long and short term monitoring. In fact, there are even scenarios that could account for the sloppy handling of individual clones. I’m just going to think out loud here for sec. (you were warned)

Clones are, IIRC, created by taking the nucleus from an adult cell of the original organism and inserting into a specially prepared egg cell so that it divides and develops into a normal embryo. This means that you will need a different cell from the original for each clone.

Alternatively, I think that if you intercede in the development of a normal embryo before it has undergone more than 2 or 4 cell divisions you can also split the embryo and create 2 from the original, but I might be making that up. That might have more to do with stem cell therapy. I don’t remember.

Assuming that you’re going to need a new nucleus for every clone, there are going to be slight variations such as epigenetic markers, mistakes in DNA transcription, histone damage (what the DNA helix is coiled around for storage and which plays a role in transcription), etc. So there will be slight variations between clones that won’t show up on a DNA test. Such tests only look at a very small set of highly variable markers which would likely still be identical. Plus, things like epigenetic changes and non-nuclear DNA damage (e.g., mitochondrial DNA) wouldn’t show up.

So one possibility is that the person who was cloned was the subject of research by multiple labs all over the world - each running their own tests. They would have harvested cells that they thought would have provided nuclei with the least damaged DNA to work with. Each would have had their own protocols for preparing the egg cell to induce cell division. Each would have their own protocols for follow-up.

Under such a scenario, it’s easy to imagine that a program in one country may have become exposed, orphaned and then covered up - say the one in the UK for example. It’s also easy to imagine that even if the programs remained in place over the decades that the research priorities might have changed warranting greater or lesser degrees of scrutiny.

However it seems that we are being lead to believe that this is a private effort. Paul being ex-military would be consistent with that since private contracting is a huge market for ex-mil types after they leave service. That leaves us with some rather less palatable alternative though in my opinion since the implication then would be some overarching global conspiracy on the order of the Illuminati or the like. Either that or some alliance of similarly shady organizations. I’m not sure I see an alternative there unless they are the modern day successors to some defunct Cold War era program.