Orphan Black

As good as it was last year, it's off to an even better start in its sophomore year.

This cult hit deserves mainstream success in its second season, which wastes no time diving back in to the heart-pounding action.

Orphan Black is better than almost any show on TV at feeling like it’s constantly building toward something, no matter how perilous and rickety its structure becomes.

Beneath the twists and turns of Orphan Black's increasingly deep and vivid story lines lie the even more basic theme of revelation: How would you react if you discovered that what you had come to know as your life was based on misinformation.... From the space between wreckage and rebuilding comes much of our great literature, music and art. And now, Orphan Black.

It remains one of TV's most compelling series, period.

Orphan Black has much on its mind, and maybe too much going on. But it knows to play to its amazing strengths--most of which are named Maslany.

This is a good, solid show that understands its strengths and keeps playing to them in season 2.

Brilliantly written and photographed, it's as thrilling, exciting and groundbreaking as The X-Files was in its era.

Weird and jagged, inventive and energetic, Orphan Black is a small blessing. While Hollywood is busy cloning, this show about clones is a singular pleasure.

Yes, the conspiracy is well-crafted, and yes, it's an engaging critique of society in the way that lots of cool speculative fiction tends to be.

Orphan Black can be a little overly reliant on camera tricks and loud music to sell its action but it’s undeniably addictive in its plotting, pushing viewers from one revelation to the next with breakneck speed that doesn't allow for consideration of plot holes.

Through the first four episodes of the new season, Orphan Black maintains the terrific mix introduced in season one.

Maslany’s performance is, however, a bit like truffle fries arriving in a Happy Meal: It is much more sophisticated than everything else around it.

This could and should be the season when Orphan Black graduates from cult curiosity and is adopted by the pop culture at large as the watercooler sensation it deserves to be.

It’s a complex, multilayered show, with the writing and acting chops to pull it off.

It’s an inordinately intelligent sci-fi series in which the flaws only enhance its overall underdog appeal.

Even if we find ourselves a bit lost, though, as we might early on in Season 2, there are many rewards in Orphan Black that have nothing to do with its mythology.

Maslany shows no signs of running down during the very challenging assignment of playing a wealth of disparate characters. But Orphan Black’s twists, turns and veers are getting increasingly harder to keep down--and impossible to swallow whole.

The show can be messy and confusing--a headlong rush to who-knows- where-or-why at times. But those clones keep it grounded.

Individual scenes are terrific, but a few plotlines strain credulity. If it weren’t for Tatiana Maslany, the show’s star, Orphan Black would be just a likable-enough thriller, with Toronto local color--enough to recommend it to a Canadaphilic sci-fi buff like me, but maybe not to you.

A reasonably entertaining though not exceptional science-fiction adventure series with a wild conspiracy plot whose hook is cloning.

I'm still not sure how much I buy of the overarching conspiracy that will have Sarah on the run from more than one set of bad guys--the action in Orphan Black doesn't leave a lot of time for overthinking these things--but for those up for a serious bioethics discussion, the openings are there.

Orphan Black has apparently just scraped the surface--not only with the overall narrative arc but with the depth of character development in each of the clones that Maslany plays.... [However] It is chewing so voraciously through its story lines--at such a rapid pace--that it often verges on collapse.

The weight of expectations on this new season were great, and if this plucky show staggers a little under that weight, that's understandable. I'm fully on board for Season 2, and I have every reason to believe Orphan Black will keep evolving in the direction of perfection. Science demands it.