'Orphan Black' Season Premiere Recap: Faces (and Wigs) of Death
Of all the tyranny we willingly subject ourselves to — work, dating, Taco Bell — none comes close to the tyranny of our genes. In scientific terms, the human body is a NIGHTMARE and there is nothing we can do about that. Equal parts wondrous and flawed, our genes constantly undermine our best intentions, squash our dreams, and sometimes outright murder us. Try as we might to convince ourselves we’re in control of our bodies, we aren’t and never will be, which is why a show like Orphan Black is so important: The female clones of this world share the same genes but are, psychologically, vastly different, and actively work to transcend that tyranny at every turn. Some are geeks, some have working class British accents, some are trans men with mullets. But all are subject to their genes’ ultimate downfall: An insatiable addiction to trouble! And as this week’s Season 3 premiere proved, their troubles have only just begun.
Related: Secrets and Clones: 5 Things We Learned on the 'Orphan Black’ Set
The power of Orphan Black’s first season lay in its thrill of discovery (“OMG another new clone?”) and the idea that nefarious intentions lurk behind every glowing surface, but by the end of Season 2 we’d learned too much about what was going on to be properly surprised anymore. That’s when Orphan Black left shock value behind for something richer: Heartfelt emotion. Not since Battlestar Galactica — Orphan Black’s closest cousin when it comes to existentialist pulp — has a show shifted so quickly away from villains’ secret plots and into the multilayered struggles even the bad guys must contend with. So nearly every villain, including Rachel and especially Helena, became sympathetic. Orphan Black no longer has to surprise us with insanity now that it can capitalize on twenty episodes’ worth of character building.
That being said, “The Weight of This Combination” was straight-up insane. There was a talking scorpion that sounded like Marcel the Shell With Shoes On.
There was a scene where a woman stuck her finger into another woman’s eyeless socket. There was a naked man doing pull-ups. And oh, the wigs, the wigs! And it all began with a dream sequence that recalled the suburban scenes from Edward Scissorhands: A backyard barbecue in which a visibly pregnant Helena kicked it with Felix (in a tennis sweater!) and Cosima (in traditional Ukrainian garb!) while Alison served cupcakes. Yes, it’s usually a narrative cheat when a story begins with a dream sequence, but this one wasn’t about misdirection, it was more a check-in with how fractured Helena’s mental health had become. At some point in Season 2 Helena became the show’s most fascinating and sympathetic character, so to see her wake up from this backyard reverie only to find herself trapped in a wooden box with a talking scorpion was as poignant as it was nightmarish. This show!
Related: 'Orphan Black’ Season Premiere Review: More Clones, Less Satisfying?
Above all else, this season premiere doubled down on its most classic theme: The theme of forcing Tatiana Maslany into more and more ludicrously complex performances. For example, in this episode we came the closet we’ve ever come yet to a Mrs. Doubtfire moment, when she was forced to impersonate Rachel (aka The Lacefront Clone) to convince the scary Topside “cleaner” to not burn down DYAD and murder all the clones… Only to have the “cleaner” immediately demand to see Sarah. Fortunately Alison never passes up a spotlight, so next thing we knew she was impersonating Sarah in front of Sarah (who did not appreciate Alison’s liberal use of “oy, oy”). So yes, all these double-layered performances meant Maslany was as A+ as ever. But the Sarah-as-Rachel storyline culminated with her having to essentially seduce the “cleaner” in the attempt to discover where Helena had been abducted to. Because, oh yeah, that’s another of Orphan Black’s best themes: The unquestionable loyalty these core four clones have toward each other. Think about it, in this show’s timeline, only weeks earlier Sarah and Helena had tried to murder each other, but now Sarah’s putting her life on the line to keep Helena safe? That’s just how these sisters roll.
But as we quickly learned, Season 3 promises to be about more than just sisters: Brothers gonna work it out, too! By that I mean, of course, the male clones who were developed in parallel to the females by a different military organization. We’ve already met a few variations on this particular set of genes, first runaway Prolethean Mark, and now naked pull-up guy as well as mean mustache guy. (Without wigs it’s going to be a bit harder to tell male clones apart, right? The mustaches and nudity were very helpful.) But whereas Sarah and her sisters were all vastly different from the jump, all of these guys seem to have at least one thing in common: They’re nuts? Yeah, they all seem very murdery, which is why it was a major stroke of genius to bestow this acting responsibility upon Ari Millen, who is as much a future superstar as Maslany. It’s obviously too soon to say what exactly these male clones are up to, or to whom they answer if anybody, but at episode’s end it certainly appeared that mean mustache guy and naked pull-up guy are working together against the female clones somehow (we saw security footage of them attempting to kidnap a new Maslany clone). Honestly can’t wait to see how this plays out.
Beyond those things, “The Weight of this Combination” served as a check-in for where the rest of the characters were at in their journeys. Cosima’s still coughing on Felix’s apartment floor, Kira’s still accidentally uncovering plot devices (will that nitrogen-cooled tank of embryos Helena left behind somehow lead to Cosima’s cure?), Siobhan’s still betraying Sarah but with good intentions, and Felix is still getting caught up in other people’s drama (his makeover of Sarah to Rachel was probably his shining moment). But Delphine is the most drastically changed for having taken over Rachel’s role at DYAD, and her ruthlessness has suddenly begun coming to the fore. First she dumped Cosima, then she tortured a brain-damaged Rachel by sticking her thumb in her eye socket. In other words, Delphine is NOT f–king around. For now she claims she’s doing it for the good of the clones, but how long until she gets too power hungry to help them anymore?
Meanwhile, aside from her stint as Sarah, Alison spent most of the episode with suburban issues like coaching a soccer team and mulling a run for School Board. As for Paul, he was nowhere to be found. When can we expect to see Paul? When will his inevitable nude scene occur? We’re just going to have to wait.
“The Weight of this Combination” was a truly fun and promising start to Season 3. More concerned with ushering us out of last season’s cliffhangers than overwhelming us with new story-points, it still gave us just enough to get excited about for the future. As always, it’s an absolute pleasure to see Maslany inhabit these characters so thoroughly, and the show’s touching reliance on insane concepts remains as addictive as ever. It’s a comfort to know that after two seasons of everything-but-the-kitchen-sink storytelling the writers clearly haven’t exhausted their brainstorming capabilities yet. Orphan Black is one of the weirdest, most complicated and human stories on TV, on an almost genetic level. If there’s one thing we can count on it’s that it’ll never be boring.
What did you think of Orphan Black’s season premiere?
Orphan Black airs Saturdays at 9 p.m. on BBC America.
