It’s hard to know where to situate “Two Boats and a Helicopter,” the stellar third episode of The Leftovers, within the HBO drama’s still-elusive arc.
Compared to “Pilot,” “Penguins One, Us Zero” is more focused, but the ambivalence it provokes remains the same.
In the beginning, at least, The Leftovers sounds familiar.
The episode is best understood as a microcosm of the previous nine episodes.
You know by now that I take Orphan Black’s allusions to the prolific work of English philosopher and scientist Francis Bacon seriously.
It may be a measure of how much Orphan Black has won me over, warts and all, that watching Tony sidle up to Felix for a kiss left me so discomfited.
It grapples with familial and societal forces in the service of an ensemble that counts among television’s most engaging.
The frustratingly inconsistent second season of Orphan Black has been a tale of two series.
The cutting-room switchbacks required to hold the tune for nine—or is it 10?—narrative threads foil any chance at building momentum.
Flawed but terrifically moving, The Normal Heart is a boldly corporeal expression of gay political consciousness.
“Ipsa Scientia Potestas Est” is a rollicking mid-season wallop that counts among Orphan Black’s best episodes
Narrative perturbations abound in the latest episode of Orphan Black.
The sole redeeming quality may be the subconscious running commentary it offers about its own pointlessness.
The concluding montage of clips from “the next Orphan Black” makes clear that she survives, but the episode assumes a somber tone nonetheless.
Orphan Black often cloaks the clearest statement of an episode’s theme in an otherwise inconsequential moment.
It dulls the satirical bite of its predecessor with stock characters and a standard episodic arc.
On Orphan Black, Tatiana Maslany runs the show, and the episode wrings ample excitements from her incomparable performance.
The most irksome flaw, and there are many, of the show’s final season is a vein of self-congratulation.
When it directs its crazed energy at imagining all the ways Norman Bates and his mother will end up losing, Bates Motel sings.
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