I don’t understand all of the hubabaloo over the second season of “Orphan Black,” and furthermore, it’s disappointing that so many viewers are not holding this show to a higher bar, demanding that it get it’s writing in shape.
Because it’s a great concept: Street girl on the run, steals the identity of a suicide victim who happens to look similar (ahem, identical), only to discover that said victim was overcome by the pressures of a genetic cloning conspiracy that involves many girls, including our reluctant heroine! I’m in. I’m all in for how to play with that, and the first few episodes are awesome.
But wow, things get off the rails quickly, and the season final could not have been more of a dud, with a preposterous and unmotivated plot device as the clincher for it’s season two cliff-hanger.
I thought for sure that everyone would agree, “What a shame.” I thought wrong.
And the people who are letting some of these enormous issues with the story slide are just inviting more lazy writing to creep in to other shows, it sets a precedent. It gives execs the power to wave a limp wrist at new material that’s leaner, stronger, and say, “eh, sounds too difficult to keep up, dumb it down and circle back to us.”
Come on, people, if we’re going to slide over to a full on media culture, we’ve got to at least have standards, and the biggest standard in storytelling has always been, is, and should continue to be – know where it’s going. “Orphan Black”‘s achilles heel is that it has no clue, it’s just making shit up on the fly to keep tension going, no matter how absurd or melodramatic.
And as a side note, the music in the show drives me crazy. I mean, again, great concept, superb acting by Tatiana Maslany, and the title song fits perfectly with the theme. But you get into the show, and it is seriously like the worst garage-band-royalty-free-loops crap that you could hear, really undermines the efforts of everyone else. And I’m not asking for anything extreme, I’m just saying, with that great theme song, why not use the instruments, melodies, and chords from that, you know, thematically, and just give us variations based on the mood, not scraps from old CSI seasons.
Maybe it’ll get good, shows ebb and flow, but it would certainly help if so many people weren’t already giving it the stamp of “amazing!”…