Orphan Black Season 5 - The Final Trip

[tomalak301]

Man that episode was dense. It's taking me a while to comprehend it all and I still don't think I understand it all. Is Westmoorland trying to make humans immortal, and that's why he thinks they made a break through with Kira? Also, I wasn't expected Virginia back but there she was. That was a pleasent surprise.

I'm going to need some time to think over this episode, but it was still really really good.

 

[Christopher]

Also, I wasn't expected Virginia back but there she was. That was a pleasent surprise.

I had no recollection of who she was. Luckily her reveal came right before a commercial, so I could look her up online during the break.

 

[tomalak301]

I had no recollection of who she was. Luckily her reveal came right before a commercial, so I could look her up online during the break.

She was the head of Castor, in season 3. She wanted to weaponize the Castor clones.

 

[Christopher]

^Yes, I know. I said I looked her up during the commercial.

 

[tomalak301]

I forgot to mention something from last night. Even if an episode might not be great, there are still really cool moments. That scene between Helena and Sarah was really special. Who knew Helena could be so wise.

 

[The Nth Doctor]

Yeah, I had to look up Virginia, too, because I completely forgot about her. Too bad I didn't do the marathon I thought about doing before the final season. Alas.

Another solid episode despite the heavy exposition dump. Good amount of information and I spent the rest of the second half of the episode trying to see if it all fit together. Problem is I've forgotten so much, so while on the surface it seems to all gel, I would have to watch the whole show again to be certain.

It's safe to assume that Delphine is Siobhan's source, right? If so, I'm still not getting why Delphine wants the clones out of the loop.

I half expected the "monster" in the woods to be the original source of Castor, if only because I completely forgot that Kendall was the source for both Projects Leda and Castor. I actually like the revelation that this "monster" in the woods is the result of the original genetic testing because it shows Percevial, Susan, Virginia, etc. didn't get it right on the first try. It also shows the divergence of methods which lead directly into Leda and Castor.

Unsurprisingly, no Donnie and Alison this week, but I hope they aren't sidelined for too long. Good to check in on Helena and I loved the reminder that she and Sarah have come a long way since their first meeting.

 

[tomalak301]

To get ready for the final season I did do an episode rewatch so to get Coady back was a pleasant surprise. I do think when all is said and done, this show will have good rewatchability because then you can be at certain points of the series and say, yeah that's why they did it this way.

I watched the exposition dump scene again and it's not really about immortality but more about perfecting the human genome. Whether that leads to immortality is anyone's guess but it is interesting to see the early stages of the experiment. i do wonder how all this ties together with Susan and Ethan wanting a baby though, or was that a lie. I guess the monster was created first and then Susan and Ethan were tackling the clones or was that happening at the same time and that's when Neolution hyjacked the work?

I'm still trying to piece everything together from a timeline perspective.

 

[bigdaddy]

I'm only halfway through the last episode after watching the last 13 episodes this weekend.

What I find interesting is this was going to be a movie / TV miniseries before the series got picked up. Part of me wishes that was the case because I think season 1-2 are still my favorite. It's so over the top now, but still enjoyable.

But Old Guy is 170 years old last June, so the show is either in 2013 or early 2014 being he was born in 1843.

Also the professor is Amherst, I live near Amherst College. It's in the USA. But Donnie and Alice wanted to go to a water park in Niagara Falls and that would have to be in the Canada side and Donnie didn't have a passport. So they are still screwing with the setting of somewhere in North America.

 

[Christopher]

Also the professor is Amherst, I live near Amherst College. It's in the USA. But Donnie and Alice wanted to go to a water park in Niagara Falls and that would have to be in the Canada side and Donnie didn't have a passport. So they are still screwing with the setting of somewhere in North America.

The show's pretty definitely set in Toronto. They avoid coming out and stating it, but it's clear from the details, like the Canadian currency, the Ontario license plates, the text on characters' ID documents and plane tickets and the like, etc. The Hendrixes live in Scarborough, a real suburb of Toronto, though the specific "Bailey Downs" neighborhood is fictional.

 

[bigdaddy]

The show's pretty definitely set in Toronto. They avoid coming out and stating it, but it's clear from the details, like the Canadian currency, the Ontario license plates, the text on characters' ID documents and plane tickets and the like, etc. The Hendrixes live in Scarborough, a real suburb of Toronto, though the specific "Bailey Downs" neighborhood is fictional.

Yeah I see it as taking place outside Toronto, but I actually enjoy how they don't just come out and say it. Because if you think about it the location doesn't mean anything.

 

[Christopher]

Yeah I see it as taking place outside Toronto, but I actually enjoy how they don't just come out and say it. Because if you think about it the location doesn't mean anything.

I feel the opposite -- I prefer it when Canadian-made shows are open about being set in Canada. It's a refreshing exception to the usual approaches, which are either to pretend to be in the US or to be implicitly set in Canada while being vague about it. For some reason, the latter seems to be done mainly with Toronto shows -- Orphan Black, Lost Girl, early Flashpoint, etc. Vancouver shows generally either admit they're in Vancouver (like Continuum and Primeval: New World) or, more often, pretend they're somewhere in the US (like nearly every other Vancouver show I can think of).

 

[Morpheus 02]

Well, with vague geography, it makes all these trips that seem instantaneous, like between Sarah's city and the island, a little more plausible

 

[bigdaddy]

I feel the opposite -- I prefer it when Canadian-made shows are open about being set in Canada. It's a refreshing exception to the usual approaches, which are either to pretend to be in the US or to be implicitly set in Canada while being vague about it. For some reason, the latter seems to be done mainly with Toronto shows -- Orphan Black, Lost Girl, early Flashpoint, etc. Vancouver shows generally either admit they're in Vancouver (like Continuum and Primeval: New World) or, more often, pretend they're somewhere in the US (like nearly every other Vancouver show I can think of).

I don't mind when shows are vague when it deals with Toronto area. I feel the shows handle it better. However I'm sick of all the shows pretending to Seattle or Portland when it's Vancouver and everyone knows it.

Fringe had an episode that opened in Westfield Massachusetts. I live 10 miles away, been there all the time. Fringe had it be a massive farmland with the Rocky Mountains in the distance. Then why not just say it was Kanas?! There was no need for them to make it Westfield Mass which is very hilly and has two rivers in it.

 

[Christopher]

I just think it's ridiculous that a show set in another country has to hide that fact so as not to alienate Americans. Nobody should be so parochial that they aren't even willing to experience a story set in another country, even the country right next door. Personally, I like it when shows are set in other countries. There's a whole world out there, so why should Americans have a monopoly on interesting stories? It's really cool to have something like Sense8, which is set -- and filmed -- in cities all over the world. And of course plenty of foreign-made shows are set in their own countries -- British shows are usually set in London, Japanese shows are usually in Tokyo, etc.

 

[tomalak301]

I just think it's ridiculous that a show set in another country has to hide that fact so as not to alienate Americans. Nobody should be so parochial that they aren't even willing to experience a story set in another country, even the country right next door. Personally, I like it when shows are set in other countries. There's a whole world out there, so why should Americans have a monopoly on interesting stories? It's really cool to have something like Sense8, which is set -- and filmed -- in cities all over the world. And of course plenty of foreign-made shows are set in their own countries -- British shows are usually set in London, Japanese shows are usually in Tokyo, etc.

Why do you think hiding a location is to not alienate Americans. There could be a multitude of reasons for not naming a city. It's also not all that important to a show like this, especially when you have the issue of the legality of cloning.

 

[Christopher]

Why do you think binding a location is to not alienate Americans.

Because I read stuff that says that's the case, of course. Like the TV Tropes page on the subject, for one example.

The first show of this type was Night Heat, a cop series produced in Toronto by Sonny Grosso Productions. It premiered in Canada on CTV in 1985, and later joined the CBS Late Night lineup in 1987. It was the first Canadian-produced drama ever to air on a U.S. network.

That's when things started to get weird. CBS wanted a gritty U.S. cop show set in a gritty U.S. inner city, but CTV (which was still paying most of the bills) needed more domestic drama. When the characters started flashing American eagle police badges and calling up the "district attorney," CTV went ballistic. Already under fire for producing so few domestic TV shows, the last thing the network wanted was for Night Heat to be perceived as yet another American import in its prime time line-up. Moreover, the Canadian federal tax incentives and production grants the producers were getting likely bound them to certain minimal "Canadian content" rules.

Forced to square the circle, the producers decided to set the show nowhere, albeit a very American-flavoured nowhere. The American eagle police badge became a mutant eagle/beaver hybrid that was never seen in close-up, and all sorts of innocuous words and objects suddenly became more taboo than George Carlin's infamous "seven words you can't say on TV." You couldn't show flagpoles, currency or license plates or make overt references to any level of government. Instead of a "district attorney" or a "crown prosecutor" the cops would phone the generic "prosecutor." Courtroom scenes were laughably torturous to produce, for obvious reasons.

Here's a Google Books link to a discussion of the subject in a scholarly text. It talks about how Toronto TV production specializes in "placelessness," making it look like a generic US city for the sake of American audiences. This is a common theme in many discussions of the subject.

It's also not all that important to a show like this, especially when you have the issue of the legality of cloning.

If it's not important, why go to such lengths to hide it? And it's not about this show. That's the problem. Too many shows do this, and I'm tired of it. It's a hackneyed cliche and it's nothing to admire. Orphan Black is a daring and innovative show in other ways, but it embraces this very timid and conventional trope of Toronto filming.

 

[Morpheus 02]

Well, it's airing on BBC America. So the British part is covered by our characters, so we need the American part covered by the geography

 

[Ar-Pharazon]

Do you think they might have to pay a given city if the city is mentioned?

I mean, I know the city gets money for films & TV shows being made there.

 

[Christopher]

Do you think they might have to pay a given city if the city is mentioned?

Unlikely. There are countless shows that are set in real cities and use their names freely -- frequently even naming the shows after the cities, like New York Undercover, Chicago Hope, WKRP in Cincinnati, etc. And if a show doesn't want to use a real city name, it usually invents a fake one, like Springfield, Cabot Cove, National City, Angel Grove, or whatever. Occasionally there are shows that keep their cities anonymous and generic, like Hill Street Blues, T.J. Hooker, and some futuristic shows like Max Headroom, but these days it's mainly done by Canadian shows that are made with US audiences in mind. And as discussed in the articles I linked above, it is well-known that the reason they do this is so that both Canadian and US audiences can interpret the show as taking place in their own country.

 

[bigdaddy]

Why do you think hiding a location is to not alienate Americans. There could be a multitude of reasons for not naming a city. It's also not all that important to a show like this, especially when you have the issue of the legality of cloning.

Exactly. The location of some shows are very important to the show, Orphan Black isn't one of those shows. It makes it relatable to anyone in the northeast part off North America.

But clearly it takes place in the USA, which has magic to get people to or from an island in no time flat. Or help Jack Bauer get through traffic in 30 seconds.