brightsips

It's not very clear to me what this has to do with Orphan Black or its legacy, except for an adult Kira as the main character and a few guest appearances of Felix, while repeating some plot lines. Whereas Felix is in a terrible, terrible mask making it impossible for him to do any facial expressions, similar with Delphine's short stint later in the series.

The story is about printing human tissue mainly in form of organs but as that technology progresses to print entire humans as well for a very selfish reason of Kira. Printing, you know, like copying as in cloning. That's the connection between these two shows and I do not think this is sufficient enough or believable for that matter. Frankly, it doesn't add anything to the existing universe which is too bad.
But it can't really either because the original ended with an "everybody lived happily ever after" and this show wants to tell us otherwise regarding Kira.

The main villain is rather boring, his reasoning to be the villain is nonsense (from what we gather throughout) and very uninteresting. The actor himself has no gravitas either to his role and while the other roles are bad at worst, he is the only direct miscast in my opinion.
Speaking of, add in an odd casting. Personally, I don't mind Ritter (main), but Jogia (side character) has always been bad and his character is pointless later in the series. Whittaker's side char only enables our main character. Jones (guest appearances) was among the weakest characters in 19-2 (although her character story was..."good"), here she follows the same level of acting. Diamond (regular "guest appearance") has always been rather one dimensional and cardboard-y and can he stop flossing his damn teeth while driving? It's a disgusting character trait. It's not exactly scraping the bottom of the barrel, but it isn't that far away either.

Maslany on the other hand is nowhere to be seen, only name dropped a few times with lame excuses why none of her characters are in this. Can you imagine, as Sarah not a single phone call or message with Kira the entire season? That is just weird and very telling.

If you detach this whole show from the name Orphan Black it wouldn't even be that bad. Taking the name away wouldn't change anything in the story at all either. It has an interesting idea that isn't too far fetched from the relatively near future. The weird casting decisions mentioned above aside, the other characters in this are fine and there is a certain chemistry between them. While the writing isn't close to the level of OB (when it was good) and clearly has its issues, it isn't terrible. Quite the opposite, it can be enjoyable to watch despite its shortcomings.
The attachment to the name Orphan Black, however, is holding this show back from standing on its own as it sets expectations it cannot and doesn't want to uphold whatsoever. But then without the attachment you probably wouldn't watch it. So...it's marketing.

OB: E is a low budget, mediocre show with a good idea but cheap execution not worthy of the name Orphan Black, setting itself up for disappointment with the viewer.

Heavy with style but lacking in substance. That's the sum of Peaky Blinders.

Peaky leans hard on slow motion shots and a modern punk/indie rock soundtrack that you'll either love or hate. I actually like the choice of music but how many times do we need to see someone walk past a fire breathing factory with a cigarette in hand and punk rock blaring in the background before some actual character development happens?

Cillian Murphy is excellent but aside from one or two other characters the rest of them are very one dimensional. You see all the faces in the background pic on this page? Less than half of those faces have any real narrative in the show. Because of this you are left with just a couple of prominent figures that tend to be overused

The story-lines are never all that compelling either unfortunately, style wins out here as well.

I thought the first season was decent and I was curious to see if they would improve for the second. When it was announced that Tom Hardy would be joining the cast I was pretty excited. Sadly his role isn't featured that much so his impact was minimal.

I see people trying to compare Peaky Blinders with Boardwalk Empire and I just don't see it, Boardwalk had compelling story-lines and an ensemble cast it actually used. Here's hoping season 3 will be different.

Gonna do another thought dump like I did for season 3

Betty/Jughead and Archie/Veronica are awful stupid boring sucky relationships. They're super vanilla and built on really thin connections and neither couple has any chemistry and everyone is an awful partner to each other. I wish they would just break up. Constantly talking about how much they love each other and how deep their connection is and how they want to be with each other forever. They're soulmates!!!1!! You guys are in fucking high school. Give me a break.

I did not care at all about the Cheryl Jason haunting plot. Cheryl was firmly unlikable this season. Was I supposed to feel bad for her? After what she did with her brother's corpse? And her family wanted to get her psychiatric help, and they're the bad guys? Fuck you

Also didn't care about the Archie's Uncle subplot. Uncle was a shitty person

Videotapes were interesting but they never went anywhere. Their "resolution" in season 5 makes it very apparent that they kinda just forgot about the tapes and needed to wrap up the story quickly

They telegraph all their "twists"

Jughead is a gullible emotional little bitch this season. Can't decide whether he likes or hates Stonewall. Constantly falls for the preppies' bullshit. Makes it really hard to like him.

Archie never progresses as a character. Every time he's faced with an important decision that tests his character he falls back on his bullshit

They kinda forgot about the whole Hiram Lodge sickness storyline a lot. And the fact that Hermosa exists

Veronica is inconsistent and unlikable as ever. And why was she so distraught over what Archie did with Betty? She was super vindictive over Archie's kiss with Betty in season 2 - when they were broken up - and the one time she had a fight with Archie she started flirting with other guys. And she cheated on him with Reggie? Or did she? Had she broken up with Archie by then? idk my point is she gets really upset despite having been an awful and kind of unfaithful partner

The episode they did to memorialize Luke Perry was nicely done. The follow-up late in the season was another "Archie doesn't make any strides as a character" moment

Mad Dog ceased to exist halfway through the season. Just was not in the story anymore. He was one of the only likable characters

That bullshit "we need to redeem principal honey" stuff was so contrived and obvious. Like ok, he did good things, but he also did shitty things that directly impacted you. You don't need to regret what you did

Payoff of the whole Stonewall Prep mystery was extremely underwhelming. They did a good enough job making the preppies unlikable, but then all their conniving and conspiring adds up to pretty much nothing

Genuinely enjoyed Jughead faking his death, because it allowed for some new stuff to happen. We saw a new dynamic develop between Betty and Archie, we questioned the strength of the two main couples. Exciting stuff. Didn't last very long unfortunately

Nothing Lynchian about the episode "Lynchian". Just another example of the show's pretentious co-opting of other better art to try to seem smart and relevant and clever.

Edgar Evernever went from designing an elaborate cult to harvest organs to being a hypnotist and delusional astronaut? Wildly inconsistent with his portrayal in season 3.

There's old-school technology in everyone's house. It's clearly set in the 21st century, but everyone has old tvs and cassette decks and typewriters because...it looks "cute" I guess? Were the writers "born in the wrong generation" or something?

Unless I'm forgetting something, the Dodger story kinda just went nowhere. Like it was just left unresolved.

Not quite as bad as season 3, but still really bad.