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pass-the-bechdel · 6 years

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Orphan Black season three full review

How many episodes pass the Bechdel test?

100% (ten of ten).

What is the average percentage per episode of female characters with names and lines?

55.17%

How many episodes have a cast that is at least 40% female?

Nine.

How many episodes have a cast that is less than 20% female?

Zero.

How many female characters (with names and lines) are there?

Twenty-seven. Nineteen who appear in more than one episode, eleven who appear in at least half the episodes, and three who appear in every episode.

How many male characters (with names and lines) are there?

Twenty-seven. Seventeen who appear in more than one episode, seven who appear in at least half the episodes, and one who appears in every episode.

Positive Content Status:

Not shining. While the number of dynamic female characters around is strong and refreshing, there are more male characters flying the flag for sexual assault this season than in any previous, and the show continues to revel in such content with only cursory acknowledgements that it might not be ok, and that’s not good enough at all (average rating of 2.9).

General Season Quality:

When it’s good, it’s arguably the best the show has done. When it’s bad, it’s bad. While the last few episodes end it on fairly good terms, the early/middle portions of the season are a big let-down.

MORE INFO (and potential spoilers) under the cut:

Let’s talk about jumping the shark.

For starters, let me say this: I do not think they’ve jumped the shark yet on this show. As I’ve noted variously, I haven’t seen the whole series yet; I’ve also avoided spoilers successfully, so I have absolutely no idea how this is all gonna shake out in the end. The return-to-the-start feel that the revelation about Neolutionist involvement carries implies that, perhaps, the showrunners might actually have an idea where they’re taking things and that we might get a deftly-interwoven narrative that impresses and/or wows us on intellectual and entertainment levels, by the time all is said and done. Certainly, I hope for that. There are other revelations we’ve had, however, that instill me with a lot less confidence, and contribute to a concern that this show will turn out to be a lot of flash, and little real substance.

Another tv show which was heavily involved with mystery and revelation was the great LOST, which I have reviewed in the past, and which copped a lot of (I believe, undeserving) flack over whether or not the writers ‘had it all figured out’ from the very beginning. As I noted in relation to that show, I don’t actually think it’s important for the writers to have everything planned in advance (in fact, it can be detrimental when the show structure is rendered too rigid to allow for natural character or story growth over time); what’s important is that whatever new twists the story makes, they adhere to the internal logic of the show and don’t contradict previous elements. It doesn’t matter if the writers don’t have it figured years in advance, so long as what they write on the fly fits into the narrative in a sensible way. LOST was full of interlocking pieces by design, and so any surprise character connections were a deliberate part of the mythos, and since the story never accidentally looped around and contradicted itself, the mysteries were successfully rendered instead of becoming useless shock-value bullshit with no purpose. Orphan Black is...not doing great in that regard. The idea of secret Neolutionists in the mix all along was the one good ‘twist’ we got as this season pulled to a close, and the reason it’s a good twist is that it’s a pre-established part of the show’s fabric which the audience has had time to forget about, and so reintroducing it now feels clever, as if it were pre-planned, as if we were always building in this direction. It does seem kinda weird for it to be a shock revelation for the characters when obviously, openly-Neolutionist Aldous Leakie was running Dyad for most of two seasons, but I’m willing to run with the idea that their influence and numbers is more pervasive than anyone had realised; they’ve earned the twist well enough on logical grounds that my suspension of disbelief can carry the question. The whole original-genome-is-actually-Siobhan’s-mother thing? Not so good. It’s utterly convenient, doesn’t hold up to logical scrutiny, and worst of all, it’s pointless. If you’re gonna ask for narrative concessions, they’ve gotta exist for more than shock value. The Siobhan connection is just a connection for the fun of it, and that would be fine if it also made sense, but it doesn’t. It asks too much, and gives too little in return, and the elements which allow it to exist on any grounds were only introduced this season, so convenience plotting abounds. Likewise, Rachel’s supposedly-dead mother being alive and involved in the Neolution business is, at present status, just a shock tactic. It contradicts Ethan Duncan’s assertion that she was killed, and Leakie’s apparent conviction that the same was true, and every time I think of a different potential explanation for what the different characters did or did not know in this situation, I think of a myriad of plot holes in the theory as well, so while they MAY have something up their sleeve that makes logical sense and that I just haven’t thought of, I’m not counting on it, nor does it change the fact that they set the scene for that revelation too poorly for it to feel like a real twist. Retroactive explanations don’t change misconceptions in the moment, and a good mystery should never rely on retroactively filling in gaps: you should always set the stage first so that an info dump later isn’t required to justify your twists.

The Castor plot, meanwhile, was such a disaster of convenience plotting and illogicality I hardly know how to unravel it. I won’t get stuck railing against Paul Dierden’s existence again, but I am convinced that much of the useless Castor story existed only to try and justify Paul’s presence on the show, despite contradicting various aspects of his past behaviour by asserting his supposed complicity and knowledge of clones since the beginning as Beth’s handler. While the military being interested in the practical potential of raising clone armies (hello, Star Wars) makes plenty of sense, it has no actual baring on the narrative that ends up being told, and I suspect again that Paul’s pre-established military history is the sole reason Castor involves soldiers at all - certainly, we can’t pretend there’s any logic in Virginia Coady’s preposterous interest in pursuing the idea of a sexually transmitted neurological defect that causes infertility in women as a potential weapon of mass destruction (which, in its current form, would require her clone army to commit mass genocidal rape, which is a war crime as well as obviously horrific and completely impractical, but hey, this show loves sexual assault AND shock value, so, ok). The last four episodes of this season barely involved anything Castor related, and even then it was inconsequential leftovers masquerading as the backbone of the seasonal narrative; again, the Castor plot may still have somewhere to go, but as it stands it was a total waste of time, just filler and distraction and a lot of build-up at the beginning of the season which ultimately went nowhere. It leaves me seriously questioning how much of this season actually mattered in the long run, and that’s not a good place to be.

As I have blathered in the past, I’ve been confused about why I’m weirdly nonplussed with this show, and how it is that I walked away from it the first time I tried to watch it, despite also feeling like I enjoyed it. We’re almost up to that same point at which the show and I parted ways last time, and I’m feeling the same detachment again, and I think the prospect of future shark-jumps is a big part of it. The final episodes of this season were pretty solid, which leaves one feeling like they watched something good, but reviewing the season as a whole exposes the more bitter failings, and the sense of a show directed more by dramatic reveals than by character motivations. I have also blathered in the past about feeling distanced from most of the characters, and finding the show more plot driven than character driven, and as it goes on that feels like more and more of an intractable problem. I don’t care if there’s a conspiracy a drama or intrigue or mystery, I only care about the people involved and what this means to them and how they’ll handle it. At least, I’m trying to care about them. But, if the show isn’t actually concerned about its characters and only keeps them for their narrative potential, it’s hard to make that character connection anyway. If the character’s motivations are made mysterious so that their allegiances can be used for ‘twists’, then their behaviour becomes nebulous and contingent upon the whims of the writer, rather than innate to their characterisation. They are rendered puppets, not people, and it’s hard to relate to puppets. From the very first episode, I flagged this show as having a motivation problem; characters reacting and behaving in ways that seem plot-convenient, just excuses to put them into certain situations that logical and consistent human behaviour might not have pushed them towards, and I think they’re still suffering from that. At midseason I noted that Helena is the real mover and shaker of the plot, arguably the only character who makes the plot obey her whims instead of the other way around, and I’m concerned that the lack of agency in the rest of the cast is drowning this show in its own attempted cleverness. I said the Neolutionists were the one good twist this season, but don’t let that suggest that I think the Neolutionist movement represents an interesting concept or direction for the show: I couldn’t care less about Neolutionists. It was a good twist because it obeyed internal narrative logic and felt like it was bringing us full-circle with part of the plot, which implies direction and purpose, but what it means moving forward is an unknown, and not a tantalising one. What does it mean for the CHARACTERS, the ones we’re trying to both know and love? Hopefully, it means something. I guess we’ll find out.

#Orphan Black #Orphan Black season three #Bechdel Test #female representation #full season review

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