Image: Steve Wilkie/BBC America
There are perfectly legitimate reasons why you missed the first season of Orphan Black. You've got plenty of things going on in your life—and frankly, there are plenty of shows you're more likely to be spoiled on via social media. You might have gotten a casual recommendation here or there, but you haven't been flooded with urgent texts telling you to get on it, so you didn't. And that's okay.
But on Saturday, Orphan Black is back for a new season. In other words, your grace period for getting into one of the best sci-fi thrillers on TV is officially over. At this point, you probably don't even have time to binge-watch the 10-episode first season in time. Never fear, though; with help from this handy-dandy cheat sheet, you can get through the first episode or two of the new season without having seen a minute of it.
The Basics
Orphan Black is a show about a bunch of genetically engineered clones (all played by the terrifyingly talented Tatiana Maslany) who were separated and released into society as orphans. It's all the work of Aldous Leekie, charismatic geneticist who's convinced he's the Steve Jobs of "neolutionism"—a fancy word for altering your genetic makeup to suit your whims. Neolutionism has developed a new-age cult following of people who get off on the idea of genetic enhancements (one dude in the first season had a Jason Alexander-esque tail). At its core, the ideology is pure, unadulterated eugenics, which is .
Anyway, the clones grew up (and were closely monitored) under different circumstances around the world. We don't exactly know Leekie's motivation, apart from observing nature-versus-nurture in its purest form. (Eventually, we found out that each clone has a single differentiating gene that acts like a nametag.) Two clones, Sarah and Helena, were spirited away by their birth mother to protect them, which means they've grown up unmonitored, outside the experiment. Meanwhile, several of the other clones have begun to suffer from a mystery illness that involves coughing up your own blood. So far it's affected Cosima, a dreadlocked Berkeley genetics student, and Katja, a red-haired German who sought out other clones (and in doing so tipped off detective and fellow clone Beth Childs to the entire conspiracy). Meanwhile, yet another clone was brainwashed by a group of anti-Neolutionist religious extremists called the Proletheans; she believes that she's "the origin! al," and has been hunting down and killing the clones, one by one.
Where We Left Off
The surviving clones have discovered not only that they are the products of a highly unethical, super-illegal science experiment, but that their DNA sequences have been patented like any inorganic commodity, effectively turning them, living humans, into products. (Leekie's moneyed lobbyists convinced governments to pass pro-business, genetic patent laws—a practice ruled illegal in the United States around the same time the episodes were airing.) At the end of the first season, Leekie has coerced the clones into a fishy set of contracts: Alison signs hers after she's promised safety and freedom (obviously untrue), in exchange for regular medical testing; Cosima is on the verge of signing one that offers employment at the Dyad Institute and freedom to study her and the clones' genome; and Rachel seems to have kidnapped Sarah's daughter Kira to strongarm her into signing hers.
Image: Steve Wilkie/BBC America
The Clones:
Sarah Manning: Our protagonist clone. Sarah is a badass/screw-up British grifter who, before the story starts, has had some trouble staying out of, well, trouble. She dates thugs (like wantonly violent drug dealer Vic), sells drugs, and partakes in myriad other behaviors that prevent her from maintaining custody of her daughter, Kira. The show begins with her witnessing Beth Childs, a well-dressed woman who looks exactly like her, throw herself in front of an oncoming train, she assumes her identity, thereby setting in motion a chain of events that will eventually lead her to Alison, Cosima, Helena, and the whole clone plot. Her motives for anything and everything she does on this show are twofold: one, self-preservation (which makes her the de facto leader-slash-wild card of the clones), and two, regaining custody of Kira.
Image: BBC America
Cosima Niehaus: The lesbian scientist clone. Cosima is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Minnesota, where she studies experimental evolutionary developmental biology (or "evo devo"). She's the brain, researching the clones' genetics and trying to stay two steps ahead of the Dyad Institute; through her connection to Leekie—via her love affair with Delphine, orchestrated by Leekie to reel her in but somewhat backfiring considering Delphine flips and Cosima is aware of the manipulation—she's able to keep the clone club informed.
Image: BBC America
Alison Hendrix: The Canadian soccer mom clone. Alison, unsurprisingly, is all about rules, propriety and normalcy. She's got two children, both adopted (because the clones are supposed to be barren—not true, obviously, in Sarah's case), and is incredibly high-strung, drinking and popping pills to take the edge off. She's the clone most needing of hand-holding, because she tends to flip out and do crazy things (like torture her husband) in the heat of the moment, and because she's also the most easily manipulated, as shown by her willingness to believe Leekie will make good on his side of their bargain for her freedom.
Image: Steve Wilkie/BBC America
Helena: The unstable Ukrainian religious zealot-turned-assassin clone. She grew up in a convent, from whence she was taken and essentially Stockholm Syndrome'd by the Proletheans into believing she is the "original" of the clones, and the others must be destroyed. She self-flagellates with a razor blade, forming a freaky, angel-wing pattern on her back. She's a loose cannon, but she wants to be good, as demonstrated by her unwillingness to hurt Sarah, with whom she feels "a connection." She's angry, confused, and wants to belong somewhere, and the Proletheans are the only family she's ever known, all of which makes her incredibly unpredictable. Sarah shoots and kills her in the season finale after she kills their birth mother Amelia in a fit of vengeful rage—before Amelia is able to share another big secret about their past having to do with Siobhan, Sarah's foster mother.
Beth Childs: The Canadian detective clone. She's unstable to begin with, self-medicating depression and convincing her partner to help her cover her mistakes in the field. She kills herself in the first ten minutes of the pilot by stepping in front of a train, overwhelmed by the weight of the knowledge of being a clone and the things she's done because of it, including killing Maggie Chen (see below). Sarah assumes her identity—which weirds everyone out because Beth was frigid, mean, and a decent cop.
Image: BBC America
Rachel Duncan: The clone raised, presumably, by Dyad Institute employees. She's clean-cut, unfeeling, single-minded, and is tasked with bringing all the clones back into the fold once they've become self-aware. She blackmails Sarah by threatening Kira's safety, which makes Sarah blame her when she and Siobhan disappear, but we know very little else about her past.
Katja Obinger: The German clone, killed by Helena in episode 2. She tipped off Beth Childs, before the latter killed herself, about the existence of the clones (she gives her DNA samples of the Europeans) and the fact that someone was hunting them. Helena shoots her with a sniper rifle before she's able to tell the other clones about her illness.
Danielle Fournier: The French clone, killed by Helena sometime before the show begins. Little else known.
Janika Zingler: The Austrian clone, killed by Helena sometime before the show begins. Little else known.
Aryanna Giordano: The Italian clone, killed by Helena sometime before the show begins. Little else known.
The Non-Clones We Trust:
Felix Dawkins: Sarah's irresponsible, flamboyant foster brother-turned-sidekick and Orphan Black's comic relief. His enormous artist's loft ends up becoming a meeting place and hideout for the clones, and he frequently has to cover for them when people show up looking for them. Defying all odds, he becomes the GBF wingman ("acting coach," to her quizzical neighbors) Alison never had, bonding over pill-popping and helping her stand up to her stifling suburban frenemies.
Kira Manning: Sarah's young daughter. She's unusually bright (and seems to possess a sixth sense about "bad things about to happen"), can tell the clones apart even when they're in disguise (like when Alison tries to pose as Sarah as a favor), and is an uncanny judge of character—she wants to help Helena, for example, but gets run over by a car after following her out of Siobhan's house. Kira is the only known offspring of a human clone, which makes her a unique biological mystery (doctors tell Sarah that she healed unusually quickly after the car accident) and thus incredibly valuable to Leekie and the Dyad Institute.
Arthur Bell: Beth Childs' former partner who helped cover up her shooting of Maggie Chen. He figures out that Sarah is impersonating Beth, and confronts her. By the end of the first season he's this close from getting to the bottom of everything (think of his story line as Orphan Black's Law and Order subplot). Generally, he's just a good detective trying to do his job, but it's extremely exasperating to watch him and his new, more skeptical partner Angela Deangelis piece things together at a snail's pace, detaining Sarah and risking her being trapped by Leekie and the Dyad people for good.
Amelia: Sarah and Helena's birth mother. She's artificially inseminated with the "twins," assumedly by the Dyad Institute; when the two are born, she goes AWOL and whisks the girls away from the institute's control, giving "one to the church"—Helena, who would become the tool of Prolethean anti-science zealots at a convent in Ukraine—and "one to the state"—Sarah, the poster child for failures of the foster care system. Amelia sticks around for about two episodes, ending when Helena kills her in the season one finale. Sarah is devastated to lose her only parent and (finally) shoots Helena for it.
The Non-Clones We Don't:
Aldous Leekie: The celebrity eugenicist responsible for creating neolutionism, the Dyad Institute, and the clones. His lectures and events are a big hit with both fringe fanatics and the scientifically minded rich who fund his institute. What his benefactors don't know is that he is secretly undertaking a highly illegal human cloning trial, including patented DNA that effectively turns the people he has "created" into property. He's the archetypal smug patriarch who believes his research makes him the savior of humanity.
Maggie Chen: One of the Proletheans who had a change of heart after helping create the clones, now intent on killing them off. She is unarmed when Beth Childs shoots and kills her before the show begins, and Art helps her make it look clean; the way Sarah handles Maggie's death case is what originally tips off Art and the cops about her impersonation of Beth and, ultimately, will lead them to the larger conspiracy, ostensibly in season two.
Donnie Hendrix: Alison's husband. She originally suspects he is her monitor, but after torturing him, suburban-style, with a hot glue gun, decides that as her high school sweetheart, he couldn't be. At the end of the first season, however, thanks to a meeting he has with Leekie in a car outside their house, we find out that he is Alison's monitor after all; he's just a ridiculously good liar for such an otherwise boring dude.
The Non-Clones We're Not Sure About Yet:
Siobhan Sadler: Sarah and Felix's no-nonsense foster mother and Kira's unofficial guardian. Originally lived with the two in England, she became part of an underground railroad of sorts for refugees from the Dyad Institute, and moved to Canada when the pair are young in order to hide Sarah "even deeper." At the end of season one, Amelia gives Sarah a photo of Siobhan and another person, both wearing lab coats; the photo is labeled Project LEDA and dated 1977, suggesting her involvement in Sarah and the other clones' existence isn't as happenstance or noble as previously assumed.
Delphine Cormier: A French immunologist and Dr. Leekie's protegé. Originally meant to be Cosima's monitor, she introduces her to Leekie and neolution, seducing her with science, but falls in love with her in the process; when Cosima discovers her, she agrees to help the clones instead. She knows about Cosima's illness and feeds her intel about the Dyad Institute—but she also gives Leekie intel on Cosima, suggesting she's more of a double agent. We're not sure yet where her loyalties lie.
Paul Dierden: Originally Beth Childs's Delphine/Donnie (monitor), now the similarly conflicted love interest for Sarah, whose Beth impersonation includes crazy-good sex—something Paul and Beth never had—and, eventually, her telling him the truth about her identity. We sort of trust him, because he likes Sarah, having saved her and told her the truth on several occasions, and we know he was blackmailed into becoming a monitor (he's a former marine whose friendly fire killed six fellow marines in Afghanistan; the event was buried and is now being used as leverage against him), but we also don't, because we're not sure how much he's willing to risk to protect Sarah over himself.
Aynsley Norris: Alison's "best friend," fellow soccer mom, and neighbor. When Alison decides Donnie couldn't be her monitor, she turns her suspicions on the overly interested Aynsley. Alison purposely sleeps with Chad, Aynsley's ridiculous cheater-bro husband, and they get in a physical fight over it. While packing to move, Aynsley's scarf gets caught in her garbage disposal and it strangles her. Alison, who has come over to confront her about being a monitor, chooses not to turn off the disposal and simply watches her die. Aynsley was probably just an incredibly nosy and self-important housewife—despite Leekie leading Alison to believe she was her monitor, now reassigned—but we'll likely never know, or care, apart from how her death affects Alison, who is now effectively a murderer.
Source : http://www.wired.com/2014/04/orphan-black-cheat-sheet/
