Today I finished the first season of OB: The next chapter in Realm.fm, and I felt the need to express a bit of the tornado of ideas I've got myself trapped in. I'm no cultural journalist to go and try to make a heavily-well argumented-dense critic, but in my humble opinion as a consumer of the original series and an audiovisual professional, this is a shit-ton of work that pays off greatly.
My first and most relevant thought during the whole season was that these writers (beautiful people Malka Older, Madeline Ashby, Mishell Baker, Heli Kennedy, E.C. Myers and Lindsay Smit) were so loving and responsible about the truth of these characters that matching the care Maslany puts in everything she touches transported me in a heartbeat into a world I had been missing for a bit now. The humor was there, the wit and the danger, the political statments that soak and base every characters' decisions. They show such an smart sense of timing when introducing new characters as well as letting the old ones make their big entrances, and this keeps you there, wanting for more, being promised almost nothing because they didn't owe us shit, but still found a way to give us new nuances of personality among the clones, new ways of aproaching the same old problems and furthering the discussions that were left open in the TV show.
I am almost in love with the swift in protagonism and activation among the old characters. The fact that Cosima stands first in the first chapters and the detail and effort put in the portrait of her happiness with Delphine strikes me hard personally as I adored these characters and I'm profoundly grateful for the intention of justice that this steady life represents for a couple that was heavily beaten up during the show (not by the writers and directors but by the fictional forces). I love every entrance of every Clone Club sestra - eternally charismatic and multi-layered Allison, twisted and stubborn and wounded Rachel - but when I thought that Helena wouldn't be up for this adventure, her coming down of the truck in her wild hair and parka (and the boots that once belonged to Allison) made me shiver with a sort of simple, joyful happiness that I understand as a gift from the team of this podcast and I am grateful again.
There are several other ideas that I find just right, some new and some old ones that still amaze me: the growth and codependency of small Clone Club Charlotte and Kira, the concept of modern/choosen family, the resistance to structural violence of a minority based on a trust net and their natural skills, the redemption that this concept offers to heavily traumatised undercasted ones as Helena, Rachel, potentially Vivi, and how this interacts with the universal, odysseic concept of coming home; the smart use of Donnie, Art, Felix and Delphine as support as always, offering familiarity but also space for the developpment of those who carry on with the story this time (even though it unsettled me a bit the fact that Delphine didn't suspect a thing about anything when she was so close to the real deal, but that's me respecting and expecting too much about this character anyway) or the effort in documentation needed to talk this much about academic environment, big corporations, northern-american politics and inmigration policies that surely could be addressed more realisticly with even more time than 11 one hour and a half episodes, but still serves to infuse life to this ever-expanding world that could go on for ever. Well not for ever, but I'd like to think that.
Chez Cophine. We were in the right hands all the time, I knew it.
So, I've needed time to come around and sit to listen this properly, but now I think is one of the finest products I've consumed in some time. Only a new, natural step forward for a franchise that have always proved itself to be supported by senseful creators and technicians with a formidable work ethic, tremendous ambitions and love. Now I am equally terrified and excited to listen to Season 2 because I know that some of the old cast actors will voice their characters, but I am not ready for this to be finished. Still, here I go, expecting as much quality as these creators have proven themselves to be capable of providing.
Just one, I'm a few, no family too, who am I?
