This series topped my 2013 Most Favorite list. That was only its first season, 10 episodes. With its second season starts showing this week, it is a good time to revisit the first again.
A science fiction that tells the story of a few identical women who are later revealed to be clones, this series got me hooked right from the first episode. Tatiana Maslany, an incredible actress, plays several characters (I lost count after five) all in different hairstyles and accents. She is the central character Sarah, a con-artist who steals the identity of Elizabeth, the woman she witnessed killing herself in front of a train, who happens to look exactly like her. All hells break lose when she meets more and more women who look like her, and she finds out that they were part of a scientific project that created clones. There are probably thousands of them living in all parts of world. Together with Alison the soccer mom and Cosima the graduate student, they unveil a series of secrets that expose them to great danger. Besides the conspiracy, Sarah also needs to deal with Elizabeth's boyfriend and her cop-partner, both seem like they are more than just meet the eye. Everyone has got some secrets to keep.
Besides Sarah, Elizabeth, Alison and Cosima, Tatiana Maslany also portrays a German clone who appears briefly before getting killed, Helena the crazy assassin who kills the German and plans to kill other clones too, and Rachel the evil clone who works with the scientific organization that created them. In every of the characters, she never fails to make us believe she is these different women. I can only imagine how excruciating it is to switch between different hairstyles, different make-up and different accents in every take. Yet she never slips, in every single scene she speaks the right accent and act in the right manner. A paranoid soccer mom is a paranoid soccer mom and an intelligent lesbian student is an intelligent lesbian student. No mistake about it. Alison has a habit of moving her mouth in a certain way when she feels whatever unpleasant feeling she feels (she's so intense all the time she seems like she's not capable of being happy, she's like one of the housewives from Desperate Housewives), and Cosima has a lot of hand gestures while talking. Her accents are spot on, even a purposefully bad one (when Alison pretends to be Sarah and meet her daughter, she speaks in a bad British accent). It was an unjust snub that she got left out of the Best Actress field at last year's Emmy. That award show has got some problems, they only recognize repeated nominees and famous big names in TV shows. An unknown newcomer like Tatiana Maslany has got no chance to break through.
The concept at the center of the show is not new. Clones has been the subject of multiple movies, yet as a TV series, the show-runner has got enough time to explore the whole concept, blending in conspiracies and action sequences to make it more interesting. My only complaint is that sometimes it takes a while for the writers to reveal more truths and make progress. It takes three episodes to reveal they are clones, and five episodes for us to learn about the monitors. But the show gets better at the second half when more and more secrets are revealed. Then it ends with a bang, a suspense that left us wanting more. And we want more immediately. Too bad we have to wait for several months before the second season drops upon us.
And now it has. The second season is finally here, and I can't wait to see what's Sarah and her "twins" are up to, though I think I would wait for another two months for the second season to wrap before I start watching. I can't live with the suspense of every episode hanging upon me and I have to wait for another week for the answer (if it even provides one). I just want to watch the second season at one go, finish it in two days, and then sit down and write another piece of article admiring it.
Before we end the article, let's evaluate every clone we know... so far:
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