Drama
Orphan Black: Echoes
The Orphan Black franchise is back. And its new show echoes the violence, profanity and homosexual romance from the original.
Awkwafina is Nora from Queens. And Nora from Queens is—or at least has been, for much of her adult life—a pot-smoking, jobless hoarder living with her dad and grandma at age 30.
I’ll give her some credit: She’s trying to get her life together. In the first episode, even, she gets a job driving for a rideshare service called Commute. She moves out of her family’s home to live with a friend. She even declutters her bedroom so you can see the floor.
But those positive changes don’t last long. Alas, Nora’s life is much like the closet where she secretly hid all the junk that she refuses to get rid of—one gentle breeze from toppling over.
It’s hard to say what Nora from Queens plans to do with her future, but it’s easy to predict what the show has in mind. She’ll likely try to clean up her life, much like she did her bedroom, and hopefully transform into a successful (or at least self-sufficient) adult, even if that path to transformation is filled with fits and starts.
Unfortunately, it’s highly unlikely that Nora from Queens will clean up more than that. Cursing is sort of bleeped out, but you can still hear the thinly veiled f-words, s-words and even c-words. Nora consumes marijuana in several forms, and she clearly has no reservations about underage consumption since she offers it to her high-school aged neighbor. She talks about being bisexual herself when she was in high school, and although we never see any nudity on camera (thanks to blurred out blocks over certain, ahem, areas), she clearly isn’t shy about sex either.
It’s pretty safe to say that Awkwafina’s show will be awkward for any family to navigate and it might just be easier to say “No” to Nora.
Nora decides to become a self-sufficient adult after being shamed for not having a job and living with her dad and grandma at age 30.
Nora dreams she died and went to Heaven. We see her dressed as an angel and hear God’s voice in her head. The voice of God is effeminate, and Nora mistakes His voice for Laverne Cox’s (a transgender woman).
Nora states that she was bisexual in high school. People discuss sex and male and female anatomy.
Nora discovers her friend is a cam-girl and joins her: They dance for an online audience wearing suggestive costumes. Nora’s grandma shows a picture of her genitals (the picture is obscured by blurred blocks on the screen) and talks about her hysterectomy. Nora steps out of a car without pants (her lower half is blurred out with blocks). Someone holds a sex toy. We see the top of a woman’s legs as she uses the toilet. A shirtless man wearing pink boxing shorts and a cape dances in a coffee shop.
A woman gets hit by a person on a bike. (We later learn she broke her collarbone.) A costume catches fire, and the blaze spreads. Nora drives poorly, not paying attention to the road.
Nora consumes marijuana in various forms. She offers weed and alcohol to her underage neighbor. A man says he vomited and describes childbirth. Someone describes a vestigial tail. A man scratches his crotch and flatulates.
Nora’s car gets towed after she parks in a no-parking zone. Nora says she scares elderly people because she reminds them of Vietnam.
We hear several bleeped-out uses of the f-word, s-word and c-word. We also hear multiple uses of “a–” and “b–ch.” God’s and Jesus’ names are misused many times.
Emily studied film and writing when she was in college. And when she isn’t being way too competitive while playing board games, she enjoys food, sleep, and geeking out with her husband indulging in their “nerdoms,” which is the collective fan cultures of everything they love, such as Star Wars, Star Trek, Stargate and Lord of the Rings.
The Orphan Black franchise is back. And its new show echoes the violence, profanity and homosexual romance from the original.
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