‘Orphan Black’ Is Truly a Family Affair

Although it’s a show about clones, Orphan Black is, like all great science fiction, really a show about what it means to be human. The third season of Orphan Black offers a deeper consideration than the previous two of the value of family, the lengths individuals will go to for those they love, and how we forgive family when they wrong us.

Certainly, the first two seasons engaged these themes, most often through the ongoing “protect Kira” storyline. However, in the third season, Sarah (Tatiana Maslany) finally makes the smart choice to send her daughter Kira (Skyler Wexler) into hiding and away from the clone club madness. In the absence of the easy “protect the child” narrative, the series is able to explore this theme in far richer ways during its third season.

Orphan Black’s third season offers a wealth of examples of the extremes to which individuals in extraordinary circumstances will go in order to protect their loved ones — betraying others, sacrificing themselves, or even breaking loved ones’ hearts. More so than seasons one and two, season three is about the intertwined joy and heartache of family.

Midway through the season, Alison (Maslany) gives a rousing campaign speech as she runs for a local school board position. She passionately argues that, “Sometimes family is more than just the people under your roof. They’re people who jump in head first, who aren’t afraid to make fools of themselves to help you, who don’t hide their faces in shame if you fall down.” Alison is using a “school district as family” metaphor for the political debate because the major point of difference between her and her primary opponent is rezoning the school district.

However, the series clearly indicates that the metaphor is applicable across the series. Alison’s speech is intercut with a conversation between Sarah and her foster mother, Siobhan Saddler (Maria Doyle Kennedy). Siobhan explains that she and Helena have reached an agreement: Helena will forgive Siobhan’s choice to trade her to the Castors in exchange for Sarah and Kira’s safety, and Helena will fully accept her place in the larger clone club family—not just as Sarah’s maternal twin or a sister clone, but as part of an extended group that includes foster parents and siblings, spouses, nieces and nephews, and close friends. Indeed, this episode marks a turning point from which many of the ties within this complicated family are strengthened.

The scenes that frame the season clearly indicate this emphasis on strengthening family. The first episode starts with a beautiful dream sequence in which Helena (Maslany) imagines her clone sisters Sarah, Alison, and Cosima (Maslany) throwing her a baby shower. As a dream sequence from Helena’s perspective, this opening scene is both a little off and right on target in imaging the clones as family. While Helena’s perceptions of her sestras in the dream are exaggerated — Alison as an uber-’50s housewife, Sarah at her most punk rock, and Cosima bizarrely costumed in what is presumably a traditional Ukrainian peasant dress — the familial camaraderie and laughter Helena imagines are enacted in reality as the season’s closing scene.

However, the closing family dinner celebrating Alison’s campaign also includes those closest to the clones: Alison’s husband Donnie (Kristian Bruun); Sarah’s foster brother and friend to all the sister clones, Felix (Jordan Gavaris); Cosima’s lab partner, Scott (Josh Vokey); and Art (Kevin Hanchard), the police detective Sarah partnered with while pretending to be Beth (Maslany), the clone that pulled Sarah into the complicated world of the clone club. Throughout the season, each of these non-clone individuals repeatedly demonstrates his allegiance to the clones and membership in the family that extends beyond this group of genetically-identical sisters.

The complicated, sometimes contradictory nature of family is also explored through the major plot developments of this season, especially the introduction of the Castor male clone line (Ari Miller). Unlike the Leda female clones, who were raised in vastly different settings to explore the impact of nurture on their development, the Castor clones were raised as a group and as soldiers.

As is discussed in depth in the DVD extra “Creating the Castor Clones”. Maslany is able to help differentiate the female clones through accents, radically different hairstyles, and application of varied cosmetics, in part because they are female, and in part because they all grew up in different circumstances. In contrast, the male clones were raised in the same environment, one that privileges American military male gender norms. As a result, Miller’s male clones’ differences must be much more subtle. These variations are achieved through some use of make-up (Rudy has a very distinctive scar, Seth has a mustache, etc.), but mostly through Miller’s ability to imbue the various Castor clones with different mannerisms, postures, and vocal inflections.

While Maslany’s Emmy-nominated powerhouse performance as at least ten different clones is a hard act to follow, Miller successfully delivers an equally talented performance as the psychotic Rudy, the not-terribly bright Seth, the medical test subject Parsons who begs Helena to kill him, the good soldier Miller, and the sensitive undercover operative Mark, whose love for his wife causes him to betray both his brothers and the “mother” who raised them.

The DVD of this season also includes several extras that are fascinatingly informative and delightfully fun in turn, all of which offer more insight into this season. “The Look of Orphan Black” explores the subtle color and lighting choices made to help reinforce the differences between Maslany’s clone sisters, ranging from an emphasis on monochromatic colors as a reflection of Rachel’s icy demeanor, the gritty blacks and greens of Sarah’s world, to the earthy browns and yellows used to characterize Cosima and her grounded-ness. “The Rendition Camp: Behind the Walls” explores how the series was able to create the feel of a hot, desert environment for the rendition camp in which Helena and Sarah are held — all while filming on an indoor sound stage in the depths of a Canadian winter. “Team Hendrix: Rockin’ the Suburbs” offers insight into the comedic element that Alison and Donnie’s pseudo-mundane suburban storylines provide, in vivid contrast to the intense storylines about a clone conspiracy driven by shadowy government programs and corrupt corporate moguls.

The highlight of the extras, by far, however, is “At Home with the Hendrixes,” a music video-like, extended sequence in which Alison and Donnie dance — clad only in their far-from-sexy, average, cotton, fruit-of-the-looms — in piles of ill-gotten money from their burgeoning prescription drug-dealing business venture.

Although some of the season’s twists are unsurprising — the relationships between the two clone lines, for example — the season still delivers its fair share of unexpected revelations, and offers an inventive outcome to the two clone line’s quests to find their original genetic material. Orphan Black’s third season accomplishes this while continuing to weave variations throughout its ten episodes on the hard choices we all might be called upon to make for our families. Overall, Orphan Black’s third season offers a captivating evolution of the series’ story and characters’ development, while deepening the show’s exploration of the limits and limitlessness of family.