Drama
Orphan Black: Echoes
The Orphan Black franchise is back. And its new show echoes the violence, profanity and homosexual romance from the original.
Sabrina doesn’t know how it happened.
She shouted at her boyfriend to leave her alone. The next thing she knew, she had thrown the much larger man across a yard and into a brick wall … with her mind.
Andre isn’t sure how, but a slap of frustration broke the cash machine in half.
Rodney was sprinting to catch a bus in London when he suddenly found himself more than 400 miles away, in Edinburgh.
Tazer went to look in the mirror, but there was no reflection—he had turned invisible.
Michael is the key to all of these strange happenings, but initially, he doesn’t know what is happening—to him or anyone else—either.
His own entry into this strange world came just as unexpectedly. He was just driving along, delivering a package for work when he had a vision: a local gang was going to stab him after he failed to pay their “delivery fee.”
Knowing the outcome, Michael is able to talk his way out of getting killed. But it doesn’t stop there.
Michael time-travels to the future where his future self has joined forces with Sabrina, Andre, Rodney and Tazer. They’re fighting a group of masked men wearing hoods.
And future Michael gives current Michael an edict: find the other four heroes; save the world.
Dionne, Michael’s fiancée, wants him to forget about it all. She hopes that if he ignores his newfound powers, they’ll simply go away. But Michael hasn’t given her the whole story: If he fails to find and protect the other four heroes, Dionne will die.
Dionne also doesn’t realize she has a connection to the heroes, too. She’s a social worker who’s been trying to locate some missing persons—and those people just so happen to have some powers of their own.
However, they aren’t just missing: they’ve been kidnapped by a government entity that’s keeping them imprisoned and running experiments on them.
But the strange connections don’t stop there. Each individual who has gained these new powers is the child of someone with sickle cell disease. That may just be a coincidence, or it could be a new mutation in the condition.
Michael isn’t sure how he’s going to find the other heroes before the hoods do. He isn’t sure how he’ll convince them to band together either since they each have their own problems to deal with. But he does know this: if he fails, Dionne won’t be the only casualty of war.
Netflix’s Supacell is incredibly creative, using a show about Black superheroes to raise awareness about a disease that predominantly affects Black people: sickle cell.
But the show has a number of problems for discerning families to consider.
First, the series dives headfirst into the seedy underbelly of gang wars in London. These young men have had difficult lives. Many come from broken families. And they often join gangs for protection or the hope of a more stable financial future. But they’re also incredibly dangerous.
Tazer is the leader of one such crew, and he takes several lives. (In Michael’s first vision, it was Tazer who stabbed him.) Rivalries with other gangs lead to more deaths. And civilians are often placed in harm’s way.
Drug dealing is the preferred profession of many of these gang members. We see quite a bit of drug use, as a result.
Nudity is kept to a minimum, but we still see a fair bit of skin as characters have sex. (We see a fair bit of skin when they aren’t having sex, too, since many women favor revealing club attire.) We also hear about cheating and premarital living situations.
Gang wars aside, violence creeps up in other places. We hear about domestic violence. A woman is nearly raped. Superpowered people fight each other with their abilities, often lethally. And the government faction kidnapping superpowered people has no problem killing inmates who step out of line.
And language can also be coarse, with multiple uses of the f-word and s-word and the occasional n-word, too.
(Editor’s Note: Plugged In is rarely able to watch every episode of a given series for review. As such, there’s always a chance that you might see a problem that we didn’t. If you notice content that you feel should be included in our review, send us an email at [email protected], or contact us via Facebook or Instagram, and be sure to let us know the episode number, title and season so that we can check it out.)
Michael and others discover they have superpowers, and they begin to grapple with the ramifications of those powers.
We see depictions of different superpowers, including super speed, super strength, telekinesis (used to throw a man across a yard into a brick wall, rendering him unconscious), time travel and clairvoyance. We hear a church sermon where the pastor tells his flock that God will only help them if they help themselves, stating that God is not a wish-granting genie. A man tells his grandmother not to waste her prayers on his absent mother. Someone says déjà vu is God’s way of giving you a second chance. Crosses adorn graves in a cemetery.
We see the beginning of a superpowered fight after Michael travels to the future. While there, he learns that his fiancée died just three months after he proposed to her. However, he also learns that he and some other superpowered folks have the power to save her and prevent that future from coming true.
Michael has a vision of gang members surrounding him, demanding a hefty “fee” to be allowed to complete his delivery job. When he’s unable to pay, they beat him up, and one man stabs him, leaving him to bleed out in the middle of the street. When the vision comes true, Michael manages to talk his way out of danger, promising to pay the fee next time.
A terrified woman is chased through the halls of a government facility by armed men. She uses superpowers to break down a door, but she’s shot in the back as she tries to escape. Her captors then drag her bleeding body past the cells of other prisoners.
Two gangs begin to fight. Their leaders each pull out knives, and one stabs the other. Most of the gang members run off when police arrive, but frightened bystanders attempt to help the injured man. A woman must tell her friend to stop recording the incident.
A newly engaged couple makes out and begins to have sex (their clothes are still on). Couples dance promiscuously, grinding bodies together. Women wear outfits showing lots of skin. Couples smooch. There are several crude references to sex and male and female genitals. A woman wonders if a man is gay after he turns down her advances. (He’s not; he’s just in a committed relationship.) An unwed couple lives together. A woman learns her boyfriend is cheating on her. When the mistress finds out, she’s hurt as well since she didn’t know.
Folks smoke marijuana. We witness a few drug deals. People drink alcohol and smoke cigarettes.
There are nearly 30 uses of the f-word, 10 uses of the s-word and one use of the n-word. We also hear uses of “p—y,” “d-ck” and “p-ss.” God’s name is abused a handful of times.
A man steals money from a cash machine after he accidentally breaks it. People lie.
A woman critiques her ex for not paying child support, threatening to not let the man see their son. She eventually relents since their son is excited to see his dad. Once she leaves the room, the dad gifts his son a new phone, claiming it was a free upgrade. A man holds resentment against his mother, believing she abandoned him.
A woman wonders if she hasn’t been promoted because of her race. Another person comments on racial discrimination in a reality TV show. An elderly woman tells her adult grandson (whom she knows is in a gang) that instead of killing each other, Black men should remember they are brothers.
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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