Orphan Black/Agents of SHIELD
Nov. 9th, 2013 09:25 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shallownessCaught up on the last two episodes of Orphan Black
1.9 Unconscious Selection
Again with the totally bonkers but compelling ending. I was almost buying that Amelia was Sarah’s birth mother as I normally would understand the term, but surrogate makes more sense. Speaking of sense, Sarah and Helena being twin clones is dramatically satisfying, given all they’ve been through and that they can’t kill each other, but not in other ways. Which country did Amelia give birth in, for example, because Ukranian nuns seems a way off from ‘the black’ that ended up in Brixton? It sort of demeans the relationship with the other clones, too.
Rewinding to the start of the ep, I am minded to think that Kira has enhanced healing abilities. (My daughter is NOT a lizard!) I wonder how long Sarah can hold out from letting her daughter’s DNA be tested.
I’d like to actually see more of Allison and her children, because the contrast with Sarah would be interesting and seeing the stakes for her. We needed the comedy of her interaction with Felix and Ainsley, and aww, Kira has all these protective aunties to back up her fierce mother and foster mother and uncle.
Glad Cosima is up to speed, and I’d like to see her join the gang (it would be fun to see her try to play the others or the others try to play her). I liked how complicated things ended up with Delphine. Even the fact that Maslany’s voice was hoarse for Cosima’s scenes worked for the character.
As for Leekie, I wouldn’t hand someone over to be ‘deprogrammed’- let alone poor, damaged dangerous Helena, although I have no good answers for how to handle her - and apart from a vague promise of answers, what had he put on the table for Sarah, really? I think it was the memory of her daughter’s disappointed pout and the echo of when Helena spared her that stopped Sarah from shooting Helena, and for her own ability to look at herself in the mirror, I’m glad.
So, Art and the cops know. Well, Sarah had no reason to be loyal to him. Ditto. Beth was the one he had a connection to. It was good that we went right back to the beginning of the story as far as we were concerned in seeing the train platform footage. It’s interesting how Beth has become a real person to us and Sarah.
I wonder if they will come over this side of the pond, based on what Mrs S was saying about stuff kicking off in London –also, was the vaguely English lady in a bob on the phone to Leekie Maslany/another clone?
1.10 Endless Forms Most Beautiful
Ahahahahahahahah.
So, some of my assumptions from the last episode were TOTALLY upended, while other things remained constant – I’d back Sarah the survivor in a fight, Allison is probably the craziest.
But...so...and...
Allison! You let that woman die because you were too paranoid to see the truth of her ignorance of Leekie!! (I had been convinced she was the monitor from the last episode, but no, she was just weird.) Whoa, even if it would be hard to put the clone genie back in the bottle, that’s a step up from torturing Donnie.
Cosima! Geeking out. I am sad that they’ve made her sick, and I feel that it happened a leeetle too quickly, although it ties her in to the German. Is it something that all the clones will face or is it tied into becoming self-aware? However, yay her for cracking the code chez Felix, the new clone HQ.
Paul, usually second or third or fifth consideration for Sarah. I was warming to the idea of him being in with the nevolutionists, and the actor looks enough like Vartan and the show is barking enough that I was having Alias flashbacks, but he’s let them down too many times now.
Felix – underused here, really, but steady in the background for Sarah. Part of the family she referred to and the one that the monitored clones never made for themselves.
Art – still not seeing it all, but getting there, now on his own steam. I may have facepalmed when they caught up with Victor, because Victor has that affect on me.
Maslany needs to work on Rachel’s accent and to differentiate her a little more from the others. I think that showing her with other characters would help.
Well, Helena had to go, I suppose. She’d pushed Sarah too far and was too dangerous. Loved the imagery of her shaking the foundations.
I got pedantic that Amelia WASN’T Sarah’s birth mother i.e. had given her her DNA, although one could understand Sarah glomping on her. On the she said vs she said, so it looks like Siobhan has been lying a lot – whoosh. I had got as far as thinking ‘Sarah looks a little off’ when Amelia started laying into Helena to her at Beth’s, but was still surprised she was Helena in disguise. Honestly, this show rated high for yelps per episode.
And then we end with Sarah, understandably not wanting to carry on living this way. What a wringer she’s been through.
Telling that the people she’d run with are Kira and Felix (I think she can trust Kira’s life with the clones, possibly less so Paul and Delphine. But the instinct not to trust Siobhan when they seemed to have reconciled and in hindsight is fascinating.)
I've really enjoyed this show. At it’s best, it’s been pretty good and it’s never been less than enthralling. I'm looking forward to the second series.
Agents of SHIELD episode 6
Best episode yet! Granted, that’s not effusive praise, but I wasn’t madly frustrated by anything except Ward and Fitz’s manly crises about not doing manly heroic thing and how Marvel only seems to believe that men can be heroic main characters in their live action things, when the thing that made me go HELLO this episode was Melinda May revealing that she died for 40 seconds and it greatly affected her. Backstory, please.
Because she was still the awesomest in so many ways.
But we’re getting on first name terms now, the characters and the show and audience. Jemma Simmons, I am growing to like you quite a lot, my dear, cute and so enthusiastic about science, and a geek to the marrow. Plus the way she faced the crunch deservedly earned Coulson's respect, and she managed the team to do what she felt she had to do.
I really liked the Simmons-Fitz stuff. They’re adorable in their crochety science partnership, and I could take them in the platonic sense or the shippy sense (although guh, I saw Simmons/Ward in the scene where he impersonated her impersonating him. The show tries so hard with Skye/Ward, and I appreciated that there was huge fall-out from her betrayal of him/the team last episode, and is pushing Fitz’s crush on Simmons, and wasn’t subtle about dangling some Coulson/May if you wanted, but no, I felt Simmons/Ward. Of course I did.)
I’m glad they got That Guy to play Agent Blake, I would love for the team to interact with the Marrakesh office. I liked the tone of the Scouts finding the first body, although I bet Guides would have handled it better, and I hope SHIELD is now initiating a Chitauri artefacts sweep (was this a reference to 9/11? I vaguely remember some story about fire fighters and first responders being hurt/poisoned from their work there. Don’t know how I feel if it was.)
I understand that an episode will be following on from Thor 2. It’s fun to speculate on how and which aspects it’ll be picking up on. Darcy cameo??? She did reference SHIELD and she's a Maria Hill-Colnel Fury tier character.
Finally (all caps time) BORGEN SERIES 3 IS AIRING ON BBC4 NEXT SATURDAY.
It seems like they'll be airing it in a double bill.
1.9 Unconscious Selection
Again with the totally bonkers but compelling ending. I was almost buying that Amelia was Sarah’s birth mother as I normally would understand the term, but surrogate makes more sense. Speaking of sense, Sarah and Helena being twin clones is dramatically satisfying, given all they’ve been through and that they can’t kill each other, but not in other ways. Which country did Amelia give birth in, for example, because Ukranian nuns seems a way off from ‘the black’ that ended up in Brixton? It sort of demeans the relationship with the other clones, too.
Rewinding to the start of the ep, I am minded to think that Kira has enhanced healing abilities. (My daughter is NOT a lizard!) I wonder how long Sarah can hold out from letting her daughter’s DNA be tested.
I’d like to actually see more of Allison and her children, because the contrast with Sarah would be interesting and seeing the stakes for her. We needed the comedy of her interaction with Felix and Ainsley, and aww, Kira has all these protective aunties to back up her fierce mother and foster mother and uncle.
Glad Cosima is up to speed, and I’d like to see her join the gang (it would be fun to see her try to play the others or the others try to play her). I liked how complicated things ended up with Delphine. Even the fact that Maslany’s voice was hoarse for Cosima’s scenes worked for the character.
As for Leekie, I wouldn’t hand someone over to be ‘deprogrammed’- let alone poor, damaged dangerous Helena, although I have no good answers for how to handle her - and apart from a vague promise of answers, what had he put on the table for Sarah, really? I think it was the memory of her daughter’s disappointed pout and the echo of when Helena spared her that stopped Sarah from shooting Helena, and for her own ability to look at herself in the mirror, I’m glad.
So, Art and the cops know. Well, Sarah had no reason to be loyal to him. Ditto. Beth was the one he had a connection to. It was good that we went right back to the beginning of the story as far as we were concerned in seeing the train platform footage. It’s interesting how Beth has become a real person to us and Sarah.
I wonder if they will come over this side of the pond, based on what Mrs S was saying about stuff kicking off in London –also, was the vaguely English lady in a bob on the phone to Leekie Maslany/another clone?
1.10 Endless Forms Most Beautiful
Ahahahahahahahah.
So, some of my assumptions from the last episode were TOTALLY upended, while other things remained constant – I’d back Sarah the survivor in a fight, Allison is probably the craziest.
But...so...and...
Allison! You let that woman die because you were too paranoid to see the truth of her ignorance of Leekie!! (I had been convinced she was the monitor from the last episode, but no, she was just weird.) Whoa, even if it would be hard to put the clone genie back in the bottle, that’s a step up from torturing Donnie.
Cosima! Geeking out. I am sad that they’ve made her sick, and I feel that it happened a leeetle too quickly, although it ties her in to the German. Is it something that all the clones will face or is it tied into becoming self-aware? However, yay her for cracking the code chez Felix, the new clone HQ.
Paul, usually second or third or fifth consideration for Sarah. I was warming to the idea of him being in with the nevolutionists, and the actor looks enough like Vartan and the show is barking enough that I was having Alias flashbacks, but he’s let them down too many times now.
Felix – underused here, really, but steady in the background for Sarah. Part of the family she referred to and the one that the monitored clones never made for themselves.
Art – still not seeing it all, but getting there, now on his own steam. I may have facepalmed when they caught up with Victor, because Victor has that affect on me.
Maslany needs to work on Rachel’s accent and to differentiate her a little more from the others. I think that showing her with other characters would help.
Well, Helena had to go, I suppose. She’d pushed Sarah too far and was too dangerous. Loved the imagery of her shaking the foundations.
I got pedantic that Amelia WASN’T Sarah’s birth mother i.e. had given her her DNA, although one could understand Sarah glomping on her. On the she said vs she said, so it looks like Siobhan has been lying a lot – whoosh. I had got as far as thinking ‘Sarah looks a little off’ when Amelia started laying into Helena to her at Beth’s, but was still surprised she was Helena in disguise. Honestly, this show rated high for yelps per episode.
And then we end with Sarah, understandably not wanting to carry on living this way. What a wringer she’s been through.
Telling that the people she’d run with are Kira and Felix (I think she can trust Kira’s life with the clones, possibly less so Paul and Delphine. But the instinct not to trust Siobhan when they seemed to have reconciled and in hindsight is fascinating.)
I've really enjoyed this show. At it’s best, it’s been pretty good and it’s never been less than enthralling. I'm looking forward to the second series.
Agents of SHIELD episode 6
Best episode yet! Granted, that’s not effusive praise, but I wasn’t madly frustrated by anything except Ward and Fitz’s manly crises about not doing manly heroic thing and how Marvel only seems to believe that men can be heroic main characters in their live action things, when the thing that made me go HELLO this episode was Melinda May revealing that she died for 40 seconds and it greatly affected her. Backstory, please.
Because she was still the awesomest in so many ways.
But we’re getting on first name terms now, the characters and the show and audience. Jemma Simmons, I am growing to like you quite a lot, my dear, cute and so enthusiastic about science, and a geek to the marrow. Plus the way she faced the crunch deservedly earned Coulson's respect, and she managed the team to do what she felt she had to do.
I really liked the Simmons-Fitz stuff. They’re adorable in their crochety science partnership, and I could take them in the platonic sense or the shippy sense (although guh, I saw Simmons/Ward in the scene where he impersonated her impersonating him. The show tries so hard with Skye/Ward, and I appreciated that there was huge fall-out from her betrayal of him/the team last episode, and is pushing Fitz’s crush on Simmons, and wasn’t subtle about dangling some Coulson/May if you wanted, but no, I felt Simmons/Ward. Of course I did.)
I’m glad they got That Guy to play Agent Blake, I would love for the team to interact with the Marrakesh office. I liked the tone of the Scouts finding the first body, although I bet Guides would have handled it better, and I hope SHIELD is now initiating a Chitauri artefacts sweep (was this a reference to 9/11? I vaguely remember some story about fire fighters and first responders being hurt/poisoned from their work there. Don’t know how I feel if it was.)
I understand that an episode will be following on from Thor 2. It’s fun to speculate on how and which aspects it’ll be picking up on. Darcy cameo??? She did reference SHIELD and she's a Maria Hill-Colnel Fury tier character.
Finally (all caps time) BORGEN SERIES 3 IS AIRING ON BBC4 NEXT SATURDAY.
It seems like they'll be airing it in a double bill.
