Orphan Black Mashed Up With Friends Will Be There For You
This article is more than 2 years old
My wife is a die-hard Friends enthusiast. She tends to remembers actors and actresses not by their more famous roles, but because of the Friends cameo they had where they accidentally bumped into Chandler (Matthew Perry) on the elevator. It’s a fine enough show that for the most part doesn’t need to be rewatched in order to remember the good parts over the bad. It’s been nine years since Friends went off the air, yet I still hear that goddamned theme song by The Rembrandts more times in a week than I do songs that I actually enjoy. (Slight exaggeration, but not much.) However, once you mix that song in with some footage of the new BBC America clone drama Orphan Black, a show that I love with all my heard, all of a sudden my mood becomes something that rivals the sun in brightness. But still, now that I’m done watching it, that song can swan dive of a bridge made out of fire into a brick ocean.
I admire YouTuber SnowFalls3 for making this video, as it illustrates that Orphan Black‘s plotline could easily be transformed into a situational comedy involving multiple clones and all of the wacky hijinks that occur while living in the same apartment. And one of them has a gay adopted brother. So many shenanigans. Now I want to go back and make sure Logo TV didn’t have this on at some point. (One of the clones is gay, too. It’s a legitimate joke maybe.)
Beyond the premise, there is quite a bit of black comedy in every episode, and the mastery of Tatiana Maslany’s performances as each of the various clones is constructed around entirely different senses of humor. Helena doesn’t even know what humor is, it seems, always laughing seemingly because a rat has crossed over a person’s grave. But her batshitty smiles are used here, as are some of the darker moments in the excellent first season. Alison dropping Donnie down the stairs was certainly a high point comedically. I also like how the dead-from-the-start Beth character is also given presence here. But not the German. Poor Germans, no one really likes them.
Speaking of humor, SnowFalls3 also put together a montage of all the funnier moments in the series so far.
And just in case you wanted to hear that Godawful song one more time, but with Adama and the gang from Battlestar Galactica, here you go.
