“Orphan Black” Episode 510 Recap: Goodbye to You

The way I first started watching Orphan Black isn’t a romantic one. I wrote for a different website back then, and had just started a few months prior to Orphan Black‘s premiere. I’d seen the ads for it on the subway, some commercials on BBC America, and had been interested, but hadn’t even realized it started, to be honest. When my editors sent out a call for someone to cover the show after season one, episode five showed queer promise, I offered to take it on. I had wanted to watch anyway, and I had only been recapping Once Upon a Time so far, and thought it would be a fun challenge to write about a show with a drastically different tone.

I was assigned the piece on a Tuesday afternoon and ended up watching all five of the aired episodes on Tuesday night. In an email to my editor to let her know the general gist of my piece, I described the show as, “very witty, dramatic, mysterious — with three pretty badass chicks as the leads (all played by the same extremely talented and very attractive actress)” because my love was immediate and deep. I had been right — writing about Orphan Black was different from any other kind of writing I had to do; the show was smart and complex, and I had to find a way to write about it that was clear, but not too dense; even five seasons later it’s sometimes hard to make these recaps not sound like book reports!

A few weeks later, I had an email interview with Tatiana Maslany, my first ever interview of any kind. I went to my first event as press the next year, before the second season started, at the season two premiere event in NYC, where I got to interview Evelyne Brochu and Jordan Gavaris on the red carpet. Right before the second season started, I organized my first fan meetup and met some Clonesbians who are now some of my closest real life friends.

A lot of things have changed in my life over the past four years, some big, some small. But Orphan Black was always a constant; it was the first show I’d recommend to people when they asked what they should watch next, it was a show people would directly send me news about because they knew how much I loved it. My friends who had never seen an episode knew Tatiana Maslany by name because of how much I talked about her. When the website I had been writing for unceremoniously stopped hiring its freelancers back, the way Autostraddle invited me to join their team was, “Will you come recap Orphan Black and Wynonna Earp for us?” (Supergirl came later.)

So I can’t imagine what my life will look like without ten weeks of the year (okay fine, more than that) being dedicated to this show. Without theorizing about who is good and who is evil and if there’s even such a thing as either. Without fearing for Cosima’s life every time she coughs. Without forgetting Tatiana plays all the parts week after week, cast photo after cast photo.

And don’t even getting me started on Tatiana Maslany! Tatiana was never shy about speaking out about feminism, she was a loud and proud ally of the LGBTQ+ community, she cared so much about this show and the characters and the people she was representing with each role she played. She was smart and kind and always the first one to give praise to her unseen costar, her clone double, Kathryn Alexandre. I met her for one brief and wonderful moment, and her eyes were so kind and her smile so genuine; she is truly made of magic.

But before I officially say goodbye, we have one more episode to recap. An episode I’ve been dreading since the announcement, but that ended up feeling like wish fulfilment porn. I cried because I hate goodbyes, because I’m going to miss this show in my bones, but it was a beautiful hour of television.

We start with a flashback, Sarah in the car with Mrs. S.

They’re outside a Planned Parenthood, and discussing whether or not Sarah wants to keep the baby. Sarah sounds defiant, like maybe she does, but maybe only because S thinks she doesn’t. She’s young and she’s scared and S is just trying to be supportive.

Cut to present-day, with Sarah trying to get Helena out of the DYAD facility while Helena is actively having contractions. The alarm is sounding, and fucking Coady is still cheating death somehow. PT comes in and finds her and is pissed she let Helena waddle away. But Coady says Helena’s water broke so she couldn’t have gotten all that far.

And it’s true, because Sarah and Helena are in a basement room and Sarah is putting down some cardboard as a makeshift bed for Helena. Helena doesn’t want to have her baby here, amidst all the danger, but Sarah tells her that the alarm sounding is their people, that they’re coming for them, that they’re not alone.

And as if to prove the point, Art sneaks up on Enger, who is hunting down Sarah and Helena, and knocks her out.

PT is fading fast, getting more and more desperate as his health fails him, and says they’ll have to do the surgery somewhere else because they can’t isolate the mutation in this contaminated area. Coady doesn’t love this plan but is a little scared of the ol’ guy so she agrees. But first they have to find the girls.

Sarah starts to leave Helena to find medical supplies, but Helena begs her not to go. Sarah hands her a screwdriver and tells her she’ll be right back, takes a pipe, and heads into the worst level of a video game where you have to sneak around in the dark and hope no one spots you. Luckily it’s Art who finds her first.

Sarah sends Art back to be with Helena while she looks for medical supplies, so he gives her a gun just in case.

Coady follows Helena’s blood trail to the basement door and goes in, wielding her gun and insults. PT wants to come see for himself but Coady says she needs someone who could actually help her, but instead of sending his doctor, PT kills him instead. It’s chaos.

Art finds Helena and Coady thinks this is a perfect turn of events because now Art can be the midwife while she stands at a safe distance with her gun.

Meanwhile, Sarah is lurking around murder-tarps, trying to get medical supplies.

PT is lurking too, though, and confronts Sarah. He calls her and Helena “fertile freaks” as he moves through the plastic as a shadow. PT says they were the only set of twins they ever produced, and it turns out they only need the one. Sarah shoots blindly in the direction of his voice, and hears a grunt and a thud, but just when she thinks he’s down for good, he lurches out of the shadows and starts to smother her with the plastic.

And listen. I thought this was it. It’s the last episode, Helena’s giving birth in a basement at gunpoint, I thought Sarah and Helena were going to die at the same time, leaving newborn twin babies in their stead. I was crying and crying and my heart was breaking but then!

Helena and Art take out Coady and get her to come close enough for Helena to scree-scraw her to death (for real this time), and Sarah throws PT off of her and says, “I survived you, we survived you, me and my sisters, together,” then BASHES HIS BRAINS IN.

It was the literal opposite of what I thought was about to happen and my tears dried up on my cheeks and I punched the air, triumphant. Our girls won. Finally, finally stopped cutting heads off the hydra and stabbed it right in its stupid, cold, black heart.

So Sarah runs to help her sestra give birth, all the while having flashbacks to when Siobhan was by her side when Kira was born.

Sarah is echoing some of the supportive words S said back then, with an added “Meathead” or two, and laughs with joy the way S laughed when Kira was born.

The twins are born and crying healthy cries and Sarah, Helena, and Art are crying happy cries and it’s beautiful.

Cut to a short time later, with the babies in their cribs with their homemade sestra-mobiles above them. One of the bbs has on orange socks and one has on purple socks and they’re chubby and cute and Helena loves them so much.

Meanwhile, Sarah is Skyping with Cosima, who is talking to her about math, because Sarah’s going to take her high school equivalency test, and it’s the cutest sestra thing ever, and it’s a miracle I didn’t just die of feelings overload at this point.

(Though I’m glad I didn’t because we’re nowhere near peak feelings.)

Cosima (and Scott!) wish her good luck and she says goodbye as she sends Kira off to school. Felix will pick her up from school to take her to Auntie Alison’s house. Because they’re all one big happy family.

Over at Alison’s, Donnie is calling the babies Orange and Purple and Alison is claiming Helena hasn’t named them yet which I think is silly because Orange and Purple are lovely names. Donnie agrees.

Alison doesn’t have time to debate over what words can or cannot be names though because she has to finish decorating for her sestra’s baby shower. Just, being very Alison, new haircut and all.

Meanwhile, down the Rabbit Hole, Cosima and Delphine are trying to find more Ledas. Together. Girlfriends. Doing science. TOGETHER.

They’ve already given the cure to the clones they know of, including Krystal and Tony, but they’re having a hard time tracking down the rest of them; especially since they don’t even know how many there are.

Art is helping though, so they do have their next one, a woman in Colombia. (They actually say “Clone Club Colombia, we’re all over the world.” Which is beautiful.)

But it doesn’t matter how long it takes, Cosima and Delphine are going to save them all.

Over at Mrs. S’s house, Sarah is boxing things up to get ready to sell the house. She finds a card from S that makes me cry but she’s being pretty tough. Felix comes in, a little upset that she’s already packing up, without a real plan, without asking what Kira wants. But Sarah doesn’t want to talk about it, reminds him to pick up Kira from school, and heads to the high school to take her test.

She gets a call from Helena while she’s there, and tells Meathead she’ll come to the baby shower of course, and that she feels weird being the only one here to take this test.

Sarah can hear S’s voice in her head, a conversation they had, S telling her that to be a good mother she should try staying still, Sarah retorting that she doesn’t need anything from S. Sarah decides then to walk out and not take the test after all, despite me yelling NOOO DON’T GOOOO at the screen.

Over at the baby shower, everything is playing out very similar to the way Helena dreamed it way back at the start of season three. Except now their family is bigger than she even imagined, and the babies are born, and everything is beautiful. Cosima got little science monkeys for the babies and shows up with Delphine and the sun is shining in the sky and in my heart.

And then in a moment of hilarity, Felix passes off the baby he’s holding to Cosima and she PANICS.

Luckily Delphine is more comfortable with it, so Cosima coos at the baby from a safe distance.

Sarah heads to the baby shower and immediately goes to the fridge to grab a beer.

Delphine comes in and hugs her, because why not give me surprise feelings in the middle of the kitchen. Sarah spent so long (understandably) not trusting Delphine, Delphine spent so long fighting for Sarah (and her sestras) anyway, and here they are, having a moment alone together.

Delphine tries to express her condolences about Siobhan, that S taught her how to be brave, but Sarah doesn’t want to hear it. She also doesn’t want to talk about her test, even though, one-by-one, people are filing into the kitchen and it’s their first question.

Felix excuses himself because he has a text and Colin follows him. Felix says he’s expecting someone, on the downlow, and y’all I almost had a full-on panic attack. I thought it was going to be revealed that Felix has been shady/on the wrong side of this the whole time, and I was going to have to cry forever/never trust anyone again. I don’t know why I kept expecting the worst! But I did and I was practically shaking with the fear of it until the moment it was revealed who he was talking to. And who he’s talking to is Rachel, who came here in an Uber to make sure everyone is okay and to give Felix an envelope. When she asks about the babies, Felix reminds her that there’s no way she would be welcome at this party, which breaks my damn heart, but Rachel seems more or less okay with it. She’s had her fill of clones. Now she can go live in beach house made of windows and sip martinis to her heart’s content.

Art comes into Helena’s garage apartment and Helena admits that she’s worried about Sarah. She’s still so out of it (she has not mended) and Helena doesn’t know how to help her sestra.

Inside, Sarah brought some of Kira’s old toys, and Alison takes this time to tell Sarah that she doesn’t want her to move. She says Kira has cousins now, that she’s bonding with Gemma, Oscar, Maya, and Charlotte. That they can finally live like sestras, that they’re finally free. But Sarah just grumbles that freedom looks different to everyone. When Alison pushes again, Sarah snaps and says she doesn’t want to raise Kira in the house where her grandmother was shot to death. Which promptly shuts everyone up.

Sarah is sitting alone outside and, one-by-one, her sestras come out to sit with her. Helena asks her to open up, and sitting in this backyard with her sisters, finally together, finally able to relax, Sarah opens up. Breaks herself wide open, admits that she didn’t go to her test, admits she feels like she’s a shitty mother. Ever since she came back to the city, she’s been able to blame these feelings on the whole being-hunted-by-various-organizations thing; anyone would have a hard time balancing that and parenting, right? But now there’s no one left to blame it on, and she’s feeling the full weight of the responsibility. And despite what her younger self said, she relied on Siobhan, she needed her support, she needed her help.

There’s a moment of silence when her sisters let her hold this pain, but then they start jumping in. Alison admits that the other day she threatened Gemma for not cleaning her room, to the point she scared her. Helena admits her babies keep eating sand she can’t find the source of. Cosima admits she’s terrified of babies and doesn’t feel maternal and doesn’t know if it’s because that’s how she is and if so is that selfish, or just because she’s scared?

Cosima holds Sarah’s hand; the point is, they’re all scared. It’s okay not to be okay. Nobody — not a clone, not a human in this world has it totally figured out. It’s okay to feel like you’re failing sometimes, and it’s okay to reach out for help. She’s not alone, not anymore. Not if she doesn’t want to be.

Felix joins his sisters, then, bearing the envelope he got from Rachel. It’s a list of every single known Leda clone around the world. A complete list. Everything they need to cure them all.

And there are 274 of them. The thought of that is…sobering.

But Helena doesn’t want them to dwell on that right now because she has something for her sisters, too. Her memoir is finished and she wants to read it to them. It’s called Orphan Black, and Sarah thinks that’s a stupid name for a thing. They all laugh about it and it’s so perfect. It’s such a wonderful way to pull us all in for one last group hug.

The story is one that has many beginnings but no end, she reads. And it starts when her sister Sarah stepped off the train and met…herself.

And then we do one of my favorite cinematic endings; a “where are they now” sign-off for our four main clones.

Alison is playing piano and Donnie comes home and dances for her, making her laugh.

Helena is playing with her babies in the backyard. Happy, safe. An angry angel no more.

Cosima is with Delphine in Colombia, inoculating that clone Art found for them, Camilla. Camilla is flirting with Delphine, because who wouldn’t, and Cosima is hiding nearby so as not to spook her.

They still have a lot of clones to save, but they have a list now, and they’re going to do it together.

These two have been through the ringer, haven’t they? They started flirting; Delphine because she had to get closer to Cosima, Cosima because she knew Delphine was her monitor. But then real feelings bloomed, and misunderstanding after misunderstanding, some lies, some betrayals, some separation, some anger. But then a coming together, a working together, some trust and a stronger relationship. Stronger at the broken places.

Delphine was not just Cosima’s girlfriend. She was always more complicated than that. And sometimes she wasn’t even Cosima’s girlfriend. Cosima was never the token lesbian — but she was never shy about the fact that she was one. She said literal lines that proved it: “My sexuality isn’t the most interesting thing about me.” and “I’m not going to apologize for my heart, okay?” and it wasn’t and she didn’t. They kissed and had sex and fought and exchanged “I love yous” and broke up and got back together. They were everything.

And hell if they didn’t earn their happy ending.

Sarah is getting ready for a trip to the beach with Felix and Kira, still in Mrs. S’s house. She pauses on the way out, looking back at this home she’s decided to embrace, this life that might not be as crazy as the life-and-death she’s been living, and might not be perfect, but something that’s somewhere in the middle. Something that’s hers.

And then she closes the door.

And that’s the end.

I was so afraid this series finale was going to be a massacre. I thought Sarah was going to have to sacrifice herself to save her fellow Ledas, or it would end with another Helsinki-like event. But instead it was the breath of fresh air these girls have more than earned. It was the bad guys being defeated and good guys winning…and realizing that “good” doesn’t mean “perfect.” (And when every day the news makes it feel like we’re losing, it’s nice to be reminded that it’s worth having hope, it’s worth fighting.) It was four different versions of what love looks like, four different versions of happily ever after, four different-looking branches of one big family.

God, goodbyes feel so impossible. I guess it’s not really goodbye; Orphan Black might be over, but Clone Club is forever. This show will settle onto that shelf in my heart where Buffy is, something I will always be referencing, something that will always be part of who I am in my core. So I guess this isn’t goodbye. Not really. Not forever.

Goodnight, Orphan Black. You’ll always be more than a show to me.

“Orphan Black” Episode 509 Recap: An Angry Angel Gets Her Wings

The bloodshed continues in this, the penultimate episode of Orphan Black. We’ve had episodes centering around Alison, Cosima, Rachel, S and Felix, and now it’s Helena’s turn.

A young Helena, true to brand even as a child, is rustling through a drawer, stealing chocolates. Sneaking candy, she catches a nun masturbating. The nun turns her internal guilt into anger and calls little Helena the devil, forcing her hair into a bleach bucket to mark her as having the devil inside her so that no one would believe her even if she did tell. The nun shoves little Helena into the chokey as a final punishment.

Helena, hair bleached and frayed, eyes red, shoves the last of her stolen chocolate in her mouth, and thus begins her origin story.

When we get back to present day, Sarah is speaking at Mrs. S’s funeral while someone sings the Parting Glass, which feels a little like my soul is walking on glass. Though I do have to say, I’m grateful for the small favor this show did in not showing us Sarah and Felix finding S’s body. I don’t know if my heart could have taken it. It was hard enough to watch Sarah start to read the letter S left them, but having to stop because Kira broke down crying.

It was hard enough to watch Felix take over reading the letter, and hear his voice shaking. S writes to them that death is not the end, that she’s just in the next room, and that they’ll be together again, laughing about this very moment.

It’s very upsetting. Also upsetting is that Cosima and Alison can’t go to the funeral, what with having the same face as Sarah, so they’re video chatting and crying with each other.

Felix had told them Sarah hadn’t even cried yet – at the funeral, Sarah was stone-faced and looked a little detached. Cosima says Delphine will be back from France soon, and then they can join Alison in supporting their sestra, together.

And I think their sestra could use them, because Sarah is at the post-funeral reception at her house, but she’s not talking to anyone, she’s just watching news of the Neolution exposition on her phone.

The only thing that gets her attention is when Felix tells her someone is here to see her and it’s Sister Irena. She’s holding Helena’s journal, and Sarah knows immediately that something is wrong.

And what’s wrong, specifically, is that Coady is whisking Helena away in an ambulance, talking about getting the babies out of Helena as quickly as possible, before the people who would be looking for her find her.

Cosima assumes they want the babies for their cord blood, and that Rachel would probably know more about where they would take her.

Sarah doesn’t love this plan, and also wants to stay with Kira, so Art and Felix say they’ll go instead. They’re kind of (understandably) hostile to Rachel until she turns around and her eye is sewn shut; I think then they realize she’s not exactly on the winning side of this, either. They ask her if Coady would have taken Helena back to the island, but she explains that the island is in chaos now, so that wouldn’t be the smartest plan.

And Rachel is right, because Coady has taken Helena to what looks like an old airplane hangar turned makeshift med tent. PT is there and he’s looking a little tough. He’s running out of time and he only has a few loyal supporters left. So he rips off his wig to get to work, a wild look in his eyes.

Meanwhile, back at the house, Sarah is walking round like a zombie, looking at the height markings on the doorframe that S kept for Sarah, Felix, and Kira. She smells an old jacket of S’s, but she still doesn’t cry. Honestly it probably hasn’t hit her yet, that the woman who was always there for her, one of the only constants in her life, even when Sarah didn’t want her to be, is gone.

Rachel, Felix and Art are talking more about the Revival Revolution and the timeframe of Helena’s disappearance when Art realizes it coincides with Detective Enger being MIA. So they recruit Scott to babysit Rachel (again), while Art and Felix go to the station.

Felix waits in the car while Art goes inside, and Enger is there with a wink and a smug smile. Art’s boss finds him and says Interpol wants to talk, which can’t be good for ol’ Art, but he’s more concerned with exactly how deep this police corruption goes. He determines his boss is on his side, and that it’s mostly just Enger who is decidedly The Worst.

We flash back again to see the moment Thomas comes to get little Helena from the closet, saying he’s been looking for her for a long time, saying she’s special. Which was surely confusing for the little girl being raised by nuns and shoved in a closet to hear, though not unwelcome.

Fast forward a while, long enough for little Helena to learn English and create a cardboard dollhouse where she spits on little lesbian Barbies and curses the “copies” she is being taught are sins of science, with the exception of The Original, a mysterious woman she must protect from the evil scientists.

Grown-up Helena is being induced into labor by Coady, at PT’s command, and she wakes up now, furious at Coady, spitting at her.

Helena knows she’s just doing PT’s bidding, so she calls Coady a coward, but Coady responds by having her assistant put a muzzle on her. And just like that the assassin clone who learned to love her sestras is alone, tied down, and muzzled. And super pregnant.

Art comes back the car and he and Felix call Cosima to tell Team Science about how the board members are dying, and there are only three left, including Rachel.

And one of them is that one guy who said the word debt and is about as nice as one so I have been considering him a Lannister, Al-Khatib. Felix flounces into the boardroom, where Frontenac is about to kill Al-Khatib, but Frontenac doesn’t seem particularly surprised, even when Art busts in. Frontenac threatens them, so Art shoots him dead, leaving Al-Khatib looking a bit shaken.

Art calls Sarah to tell her what went down, and she hates that he’s so tangled up in this now.

But his heart’s tangled up in it already, so a little gunshot between enemies didn’t really make it any better or worse.

Meanwhile in the chaos cave, PT is telling Coady to put Mark down like he’s a dog that bit a kid while out for a walk; he says Mark only wanted the cure so he could grow old with Gracie, and Gracie is dead now, so what’s the point in letting him live? Coady is a little horrified; she didn’t even want Gracie down in the first place, and she surely doesn’t want to kill the last of her Castor boys. Even monsters have their limits. But PT doesn’t care about Castor anymore, only LEDA and their offspring. He leaves shouting, “the future is female” even though has no right to considering he sees these women as merely pawns and objects.

But, Coady is under his thumb, and whether she truly believes in the science or what is anyone’s guess at this point, but regardless she tells Mark she’s giving him his cure and lets him talk about his future with Gracie. He tells her he’s happy, calls her mom, then dies in her arms. And man, I didn’t even LIKE Mark or the entire season we spent on the Castor clones, but Ari Millen is so great in this scene, and it actually made me really sad??? Then again it’s the second-to-last episode of one of my top-five-ever favorite shows so everything has been making me sad. “Is this their last Skype call?” “Is this our last flashback?” etc. I’m a mess.

Speaking of flashbacks, we go back now to a fully grown Helena, being given her fish knife for the first time, ready to start her mission of “cleansing” the copies. Why they had her wait ’til adulthood is anyone’s guess; I suppose it stands to reason it took them that long to start finding them.

So off Helena goes, ready to kill her first mark, having presumably practiced on puppies, and follows the copy into a church of all places, her very first scree-scraw leading the way. The woman kneels down, and Helena stabs her from behind, quick, clean, hesitation-free. But then the woman falls back and Helena realizes the woman she killed looks just like her.

Helena goes home (if you can call it that) and sits on her bed having an existential crisis; for almost two decades, she has been raised and trained to hate these “copies,” told they were abominations, that they needed to be eliminated. And now she finds out she IS one. Thomas tells her then that she is the original, she is the one they copied, she is the special one. She needs to believe this to keep some grip on the reality she’s been forced to build, so she does. It’s unclear to me whether this was his plan all along, or if it was a panic switch when he realizes how upset she was. If she was always meant to believe she was the original, or if he truly believed there was an original out there that needed to be protected. Something tells me it’s the first thing.

And then, possibly as a way to help alleviate her guilt, Helena cuts herself for the first time, the first feather in what will someday be an angry angel’s wings.

Present-day Helena is mid-contraction and crying out that she’s not special, that she’s been just a copy all this time, just like her sestras, even the ones she killed. She sees Coady standing there and begs her not to take her babies, woman to woman, mother to mother; they took Coady’s babies, don’t let PT do this to her. But Coady just had to kill her last baby so she’s not feeling very much like bonding right now. She tells Helena she’s committed sestracide and she stinks and would be a horrible mother. Helena loves these unborn babies so much, it never occurred to her that she might not be cut out for motherhood, so she cries.

Back in Rachel’s hotel room, something truly shocking happens. They’re trying to figure out where Coady and PT are, and Al-Khatib keeps calling Helena “the science,” but Rachel — Rachel fucking Duncan — interrupts him and says, “Her name is Helena.” It might be the kindest thing Rachel has ever said.

Sarah is on the phone and says that they’re running out of time, because Kira can sense that the babies are coming.

Al-Khatib swears he doesn’t know where they took Helena, all he knows is that Rachel is next. So Sarah says they should try to get ahead of the game by giving them exactly what they want. So Al-Khatib calls PT and offers Rachel up and Enger checks the trunk, is pleased as pie to have the ProClone in her grasp, and brings her back to Westmoreland.

Cosima. Is. Stressed.

She hates this plan so much and not because she feels so deeply for all her sestras, but because the person in the trunk is actually Sarah, cloneswapped.

Over in the med tent from hell, Helena pretends to be drugged, but as soon as she’s left alone, she gets down to business, swiping some scissors from a tray by her bed and working on releasing her wrists from their cuffs. When she can’t get them off, she speaks to her babies in Russian, saying they deserve better than a life with her, better than a life of being a science experiment. So she decides to set them all free, slitting her wrists with the scissors.

One thing Orphan Black has always had going for it is that no clone ever truly felt safe; when one actress plays every character, all of those characters are expendable. So I truly thought we were losing Helena in this moment, and boy was my heart broken. To have just watched her journey, from angry and tortured child to angry and tortured adult, to sweet and goofy woman who loved snacks and her sestras and her babies more than she ever loved murder…and then to have that all end? When her evolution was only truly beginning? It hurt. My only solace was knowing that truly the only acceptable way for Helena to go out is by her own hand, no one else’s.

But worry not, because her family is on the way. Art is tracing Sarah and follows Enger to the DYAD building where Cosima’s lab used to be. Have I mentioned the Cosima is worried, because she’s still super worried.

But between WizardFace and Rachel, they have enough intel that they have hope they can pull this off. Sarah just has to stall.

When Sarah gets to PT, he starts to tell her things about Rachel he learned through watching her through her robot eye; deeply personal things that Rachel would hate that Sarah now knows, but that give Sarah an insight into her most serious sestra’s humanity. For example, the most upsetting piece of news: Rachel writes letters to the biological mother she never met.

Punch me in the heart, why don’t ya?

Eventually Sarah yells at PT to stop telling her these things and pretends to cry, calling him “father.” He’s suspicious now, and soon rips off her wig to reveal Sarah, who drops the act instantly, jumping up and slashing PT’s face with her knife.

Enger comes in and pins her down so PT can point a gun at her, ready to rid himself of the nuisance clone once and for all.

But Coady runs in then, expecting to have to borrow Rachel, but instead snatching Sarah. Helena needs blood and she needs it NOW.

Meanwhile, Scott and the Wizard sneak into DYAD and get Art in through a back door, letting the alarms go off to alert the masses. Art whips out his nightstick and heads toward Sarah, because he’ll always have her back.

In the med tent, Coady hooks Sarah up to Helena to give her more blood, right from the source.

Coady is going to give Helena a C-section, but after some loving “meathead”s, Helena wakes up.

Helena gives her twin the eye, and Sarah hangs tight while Helena does her thing.

She asks Coady for water, and while she’s giving it to her, Helena SMASHES Coady’s head into the utensil tray. It’s pretty brutal but man I hope she stays dead this time. Helena calls Coady a shit mother and has Sarah help her up so they can escape. But as soon as they’re both free and standing, Helena’s water breaks. The babies are coming.

“Orphan Black” Episode 508 Recap: The Storm

We open on Mrs. S, sitting in her chair, looking at her family, protecting the ones she loves the most.

Sarah and Kira are sleeping, but it’s no matter, because Siobhan is on the lookout.

At DYAD, Rachel is crawling around in the mess she made from PLUCKING OUT HER OWN EYEBALL and is losing a lot of blood and fast, and she makes it to the elevator, but there’s a person inside. She doesn’t know if it’s friend or foe (is there a difference when you’re Rachel Duncan?) and knowing the answer isn’t an answer because it’s Ferdinand. But, she’s alive and her eye is sewn up and I guess it’s fine for now even though he is the literal scum of the earth.

When Sarah wakes up she freaks a little but S assures her she has everything under control. Sarah kisses her mum on the head, and Mrs. S looks weighed down by the secrets she keeps.

S tells Sarah to get Kira ready because they have guests coming over. It’s Charlotte! Kira finally met her Auntie Charlotte who is her age! It’s very cute and they’re going to continue to be cute and safe at Art’s ex’s house with his daughter. All’s quiet on the clone front, which stresses Sarah out to no end, but Art says probably it’s just because Rachel is the one in the crosshairs now after letting Kira escape.

And! Down the Rabbit Hole, where I guess Cosima lives now, acting like this isn’t the biggest deal in the world, are Cosima and Delphine, just sitting around, drinking tea and chatting about Jane Eyre.

It’s the actual cutest thing. Our girls are finally together again without a man waiting nearby to tear them apart. But they can’t totally relax into each other just yet. Delphine is stressed because they’re running out of time before the DNA is collected from innocent people for nefarious science reasons, and besides, they have a Skype date with Mrs. S in a few minutes.

Sarah is still a ball of nervous energy, pacing back and forth and demanding to know how Mrs. S can just sit there all calm and collected when the SKY IS FALLING. But one of Mrs. S’s secrets is about to be revealed… Felix is home!

Adele is, too. And frankly it wasn’t THAT much of a secret because Felix has an art opening tonight and Sarah plumb forgot. When they get on the call with Cosima and Delphine,

Cosima wonders aloud if an art opening is such a good idea, and Sarah agrees, but S and Felix think this is exactly what they need. His sestras can’t all show up though because that would be too wackadoodle even for him. So Alison will help set up, Sarah will attend, and Cosima can swing by after.

Mrs. S looks at all her stressed little chickens and tells them to stand down, just for today. It’s the eye of the storm, there’s nothing for them to do right now, and they’ve earned a night off.

So Cosima and Delphine are in.

Sarah, on the other hand, doesn’t even remember what relaxing feels like.

Meanwhile, in the convent, Gracie is making her bed on Helena’s floor. Her story was that Mark died and she had nowhere else to go, no family left. Helena is suspicious at first…

…and gives her a good scare, waving around a butter knife like she hasn’t killed a man with less, but eventually she takes Gracie’s hand and puts it on her belly, telling her she does still have family.

So, the art show is going to happen in Felix’s loft, which has been painted white for the occasion, and cleared out of the bed and couch and everything. It’s pretty amazing, and honestly probably closer to what the loft was meant to be used for anyway. Donnie and Alison are helping set up, and Donnie literally doesn’t know what to do with himself without Alison telling him what to do — but we do see a little of our old Ali come through when she asks Donnie if that’s what he’s wearing which is a thing my mother used to say to me all the time (along with “are you going to brush your hair?” even though I ALREADY BRUSHED MY HAIR, MOTHER) and so it gave me an eye twitch.

Alison’s old and new selves come through at the SAME time when she tells Felix she wants to play the keyboard for his show.

Felix says thanks but no thanks and also she should skedaddle before people start showing up.

At Mrs. S’s house, Siobhan is pouring Adele some whiskey and still trying to get Sarah to calm down, but Sarah doesn’t understand why everyone else is totally fine with taking the night off when they literally JUST saved her daughter from becoming a mother to thousands of clone children. Mrs. S all but grabs her by the sides of her head and says that she hasn’t forgotten all the danger they’re in, but this if Felix’s night, so why doesn’t she just play the big sister and watch over him tonight.

Also in the running for Best Sestra is Cosima, who has created 144 doses of the cure, and is on track to make at least twice that, ready to inoculate all of her LEDA siblings. Scott points out that they don’t even know exactly how many there are, or who they are, but Cosima won’t let a little thing like that stop her from at least trying.

Delphine has an errand to run, and will meet them at the art opening, so she blows Cosima a kiss and is on her way. Cosima explains to Scott that they have a new policy where Cosima doesn’t pry into Delphine’s goings-on so that Delphine doesn’t have to lie to her. It’s…a choice.

Actually, I joke, but it’s a measured decision based on trust. Delphine promised everything she does, she does for Cosima and her family, and Cosima trusts that’s true, and understands she can’t know everything just yet.

So Delphine goes and meets up with Mrs. S, looking beautiful as can be because the spy life looks good on her.

Delphine really truly wants to tell everyone, but Mrs. S is sure the sestras would just get in their way or try to stop them if they knew what they were up to — or worse, lose faith that they’re all on the same side.

And her concerns are valid because the person they’re here to see is Ferdinand. Well, Rachel, but via Ferdinand. Which Delphine HATES. He brutally murdered MK, among other things, and she hates that this is the best course of action, but she’ll play along, to end this.

Mrs. S tells Rachel that they have enough evidence to take Neolution down, but they just need more solid proof to back it up. Mrs. S asks to talk to Rachel alone and explains what Neolution’s real plan is: The 1% will get genetic perfection, while everyone deemed imperfect will be forcibly sterilized. It’s like backwards Handmaid’s Tale but just as creepy. Mrs. S says that since Rachel saved Kira, she knows she’s not as pure evil as she was raised, and there might be some humanity left in her after all, so she wanted to give Rachel the chance to fight her nurture and let nature win. To choose to help.

They don’t have much to offer in return, except the one thing no one has truly been willing or able to give Rachel yet: freedom.

Felix’s art show is going well and there’s an important art dude there, and Alison has the idea that he should use the sestras to his advantage, so he does just that. He starts by presenting Alison to the crowd as Hestia, the goddess of hearth and home. She even does the lil face pose like she’s doing in her painting, and it’s a big hit. It’s an even bigger hit when Felix swaps Alison out for Cosima, introducing her as Metis goddess of wisdom and deep thought.

She dances, stomping all over an image of Rachel on the floor, and moving her body in that very Cosima way. As someone who spent many years in dance classes and at school dances trying to make my body mimic others’ and only sometimes succeeding, sometimes it’s the extreme differences in the way the clones’ ENTIRE BODIES move, even/especially when dancing, that reminds me, always, again, that Tatiana Maslany is extraordinary beyond measure.

Sarah is STILL pacing around home base, stressing at Adele, who is the only person left to listen. Adele has finally heard enough and snaps at her; Felix spent their entire trip working for her, thinking of her, painting her. And now it’s his big night and she still can’t take a minute to focus on him. Adele tries to ease some of her nerves by saying while they were abroad, Delphine only did what Mrs. S said, and the only thing she’s not completely clear on is that one phone call with a dude named…Frederico? Ferngully? Ferdinand.

Sarah’s eyes bug out, feeling justified in her paranoia: Ferdinand killed her sister. Adele has that classic foot-in-mouth face and goes back to her hush puppies.

Back in her new room, Rachel is showing Ferdinand the missing pieces of info S is after. Ferdinand’s eyes turn into dollar signs like a cartoon villain while Rachel waxes poetic about freedom. After all, Rachel doesn’t owe anyone anything. Not anymore.

Rachel tells Ferdinand that she has a nest egg they can use; they can run away and leave all this behind. But Ferdinand mocks her dream and says they should sell the info instead, be filthy rich. Rachel knows then, if she didn’t already, what he’s about. He doesn’t care about her freedom at all; and why would he? He’s never been not free. He literally stomped a girl to death and faced no consequences. Rachel gives over the USB, but there’s a light out in her eyes that used to be there when she looked at him. He thanks her by saying, “Who’s your daddy?” in the creepiest creep voice he can creepily muster.

At the art show, Felix takes a deep breath and asks Delphine why Sarah is texting him furiously about Delphine and Mrs. S being up to something, and Delphine answers, “Maybe we are,” and that’s enough for Felix. She takes a shot with Felix and Donnie and then Cosima pulls her away to dance and it’s all so beautiful and happy and normal and actually kind of reminded me of the Orphan Black afterparty I went to that one time and it’s such a brief moment but it filled me up with so much joy.

Delphine and Cosima are looking at Cosima’s painting, excited to be doing yet another relatively normal thing together.

And soon they can be like this forever! Remember that one time I said Delphine and Cosima were finally able to be together without a man coming to separate them? Well that was just in the bunker, they’re not safe from that here, because Cosima is pulled away now by Felix because it’s cloneswap time again. Cosima is bummed but she tells Felix he’s one of the good ones. Also Delphine buys the painting of Cosima, and Cosima jokes she owns her, and Delphine answers simply, “You’re mine.”

So Cosima is ushered out and Sarah is ushered in. Felix isn’t even listen to her ranting about Ferdinand, he’s just shuffling her into the room and introducing her as Artemis, goddess of war.

Meanwhile at home base, Mrs. S is putting a bouquet of roses together for Felix, assembling her guns, writing a letter, and crying. It’s all very ominous and I hate it, even though it’s beautiful to behold. She sends Delphine a text that says, “We’re in business,” and Delphine takes a lingering look around at all the LEDA clones (plus S and Kira) on the walls before leaving.

Art watches this happen and is a bit suspicious, and Sarah is so glad someone is finally taking her panic flailing seriously. But before they do anything about it, they take a moment to smile at the painting that pays homage to the reason they know each other in the first place: Beth Childs.

Across town, Ferdinand struts like a stupid peacock into the DYAD board meeting, where he finds a lot of empty seats, because people are starting to freak out. He starts to pull up the evidence from his little USB, smarmy and gross as ever. Then the most beautiful thing flashes onto the screen: Files not found. It’s damn poetry.

Because guess what, Rachel made a choice. She chose freedom over a fortune. She’s a little sad about it; she’s sure Ferdinand won’t be coming back. She also thinks Ferdinand is the only one who ever loved her, which is heartbreaking because Ferdinand doesn’t love anyone but himself. Mrs. S promises her she’s doing the right thing.

Mrs. S says we all do what we can, and we do it for each other. And maybe she means the people involved in the LEDA experiment, maybe she means women in general, but either way it made me feel good.

At the convent, Helena leaves Gracie alone for a second and she immediately calls Mark. But when he asks if she found Helena yet, she says no. Quite a long way from when she actively tried to kill her when they first met, eh? Sweet Gracie has grown so much since we first knew her, and she’s fought her nurture to reveal a rather kind nature. But Coady and Mark can tell she’s lying, so they send in the calvary. And by calvary I mean Jerky McCopface, Maddy Enger. Who I liked a heckuva lot better on Legends of Tomorrow, turns out.

Helena had figured out that Gracie had a phone that probably Coady traced and tries to get them out of there, but it’s too late, and Maddy is there. Her men are told not to hurt Helena or her bebes, but Gracie is another story entirely. Helena struggles against her hold and Maddy shoots Gracie right in the head.

And listen I don’t WANT my “nobody will be left standing by the end of this” theory to be true but things aren’t looking good so far.

Mrs. S shows up at the art show, and Sarah is pissed about the Ferdinand thing, but S assures Sarah that it was the right move, because Rachel gave them everything they need. They can expose Neolution and DYAD and all of it now. It’s over, they can finally be free.

Well, as soon as Delphine and Cosima upload it. Cosima takes a moment to take it all in, to realize that all of these files were borne of the hard work and dedication of Delphine, Felix, Mrs. S, and Adele — all for the LEDAs, all for them.

Cosima puts her hand over Delphine and together they hit ‘send’, making it official. The bad guys are exposed. They smile and they laugh and then Cosima cries, overwhelmed by all the emotions; they came this far, but they lost so much on the way. So many innocent children from experiments that came before and after them, so many allies. So many sestras. But Delphine is there to hold her.

And it might just be okay.

Felix stands up to address his adoring fans, and gives the most beautiful speech I’ve ever heard. He thanks his mum, the woman who took him and Sarah under her wings, who loved and protected them even when they didn’t make it easy. She chose them. And it might have taken them a while to be able to admit it, but they choose her back.

Felix says that watching his weird little family he’s come to realize how mysterious and surprising and impossible we all are. He says we’re all made up of the things that happen to us, but also the choices we make. Of nature vs nurture. Sarah even calls Adele up to stand with her and S as Felix speaks of his “galaxy of women” and thanks them for the nurture. And I’m tearing up just thinking about it because I’m going to miss this galaxy so much. This speech here is the embodiment of what I love most about the series, and what I’ll miss most when it’s gone.

:deep sigh:

In other news, Rachel was right about the board not wanting Ferdinand to be able to leave that board room alive, but he’s like a cockroach in more ways than one and wouldn’t be taken out that easily, so he fights back and makes his way back to Rachel, pissed. She makes it clear that she has no intention of giving him the information he seeks, and that actually it’s being made public right now, and Ferdinand snaps. He says some awful, cruel things to her, then pins her down, choking her. She squeaks out a “daddy,” because she knows how to manipulate him, still, and he lets her go, storming off to take matters into his own slimy hands.

At the gallery, Felix introduces Colin to Mrs. S and says he’d love it if his boyfriend and his mum got to know each other, which Mrs. S would love very much. DJ Wizardface (I know that’s not his name but I can’t stop now) starts to rap and everyone starts to dance. Mrs. S smiles because Sarah is smiling and dancing and having fun for the first time in a minute.

Mrs. S gets a call from Rachel, warning her about Ferdinand. Rachel even tells her to be careful, and Mrs. S says something a rare few have probably said to her so earnestly: “Thank you, Rachel.”

S looks at her kids one more time before ducking out.

When she gets home she’s greeted by a proper mess and Ferdinand, weapon drawn, soul still missing.

Ferdinand growls and says he wants to shoot her in the leg and she says she’d prefer shooting him in the throat thank you. Eventually they put their guns down and Ferdinand demands the files Rachel gave her. S goes for a secret gun stash but Ferdinand already found that one. S tells him it’s too late anyway, the files are public, so Ferdinand responds by shooting her square in the chest. Right through that heart that’s loved so much for so long. The heart that’s been broken by the kids she’s raised, but then healed again by them.

Sarah feels it in that moment, and realizes she can’t find S, and starts to worry. Her empath skills becoming more finely tuned just in time for the sharpest blow.

Mrs. S slumps into her chair and asks saucily for Ferdinand to just finish it already, but he won’t show her any kind of mercy. She asks at least for him to hand her the photo of Sarah and Felix from the mantle, but instead he smashes it at her feet.

But don’t worry, Mrs. S won’t be taken out by a snake under her heel. Instead she dashes it, digging a gun out of the cushion of her chair, shooting him square in the throat, as promised.

Mrs. S says she’s statistically more likely than him to survive a gunshot wound, though she’s not feeling great about her odds right now. She says she’s had a good run and picks up the picture of her kids. Her kids she would and has done anything and everything for. Even when they didn’t want her to, even when they didn’t even know if they trusted her, she was fighting, fighting, fighting for them. Sometimes moving chess pieces, sometimes literally fighting. Always for them. Always for the people they cared about, because if her kids and grandkid cared about them, so did she. She loved them with everything she was.

Mrs. S holds on just long enough to watch the wretched life go out of Ferdinand, then looks down at the photo Sarah and Felix. She smiles at her chickens, uttering her pet name for them one last time.

We close on Mrs. S, sitting in her chair, looking at her family, protecting the ones she loves the most.

“Orphan Black” Episode 507 Recap: Eye of the Storm

Hi and welcome to Denial Town where I refuse to admit that there are only three episodes of Orphan Black left and am going to carry on like my heart isn’t breaking.

Let’s do a clone check to start:

Helena is hiding out with a nice, tongue-less nun. Alison is on a retreat to find herself. Cosima and Charlotte are getting the hell out of dodge. Or the dodge out of hell, as the case may be. Rachel is losing her grip. And Sarah is probably missing her brother but mostly doing her best to protect her daughter.

So I’m pretty sure I was right in thinking we’re going to get a single-clone-themed episode for everyone, and this week it’s Rachel’s turn.

We open on the startling sight of Leekie with hair, and he has little Rachel Duncan with him. She recites things like ID tags to the DYAD board, picking her nails all the while. The board is impressed, and honestly I can’t tell if it’s because a young girl is rattling off science details with clear understanding, or if it’s because a clone is. Either way it makes me about as comfortable as it makes wee little Rachel.

Present-day Rachel is sitting at the head of this same board, talking science at them and calling upon PT, who credits her for finding the “Eve” of their new experiment. And by Eve of course, she means Kira.

Kira, who is done with Auntie Rachel time, and would like to go home, but that’s not on Rachel’s agenda. She won’t even let Kira call Sarah before bed. Kira hasn’t lost sight of her hustle though, so she gives Rachel a friendship bracelet. In a moment that succeeded in making me feel worse for Rachel than I ever have before: She had a best friend in summer camp once, who she made friendship bracelets for! Kira asks if they’re still friends and Rachel’s unfeeling “no” stabbed me in the heart a bit, I won’t lie. After her parents faked their deaths, all nurturing went out the window. And it shows.

Rachel is told that Cosima’s boat was found drifting but Rachel knows better than to count her sestras out and tells them to continue looking for her as though she’s still alive.

Sarah hates all of this, by the way. She’s pacing around, furious Rachel won’t let her talk to her daughter, despite having been mostly compliant with all this testing nonsense lately. Mrs. S is even angrier though, since Kira was taken on her watch, and Sarah has to remind her of her own advice to not go in guns blazing.

Across town, Wizardface is leading Scott to the basement of the comic book shop and it’s because he wanted to surprise him because COSIMA IS HOME! Cure and all.

Charlotte is also there, being cute af. I’m so happy that sweet baby angel is safe.

Cosima Skypes Sarah to tell her about DYAD’s plans for Kira and how they only have about 24 hours to get her out of there before they’ll harvest her eggs for the new cloning experiment. Sarah says they need leverage, and Cosima suggests perhaps revealing that PT Westmoreland is a liar, liar, cult on fire.

Mrs. S doles out orders again; Felix and Adele are on the Neolution money trail, so Cosima and the boys are to find out who PT was before he was the mythical 170-year-old head of Revival.

Alison Skypes in form her retreat; she’s coming back from California tomorrow. I don’t know if pre-retreat Alison would have ever let us see her without full hair, makeup, and wardrobe, so maybe she’s a new person.

Oh and Cosima has one more bit of news: Coady is on the island, which means probably Susan no longer is, in one way or another.

And sure enough, cut to Rachel arriving at the island and bringing flowers to her mother’s grave. Unsurprisingly, Ira is buried beside her, and whether he glitched to death or was helped along his way is anyone’s guess.

As she stands on her birth mother’s grave, the woman she thought had died when she was young, but who had just purposefully extracted herself from her daughter’s life, and who left her to be raised by men who pretended to be father figures without actually being father figures. Including PT, who went so far as to tell Rachel he considers her like a daughter.

PT takes Rachel to meet Coady, who says she’s looking forward to working with her and Kira, but also mentions Helena, which can’t end well, and I don’t mean for Helena. Rachel is told she’s going to be examined to check how the cure is doing and she looks less than pleased that this plan wasn’t cleared with her first. In fact, she’s so displeased that she has a flashback to when PT had her sign a waver saying she was free from the experiment, that she was no longer DYAD property, that she was no longer just 779H41.

But now, as she changes into her hospital gown to get ready for this surprise examination from this woman she just met, she sees her file up on the computer and there it is, clear as day: 779H41.

Coady comes in to examine her, calling the LEDA clones a baseline again, basically admitting to killing Susan, proving that she’s one of the ironic players in this game who is studying/trying to shape and create literal human beings and direct the evolution of the species, but has no humanity herself.

Rachel is reminded of an examination Leekie gave her when she was younger (when she started to lighten her hair, maybe to separate herself from some of the other subjects, but not before she went to full bleach, which maybe was born out of her desperate need to control everything; everything clean, crisp, in its place.) They’re doing a biopsy on her and Rachel knows enough to realize this has to do with a few other clones who are sick; Leekie even goes so far as to call it a disease.

She’s still picking her nails when Leekie tells her that just because she’s aware of the experiment doesn’t exempt her from study, and that they’ll have more information as more clones get sick.

At Mrs. S’s house, it’s looking a bit like a conspiracy theorist convention, papers strewn about as they try to put the pieces together about Neolution, the DYAD board, anything, and stumble across a consulting firm a DYAD shell pays. Similarly but a little more modern with their clear boards, markers, and computers, Cosima and the boys are using college records to try to figure out who PT might have been before he was the man, the myth, the legend.

Across town in the suburbs, Donnie cleans up the house for Alison’s returned. Her goofy happy slightly warbly theme plays in the background and the door swings open and our favorite neurotic soccer mom is—

She immediately starts talking about Kira like her hair isn’t short and black and purple until Donnie interrupts her. I can’t help but wonder if Donnie thought for a moment that it might not be Alison, knowing there are people with her literal same face running around out there. But no, it’s the same old Alison Hendrix, at least technically. She’s spent time learning how to be present and “live deep” which she has tattooed on her body and I’m sorry but sounds VERY DIRTY TO ME.

In the Revival mansion, Rachel overhears PT questioning her conviction on the phone and when she pops in she sees him tuck away a weird looking tablet. She tells him she wants to choose her own physicians and schedule her own appointments and he agrees. She gives an update on Kira and swears she’s not attached to her and can be objective but when PT tests her by saying she wants Kira on the island, Rachel questions why this is necessary. Frankly even objectively this is a bad idea, because she even later calls Sarah the “nuisance clone” and Mrs. S hasn’t exactly been staying out of their way, so why would they want to risk that by breaking their agreement? But PT insists, again probably just to see if Rachel will do it. So Rachel concedes and says, “You know best,” as a nod to but potentially a mockery of his perceived role as a parent to her.

In the basement of this very mansion, Coady is meeting with long lost Mark, who is here for a cure, because he doesn’t want to glitch like his brothers. So of course she’s blackmailing him, because she’s about as good a mother figure as any of Rachel’s supposed fathers.

What Coady wants in exchange for giving Mark the cure is Helena, and unfortunately it seems Mark can deliver…with a little help.

When PT is gone, Rachel sneaks back into his office and steals the tablet and turns it on. What she sees is an endless loop of the tablet, like when you stand in a hotel bathroom vestibule and there’s a mirror in front of you and behind you and there’s just you forever and ever until your brain hurts and you have a mini existential crisis. But this is worse because what Rachel realizes is that the reason she’s seeing this effect on the tablet is because her synthetic eyeball is a fucking CAMERA.

Talk about a violation of one’s body, privacy, and entire life.

When PT comes back she doesn’t flinch or reveal that she knows anything or confront him at all, she just says goodbye.

We’re given another flashback now, and I think it’s probably one of the more pivotal turning point moments in Rachel’s life: she killed a clone so they could autopsy her and learn more about the disease.

She sees her as a subject in an experiment, and even Leekie is a little horrified; unlike Rachel, he knows more about her than her call number. And actually interestingly, after Leekie calls the deceased clone creative, Rachel calls her homeless and says her mother was a drunk and in THE SAME BREATH says she’s objective. Leekie doesn’t help things by asking her literally, “What are you?” as if she hadn’t been questioning her own humanity since the day she learned her ID number.

Rachel returns to DYAD (annoyingly fast, considering how long Sarah and Cosima were stuck), and Kira tries to chat with her but Rachel isn’t having it this time. She does allow her to call her mother though, but she tells Frontenac to make sure he watches them closely.

Also happening at this time is possibly the cruelest death of the season. Alison murdered her craft room! She even throws away the glue gun she used to torture Donnie in the first season! (Which he flinches when he sees, in a subtly hilarious moment.) She’s talking like that one weird music teacher you had for like 3/4ths of sixth grade who you sometimes wonder if you made up, saying she has to face her shadow self or it will manifest into bad habits, and that she’s now going to jam on her keyboard and follow the music and not tell Donnie what to do anymore.

It’s all very strange.

Kira, smart little cookie she is, tells Sarah a story using the code words they made up, complete with drawings of Elephant Rachel stepping on Mouse Kira’s tail and telling her she has to go to Wonderland. Sarah uses this same metaphor to comfort her daughter, telling her they’ll be together to write their own ending soon.

When she hangs up, Sarah tells Mrs. S that the story means they’re taking Kira to the island, and she knows they’re running out of time.

Rachel, armed with the knowledge that PT can see everything she can see, takes some gin and a martini glass and goes into the Room of Erised, watching that one memory of her and the Duncans rolling around in the leaves over and over and over. PT calls to check in, and Rachel knows for sure that his promise she was monitor-free was the opposite of true; she is the most monitored now. She has a resignation in her voice and God it’s not even like she snapped as much as she…deflated. It’s kind of heartbreaking.

Kira comes in and asks, “Who hurt you?” and Rachel looks her square in the eye and tells her, “All of them.”

Rachel tells Frontenac that she’ll be the last face Kira sees before she leaves DYAD, whether for the control or because she knows it will be a small comfort to Kira, who knows. Then PT comes on the screen to talk to Kira for a bit.

Back down the rabbit hole, Cosima and the boys finally find PT’s original identity.

Sarah emails it to Rachel, who immediately calls her to tell her that no one is going to listen to her if she spreads this information. Out loud she makes it sound like she doesn’t believe it, and what we know that Sarah doesn’t is that PT can hear her. Sarah tries to get to her by reminding her PT took her family from her and used her as an experiment, but what we know that Sarah doesn’t is that she is consumed by this knowledge and doesn’t need reminding.

So it’s with tears in her eyes that she hangs up on her sestra.

Rachel goes to give Kira her sedative juice and they have a conversation; Rachel says she doesn’t remember how she felt at Kira’s age but eventually got used to being studied. A combination of Rachel’s gin intake and mental breakdown causes her to hallucinate her child self and she asks the little girl why she doesn’t run. But the little Rachel answers that she has nowhere to go.

PT watches as Rachel forces Kira to drink the OJ sedative and hears as Rachel gives Frontenac the hit on Sarah and Mrs. S and tells him not to hesitate. But as soon as he’s gone, she focuses her eyes on her necklace spinning while she also holds her phone in her good eye’s periphery and sends a text message.

Turns out that message was for Art, and he busts in to warn Sarah, and GUYS I HAVE SUCCESSFULLY MOSTLY HATED RACHEL ALL THIS TIME WHY DO I WANT TO HOLD HER NOW.

Rachel goes to her meditation spot and closes her eyes, which PT would know is not unusual these days, and then she slips on her eye patch and goes to wheel Kira out of her room.

Frontenac finds an empty house when he goes to kill Sarah so PT starts pushing images into Rachel’s eyeball. But her job is almost done now, because Art, Sarah and Mrs. S are there and they take Kira from her. As the elevator closes and they leave her behind, Mrs. S mouths a “thank you” to her, but no one even asked her if she wanted to come.

Rachel emails the information Cosima found to the board, then pours herself some more alcohol, making sure her eye is getting a good long look before she takes a good long swig.

When the glass is empty, she smashes it, leaving only the stem behind. And then, my friends, she SHOVES IT INTO HER EYEBALL. When I watched this episode the first time I was just wailing “nooOOooo” like some kind of Moaning Myrtle. Then I watched this episode with my parents, and decided to watch them instead of this scene again, and it was pretty hilarious. My mother fully covered her eyes and shouted, “THERE’S GOT TO BE AN EASIER WAY!” and even my dad, who laughed with almost a sick delight when he realized she was going to poke her eye out, started to make grossed out noises and eventually nervously exclaimed, “She’s going to POP IT OUT.”

And reader, she did. She had to sever the tendon and everything. It was awful. Then blood was just POURING out of her eye socket. But PT can’t see what she can see anymore. She might die from this injury, but this was her choice, her decision.

I was going to show you guys pictures from the “next week on” that I got on my screener but then when I watched it live it said it the episode was TOO INTENSE to show any of it so now I’m stressed out and I’m afraid the short clip I saw was a decoy and EVERYONE’S GOING TO DIE.

“Orphan Black” Recap 506 Recap: Two Truths and a Lie (and a Lie and a Lie)

My friends, it is a glorious day, for Krystal has returned to us, in all her beglittered glory.

See, Krystal has a vlog (a vlog! I haven’t heard the word vlog in ages) with her gal pal Bree, and it’s the most gloriously ridiculous thing I’ve ever seen. My face hurt from smiling during this whole intro. They’re here to expose the lies of “Big Cosmetics” while also helping you get that effortless party look. It’s unreal. But things take a turn when they try to take the bendy straws they were using as curlers in Bree’s hair out, and chunks of hair come out with them.

Krystal takes the case to Art and Scott because they’ve helped her before. They have these adorable dumbfounded expressions on their faces because they have no idea why exactly it is she thinks she needs the help of a police detective and a scientist, so she explains it, annoyed they don’t get it: Bree has been poisoned by Big Cosmetics. OBVI.

Meanwhile, at Mrs. S’s house, Frontenac comes to pick up Kira but she’s sick, according to Sarah. He goes upstairs to check on her, and Kira puts on a good show about not wanting to miss a chance to hang out with Auntie Rachel, but then she hurls on his shoes. It’s pretty funny, to be perfectly honest.

Across a mysterious amount of water, Cosima is still in the cage in PT’s basement. Mud comes down to bring her food, but won’t let Cosima out. She’s wearing a bell to punish herself, since the hunter and Janis (who I accidentally called Yannis last week, sorry!) are dead because of her. Cosima tries to break through the cult’s hold on her by helping Mud connect to who she was before, asking where she’s from, who she left behind.

But it doesn’t work; Mud says she’s from Seattle, but she insists no one cares about her. Cosima then tries to reason with her by explaining that Revival is a lie, that PT is a monster, evidenced by the fact that he wants to create thousands of experimental children from another child’s eggs. Her niece’s eggs. Cosima reminds her of Janis, another experimental child, and she almost has Mud on her side, but she loses her tenuous grip on the girl by going a step too far, saying, “Let me out so I can warn my family.” Mud doesn’t feel like she has a family, and considers the people on Revival a replacement of sorts, so this snaps her back into the cult mind and she leaves Cosima in the cage.

Back at the house, it’s revealed that Kira did a little hustling this morning, and actually isn’t sick at all. She just had a little ipecac. Sarah is confused, but Mrs. S says Delphine risked a lot to come here and warn them that it wasn’t safe to let Kira go back to DYAD because they know about LIN28A and that they should listen to the badass blonde bisexual. Delphine’s next stop is to meet up with Felix and Adele in Geneva; and I hope we also meet up with them soon because it’s hard to be nearing the end of this series with so little Felix. Anyway, Sarah asks Mrs. S if Delphine was also her source for finding Coady, but Mrs. S says her sources are plentiful.

Art calls Sarah and says they might have a lead in this whole Neolution shitshow, and to make a weird situation weirder, the lead is coming from Krystal. Krystal and Bree update Sarah on the whole Big Cosmetics theory but when they’re done Sarah looks to Art like she needs a translator. This pisses Krystal off and she says one of my favorite Krystal lines to date, specifically since it’s about Sarah, “Is she necessary? She’s so rude.” Is she necessary! Sarah! I love it. Krystal is a damn gift.

One reason they think they were poisoned is because they were working with an ethical cosmetics tycoon named Leonard Sipp to expose some lies, though it’s clear Krystal wants to take a Sipp of him, if you know what I mean. Unfortunately, they haven’t talked in a minute because he ghosted her.

Back at the DYAD, Frontenac tells Rachel that Kira is sick, and even though they wanted to start on PT’s plan today, he thought it would be suspicious if he forcibly removed a sick kid from her home. Rachel accepts this information but it’s becoming increasingly clear that the meditation she’s doing almost constantly now is barely working. I think Rachel is a rubber band at its breaking point. Girl’s gonna snap.

At the Revival mansion, Susan tells PT she wants Cosima’s help with the science, but PT would prefer she stay in her cage. She wore a suit to dinner, Susan. Lesbians can be very dangerous. Mud interrupts their conversation with the machine she hooks PT up to, and Susan thinks he’s getting dialysis, but he insists he’s fine. Susan reminds him that the myth of PT Westmoreland is crucial to keeping this whole operation running, but he reminds her that the whole reason they built this myth is because even though she was a brilliant scientist, he was a rich white cis straight man so he held all the power. While he says this, Susan “My New Hero” Duncan literally responds, “That’s how the patriarchy works.” She’s like, stop mansplaining your own privilege and my own oppression to me and get to your damn POINT. Anyway his point is that he bought the help of smart women to hold up his façade, and one of those women was Virginia Coady.

The three scientists face off, and Susan is all, “Sorry not sorry I disapprove of genocide” and stands her ground like a boss.

Mrs. S, back at the house, is telling Sarah how Krystal might be onto something, and even mentions a fact that I believe to be true but don’t WANT to believe to be true: cosmetics gets more research dollars than cancer research, so of course Neolution scientists would want to get in on that. Sarah mocks Krystal and her baby voice, which gives her an idea; what if she cloneswapped to have a chat with Mister Sipp to get more info?

She asks Art to have Krystal set up the meeting.

Sarah goes in to check on Kira, who informs her she has a new code name: she wants to call the island Wonderland. Which is appropriate with all the rabbit hole metaphors already going on. Kira is ready to hustle Rachel more, but Sarah says she’s done her part for the day, and makes her daughter laugh by putting on a blonde wig and mimicking Krystal again.

In Wonderland, Coady goes to PT’s basement to visit Cosima and check out the facilities. She calls Cosima “Susan’s beautiful baseline” but Cosima isn’t a huge fan of being boiled down to her DNA. She’s so much more than 324B21, she’s so much more than Leda. Coady tells her that right now Cosima is looking at this as an attack on her family, but if she just tries a little, she can think of it as her family being part of this grand design, part of the future. There’s a new delivery system out there and Coady wants her help to develop it. But Cosima isn’t blinded by science anymore; she wants no part of this Mad Hatter’s tea party.

Back in her greenhouse room, Susan is complaining that Westmoreland is going senile and can’t believe he brought Coady back into it, wishing she had killed her while she had the chance. Ira doesn’t feel so hostile, and wants to meet the woman who had a hand in creating him and his brothers. He’s basically like SHE’S MY REAL MOM so Susan slaps him, causing him to glitch a little. She apologizes but says it’s for the best he doesn’t get involved with those two. Ira offers instead to pretend to get close to her to learn what they’re up to; a sort of compromise.

At the comic book store, Scott is going to test Bree for poison, and Krystal gets her friend to distract him while she scurries out because she might be ditzy and oblivious but she’s not dumb.

The people of Revival are mourning the loss of the hunter, their faith in this fountain of youth shaken. Behind them, Aisha is being carried out of the medical trailer as Coady goes in. Ira follows her in there and finds her taking blood from a little kid. Coady has little nostalgia for the man standing in front of her who shares the face of other men she called her sons. She remembers Susan taking him when he was four, how he screamed. But she’s cold in her recounting. He asks if any of his brothers are left but in lieu of answering she gives him a glitch test, that he doesn’t exactly pass.

Back on the mainland, Sarah is dressed and ready to meet with Len Sipp, but Krystal already has surveillance equipment set up and is ready to go. Sarah tries to protest, but Sipp is already here and she’s already answering the door.

Almost as soon as he’s inside, she starts kissing on him and getting distracted, seeming to forget (or, more likely, not caring) that Sarah and Art are watching and listening from a car outside. Fun fact, Leonard Sipp is played by Tatiana Maslany’s real life partner, Tom Cullen. Embarrassing fact, when I first realized this, I wondered if it was weird for Tatiana to be sitting in a car watching someone else make out with her boyfriend. Then I basically made an Ann Perkins-style face at the non-existant camera on my own self. Krystal is just such a departure from a) all the other clones and b) Tatiana herself that I simply forgot. It will never stop being amazing, I will never stop forgetting she plays all the clones, but it will never stop being embarrassed considering I’ve been not only watching but writing about this show for four years.

At Sarah’s insistence, Krystal pauses the make-out to interrogate Sipp. First she asks why he ghosted her, and when he just laughs, she starts to get annoyed. He says he had to put work first, closing a huge deal, and has been partying for days. When he stops their next make-out to take a phone call, despite Sarah telling her to ease into it, Krystal flat-out asks him about making a deal with DYAD.

Krystal is appalled because they test on bunnies (and humans but whatever) but he doesn’t have anything to say for himself, he just takes his phone call.

While all this is going on, Scott finds out that Bree wasn’t poisoned, she’s just having a reaction to something. Bree confesses that she nicked some lotion from Sipp the last time they were partying together, so Scott tells Art and Sarah.

When Sipp comes back from his call, Krystal says she wants to work together to expose the truth about Big Cosmetics, and thought he wanted that too, but he’s flippant about her blog and mentions a dress she was wearing, and Krystal realizes with sudden certainty that he doesn’t care about her plans and theories at all. She storms into the bathroom, which is when Sarah tells her about the cream to look for.

Out at her vanity in the living room, Sipp finds the cream first, and confronts Krystal about it. But she’s gone full rogue now and when he calls her stupid she kicks him square in the balls then tackles him and it’s amazing.

He confesses that the cream was testing a dermal delivery system that works on the cellular level, but that this particular batch had the side effect of hair loss. Pissed, Krystal rubs the cream all over his beard, then kicks him out. Never count out a clone.

On Revival, Ira tells Susan what he saw Coady doing and Susan realizes PT is harvesting the blood of healthy kids which is creepy and weird and like something out of Repo! The Genetic Opera. Ira wants to get the hell out of dodge but Susan needs to stop the madness.

Ira also mentions something Coady brought up, that Susan maybe could have cured Ira of his glitching, but Susan says Cosima is probably the only one who could come up with that cure. Also, they could use Cosima and her relationship with Mud, too, so maybe they should focus on getting Cosima out of the cage.
In a very sad turn of events, little Aisha dies. Everyone is devastated and confused; she was getting better. Between this and the things Cosima has been saying, plus all the stuff with Janis, Mud’s eyes are being opened, and she’s not loving what she’s seeing. She’s very visibly shaken and overwhelmed. She goes downstairs to see Cosima (who is trying to break the wire of her cage with her tiny hands, it’s very cute) and she starts in on the family question again.

Ira comes down too and explains about the kids and the blood draining and Mud finally has her breakdown. She was a junkie (her word) and she stole from her parents and she OD’d, possibly purposefully, and ended up in a coma. She woke up on Revival and felt saved. Cosima asks if she’s here by choice, because Cosima sure isn’t, but Mud doesn’t even know anymore.

PT calls Rachel because he knows Kira isn’t at DYAD, which annoys Rachel to no end, his all-knowingness. She goes to the comfort of her familiarly elegant windows as he passive aggressively tells her to get Kira to DYAD as soon as possible, an implied “or else” punctuating his statement.

With Mud’s help telling them when PT’s treatments are, Susan comes in while Mud his hooking him up and Mud lets her “help” while actually Susan injects his IV with something untoward. But while she’s finishing up inserting the IV into his arm, PT tells Mud that she’s been a “great comfort” to him, calls her “my child,” and tells her to forgive herself. Which is exactly what Mud needed to hear, this lost, broken girl with no family. It was exactly how to manipulate her into remaining loyal, whether that was his intention or not.

While that’s going on upstairs, downstairs Ira is letting Cosima out of her cage, but also glitching all the while. He’s going to go find Susan and go to the boathouse, she’s going to go secure Charlotte and the cure and meet him there. Ira gives Cosima a folder as a “just in case” and when she opens it to look inside, she looks absolutely floored.

Rachel, having little to no choice, goes to fetch Kira from Mrs. S’s even though it’s late, claiming it’s a sleep study. S tries to tell Rachel how many ways to Sunday she will kick her little arse if she hurts Kira, but Kira says everything’s fine and she’ll go with her aunt. On her way out though, she tells Mrs. S to tell her mum that she’ll keep writing a story, because every day she’s hustling.

When Cosima leaves the med tent, her cure clutched close to her chest, a man attacks her, accusing her of making them her lab rats. She tries to explain that she’s not part of it, that she’s on their side, that all she wants is to take her little sister and leave. (Side note, my heart grows three sizes when Cosima calls Charlotte her sister and so it exploded by the end of this episode.) Knowing this was the “just in case” Ira warned her about, she shows the man her folder, which contains proof that PT is a liar. The proof is a photo of PT and Susan Duncan, looking the same age at the same time, meaning unless he aged twice as fast in the past few decades as he had the “first hundred years” of his life, his hair is big because it’s full of secrets.

With this, they let Cosima take Charlotte and go, and start spreading the truth of Revival, the myth the cult was founded on starting to crumble around them, causing a riot.

Inside, Coady comes in just before PT bites it, interrupting Susan’s grand plan. How is her timing so impeccable, you ask? I’ll tell you. Mud. That one last promise of family made her second-guess her agreement with Ira and Susan, and she told Coady the plan. Mud! Sweet baby angel! You’ve ruined everything.

At the boathouse, Charlotte is nervous, but Cosima assures her that life vests are the bulletproof vests of the sea, so she is a safe fictional lesbian for now. Plus she grew up on boats and knows what she’s doing. Charlotte comments that it doesn’t seem like Ira and Susan are coming, and after a few minutes, Cosima has to agree, and so they head out into the night.

Ira goes to get Susan to bring her to the boathouse, but even if Cosima hadn’t left yet, he’d be too late. PT and Coady turned Susan’s plan against her, and hooked her up to her own weaponized IV. Susan Duncan is dead, this time for real.

PT stands by his window and watches his lies burn to the ground, his loyal following dissolving, his cult disbanding. Mud goes outside into this chaos, dumbfounded, and finds the photo evidence. Her eyes are fully open now, there’s no turning away from it anymore. She realizes the truth, and at the same time, she realizes her mistake.

Is there any show more consistently stressful than this one? Is anyone going to be alive by the time those final credits roll? Only four more episodes left, with next week promising the return of at least Donnie and possibly Alison and definitely Helena.

“Orphan Black” Episode 505 Recap: Defy Them

MY DREAMS CAME TRUE. Just like there was an Alison-centric episode, we now have a Cosima-centric episode, and hoo-boy was it a doozy. So much science, of the regular and crazy varieties.

We open with the regular kind of science, because Cosima is examining the tooth that no one seems to have scolded Charlotte for picking up but whatever. While she sciences inside, outside a dude follows food scraps in the wood like an idiot in a horror movie following a trail of blood, and then is SO SURPRISED when he’s attacked by the definitely-not-a-bear in the woods.

As Cosima waits for her results she’s reminded of the last time she sequenced DNA and it came back that she was intellectual property. We know the scene well, we’ve seen it a thousand times, but we didn’t see what happened between when they realized it and when Cosima called Sarah to warn her that they could claim Kira.

UNTIL NOW

Cosima stands up, shaken by this news. They own her. She’s property. But Delphine comes to her immediately to try to calm her own; they can own her biology on paper but they can’t own her. She takes Cosima’s hand and puts it over her heart, so Cosima can feel that Delphine means what she’s saying, can feel a heart beating just for her. They might have made her body, but Cosima’s humor, her intellect, all of the things that make her her, they can’t own that. They can’t take that from her.

And even though over the coming months they will try and try and try, they will never take Delphine from her, either. “I will always work to protect you,” she vows.

And then she gives Cosima one task: Defy them.

Cosima snaps out of her flashback to find she has fallen asleep at her science table like the precious little nerd she is and hears a commotion outside. The “bear” attack has sent everyone into a bit of a tizzy, and the hunters seem ready to stop the madness. Cosima breaks from the chaos to follow Aisha back to her tent and ask to examine her, where she discovers her tumor shrinking significantly. Aisha attributes it to magic water, but Cosima isn’t so sure.

Cosima asks to keep Aisha’s journal, which involves stickers and descriptions of how she’s been feeling, along with notes from an adult about a corrective gene, and Aisha agrees.

Back home, Mrs. S says she’s going to go to the comic book shop to get some answers from her band of merry nerds, and Sarah just wishes she could talk to Cosima, but I guess reception isn’t great on the Island of Dr. Moreau. Kira realizes Mrs. S and Sarah are going to talk about grown-up stuff and starts to trudge upstairs but Sarah is ready to start looping her in if it will help her stop looking for answers under her own skin.

Back on Revival, Mud’s wide-eyed kind-of-creepy perma-smile is failing because the hunters are going to go after the man in the woods – whose name we later learn is Yannis so I’m just going to start calling him that now for simplicity’s sake – but Mud insists he doesn’t want to hurt anyone.

The hunters talk about Mud as if she’s not there, saying her being there might calm “it” down and so they decide to take her with them. Before they leave, Cosima grabs Mud and asks what’s happening but Mud just says he wasn’t always this feral; they started doing more experiments on him, so Mud set him free.

So Mud and Cosima part ways, but on her way back to her yurt, Cosima sees Delphine going up the stairs to the big house and is a little offended she didn’t know she was back.

Upstairs, Delphine waits outside while PT pours a glass of wine for Rachel and they chat about the 1300 surrogates they chose for the new clones. He gives her Cosima’s cure, which he says she deserves the most, which is just another sign that PT doesn’t live on the same plane of reality as the rest of us.

Delphine’s on my side of this one.

Rachel wants to kill the “creature” in the woods but PT won’t hear of such a thing. To change the subject, he calls Delphine in, and Rachel calls her windblown as if it’s an insult when in reality she looks like maybe she flew here on the back of a Pegasus.

Delphine makes this really great face though that I interpreted as her not giving a flying fuck what Rachel thinks. It must be easier not to take someone too seriously when they look like your girlfriend playing dress-up.

Her mission in Sardinia was successful and is surprised she wasn’t sent right to Geneva, but he says there’s a reason she’s here. PT calls Cosima Delphine’s “friend” and Rachel thinks Cophine being galpal’d is hilarious. It really sets us up to hate PT and Rachel even more and it’s very successful.

I know at this point there are still people who don’t trust Delphine, but I think this scene proves what I’ve been saying all along: she’s doing all of this for Cosima and her sestras. She doesn’t love any of this.

Rachel goes to visit Susan and continues to be awful, telling her she’s in charge now.

Delphine goes to Cosima’s yurt, and is so happy to see her girl.

Cosima is happy too, even though she’s a little salty about the fact she went to see PT before her. But she can’t stay mad for long because she has science to share. Cosima shows her everything she’s learned about Delphine’s patient, Aisha, and Delphine makes the connection to Leekie’s study of a gene in spiny mice.

Spiny mice like the one Rachel gave Kira, who Kira is currently introducing to Sarah. This science is all true by the way; spiny mice really do have a regenerative genes and some scientists are trying to figure out if they could use that information to switch on that same regeneration process in humans. I just doubt they have anyone chained up in a basement to test on but WHO KNOWS.

Sarah tells Kira she went to visit Auntie Helena, and Kira says Helena misses Sarah. And how hard it must be, for this tiny human to be carrying the emotions of goodness-knows-how-many full-grown adults. Empathy is hard enough to bear when it’s not so literal. No wonder she’s started acting out. Sarah tells Kira that she wants her to teach her everything she knows about this connection, because she’s just finally starting to feel it, too; finally letting herself feel it. In reality I think she’s felt it for a long time; I think that’s why the clones can imitate each other so well, I think it’s why Cosima and her bonded so quickly – she was the first one Sarah let in. But she needs help figuring out what it all means, and frankly so does Kira, so why not help each other.

Meanwhile Mrs. S is at the Rabbit Hole getting the scoop from her minions about the timeline of Neolution and Coady and all the clone nonsense. Mrs. S has been quietly running things for a long time, mostly just guiding Sarah quietly like a really sexy guardrail, but lately she’s taken the wheel and it’s been so exhilarating to watch.

In (at? on?) Revival, Delphine and Cosima are doing some more regular science.

Delphine notices some DNA in the sequencer and Cosima confesses about Yannis’s tooth; he’s been experimenting on someone. (And listen I know she’s ~cured or whatever but Cosima coughed in this scene and I DIDN’T LIKE IT.)

Cosima starts rambling more science stuff – the human experiment and Aisha have similar genomes and so there’s obviously something there, but Delphine interrupts her. It’s actually almost scary, maybe the loudest we’ve ever heard Delphine get. She begs Cosima to stop, says she’s pushing too hard, and risking all the work Delphine’s putting in behind the scenes. But Cosima is frustrated because she doesn’t understand what that means since Delphine is keeping her in the dark.

But if she would listen for one second Delphine will tell her! Rachel has access to Kira now, to test her. Which breaks Cosima right open; this is exactly what they’ve been trying to avoid. But before she can get more details, the Messenger comes in to invite Delphine to dinner. Cosima informs him that she will also be attending dinner because she just saw Wonder Woman so she’s going to Diana Prince her way into the room where it happens.

The Messenger brings them to a room full of what might be PT’s parents’ clothing and tell them to dress for dinner. Which is creepy and weird and I hate it. Delphine is going to do it because she’s more of a tow-the-line-and-wait-for-your-moment type of gal. Cosima, decidedly, is not.

Cosima comes out of the room, dressed in a full tux, holding her GIRLFRIEND’s hand, and it’s a beautiful fucking thing.

The Messenger hates it, which only adds to my enjoyment of it. PT wants to talk to Delphine alone before dinner, so he whisks her away momentarily, and she comes back on PT’s arm. But she’s no stranger to wooing icky old dudes to get what she wants, so she lets herself be lead to the table.

Cosima looks like a hedgehog while she watches this, and when PT invites her to sit with them, she’s not sure she wants to anymore. Being involved with him seemed much more exciting when it was all cheese mites and metaphors and not creepy dress codes and human experiments.

Dinner goes about as well as you’d expect; it would have been less awkward if it was a murder mystery dinner party. Cosima doesn’t help things by being hilariously cavalier and sassy, pissed to find out these assholes have thrown ethics to the wind.

Delphine is equal parts terrified Cosima is going to make things worse and amused because no one does defiant quite like Cosima Niehaus.

PT tries (and sort of succeeds) to shake Cosima by asking about her parents in what sounds like a thinly veiled threat. Instead of totally backing down, though, she explains how difficult she’s made her life. She hasn’t been able to talk to her parents – which isn’t too weird because they think she’s in school and they’re professors on a houseboat BECAUSE OF COURSE THEY ARE – or tell them that she’s part of an illegal cloning experiment or that she’s sick or anything.

PT doesn’t seem particularly sympathetic, and to make matters worse, Rachel shows up late like that family member you were kind of hoping wouldn’t show up after all.

Back at Mrs. S’s house, Sarah and Kira are having a dance party and giving everyone nicknames. My favorite I think was that Cosima is a sunfish, because it made me think of that marine biologist’s rant about sunfish where she called them a “complete failure of evolution.” Mrs. S comes home and Kira says she’s learning to be a hustler and Mrs. S thinks maybe Sarah swung the pendulum a bit too far in the other direction.

At the uncomfortable family dinner, they talk about LIN28-A, which is what they actual have meant all this time when they’re talking about the fountain of youth. Cosima and Delphine quickly figure out what this means and Rachel is a little more alarmed than she should be, given they’re both scientists. (Though I guess maybe she didn’t realize they knew she was studying Kira.)

Dinner comes to a bitter end when PT reveals that Delphine told him that Cosima found Yannis’s cell in the basement, but before Cosima can flip her lid about it, he sends Delphine off to Geneva, telling Cosima to get out of his face and say goodbye.

They go back to the dressing room and Cosima is indeed flipping her lid while Delphine is stripping which would have shut me right up but Cosima has FEELINGS. But Delphine cuts her off – there’s a reason for everything she does. She had to give PT some information to gain his trust; and she’s going to Geneva because Felix is there. There’s a reason for everything she does, and that reason is Cosima. She puts Cosima’s hand over her heart again and reminds her of her promise, and reminds her what she asked Cosima to do.

This has been their pattern all along, hasn’t it? Delphine is doing seemingly shady shit and Cosima pushes and pushes for more answers and the answer is always that she’s doing it for Cosima. Delphine says probably it will always be this way, so they can choose now whether to end it or continue on. Together.

As a response, Cosima kisses her.

Oops just kidding that was from the flashback kiss that ended up here TOTALLY BY ACCIDENT. Yup there’s no way I can edit that out, sorry, what’s done is done. Here’s a shot from the actual scene where they kiss and make up:

Calm now, Cosima realizes that this was exactly PT’s intention all along. Together they are smarter than him, and they represent the one thing he can’t create in his lab: human connection. Love. So Delphine tells her to act like his plan work, pretend like they have been successfully pitted against each other.

Outside, Mud and the hunter found Yannis but Yannis gets spooked and kills the hunter. He almost kills Mud, but she says his name, he drops her and runs off.

Cosima goes back to PT, who tells her that they found Yannis in an orphanage and then Susan synthesized his accelerated healing gene to put into the Leda clones. It didn’t show up in them, but it showed up in the kids they designed the Leda clones to not be able to have. Ironically.

Another hunter comes in and warns them that Yannis is on the loose so they hide Susan and Cosima away in a room with Ira. Cosima gets out of Susan that they’re going to harvest Kira’s eggs and put them in the 1300 surrogates. Which is fucking bonkers. Cosima doesn’t understand how none of them seem at all perturbed by the utter lack of morality in any of them, but Susan insists there’s nothing she can do.

Cosima storms out to stop PT herself, and as she leaves Ira blurts out the answer to a question he was asked by someone else entirely like a dozen scenes ago and Cosima realizes he’s glitching.

Cosima finds a terrified Mud who spills that PT is sick and begs Cosima to stay away from him but Cosima is on a roll of doing exactly the opposite of what she’s told today so she storms down to the basement to see him. Cosima confronts him, accusing him of doing all this crazy shit because he’s dying, including hurting Yannis, who is now back in his cell, injured and cowering.

She all but calls him a lying monster and so PT hands him a gun, telling her to do the “ethical” thing and kill Yannis. She holds up the gun, but she can’t do it; he’s still a human being.

She tells him the one thing he can’t have of hers is her humanity, just like Delphine taught her, so she puts the gun down and goes over to Yannis to apologize and introduce herself. She’s talking to him sweetly when PT shoots him SQUARE IN THE HEAD. Then just watches as Cosima sobs for having been present for too many of these exact situations.

Meanwhile, back home, Mrs. S, Sarah and Kira are cuddling like the adorable little family they are.

Mrs. S hears a noise so she grabs her shotgun and heads downstairs, but it’s just Delphine, there for another secret rendezvous. Delphine reveals that she wasn’t actually the one who told S about Coady, because she asks after said source, and Mrs. S isn’t sure they can trust that source but Delphine says they’re running out of time, because whatever they’re doing with Kira is happening sooner than they thought.

Cut back to PT’s basement, where Cosima is still in the cage with Yannis, because PT locked her in. Which can’t be good news for our girl.

And honestly, no words could possible capture how much I loved this episode. I loved how much we learned about Cosima, I loved seeing more interaction between her and Delphine, and I loved the call to action: Defy them. Cosima was told her body was an object, her body didn’t belong to her. Delphine told her to defy them. Right now we’re being told our bodies don’t belong to us, or that who we are or who we love make us somehow less than. We have to defy them. We have to go in the rooms they tell us not to go into, we have to learn more about the things they tell us to leave alone, we have to stand up, speak out, fight back until they see us and hear us and cannot deny us. We have to defy them. Together.

“Orphan Black” Episode 504 Recap: It’s Not A Bear

Previously on Orphan Black, Rachel stabbed her mama, PT Westmoreland gave Cosima free run of his cult village’s lab, Rachel started studying Kira, Helena went into hiding with nuns, and Alison decided to take a damn break.

Susan Duncan wakes up on Revival, surprised to be alive, and surprised to see PT Westmoreland standing over her bed. She accuses him of being the reason Rachel turned against her to the point of trying to kill her. And asks why she IS alive, to which he says simply that he needs her.

Outside in Revival, Charlotte and Aisha are adapting to their new life and go visit the camp’s pigs. But they notice one is missing and the pen door is ajar, so they set out to find it. The girls find the piggy in the woods, injured, scraps of food and a human-looking tooth nearby.

They hear a rustling and consider inspecting it but Mud catches them before they can make a very bad horror movie mistake.

Mud rushes them back to safety, but Charlotte keeps the tooth.

Back at Mrs. S’s, Kira is getting ready and Sarah is trying to pry information out of her about what happens during her sessions, but she’s giving the bare minimum and almost making me feel guilty for all the times I did the same exact thing to my own mother. Things go from frustrating to scary for Sarah though when she discovers a huge cut on Kira’s arm. At first she starts shouting about Rachel but Kira soon jumps in to say she did it to herself. She wanted to know how fast she’d heal.

What Sarah doesn’t know but we do is that Kira might have made the cut but Rachel was still the puppetmaster here. Mrs. S has a plan and they have no more time to waste. Felix will pick Kira up from school and then wait for a visitor Mrs. S is sending his way. They have three days before Kira has to go back to Rachel’s and Mrs. S has an idea to get some leverage, and it involves a bit of a mother/daughter road trip with Sarah.

Their first stop is the Rabbit Hole, where Scott tells them what he knows about PT’s history and HellWizard (who I accidentally called Wizard Face in my notes, which might be my new name for him) decrypted an email for Mrs. S.

Mrs. S tells them all she wants a timeline for the evolution of Neolution by the time they get back and frankly Sarah probably loves not being in charge for once. Mrs. S takes Sarah to a fancy bar and Sarah can immediately tell what S is up to; she was a grifter and a con artist, too. Mrs. S’s mystery road trip is taking them somewhere where they’ll need an ID, and poor miss Susan Perkins is about to get hers stolen.

In an artistic performance, Sarah and Mrs. S use Perkins’ tumultuous relationship with her own daughter and stage a fight to distract her long enough for Sarah to swipe her ID, and Perkins ends up inviting Mrs. S to bond over having difficult children.

In Revival, Cosima and Charlotte are making headway in the race for my favorite clone duo. Charlotte saying she thinks the thing in the woods is an ogre, not a bear like Mud says; Cosima responding with the scientific classification for ogres. All while inspecting the tooth Charlotte found, which she believes to be human.

Cosima marches to the foot tent to confront Mud about this “bear” and finally makes the Island of Dr. Maureau reference out loud, saying that anything bonkers going on is coming from PT and Mud has to know what it is. Mud says, “It’s not his fault,” and something tells me she’s not talking about PT. Cosima offers to help her, but Mud loses her nerve and just doubles down on the bear story instead.

Sarah comes back into the bar to give Mrs. S an out, but before they leave Perkins drops a nugget of wisdom, telling Mrs. S to try to give Sarah a break. After all, she’s becoming just like her mother. And Mrs. S hesitates at that because even though this was a con, that observation is pretty spot-on.

At his loft, Felix is being a good uncle, sketching Kira and asking if her homeroom teacher is single, you know, the usual.

Kira looks at the sketch and says she looks like her mum, then goes off on a little rant about how Sarah is RUINING HER LIFE and she likes her Aunt Rachel because she shows her why she’s special. Finally someone explains to Kira why everyone is so fidgety about her hanging out at DYAD all the time: Felix says they don’t know what Rachel wants with that special part.

On their road trip, Mrs. S finally gives a little more information: they’re going to see someone who used to be Neolution. Sarah doesn’t understand how Hell Wizard figured all this out for her, but it wasn’t him. It was a mysterious puppy with angel hair. But Mrs. S can’t tell Sarah that, not yet.

Back in exposition land — er, I mean, Susan Duncan’s recovery room, she explains that she and PT worked together once, but eventually split off because she didn’t agree with his methods, even though she believes in the whole genetically perfecting the human race thing.

Sarah and Mrs. S take a quick detour on their road trip to a little convent, which reveals that Helena isn’t actually back in the Ukraine as I had thought. Instead she’s with one of the only nuns that was good to her, right here nearby. Helena is so happy to see her sestra; she can tell Sarah has a lot on her mind, so she asks Sarah to sit with her.

Back at the loft, Felix is tucking Kira in when he hears a knock at the door. He opens it to reveal Adele! His long lost sister. Mrs. S brought her into the fold because she’s good at following money, and following money is what Mrs. S needs her to do. In Switzerland. And she wants Felix to come, even though there are only six episodes of this show left FOREVER and we can’t really spare him, sorry.

Sarah tells Helena about Kira cutting herself, which Helena and her wings with scars for feathers can relate to. And speaking of relating, Sarah admits that she can finally feel the connection Helena was always going on about, because she could feel Kira pulling her back from the brink of death.

And this, this emotional connection, this is the thing Rachel can’t create in her lab, this is the thing she can’t steal from them. Helena is like, “Look I know I’m pregnant but I could still probably murder at least half of the people causing us problems,” but Sarah would rather her save her energy for her bebes.

When Sarah comes back out of the room to continue on her journey, she finds Mrs. S dressed as a sexy librarian, doing the full Perkins.

They drive to the asylum where Perkins was supposed to have a meeting, and after some adorable accent testing, they head inside and play it like Sarah is Perkins’ assistant and messed up the timing of the meeting. They’re met with skepticism at first, but Jeremy from Black Badge is impressionable and eventually gives them visitor passes to help a fellow assistant out.

They’re told they can’t see patients until tomorrow, but no one has ever succeeded in telling these two “no” so they march right into a secure ward first thing. As they approach, Mrs. S drops something she was saving for the last minute: this isn’t a mystery patient, but someone they know, so maybe don’t flip out when you see her.

But guess what. Sarah flipped out. And I did, too, because the patient? Is Virginia Coady.

Sarah calls her genocidal and is full on flipping out while Mrs. S pulls her sleepytime drug IV and shoots her up with adrenaline to try to get her unslumped.

On Revival, Cosima is cartoon tiptoeing, following Mud to see what she’s hiding. Mud first goes to PT’s house to timidly give him his treatment, then back outside again.

When Coady finally comes to, Sarah loses it on her, still pissed about a lot of shit she did, shit that violated and killed innocent girls, shit that cost Paul his life. They have questions, and if she wants to get out of this place, she’s gotta start answering them.

So Coady tells a tale of controlling human genetics, and what happens when the science isn’t quite right. Her voice follows Cosima down to a basement, where there is discarded and broken science equipment.

Sarah wants to know who put Coady in the asylum, but it doesn’t take her long to put it together: Susan Duncan. When Castor “fell” (read: got blowed up) Leda took over. Coady and Duncan worked together, long before the cloning experiment, and they had another subject, a different obsession. An obsession that lead to mistakes.

Under the voiceover, Cosima is still in my least favorite part of every video game, lurking around in the dark, finding old blood stains, getting the crap scared out of her by Mud.

Cosima, to her credit, doesn’t scream like a banshee like I do when playing aforementioned video games, but instead demands answers. In a panic, Mud shoves Cosima outside before PT finds her lurking.

Coady is still waxing poetic about the beautiful child with the rare genome they scienced half to death and basically made into Frankenstein’s monster.

Cosima follows Mud to that monster. She’s calling out to him, telling him she has blankets for him. She cares about him.

Cosima watches as he creeps out of the woods, heavy breathing and hunched shoulders and scars and pointed teeth. He barks at Mud, grabs the blankets and runs off with them. Cosima is scared.

That’s all Coady is willing to tell them until they get her out, but they’re interrupted by a doctor who can tell something is afoot. So instead Coady swipes Sarah’s visitor pass as they get escorted away.

Back on Revival again, we learn that PT thinks Coady is dead, and that he and Susan have made a breakthrough on the science that created the monster in the woods, and that the breakthrough has to involve Kira somehow. So despite their past differences, they’re going to work together again, which can’t be good for anyone involved.

The fam still in town all gathers at Mrs. S’s, including Adele. Felix is still salty she got roped into all this, but Sarah surprises all of us by saying it’s time they start trusting Mrs. S.

Felix doesn’t want to go to Switzerland, but there are hella Neolutionists there, and if they’re going to solve all this, they need the whole family. (Mrs. S is looking at Adele specifically when she says this, which I love so much.)

PT and Susan share a drink to celebrate their renewed partnership, Susan so lovingly calling Rachel PT’s “corporate raised psychopath” but PT doesn’t care, he wants her to stay at the head of all this. They toast to the future but I don’t think it’s a future any of us with a good head on our shoulders would want.

But Ira was eavesdropping so maybe he has some emotional attachment to his sestras and Kira now so he’ll warn them? Only time will tell.

More importantly though, time (less than a week of it) will bring us this:

“Orphan Black” Episode 503 Recap: Welcome to the Trip, Alison

Hello and welcome to this episode of Hendrix House where it’s all Alison all the time!

In a rare change of tempo, this episode of Orphan Black focused almost exclusively on Alison, In a combination of flashbacks and present-day scenes, we learn more than we ever have about what makes Alison Hendrix tick.

We start in a flashback, which we know immediately is a flashback because Aynsley is there (RIP). Aynsley and her husband, Chad, who despite being a pretty prominent character in Alison’s life, I called “Chet” at least three times (and “Chat” once) in my notes I’M SORRY. Anyway, Chad and Aynsley have a proposition for Alison and Donnie and at first they think they’re swingers and it’s a pretty adorable misunderstanding moment that I hope really happens in the suburbs all the time.

But what they really want is to do mushrooms, and while Alison is hesitant at first, she eventually gives in because it turns out this is just around the time when Beth is trying to explain to her that they don’t just happen to have the same face, but are in fact clones. And to prove it, there’s someone Beth wants her to meet; but Alison chooses escapism instead and gets high as a kite.

The person, of course, is Cosima, and I didn’t know I needed an Alison-meeting-Cosima scene in my life but I did and I’m so glad we got it. Because Alison comes outside, high off her ass, and Alison is of course “but the neighbors!” about it, poking at Cosima’s nose ring, amazed at how different and how similar they are.

Alison’s high mind paints a caricature of Cosima, her hands and voice moving faster than reality, and Cosima recognizes the pupils of someone who is high almost right away. Alison scurries inside, leaving a very confused Cosima on her porch, probably cursing Beth for making her do this in the first place.

Present day Alison and Donnie are being interviewed by that Frontenac fella and he ends up saying horrible things to Alison, calling her expendable and vapid and borderline implying he wishes she had been crushed to death instead of MK. It’s not great for our broken little soccer mom.

Speaking of MK, after Frontenac leaves, Alison and Donnie Skype into a little memorial Sarah, Felix, Mrs. S and Kira are having for her in Felix’s loft.

Things are looking bleak; Alison is upset, Kira won’t talk to Sarah; Mrs. S has things to do on her own. But before she leaves, Siobhan tells them that they’ve got some people in their corner, and also assigns Felix to essentially babysit Sarah for the day.

Alison is too upset to go to the church fair she’s no longer being permitted to run, but Donnie reminds her that they’re part of the entertainment, so they must. Alison finds pills and pockets them, lamenting out loud, “Why do I love my sisters so much when they ruined my life?” Which I think is a perspective on the clone situation that is pretty uniquely Alison’s and very interesting.

Alison marches to the church and confronts Nona Walker, who is in charge of the fair now and was warned this might happen, so swiftly shuts down any help Alison offers.

Defeated, Alison slinks to the chapel and takes a few of the pills. She puts the rest in an apple juice she digs out of her purse and almost gives the juice to Nona but luckily takes it back before she becomes a suburban serial killer.

At the DYAD, Rachel is talking to Frontenac and tells him that PT Westmoreland told her that he wrote the book on Neolution and Leekie dumbed it down to publish it; she has a new hero now. She also says that the new information about Helena’s bbs might prove that they’re worth more to them than even Kira, which is great for us because that means Kira will be safe, and it’s not like Helena’s going to go down without a fight.

Back in the suburbs, Art and Maddie, greeted by a be-kilted Donnie, enter the Hendrix house to search for evidence on the death of the drug dealers Helena killed to death.

Present-day Alison is feeling shunned at the church event (classic) when she runs into Chad and his kids at a memorial photo of Aynsley. He looks older, tired, and so, so sad. He starts to muse out loud about whether they could have saved her, but Alison cuts him off and storms away, unable to deal with the thought of it. Because yes, she could have. But she didn’t and that’s a thing she has to live with now.

Flash back to the night of the mushrooms, where Alison is questioning her life choices and poking at her face that she’s now seen on two other people and poking at Donnie’s face which is so…normal. She says she feels like her whole life is a lie sometimes and before Monitor!Donnie cracks under the scrutiny, Aynsley pops in and tells Alison to get out of her own head and out into the starlight.

At the present-day DYAD, Rachel and Kira are hanging out, Rachel taking Kira’s fingernail clippings, Kira playing with a mouse, talking about how the mouse can slither out of its own skin and then grow its skin and fur back, all normal things I also did with my aunt as a child.

Kira confesses to Rachel, in that almost-too-honest way kids do sometimes, that people have warned her not to trust her Aunt Rachel, but she’s having a lot of fun.

Which luckily Sarah isn’t around to hear; instead she’s holed up in Felix’s loft, being forced to sit for a portrait, which she feels some type of way about.

It was a moment of cute sibling levity between them we haven’t seen in a minute and I liked it a lot.

In the church fair parking lot, Alison runs into a throwback character, Ramon the teenage drug and weapons dealer. Figuring she already broke her sobriety with the pills, she joins Ramon for some booze and weed and bonding.

Speaking of bonding, we flash back now to Aynsley and Alison lying beneath the stars together, talking about Bailey Downs and whether this is really what they’re meant for. I was struck with a strange sadness about Aynsley and her friendship with Alison in this moment; they were more similar than they thought and they only really found out when they let their guards down and stopped trying to play Perfect Housewife for a second.

Present-day Alison, also high and drunk, comes out of the bounce house to a confused Donnie, and they argue about murder and monitors and you can just see the threads of Alison’s carefully knit life spooling around her.

Back at the Hendrix’s house, Art catches Maddie planting evidence in the garage because she’s desperate to find where Helena is, and thinks this will be good leverage. But before she can do it, she finds something better: newly poured cement, approximately the size of a grave.

And listen, Maddie is chalking up to be a piece of shit, but she’s very cute and I am very gay so when she got out that jackhammer I wasn’t that mad about it.

Felix and Sarah’s Painting Hour gets interrupted by a desperate call from Donnie, and they decide to ignore their mum’s warning and go help their sestra.

After he hangs up, Donnie chugs the whole bottle of apple juice he finds in Alison’s purse, not knowing it’s drugged to high heavens. I said, “Oh no!” out loud to my TV at this point, because I was afraid the show was going to go into “kill someone every episode” final season berserker mode, but I should have known better, because Donnie has become some much-needed relief on this dark and twisty show.

Back at Mrs. S’s house, Kira won’t talk about her time with Auntie Rachel, so Mrs. S tells her to get ready for bed, but instead Kira looks at her new pet mouse, then whips out a knife, because this show wasn’t stressful enough yet apparently.

When Donnie goes out to perform his Irish jig, Felix arriving just in time to watch the insanity, he starts to wobble as he drugged juice floods his system and eventually pulls an Alison and wipes out on stage. Alison and Felix rush the stage to help and when Alison hears some snickering and name-calling from the crowd, she. goes. OFF.

She’s seeing and hearing the Aynsley she once knew now; she’s finally realizing that she has found the purpose they were talking about. Alison is part of something bigger than Bailey Downs, a sisterhood she calls it. She’s finally done trying to resist “the c word.” She’s finally ready to join her sisters on the frontlines, not just help out behind the scenes.

And just in time, too, because things are coming to a head. No pun intended. But there is a literal head. Maddie found the decaying, headless body of Dr. Leekie, and Donnie giving up Helena’s location is out of the question, so Alison takes things into her own hands. She marches to DYAD, marches up to Rachel’s desk, and plops a bag down in front of the ProClone sestra she’s never met.

Alison knows Rachel counts her out, but she was one of the first ones in this thing, and she’s in it now. She slides the bag closer to Rachel, who opens it to find Dr. Leekie’s rotting head.

Alison explains the situation, and knows Rachel won’t file murder charges against them. She hands Rachel a phone and tells her to – nay, COMMANDS her to call off her dogs. Rachel is impressed and maybe a little turned on and she does indeed tell Maddie to stand down (just in time, because Art was about to off her in a panic).

Alison also adds that Rachel should leave Helena alone, and Rachel vaguely threatens her, and Alison hates her just as much, so maybe they’re not as different as they seem. Alison gets in the elevator, proud that she, like Aria Montgomery, has finally decided to join in the murder mystery of her own life in the eleventh hour.

Back home, when things quiet down, Alison sits with Donnie and says she needs to go away for a while. She needs to see the kids, she needs to figure out who she is if not Alison Hendrix, the potluck-having, craft-making, prim and proper suburbanite. Donnie is sad about it, but knows it’s what they need, and they sing a sweet, sad rendition of the song they were supposed to sing together at the fair.

This week’s tag is a quick check-in on our runaway clone, who has taken her bebes back to the nuns who raised her, presumably, and she’s writing in Ukranian, and I will love you forever if you can give me or link me to a translation of her journal.

I haven’t seen the preview for next week, and I know we only have seven episodes left, but I wouldn’t mind a single-clone focused, half-flashback episode like this based on Sarah, Helena, and Cosima before the series is through.

“Orphan Black” Episode 502 Recap: Crushed

Previously on Orphan Black, Cosima decided to stay in Revival to follow the crazy science and got injected with the cure FUCKING FINALLY, Helena got stabbed in the belly by a stick, Rachel stabbed everyone and her mom to rise to the top of the Neolution pyramid, and Sarah got hit with a tranquilizer dart right as she was about to escape the island.

The good news is, when Sarah wakes up, she is indeed off the island. The bad news is, she’s back in a DYAD cell, and she is NOT PLEASED.

Before she wakes up though, a thing to note: She sees that same Kira vision from before, but besides just “mummy, wake up,” Kira says, “You’re gonna have to let go.” And also this time Mrs. S pops in to say, “You need to listen to her.” Both things that will be relevant later and probably Sarah should have paid more attention to them.

Ferdinand comes to see Sarah in her cell and immediately she asks about Kira. Instead, Ferdinand video conferences in her sestras. Alison is in her craft room and tells her that Helena and Donnie are on the lam but she’s fine, then Cosima is patched in and gives her a dose of good news: the cure is in her. The trial is officially a go.

But before Sarah can get any more details, Ferdinand shuts off the call and shows her live footage of Kira, coloring in another room at the DYAD, safe.

Ferdinand’s voice is arrogant when he asks her if she’s ready to behave.

Meanwhile, up in her office, Rachel has taken up meditation and has doubled-down on windows.

Sarah is brought up to see her and Rachel offers her tea but Sarah just wants her to spill it. That sounds like a joke but I’m serious, Rachel says she wants to run some tests on Kira and Tatiana Maslany slaps a cup of tea right out of her own hands. This is the 42nd episode of this show, and I have seen every episode a MINIMUM of three times, and yet things like this blow my mind every SINGLE time. It’s such a strange trick of the mind. There is truly no one else who could have pulled this off like Tatiana.

Rachel, unflinching despite almost getting scalded by hot water, says that things are different now. They truly just want to learn about Kira and her unique biology; they don’t want to keep her. Not anymore. To prove her point, Kira and Mrs. S are brought into the office. They can all go home together as long as they agree to bring Kira back for testing. Kira says please, Mrs. S says please, and Sarah feels like she woke up in an alternate universe but she agrees, just to get her family home.

Meanwhile in the suburbs, Art and his new best friend Maddie are forcing Alison to play her voicemails out loud for them. When they’re done and there’s nothing from Donnie or Helena, she asks them to leave because there are neighborhood politics she needs to address, but Maddie doesn’t want her to leave her house until Helena shows up. She’s like “you’re crafty, just craft” and frankly she’s lucky Alison didn’t whip out her trusty glue gun right then and there.

At Revival, Cosima and Charlotte are having some lunch together and competing for my favorite sestra relationship on the show. There are vitamins that are served with the food but Cosima decies her and Charlotte aren’t going to partake, just in case. Cosima coughs and Charlotte is worried, but Cosima reassures her that the treatment wouldn’t work that fast.

Charlotte says she believes in the treatment, and bb girl so do I. The mother and daughter that Delphine treated last week walk by, and Charlotte recognizes Aisha from the “school” so Cosima asks Charlotte to introduce her.

As soon as Sarah, Mrs. S and Kira come home and send Kira upstairs to get ready from school, where Rachel will pick her up, and as soon as Kira is out of sight, the walls come down and Mrs. S runs to the vacuum cleaner to turn it on to mask their hushed and worried voices; they weren’t actually as compliant as they seemed, and Sarah is SO RELIEVED. They were just playing along until they made a game plan. So Sarah takes Kira to school like everything’s fine and normal, and Kira’s like, “Auntie Rachel is going to pick me up,” and Sarah practically spits on the ground and is like “Auntie my butt!” Kira tries to say that it’s different now but even the most precocious kids are ignored when it comes to what is perceived as “adult stuff” so Sarah shuffles her off to be the smartest witch of her age.

Scott pops in briefly to give Felix one last batch of clone phones, including one for MK, who they found on the darknet and who is now in Felix’s loft.

In Revival (why are cult names always just creepy spiritual words, why can’t it be like NeoParty Science Club or something), Cosima is examining Aisha, while Charlotte proudly tells her that Aisha said that Delphine was very nice in that cute way little kids do when they want you to know they like the person you’re dating.

The Messenger and Mud find them and Cosima is like “We’re doing school,” and I mean I get why it looked a little suspicious. But regardless, Cosima has to come with them because “he” wants to see her. “He” of course being the legendary PT Westmoreland.

When Felix gets to the loft, he video chats Sarah, who has MK take off her mask. When she does, it’s obvious that she’s sick, and has been sick. She coughs and looks embarrassed but she has information: the DYAD has been recruiting naive surrogates. Rachel is restarting the cloning program. Sarah leans in close to the screen and assures MK that she’s their sestra now. She’s one of them, and they’re going to help her. Cosima has the cure, she’s going to be okay.

And speaking of Cosima, as she’s walking with Mud up the stairs to PT’s lair, and Mud is talking about all the times she’s chatted with him before, Cosima finally asks, who IS she. Mud keeps her scary empty-eyed smile on her face and says, “Don’t be nervous,” which is decidedly not an answer.

Cosima goes into the house and it’s definitely haunted, full of things like animal skeletons and taxidermy and and an old phonograph running on ghost-power alone. She sees a picture of PT Westmoreland from 1894 and I’m prepared for a moving corpse to be wheeled into this room, but instead in walks a devilishly handsome man who looks like he’s played The Devil at least three times and certainly doesn’t look like how I’d expect a 170-year-old to look. But he’s eloquent and charming and he hands Cosima her first test results and the outcome so far is “remarkable.” The cure seems to be working. He asks her to stay on at Revival, where they “follow the science,” and that’s what Delphine says, so she does her regular Cosima thing of challenging him a little, but all she has to decide right now is that she’s going to continue to develop the cure for the rest of her sestras.

He also tells her this really interesting philosophy poem about cheese and all of Cosima’s faces were perfect as he went through it. And if you will, I recommend imaging all the other clones in that exact scenario. Alison would have cut him off and asked what on earth this has to do with cheese, Sarah would have rolled her eyes and told him she wasn’t a bloody cheese mite, Helena would have stabbed him with the cheese knife. Cosima was fascinated though and would probably love to run some tests on him herself.

In her office at DYAD, Rachel tells Ferdinand that she’s found herself through Westmoreland and doesn’t have interest in their kinky sexual relationship anymore. Which doesn’t please him to say the least.

Rachel goes to pick up Kira from school, motherhood being not quite as exciting as she might have hoped.

But Sarah and her kin make it more fun by playing a switcheroo; Sarah dresses as Rachel and Mrs. S and Felix work together to get Kira out. When Rachel goes into get Kira, she recognizes the “why are you asking me a question you should know the answer to” look on the teacher’s face and knows she’s been cloneswappeed. What Sarah and Mrs. S hadn’t been counting on, however, was that Ferdinand was watching from the back of the school, and follows Sarah as she heads back to Felix’s loft to pick up MK while Mrs. S shuffles Kira to safety.

During this entire episode, Donnie and Helena are in the hospital, and honestly I’m not sure that Donnie remembers at this point that Helena isn’t actually his wife. One of the babies was hurt in the fall, but when they do another ultrasound to see if they should do an emergency c-section, the baby is healed. Helena is afraid they’ll want to steal her magic babies, so she tells Donnie where she’s going to run to and says if he tells anyone besides Sarah she’ll sick baba yaga on her, and just ask Kenzi from Lost Girl, that ain’t good.

A doctor comes in to examine Helena (and question Donnie as to why his injured wife is so skittish) and pulls out a big needle that was intended to test Helena’s amniotic fluid, but instead Helena grabs and STABS HER IN THE FACE. When the doctor is pinned to the bed THROUGH HER CHEEK-TONGUE-CHEEK Helena steals her car keys.

Then despite that HORRIFICALLY VIOLENT ACT she becomes instantly adorable as she waddle-runs out of the hospital, her little bum poking out from the back of her hospital gown.

When Sarah gets inside Felix’s loft, Ferdinand hot on her heels, MK tries to tell her that she’s too tired to keep running. They switch clothes and MK says she’ll just pretend to be Sarah pretending to be Rachel long enough for Sarah to get away. Sarah doesn’t want to leave her sestra, but MK says she wants to do this, for Kira.

MK is also frustrated; if someone was alive for 170 years there should be so much information about them, but Westmoreland doesn’t have enough. She’s almost talking to herself, “There’s not enough data” and she’s spiraling but Sarah grabs her face to calm her down. MK says it wishes it could have been different between them. Sarah does, too.

Sarah sneaks out through a door I’ve never noticed before and Ferdinand busts in through the main door. MK is ready to make a stand, and Ferdinand is thrilled that Sarah is dressed as Rachel. He’s transformed; where there’s usually a calm and creepy Dr. Jekyll is a feral and wild Mr. Hyde.

Ferdinand says some really terrifying sexually aggressive things and pins her down. He realizes, because he’s brushed her hair out of her face to reveal her scars, that it’s not Sarah he has pinned to the floor, but the last survivor of Helsinki, who he calls Veera.

Ferdinand hisses about two revenge fantasies in one, switching between calling her Rachel and Veera, truly no longer on our plane of reality. She eventually spits on him and he snaps. He stands up and, in the most horrific sequence I’ve ever seen on television, stomps on her chest over and over and over again until her ribcage breaks and she dies. My chest hurts just typing this. And it’s not just the absolutely over-the-top and unnecessary violence of it, but because it was one of our sestras. We haven’t lost a Leda clone we were attached to yet. We only grew to love Beth in retrospect, as Sarah settled deeper and deeper in her shoes. We lost Katja before we really knew her, we only found out about Jennifer after she was gone. The Helsinki girls were just a horror story we heard. But MK was their sister, Sarah just said so. MK helped them when they needed, MK cared about them. MK sacrificed herself to save Kira.

Ferdinand puts her sheep mask atop her crushed torso and leaves her there on the floor of Felix’s loft.

At that moment, Sarah and Kira are getting ready to go into the van that will take them away from the chaos forever, when Kira starts to lose her mind. She starts kicking and screaming, she’s not going. “MK is dead,” she wails, as Sarah tries to lift her daughter into the van unsuccessfully. Sarah says, “You can’t know that,” but even she doesn’t believe herself as she says it. “I don’t feel her anymore,” Kira sobs.

Kira yells that she wants to know why she’s like this, that she wants to go with Rachel, who has promised her answers. She runs to Felix and Mrs. S looks at Sarah, as though it pains her to admit it, but they can’t pretend anymore. Kira is different, and she wants to know why. Rachel can help.

Rachel who is officially on my list because all she does to Ferdinand is turn him out because he didn’t follow her orders. I would have locked him in one of those DYAD cells with the wall-screens and forced him to watch Skins Fire on repeat for all eternity.

Back at Mrs. S’s house, Kira gets ready for testing time with Rachel. Sarah just stands there watching as everything she has been afraid of is happening. She’s been running and fighting and bleeding and crying and fighting and fighting and fighting to prevent this exact thing, and here Kira is, just walking away from her and into Rachel’s arms.

Sarah and I both wonder, what was it all for? What was the point of anything if this was the inevitable end anyway? What’s the message here? It it that maybe someone should have asked Kira what she wanted to do before hatching a master kidnapping scheme that got MK killed? Is autonomy the lesson? Is it that you can’t protect your children forever? Is it that trying is pointless and loving people is a waste of time because they’re just going to leave you anyway?

Sorry, I’m still shook by that MK situation. This episode filled my heart with sand and it is weighing heavy on me today.

Later that night, with Sarah tucked away in bed, probably catatonic because I would be, Mrs. S hears a knock on her back door. She grabs a gun and is shocked to see who it is and my brain did one of those eyeball-slot-machine movies like money-hungry wolves in cartoons when they see a cash cow, trying to guess who was at the door, and my brain rolled through Helena, Donnie, Allison, Tony, Krystal and Maya St. Germain by the time the camera turned to reveal who was there but I sure as heck didn’t guess right. Because it was DELPHINE.

“I’m not a ghost,” she says, “ARE YOU SURE?!” I respond. After being sent away last week, I was sure she was gone until the finale. I was delighted and some of the sand in my heart spilled back out. Delphine says that Sarah can’t know that she’s there, that it’s safer that nobody knows, but that she wants to work together with Mrs. S on something. And I’m VERY excited to find out what.

“Orphan Black” Episode 501 Recap: Once More, With Feeling(s)

The bittersweet time has come for us to say hello to Orphan Black one more time before we say goodbye again. Our girls have been through the ringer, and the stakes are still high as we pick up right where we left off. Before we just into the episode, let’s check on where we left some of our girls:

Helena and Alison were on the run and camping out with Donnie in the woods. Cosima ran with Charlotte to head for a boat to freedom but almost got hypothermia and Delphine had to use her body heat to warm her. Rachel had snapped and attacked Susan and Sarah. Sarah escaped within an inch of her life and scrambled across the island, bleeding out from a stab wound in her leg from her darling robo-eyed sestra.

We pick up from there, Sarah beaten down and bloody, dragging herself across an island she doesn’t know how to get off. She uses her 2% remaining phone battery to call Felix and tell him that Kira and Mrs. S were kidnapped by Ferdinand and send him to check the safe house. She also mentions Rachel’s hostile takeover, and that she’s not coming back without Cosima.

Felix has Ira tell Sarah where they could be taking Cosima, and Ira gets out something about it being downstream from “the village” before Sarah’s phone dies.

Meanwhile, in said village, Rachel is ascending a long, ancient-looking staircase, looking pleased as a peach whose manic dreams are coming true.

Sarah luckily has a book of matches from Bobby’s bar on her, and (terrifyingly) uses a picture of Kira as kindling. She wraps her broken fingers and uses a tampon to stop the bleeding from her stab wound, though as she tightens the tourniquet around her leg, she passes out and dreams of Kira begging her to wake up. “There’s so much to do today,” the prophetic little angel monkey hallucination says.

Sarah wakes up and hears a noise in the woods, which is frankly probably not the friendly neighborhood unicorn.

Something attacks her and rolls around OVER THE FIRE with her for a bit and we never get a good look at it but it gave me some serious Island of Dr. Moreau vibes. She beats it off with a stick on fire and whittles a part-walking stick, part-weapon until it’s light enough to continue on.

Across the island, Cosima wakes up in a yurt, alone but alive. I spent some time in a yurt at this year’s A-Camp, but Cosima’s seems to be lacking an inflatable unicorn full of beer and La Croix. Instead, she has a door that’s locked from the outside, her bag missing the cure she stole from Rachel, and a note presumably from Delphine that says, “Follow my lead.” Speak of the beautiful bisexual scientist, she’s outside fighting with the man who is called simply The Messenger. Cosima knows now, though, that Delphine is alive, that it wasn’t a hallucination.

A young, plucky girl comes into the yurt and says her name is Mud. Which…is fine, I guess. She tells Cosima this place is called Revival and that they’re an almost-entirely-self-sufficient, off-the-grid community. She smiles creepily and watches Cosima a little too closely as she shows her around, telling her she won’t be allowed to call her sisters in the same chipper tone she tells her they have a fish farm.

Mud says that people are selected from all over the world for this community to build a genetically improved human race. “We all contribute and we all benefit.” Yikes.

Cosima asks about her stolen science and Rachel Duncan, and Mud gets all giddy as she explains that Rachel is “in seclusion” with P.T. Westmoreland, The Founder of Neolution, age 170.

Cosima finds Charlotte in a little school hut and Mud calls them “Tweedle Tall and Tweedle Small” which prompts Cosima to tell Charlotte to ignore her. It was subtle but hilarious and the delivery was just A+. They do indeed ignore Mud and talk about how Delphine will have their backs and Susan will probably pull through.

Meanwhile back on the mainland, Felix goes to the safe house to find a bloody mess and almost attacks an intruder with a frying pan, only to discover it’s Art. Art is stressed because between the police and Vice milling about the station, he can’t tell who’s Neolution and who’s not anymore. He tells Felix to warn what sisters he can, so Felix calls Allison and tells her to stay put.

Unfortunately staying put isn’t exactly in Allison’s repertoire, so she starts packing everyone’s things up almost immediately upon hanging up the phone.

When Art does get back to the station, he’s told he has a new partner. Her name is Maddie, and she’s ditching her last partner because apparently she was too nice. So now she’s Art’s problem.

(Queer Trivia Sidebar: Maddie is played by Elyse Levesque, who also played the Guinevere to Sara Lance(lot) in the Camelot episode of Legends of Tomorrow last season.)

On the island, Sarah is hiding in the reeds and hears men hunting her down to bring her to Revival with “the other one” which is a VERY RUDE WAY to talk about my Cosima, SIR. So Sarah hobbles across a river, dragging her injured leg, blood still on her face, determined as ever.

At Revival, Delphine is working at the clinic and treating a little girl from Afghanistan. Her mother says they came here for “The Fountain” and this news makes Delphine do the most heartbreaking thing with her face before giving the girl a small, sad smile.

After the girl and her mother leave, Delphine closes and locks the door and starts mussing about, hiding Cosima’s cure in the lab fridge, pocketing the little girl’s file, and stalling while The Messenger demands she come unlock the door right this instant. She smoothly lies and says the newbies must have locked it accidentally on the way out, but The Messenger doesn’t care that much. He’s just here to…well, deliver a message. “He” wants to see Delphine right now.

Back at Rabbit Hole Comics, the boys are feeling stumped without any of the sestras to help them. But prodded by Felix’s sass, Scott, Ira, and Hell Wizard come up with a plan to use Kira’s Minecraft game to try to reach out to MK, the only sister who can help them now.

Out in the field, Art’s new partner is showing how charming she is by brushing her teeth in the car, and then playing her hand.

Her hand being that she knows he knows more than he’s letting on about the clones, and if he doesn’t help her find them, he’ll regret it. Maddie drives this point home by including, in this file, a picture of Art’s daughter.

Out in the woods, Donnie and Helena are loon calling to each other. That is a sentence I never could have dreamed, but holy doodle do I love it so. But wait it’s about to get better: Helena sees a man lurking nearby so switches to the EMERGENCY LOON CALL.

But it’s too late, the men black bag Allison and carry her away, and though she calls out for her husband, he runs to the pregnant clone instead, wheely bag dragging behind him.

When Felix arrives back at the safe house to get the Minecraft laptop, a man named Mr. Frontenac surprises him and, after explaining that there’s just one faction now, and it’s Neolution, makes it clear that Felix has few options besides coming with him.

Alison is taken to the side of the road where Art and Maddie were waiting, and is asked where the rest of the clones are, starting with Helena. Alison doesn’t know, and when she keeps insisting she doesn’t know, even through Maddie kidney-punching Art and holding a gun to his head, Maddie accepts her answer. And I’m starting to think maybe this Maddie gal is a bit…unhinged.

Back in the yurt, Charlotte reads the book about Revival to Cosima and even she can tell something ain’t right about this place. Cosima starts to explain to her that myths usually combine fact and fiction to teach a lesson.

But before she can tell us what lesson we’re supposed to be learning in this cult city, Delphine comes in and they can finally talk. Cosima tells her she thought Delphine was dead, but Delphine explains they wouldn’t let her contact Cosima. The Messenger is looming and Delphine says pointedly, “We each have a role here,” as she tells Cosima she’s being sent to Sardinia and if people could stop sending Delphine to countries where Cosima is not that’d be GREAT THANK YOU.

Delphine gets the Messenger to give her and Cosima ten minutes alone, where she quickly catches Cosima up on getting shot in the gut but saved by the science of Revival. Cosima is still stuck on the idea of a 170-year-old man, but Delphine says the science is real. As if to prove it, Cosima lifts Delphine’s shirt, and when she sees a scar right where Delphine said it would be, she kisses her belly.

Delphine explains that Revival is a decades-long longevity study that uses risky and rare science experiments to genetically approve the human race, starting with being able to live a long-ass time. Revival is the heart of Neolution. Self-directed evolution. Delphine says that Rachel is doing something to ramp things up, which surely can’t be great, but that she thinks the little girl she treated has something to do with it. She slips Cosima the girl’s file, a key to the clinic, and directions to her cure as the Messenger comes in to tell them their time is up.

Delphine pulls Cosima in for one last kiss, full of desperation, full of hope.

And as she pulls away she looks in Cosima’s eyes and says, “Follow the crazy science.”

Delphine exchanges one last look with Cosima, and then she’s gone.

And I’ve watched that scene a dozen times and every time tears spring to my eyes. Surely that won’t be the last we see of Delphine, but it sure felt like goodbye.

In the woods, poor Sarah is still hobbling around trying to avoid the men with guns and tracking dogs like she’s in my least favorite part of any video game. She finds a tower with some furs, and falls almost directly on an animal that has been stabbed with a makeshift spear and gutted, which she uses as a distraction as she hides behind a nearby log. One of the men on this hunt is a little alarmed by the hanging furs and the stabbed animal, but another man says it’s a bear in a way that says he knows it’s not a bear but they’re not going to talk about it being anything else but a bear.

So they give up and head back to the village, offering an insincere “good luck” in Sarah’s general direction.

At Revival, Cosima is eating when creepy cult music plays from the speakers, and Mud grabs her and drags her to the stairs, because PT has a message for them. Rachel descends the staircase and address the crowd like a brainwashed drone clone and says that they’ll be drinking from the fountain first, those here at Revival. She might as well have called it kool-aid for the look on her face when the crowd cheers.

Sarah made it to Revival just in time to catch the end of that speech and is feeling very WHAT IS HAPPENING about the whole thing. Which, same.

Now, earlier I said Donnie was opting to save the pregnant clone instead of his already-captured wife, but as he uncovers and unlocks their getaway car, I’m now not so sure he wasn’t just going to save his own butt. He’s set upon by another man with a gun, but is saved by a SCREE SCRAW and Helena pouncing on the man. They knock the guy out but when Helena fell to the ground, a branch stabbed into her stomach, so Donnie has to get her to the hospital STAT.

Later that night, Cosima sneaks out through the yurt window, creeping past Mud, asleep on her watch. She makes her way to the clinic and finds her cure, right where Delphine said it would be, and opens it with shaking hands. Sarah appears then, scaring the crap out of her, and saying she’s here to get her. Cosima looks at her supposed savior, bleeding all over and limping, and tells her to sit down so she can treat her wounds.

When they’re done, Sarah says they should leave now, who cares about a 170-year-old man, but the thing is, Cosima does. Cosima says that if she leaves now, the sestras will never be free. So sorry she hobbled all this way, but she can’t go with her.

The Messenger finds Mud asleep at her post, and starts a search for the missing clone. Sarah doesn’t want to just leave Cosima, or go back out to face the Not-Bear, but tells Cosima to find some answers and take care of herself and heads out. Together so briefly.

Cosima quickly puts on gloves and is working up the courage to jab the needle with her cure in it into her own uterus when she’s interrupted by The Messenger, Rachel Duncan close behind. Rachel tells The Messenger to leave, then surprises us all by taking the needle from Cosima, only to offer to do the procedure for her.

Rachel says PT wants Cosima to be part of “this” whatever “this” is so she injects Cosima with the cure. Finally, finally. The music is triumphant, and Cosima looks like she let out a breath she’s been holding forever, a breath we’ve all been holding; her for months, us for years. And Cosima finally, finally has some relief.

Outside, Sarah lurks about until she finds the rumored boathouse, but because life isn’t fair, as soon as she has the keys in her hand and the boat untied, she’s hit with a tranq dart. Her vision flashes between more hallucinations of Kira and the actual sight of Rachel looming over her, until she loses consciousness completely.

And there we have it! We laughed, we cried, we quirked our eyebrows and cocked our heads. So help me out, friends: what in the sam heck is going on?? What are these Neolutionists up to, and what on Earth is that “fountain” business all about? Tell me all your thoughts and feelings please and thank you.

Orphan Black Episode 305 Recap: Sestra, Sestra

HELLO, SESTRAS. This is a recap for Orphan Black episode 305, “Scarred By Many Past Frustrations.” I was trying very hard to get a recap up for last week’s episode, but what happened was a lot of really super queer stuff in real life and also on television, and so much A-Camp preparation, and Orphan Black had no queer stuff and was very Castor-focused, so it kept getting shoved to the bottom of my endless to do list. And now here we are. So I am going to recap this week’s episode fully, and tell you very quickly what happened last week. Okay, sestra? Okay.

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304: “Newer Elements of Our Defence”

Gracie’s mom shot Mark in the cornfield and then skedaddled because she assumed he was dead. Who gets hit with some shotgun shells and walks away? Well, Mark, that’s who. Sarah dragged his ass halfway across Canada to some random cabin in the woods, pulled the bullets out of his guts, and sewed him up. In the middle of the surgery, Mark confessed he was torturing Johansson because he was pretty sure Johanssen had an original sample of Castor DNA. And Mark was right. But Johanssen used the DNA to try to make his own clone baby and that clone baby died when it was still barely born, and so Sarah and Mark dug up the baby’s bones and of course Rudy found them doing it, so the brothers decided to take the bones for themselves and “tie up the loose end” of Sarah.

Helena chewed a pork chop bone into the shape of a skeleton key and broke herself out of her cell at Castor HQ, but then found one of the Castor clones in a hospital room with the top of his head sawed off because Mother and some doctors were messing with his open brain. He asked Helena to kill him, so she used her pork chop key to do that by stabbing his literal brains.

Cosima sat around in Delphine’s clothes wearing Delphine’s perfume and smoking Delphine’s cigarettes and doing science and feeling awful.

And Allison and Donnie upped their drug game by making promises to the kingpen supplier of the neighborhood, who, it turned out, was Alison’s high school boyfriend.

Also, Gracie lost her baby and the Proletheans kicked her out of their cult.

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305: “Scarred by Many Past Frustrations”

Rudy is feeling extra proud of himself for bringing the baby bones back to Mother so they can mash them up into some kind of potion to cure the Castor clones’ brain glitches. Rudy wants to stay around and do the alchemy, but Mother tells him to take off the weekend and go bang ladies and chop off their hair and write about his humpings in his diary and hang out on the MRA boards or whatever. Just hit up that warp zone that connects Mexico with Toronto and be back in 48 hours. Rudy kisses Mother on the cheek and bounces.

Sarah wakes up from her kidnapping and finds herself in a cell at Castor HQ. She yells a lot of insults and climbs up onto her bed to try to see out of the tiny window near the ceiling. And then, through the vent in the wall, she hears Helena talking about, “Not so smart after all, are you?” Sarah is shocked and relieved and she scrambles over to the vent to try to see her, but Helena’s not interested in reconnecting. Kill her once, shame on you; kill her twice, and you’re going to hurt her feelings. Sarah tries to explain about how it was Ms. S who did the dirty dealings. Ms. S and Paul. She begs Helena to at least peep her through the little grate separating them, but thanks to Pupok, who is being a real butt hole today, Helena isn’t feeling it.

Felix and Ms. S are starting to panic a little about Sarah disappearing. She used to do this shit all the time, of course, but that was before she discovered she was part of a sisterhood of clones being relentlessly monitored, pursued, and murdered by every governmental shadow agency and cabal of mad scientists in the world. Felix distracts himself with Cosima’s problems. Well, one of Cosima’s problems at least. The problem of her deep and debilitating heartbreak. He has signed her up for a dating app called Sapphire and she is, at this very moment, waiting to meet someone named Shay at the local pub.

Felix: Give it 20 minutes before you bail, do you promise?
Cosima: Knowing this show, a sniper will shoot me in the face through the pub window by then, but okay.
Bartender Bobbi: Just don’t talk about your ex, girl.
Cosima: What? I’m not going to talk about my ex. Do I look like I want to talk about my ex?
Bartender Bobbi: You look like you want to go home and pile up the clothes she left behind and roll around in them like a cat while listening to Bon Iver and eating ice cream with your hands.

Cosima promises to keep it tight for at least half an hour, okay, and then Shay walks into the bar. (It’s Ksenia Solo and she looks like Kenzi and sounds like Kenzi but she’s so not Kenzi.) Cosima tries to make small talk and it’s more awkward than all the small talk you’ve ever made in your life, but Shay is super into it. She calms Cosima down by weaving a yarn about her first terrible Sapphire date. But also, she makes Cosima even more nervous because her voice is so sultry and she doesn’t break eye contact. It’s intense, and kind of — I feel hypnotized watching it happen, and Shay’s not even staring into my soul like she’s doing to Cosima. The challenge soothes Cosima, I think. She likes to win. She settles in and levels up her banter and it’s pretty wonderful.

Orphan Black Episode 303 Recap: My Milkshake Brings All the Clones to the Yard

Little otters, I had some trouble getting my hands on some proper screencaps this week, so I’m light on pics by heavy on love. 

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Previously on Orphan Black, Rudy shot ol’ Seth in the face when he wouldn’t stop glitching. Helena had a tea and mango party with sweet Pupok in the bowels of Castor HQ. Cosima leveled up her Sass Master game trying to dig up the original Leda genome from the latest dubious doctor controlling Dyad. Alison and Donnie bought a pill-pushing business and renamed it Bubbles. And Sarah sent Kira off to meet Daenerys Targaryen, and maybe help her calm down those angry teenage dragons of hers.

Well, Rudy did not clean up the mess he made when he gunned down his brother, so Sarah and Felix are tasked with dragging his corpse upstairs and into the bathtub and trying to figure out how to get rid of it. Through some basic trial and error, Sarah has discovered that the first thing is you need to dig the hole deep enough that the rain doesn’t uncover the body and send it rolling down a hill and into a rock quarry. Felix is pretty sure disposing of dead bodies is one of S’s specialties, but Sarah still hasn’t forgiven her for selling Helena to Paul, so she doesn’t want her help.

You know who else’s help she doesn’t want? The help of the cops. So it’s too bad when Art shows up banging on the door and pushing his way past Sarah into the loft — grabbing her waist and hips in such a way that made me jump right up off the couch and shout, “NU UH!” — and following the blood trail right to the dead body.

Felix has one idea, and it’s that Art could just leave and pretend he didn’t see anything. Art’s not really feeling that plan. He poses it like it’s the ethics of being a cop, but honestly, I think Art is just bored. It’s a pretty big adrenaline plummet from investigating a clone conspiracy to the next most brutal thing in Canada, which is like people not use their turn signals or not saying “thank you” emphatically enough to the checkout clerk at the grocery store.

They Skype Cosima so she can charm and/or bamboozle Art into forgetting about the dead Castor in the bathtub. It totally works.

Cosima: I guess whatever’s wrong with our lungs is wrong with the Castor noggins.
Felix: Hey, Scott.
Scott: [Giggles]
Cosima: I’m going to come over there and take out that guy’s brain, cool?
Felix: Yep. Bring some of those Mr. Clean magic eraser scrubber things. Bye, Scott.
Scott: [Giggles]

Sarah bounces with Art to track down Mark and Grace, which will maybe bring them one step closer to Helena and definitely will bring them one step close to the litter of Helena’s babies that are getting incubated all over the Great White North.

Mark and Gracie are still in that Motel 6 in Nowhere. His arm is all bandaged up now on account of he burned off his Castor tattoo in the bathroom with a blowtorch the other night, you’ll remember. Gracie’s not in the room when he wakes up, so he grabs his gun and assumes he’s going to have to start murdering, but she was just downstairs getting some donuts.

She offers him some pastries and some coffee and also some sex, but he demurs on the last thing. Gracie’s not having that, though. She did not leave the cult compound of her youth — where her father artificially inseminated her with his and Helena’s babies after sewing her mouth shut and making her sleep alone in a horse stall — to hang out in a shady motel watching Judge Judy reruns and not fucking, okay? That is not what Gracie signed up for. So. She and Mark have sex and the whole time he’s like, “Sorry I’m not as good at this as my brothers! I always had to do spy things while they did screwing!” Because Gracie has never had sex or a subscription to HBO, she thinks this is totally normal Doin’ It talk.

Post-coital cuddles:

Gracie: This town we’re in, one of Daddy’s old hick friends lives here, right?
Mark: Yeah. And I’m pretty sure your dad gave him some top secret science information that I need to recover and return to Mother.
Gracie: Is Mother the army? I thought you were AWOL?
Mark: Mother is more like if the Eye of Sauron breast fed the Orcs, which answers both of your questions.
Gracie: There’s not enough therapy in the world to even make a dent in our collective shit, huh?
Mark: Nope. Wanna learn how to do blow jobs?

Meanwhile, out in the ‘burbs, Alison and Donnie are rolling out their new business, and it is everything I dreamed and more. They’re not selling pills out of the trunk of an SUV. No, they’re pushing a trolley of artisanal body care products down the sidewalk like an ice cream truck and greeting all the Aynsleys with a smile. And inside the trolley are these Etsy-looking packages with like little kaolin clay lavender soaps and Dead Sea mud masks and magnesium bath flakes and also Vicodin. This one Aynsley is like, “I will never buy your soaps and never vote for you for the school board, due to your alcoholism!” But Alison hands her one of the packages and offers her a peek of the pills, and that Aynsley hands over her cash and her vote, and then two other Aynsleys here the news and come running up.

Sarah and Art track down one of the Prolethean ladies who is working as a cook at a diner now that the compound has burned to the ground. (I think the girl who plays this Prolethean is Tatiana’s stunt double.) The Prolethean’s name is Alexis. In one breath, she’s talking about how it’s a miracle of the Lord that Gracie’s dad was able to harvest Helena’s eggs, fertilize them with his own sperm, and then implant them into the uteruses of Gracie and Helena. And in the next breath, she’s calling Helena an abomination. Sarah says, “If Helena is an abomination, I’m worse!” Which I think is supposed to be a threat or an insult to Alexis, but is so weak it’s embarrassing and not at all up to the standard of burns Helena has conditioned us to believe in. Maybe Sarah can coach Helena on how forks work and Helena can coach Sarah on zingers.

After a promise from Mark that he’s going to love her and her babies no matter what, Gracie heads on out to see that farmer friend of her dad’s, and he’s as gross as you know he’s going to be. Perving on her. Confederate flag in the window. And then when he finally admits he’s holding onto some stuff for her dead dad, he also tries to extort money from her to hand it over. She tells him to keep on threatening her and see if she doesn’t call on the Lord to smite him with a fire tornado, and so he relents and hands over the box her dad left. She curtseys and bounces. When she gets back to the motel, Mark is frustrated because the only thing in the box is diagrams and notes about medical research, and he was so sure there was going to be a tupperware container of DNA in there. He gives Gracie five dollars to go buy an ice cream, and goes back to the farm to find the sack of DNA himself.

I can’t figure out how Art and Sarah know where they’re going. It seems like they’re driving around the entirety of Canada, willy-nilly, hoping they’ll find Mark and Gracie trying to hitchhike or something. But road trips are always good for bonding. Sarah figures out that the reason Art can’t stop getting himself tangled up in their clone dangers is because he feels responsible for Beth killing herself. She called him the night she jumped in front of that train and he thought she was just tripping balls, so he blew her off. Oh, and also he was in love with her. So that’s also why he can’t let go of all the faces that look like her face. Isn’t it bananas that these women have men lining up around the planet to be with them and three of them have fallen for Paul? PAUL. Like, do you want some ice cream crunch birthday cake? Nah, I think I’ll just eat a piece of bread.

Speaking of which, Paul shows up at Castor HQ with Rudy in tow, and Mother walks right on up and wallops Rudy right in his face. He says he had to kill Seth because he was glitching so bad it’s like his brain was fireworks inside his skull, and it was the nicest way he could think to handle it.

Paul: I brought you some cigarettes to calm you down.
Mother: I’ll smoke them and maybe burn some of my sons with them. Thank you.
Paul: Rudy was telling you the truth about Seth. He couldn’t even solve a simple logic puzzle about who to rape.
Mother: Bah. Well, Helena’s fine. Her brain isn’t glitching even a little bit, so I guess what I need is for you to buy me some more time so Topside doesn’t shut us down, and Helena will grow her babies, and I’ll harvest their unicorn blood, and then I’ll cure these boys and we’ll have our army working again.
Paul: Cool.
Mother: Why do you look smug and angry, though?
Paul: This is just my face.

Cosima and Scott and Felix extract Rudy’s brain. That’s all I can tell you about it because I got so grossed out I had to close my eyes and cover my ears, but I kept being like, “WHAT ARE THEY DOING? WHAT ARE THEY DOING?” to my girlfriend and she was like, “Talking about the philosophy of what makes a life and sawing open Seth’s head! Don’t look! DON’T LOOK.”

Orphan Black Episode 302 Recap: Mangoes Are Not the Only Fruit

Previously on Orphan Black, Helena’s imaginary friend, Pupok the Giant Bleeping Scorpion, soothed her nerves and her heart as she was trapped at Castor HQ inside a tiny wooden shoebox. Cosima came back to life only to have her heart ripped from her chest and stomped on by Delphine, who ripped out her own personal heart and stomped on it too, in the process of dumping Cosima, but For the Greater Good. After deciding to nominate herself for president of the school board, Alison pretended to be Sarah at Dyad so that Sarah could pretend to be Rachel at Dyad so they could thwart the most recent shady organization threatening to wipe the Toronto sestras from the face of the earth. And Castor Seth broke Castor Rudy out of Dyad jail.

Right, so. Rudy gets a woman super drunk and brings her back to his place to rape her with the help of Seth. It’s gross and it’s terrifying, like some kind of sick bait-and-switch cat-and-mouse thing, and the woman is rightfully freaked out when Seth appears out of nowhere while she’s in the middle of having sex with Rudy. Seth says they were taught to share when they were growing up, so what’s her problem?

The next morning, Paul shows up to do his standard glaring and talk-growling like he’s a Chris Nolan Batman. He takes turns hooking Seth and Rudy up to a mind-reading machine and asks them brain teasers while some SoulVision goggles look inside their brains to see if there’s anything weird going on in there. Rudy is bored and over it during Paul’s exam, but Seth starts hardcore glitching in the middle of it.

Rudy freaks out when Seth goes quiet because he knows it means his brother’s brain is cracked. Rudy tries to tell Paul they were out late drinking and and sexually assaulting and that’s how come Seth is having trouble concentrating this morning. Paul doesn’t give a shit. He slaps a couple of envelopes on the table and says they’re from Mother and it’s time for these Castors to go back home.

Sarah is taking a moment out of her quest to find Helena to hang out with Cal and Kira. Cal has purchased an apartment for the three of them, complete with an art studio for Kira and an indoor hockey rink.

Sarah: I think you understand the fullness of what I mean when I say the only thing I like less than surprises is a promise from a straight man.
Cal: Okay, but like, I came all the way from the Dothraki Sea, where I was hanging out with the Khaleesi to make a home with you and Kira. A burned up baby had just fallen from the sky. The fighting pits were reopening.
Sarah: That’s the only place I’ve ever heard of that sounds less safe for Kira than Toronto. I’ll keep it in mind.

The three of them play hockey in their socks in the sunlight and laugh and smile, like a gaggle of goons who aren’t constantly being murdered by cult members and literal mad scientists. Then, of course, Sarah’s phone rings and it’s Art. He just wants her to know that a woman came into the station this morning to report being raped, and the guys who did it were twins who look just like Mark the Prolethean. (Remember when Art stood in that wheat field outside of the Prolethean compound last year for like two weeks, just staring at them with some binoculars, and then one day, Helena ran on by him on her way out of dodge? Remember when she ate all his snacks?)

Well, and that is Sarah’s fun coming to an end for the day/her life. She leaves Kira with Cal and zooms down to the precinct to talk to Art in person. These Castor shitbirds could be the bridge to Helena.

Felix’s Loft of Homoerotic Shenanigans and Bare Butts. Scott arrives to give Cosima a check-up and is pleased to report that she’s getting less and less dead by the day. Pleased but stumped. The science doesn’t add up! Cosima isn’t interested in “science” so much as she’s interested in “being alive,” so she’s not worried about the logic for a minute. Felix can’t believe his ears. He’s halfway to signing her up for one of those witch classes where you do potions and talk to your ancestors when she tells him to slow his roll; she still wants to use her genius science brain to solve the mystery of Kira’s magical stem cells, and she wants to meet with Dr. Nealon over at Dyad to see what he knows about Duncan’s research. Before she and Scott head out, Felix gives her a new ClonePhone. Blue ones this season, and iPhones too.

Soccer in the ‘Burbs.

Donnie: Since I still haven’t found a job and you refuse to go back to work with your mother at whatever amazing place Bubbles is, I think we should sell our house.
Alison: Good idea, Donnie. When we list it, should we mention that it is strewn with corpses?
Donnie: Oh. Oh, right.
Alison: How about you act like a team player for once in your life.
Donnie: I am a team player! Team Hendrix! I am so Team Hendrix! Fist me!
Alison: I’m sorry, what did you just say?
Donnie: Fist me! It’s what people say when they knock their fists together to show solidarity, like how President Obama does.

As Alison is waving like Regina George across the field at Marcie, Ramon toddles up to congratulate Alison on being clean for so long. She hasn’t called and asked him for any pills since she got out of rehab, so she must be standing strong, but just in case she’d like to know, he’s having a going out of business sale because he’s heading off to college soon and everything must go. He figured he’d hit her up first because he likes her best out of all the pill-popping moms at this soccer field, the grand total of which is: all these moms at this soccer field.

Alison’s face lights up like a fireworks finale.

Orphan Black Episode 301 Recap: Clear Eyes, Straight Hair, Don’t Care

Welcome back to Orphan Black! Previously, four sestras joined forces to wage war against a faceless shadow determined to rip away their autonomy/destroy their lives, which looked like: Sarah Manning tracking down the Big Bad behind their cloning, beheading it, and watching helplessly as three other Big Bad heads grew back in its place; Alison conquering her booze-fueled bender habits and teaming up with her husband/former monitor to murder anyone who got in their way and bury their corpses under the garage; Helena eating a lot of candy and falling in love and trying not to get kidnapped and getting kidnapped and having her eggs harvested against her will and getting kidnapped again and also eating more candy; and Cosima researching a cure for her Leda Lung Syndrome while hovering near the edge of death while making out with her wicked smart and supernaturally beautiful girlfriend. Also, some boy clones came into play.

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It’s a bright sunshiney day in Toronto, and Helena’s sisters are throwing her a baby shower. That is a lie. Helena is trapped in a crate, but she is dreaming of this baby shower and it is the sweetest and silliest and saddest thing you have ever seen in your entire life.

It’s Helena’s heightened, perfect reality and so all of her sisters (and brother-sestra) are outlines of who they really are, with Helena’s imagination coloring in the rest. Except for Sarah. Sarah is spot-on because Helena knows Sarah better than she knows herself. So Sarah needles Helena about being a meathead, and Alison has crafted literally every baby thing off of Pinterest (baby clothes and toys and cupcakes), and Kira is a fairy and very excited about the new monkey Helena is growing in her belly, and Felix is dressed like if Mad Men were a gay Disney movie and he was the Don Draper. While he grills marinated ox liver and babka, Cosima shows up dressed like a Ukrainian festival holding a basket of Ukrainian delicacies and talking about, “I’m way better thanks to science!”

Well, but like I said, Helena is actually stuffed in a wooden box, sitting in a warehouse. She wakes up and freaks out, and then, of course, a giant scorpion crawls out of her dress and starts chatting her up. The scorpion sounds like Marcel the Shell, but guess what? It’s played by Tatiana Maslany too. (The voice, I mean. That’s not Tatiana Maslany in a scorpion costume.) (Or maybe it is. Wonders never cease on this show.) The scorpion tells Helena she’s being tested again, and for some reason, this calms her right down. Also, he has a name and it is Pupok.

If someone doesn’t take Helena out for ice cream and also to fucking Build-a-Bear by the end of this season, I am going to have a fit.

Down by the river where Felix once hosted a fake funeral for Sarah, the two of them and Kira hang out and drink beers.

Felix: Kira, you don’t keep getting kidnapped by a many-tentacled leviathan that wants to disassemble your entire body. Why don’t you run off into the tall grass and play by yourself.
Sarah: It feels good to sit here and drink these liquors and not have anything to worry about.
Felix: I mean. Everyone you love keeps getting stalked and murdered by a seemingly infinite number of interchangeable straight white men with unknowable allegiances, but okay.
Sarah: Dude, I told you. Marion, that lady with the boy clones locked up in her basement and the tiny me-clone who lives in the cupboard under the stairs, she’s going to take care of us. She controls Topside and Topside controls DYAD and DYAD controls the people who keep killing us.
Felix: Sure thing. Hey, who’s that dark angel in the luxury sedan? Ah. Right. Delphine.

Delphine’s hair is straight now, but her swagger is not. She summons Sarah to DYAD to talk about the new ways she and her sisters are going to get killed to death this year. For one thing, Rachel — who is at this facility having surgery to remove that pen that was jabbed in her eye — is going to come after Sarah like a perfectly manicured wildcat, okay? And now Project Castor is in the mix. It turns out the boy clones are kidnapping the girl clones, as evidenced by a hotel surveillance video of a new Leda clone named Krystal making out with and then getting snatched by a Castor clone. Delphine wants Sarah to talk to Rudy, the Castor clone in captivity, and game him into spilling some secrets. Sarah wants Delphine to talk to her girlfriend.

Sarah: Hello, I am here to discover your secrets.
Rudy: I am here to leer at you and speak in riddles like a perverse Willy Wonka.
Sarah: I kicked one of your brothers in the face with my industrial punk boots, is a thing you should know before we get started here.
Rudy: That’s just one of the reasons you’re our favorite. The other, of course, is your functional uterus. If you’ll lean close enough for me to strangle you with these handcuffs, I’ll whisper some secrets to you.
Sarah: You can suck a camel nut. I only trust my sisters.
Rudy: Oh? You don’t trust DYAD, whom you’re now working for? DELPHINE, DON’T PRETEND YOU DON’T SEE ME, GIRL! I KNOW YOU SAW ME!

Orphan Black Episode 210 Recap : “By Means Which Have Never Yet Been Tried”

Hey Sestras! Welcome to the recap of the season finale of Orphan Black, the show that just succeeded in mashing my mind grapes into brain wine.

We open with scenes of Sarah being stripped down and examined in a dark room. She is barraged with personal questions, from when she started menstruating to when she lost her virginity.

While she is being poked and prodded, we flash back to Mrs. S’s house in the aftermath of Kira’s abduction. Mrs. S tells Sarah to stay strong, but Sarah leaves to give herself up to Dyad. Back in the black room, we see Sarah surrendering unconditionally to Dyad.

Sarah sits in a Dyad interrogation room, where she meets Dr. Nealon. He gives her a contract to sign, although considering she’s handcuffed to a chair, none of this seems entirely consensual. Sarah says she’ll cooperate with whatever they want, she just wants to see Kira.

Over in Kira’s pastel bedroom of nightmares, a nurse is trying to get a cheek swab. Kira gives her the sample, but steals the nurse’s cell phone. Cheeky monkey.

Back in the lab, Scotty and Cosima are pissed because a bunch of Dyad suits are jacking their research and Kira’s bone marrow. They tell Cosima that Delphine is no longer her doctor, and that Dr. Nealon will be taking over. This is all on Rachel’s orders, apparently.

Speaking of Rachel, she fires a distraught Delphine from the clone project and gives her a one-way ticket to Frankfurt. Delphine is upset because Rachel used her, and just to be a total bitch about it, Rachel forbids her from saying goodbye to Cosima.

Rachel tells her that Sarah’s procedure is imminent (oh shit) and that none of this is personal, it’s just business. Note: “it’s not personal, it’s business” is the douchebag catchphrase to end all catchphrases.

In the lab, Scotty is furious that they’ve taken Delphine away, as she’s the expert on all things Cosima. Cosima then gets an email from Delphine telling her that it’s all up to her now (also, Delphine’s email is Eskimo Pie? That is so fucking cute).

Cosima tells them that she is ready and willing to collaborate with all things Dyad, but she wants to know if she can see Kira. Once the Dyad guys leave, Cosima shows Scotty the email, which contains Rachel’s schedule. They see that Sarah is getting surgery and they need to stop it.

Dr. Nealon, still with Sarah, tells her that they want to harvest her eggs. If she signs the contract, she’ll get to see Kira. With no alternate choice in sight, Sarah signs off on the procedure.

Kira is having a tea party with her toy octopus while Sarah watches her through a window. She then watches as Rachel enters the room and talks to Kira. Rachel tells Kira that her mother wasn’t very nice and laid hands on her.

She also tells Kira that Sarah ran away, just like she ran away from Kira all those years ago. Rachel stares right at Sarah in the mirror and says that even mothers have to do what they’re told. Guys, Rachel is so creepy in this episode I can’t even.

Back at Mrs. S’s house, Mrs. S is on the phone demanding car bombs and action. There’s a knock on the door and it’s Cal and his beard. Cal tells her that he’s Kira’s father and he’s here to help.

Mrs. S is pissed that Felix didn’t tell her about Cal, but he’s like, “biiiiitch, glass houses.” Through the power of the internet and Kira’s crayon drawings, Cal has figured out the whole clone conspiracy.

Before they can dig into it, Felix gets a call from Art. Helena showed up on his doorstep and is now eating his cereal with her bare hands. Helena also says “hi sestra brother” into the phone and it’s pretty adorable. Felix rushes over to babysit Helena, and to maybe get a handful of those Golden Grahams.

Sarah is led through the Dyad corridors, where she encounters Duncan, who is also rocking prisoner scrubs. He tells Sarah not to despair, but it kind of seems like despairing is in order here.

Felix gets to Art’s place, where Helena regales him with the story of Jesse the truck driver and their bar fight of love. Art asks Helena if she knows anything about the ranch, and Felix asks her if she burned it down.

Helena smiles and says no, which is her way of saying “obviously I did it, and I’d do it again.” Helena also tells them that after her heartbreak, she became roommates with a very good girl who had a crisis of faith.

We then cut to Gracie and Belt Buckle on the lam, where he assures her they can start fresh. Gracie wonders if she is sinner because she hopes her dad is dead, but he tells her he had it coming. She says that God will have to deal with both of them and the baby.

Back at Mrs. S’s house, Cal has drawn out a massive diagram of Dyad and all its ancillary shell corporations. Apparently they have dozens of SuperPACS and research groups all working on securing genetic patents. Mrs. S is like, “duh, I know” but Cal mansplains that she can’t internet like he can. You better check yourself Cal; Mrs. S has car bombs on speed dial.

Basically, Cal is communicating with the person that tried to hack him. They open a chat window, where Cal asks for Mystery Person’s help. MP tells him to ask Siobhan about Castor, and Siobhan tells him that she has people on the inside too.

Cut to Mrs. S in an abandoned building, where she is met by Paul and a hummer full of military men. She asks is Paul is still ready to be a double agent and offers him a cup of tea.

Duncan watches Rachel’s childhood videos in the screening room while Rachel brings him tea. She wants to know why her father isn’t decoding all the data for Dyad, and he tells her that he’ll unlock it when they cure Cosima.

She demands the cipher key, but he refuses to give it to her. He asks if she remembers how much he loved her, and she tells him that she doesn’t: that’s why she keeps watching the tapes. Duncan starts choking and dying, having poisoned himself with his own tea bag.

Rachel cries and demands that he doesn’t leave her again, and he tells her that she doesn’t deserve him anymore. Despite Rachel being such an unsympathetic character, it is still a heartbreaking scene. All the acting awards for Tatiana Maslany, please.

Back in the abandoned building, Paul and Cal meet. Mrs. S is like, “I don’t know how Sarah does it” which is pretty funny considering she banged a guy in a public restroom just a few episodes ago. Game runs in the family. With Cal is Marion Bowles, Rachel’s boss. Mrs. S gives Marion information on Castor in exchange for her help in rescuing Sarah and Kira.

Back at Dyad, Cosima visits with Kira. Cosima suggests they do a science experiment together, and Kira is all over it, as she is a genius baby. Cosima has Kira try to punch a hole in some paper with a pencil, and talks to her about force, acceleration, etc.

While she does this, we cut back to the lab, where Cosima and Scotty are rigging some sort of contraption based on the science she is teaching Kira. If physics were this exciting in high school, maybe I would have paid more attention.

Cosima is getting sicker and sicker, and makes Scotty promise he’ll help Sarah. Scotty has swiped a Dyad passkey and assures Cosima he’ll get the device to her. Cosima has Kira draw a picture of what she learned, and they hug and are really sweet together.

Sarah gets strapped to a gurney and is taken into an OR. Dr. Nealon walks in and tells Sarah that instead of harvesting her eggs, he’ll be taking one of her ovaries out for research. He assures her she’ll still be able to have babies; in fact, he’s counting on it. Scotty, disguised as one of the nurses, sneaks in and tells Sarah he’ll get her out.

Rachel walks in and asks for a moment alone with her sister. She shows her the drawing that Kira made, which has a fire extinguisher on it. Sarah calls Rachel a psycho, and Rachel demands that Sarah give her the cipher key.

Sarah has no idea where the cipher key is, but Rachel refuses to accept that. She takes the vials of Kira’s bone marrow and smashes them on the ground. What a dick move.

Rachel goes to leave, just as Sarah eyes a note on the extinguisher that says “squeeze.” Sarah squeezes the handle and shoots a pencil right into Rachel’s eye! YOU GUYS, SHE BLINDED HER WITH SCIENCE!

Orphan Black Episode 209 Recap: “Things Which Have Never Yet Been Don”

Hey Clone Stars! Welcome to the recap of the ninth episode of the second season of Orphan Black, the show where dead body disposal is the ultimate aphrodisiac for suburban parents!

This is the penultimate episode of the season, and boy is this show firing on all fucking cylinders.

We open with Alison and Donnie in their garage, wearing matching rubber gloves. Alison has cleaned Leekie’s brains out of the trunk, but there’s still the matter of what to do with the body. Donnie is grossed out and ready to puke, while Alison attacks the problem like an arts and crafts project clean up. They wrap up the body in plastic and toss it in their giant garage freezer.

Over at the Prolethian Farm, Helena is being artificially inseminated by Hank. It is gross and terrible.

Meanwhile, at Dyad, Delphine and Rachel discuss Cosima’s health. Apparently, the growths have spread everywhere, and Cosima is most def gonna die without treatment. That ear-piercing wail you hear is the primal scream of a sea of nerdy lesbians in distress.

Rachel says that they need to get Kira’s bone marrow, and that Delphine has to convince Sarah to let them. This is a pretty good plan, because who is gonna say no to an adorable French girl? No one.

Delphine says that the clones will never trust Rachel, but Rachel tells her that she’s been lied to as well and offers Delphine the opportunity to take over as the director of the program, aka be the new Leekie. Delphine goes to Mrs. S’s house to plead for Kira’s bone marrow, but Sarah isn’t having it.

Delphine tells her that Duncan is months away from a cure and Cosima is about to expire like supermarket sushi. Delphine says that Kira’s bone marrow will reboot Cosima’s immune system, and without it she’ll die.

Cosima, Alison, and Sarah have a group Skype chat. Cosima is all hooked up to nose tubes and Sarah says that she wants to help her but can’t turn Kira over to Dyad. Donnie watches the call from the other side of the laptop, and gestures to Alison to get more Leekie info.

Cosima tells them about the cover up, and that Dyad will keep the whole thing under wraps. Luckily for Donnie, it looks like no one will be looking for Leekie. Now they just have to get rid of the body.

Donnie wants to dump Leekie in the lake, but Alison thinks it’s way too cliché. Besides, she’s seen Dexter: they’d need a boat, a ribbed Henley, and the worst police department in Miami. Alison says it’s too risky to move the body, so they decide to bury it in the garage.

Cut to Donnie drilling into the garage floor with a jackhammer. Being that he’s Donnie and all, he’s doing a crappy job. Alison takes over and immediately does the job better, because she is better at all the things.

Back at the Prolethian farm, Helena rests in bed while a midwife attends to her. The midwife then takes Helena to the farm nursery, which is swarming with children. Apparently none of the Prolethians are worried about leaving a crazed assassin with their babies. Helena makes friends with an adorable little girl, while Gracie watches and wonders what the fuck is going on.

Back in the farmhouse, Belt Buckle and Hank are sharing a drink. We find out that Belt Buckle is a soldier with PTSD who went AWOL from the army before joining the Prolethians. Hank gives his blessing for Gracie and Belt Buckle’s marriage, and then says that it’s time for Gracie to bear fruit. Nobody bothers to ask Gracie’s opinion on anything, because they are the worst.

Back at Mrs. S’s house, Sarah and Mrs. S discuss what to do about Kira. They think that with their own doctor and plenty of security, they could make it happen. Felix gets in on the conversation too, and they all agree that the decision rests with one person: Kira.

Sarah goes to talk to Kira, and explains to her what a bone marrow transplant entails. Kira asks if Cosima will die without it, and Sarah tells her the truth. Kira agrees to donate the marrow and Sarah hugs her and calls her the bravest. It’s all kinds of heartwarming.

Delphine arrives at the doctor’s office and is patted down by Mrs. S’s team of watchers. She waits in the hallway while Kira is prepped for the transplant.

Back at Dyad, Scotty and Duncan are trying to upload Duncan’s floppy disks. Cosima is also there, making fun of their nerdery. Duncan tells them that all his research is encoded, and they’ll need a cipher to read it.

Back at the House of Cement and Murder, Donnie and Alison are digging a giant hole in their garage. Alison is annoyed that Donnie is tossing dirt everywhere, and says the phrase “Lard and butter, Donnie!” which is the most absurd thing I’ve ever heard. Donnie tells her that he isn’t as comfortable with murder as she is, and just then, the kids come running in to tell them there’s a man at the door.

It’s Vic, who has finally awoken from his glittery drugged slumber. Vic wants to talk, but Donnie and Alison tell him to GTFO. Vic walks back to a large unmarked van, where Officer Ange is waiting for him.

Back at the Prolethian Baby Stable, Hank is telling the story of Frankenstein to the children, which is A) incorrect and B) not appropriate for that age range. He also tells Helena that one day, the nursery will be full of her children. That nursery is huge, and she has a vagina, not a clown car between her legs.

Helena sees the midwife slap the adorable girl and grabs her by the neck. Helena tells her that there was a nun in the convent like her, and if she ever hurts the girl again she’ll gut her like a fish. Gracie watches Helena with something approaching admiration.

At the doctor’s office, they’re sedating Kira for the surgery. Sarah and Felix stand by her and hold her hand, and Delphine watches as they drill into Kira’s hip. Sarah feels tremendously guilty, while Felix assures her she’s a great mother and a great sister. Sarah cries and apologizes to Kira.

The doctor continues with the bone marrow extraction, and it’s a success. I’m surprised because I was pretty sure Kira’s bones were filled with phoenix feathers or unicorn hairs.

Vic continues to spy on Alison from outside the garage. Alison measures the hole and measure the body, because everyone knows you measure twice and cut once. Donnie sneaks up on Vic and pulls a gun on him. He drags him inside and holds Vic over the hole, threatening to shoot and bury him.

Vic confesses that there is a cop outside, but Donnie was bluffing the whole time! Alison is impressed that Donnie doesn’t accidentally shoot Vic in the head, and Donnie assures her that he never makes the same mistake twice.

Then this show throws out the most shocking twist of all: Donnie is actually a competent human being! He storms into the cop van and yells at Ange to leave them alone. He also tells her he’ll have her suspended if she keeps sniffing around, and takes a phone pic of her for evidence.

He also tells her to have a shitty day, which is delightful. Oh no you guys… do I actually like Donnie now? Is this real life?

Meanwhile, at the kingdom of Prolethia, Hank is inseminating Gracie! What the fuck dude, how many babies do you need? This is the worst thing ever.

Gracie is taken back to the pregnant woman holding cell, where Helena is eating and making oinking noises, like you do. Helena doesn’t understand why Gracie is so sad to be pregnant, until Gracie tells her that she is carrying Helena’s eggs mixed with her father’s sperm. EWW!

Helena seems shocked, and Gracie calls her out for not paying attention to what the fuck is going on. Everything about this is horrifying and everything hurts.

Back at Dyad, Duncan mansplains to Cosima that it was his wife’s idea to make all the clones sterile. They engineered the sterility as an autoimmune disease, which is currently wreaking havoc on Cosima’s body. Duncan assures her he will fix his mistakes, and Scotty breaks the code on his research.

Duncan tells them that each gene sequence has its own secret password, and he won’t share them with Dyad. He also assures Cosima that he is looking out for her, but I’m dubious.

Orphan Black Episode 208 Recap: “Variable and Full of Perturbation”

Hey Clone Rangers! Welcome to the recap of the eighth episode of season two of Orphan Black, the only show that rivals RuPaul’s Drag Race in terms of wig budget.

We open with a white van speeding through the streets before it pulls into a garage. A bald guy named Sammy is helped out of the car by a bearded bandit named Tony. Sammy’s been shot, and his dying words to Tony are that he needs to find Beth Childs.

The camera then zooms in on Tony, and we see Tatiana Maslany in a mullet wig and a goatee. We have a brand new clone and he’s a trans man!

Back at Mrs. S’s house, Mrs. S is trying to convince Sarah that they hold all the cards regarding Dyad and Duncan. Felix and Kira arrive and Kira is reunited with Mrs. S. It’s a family reunion!

Over at Dyad, Delphine tries to get into the lab but her key card has been de-authorized. Cosima opens the door and accepts a package from Delphine, but then kicks her out of the lab.

Classic lesbian drama, except most break-ups don’t involve baby teeth. Scotty and Cosima drill into Kira’s tooth and harvest the cells. He says that the easier solution would be to get bone marrow from the child, but Cosima refuses to put Kira through that.

Alison has been released from rehab, and is annoyed that Donnie didn’t pick her up.

She barges into her bedroom to discover that Donnie is drunk and in bed, still recovering from his accidental murder of Dr. Leekie. Alison is pissed because Donnie is already fucking with her recovery, so she spills some perfectly good booze all over his head. Their kids walk into the room looking confused. Guys, Alison’s kids are gonna need so much therapy.

Art meets up with Tony, and is shocked to see yet another clone enter the picture. Tony snarkily tells him he isn’t Harry Potter, which immediately dashes all my dreams of magical clones casting spells on the Prolethians. Oh well.

Felix leaves to help Art with Tony, while Duncan questions Sarah about Kira. Duncan seems a little too interested in Kira, but Mrs. S is more concerned with ending the Dyad drama once and for all.

Back at Dyad, Rachel has taken over Dr. Leekie’s office and is leaving a voicemail for Paul, who has disappeared. Delphine walks in and Rachel tells her that Leekie had a heart attack on the private jet.

Delphine is shocked, but Rachel tells her that Leekie buried important information and they may be on the verge of a scientific breakthrough.

Felix arrives home to find that Art has broken into his place and brought Tony. Tony is acting shifty and demanding to see Beth, but Felix convinces him that he’s safe. Felix and Art want to know what message Tony is bringing, and Tony wants to know what the fuck is going on.

I want to know why they couldn’t get better facial hair for Tony, but maybe that’s just me. Felix and Art duck into the hall and Felix sums up the situation by saying “Holy Tilda Swinton!” Felix then corrects Art on his pronoun usage, which is a pretty awesome thing to see on television.

Art and Felix discuss how to clue Tony into the whole situation while Tony rifles through Felix’s belongings. They try to get more information out of Tony, who says that he knows he and Beth are related. Art leaves to do a background check on Tony while Felix babysits him.

Sarah and Kira are enjoying some crafting together as they make a mobile of angels. Kira wants to know what happened to Helena, which is a good fucking question because Sarah apparently gives no fucks about her twin.

They hear some noises and Kira’s first instinct is to hide. Someone set up a therapy fund for all the clone kids, stat!

But it’s only Delphine, who has come with a request from Rachel. She tells Sarah that Leekie is dead and that she thought he was the lesser of two evils. Dyad needs Duncan because he could have the key to a gene therapy cure which doesn’t require Kira’s stem cells. They want Duncan to come in to Dyad and Mrs. S says they’ll think about it.

Back at the lab, Cosima is coughing up blood into a hankie but is quickly distracted by Scottie and some lab geeks playing Runewars, which appears to be like Settlers of Catan or Cones of Dunshire. Cosima joins in on the nerdy fun and proceeds to school these poindexters at their own game.

It’s all fun and games until Cosima starts coughing again and Delphine walks in. Cosima tells the battle bitches to beat it and she and Delphine talk. Delphine tells Cosima that she thinks Rachel killed Leekie. She also tells her that Kira’s stem cells are just a band-aid to a larger problem, but Duncan may have the real cure.

Also, she doesn’t want Cosima to die and she’s sorry for betraying her like a million times. Cosima says she is going to keep the promise she made when they first met: fisting. JK, they are gonna get high. I’m all for stoned lesbian shenanigans, but maybe Cosima shouldn’t be distressing her lungs anymore, am I right?

Felix and Tony are hanging out and we find out that Tony’s parents were assholes. Tony wants to take a bath and borrow some of Felix’s clothes, but Felix isn’t having any of it. He wants to know how Tony survived on street as a trans bandit (great band name) and Tony says it’s more complicated than sex or gender.

Oh honey, it always is. Tony then tells Felix to shut up and run him a bath, and Felix is like, run it yourself bitch! These two kids are getting along great.

Alison goes into her den and sees Donnie shuffling around looking sketchy. Donnie says he’s leaving, but Alison responds that they aren’t there yet.

I think they’ve gone way past “there,” but Donnie says she’s better off without him. Alison asks if he still loves her anymore, or if he ever did. Donnie dives into her lap crying and apologizing for lying/porn/rehab/hating her mother. It’s a long list. Alison says that everyone hates her mother and they’ve both made mistakes with porn and hot glue guns. But Donnie assures her his is worse.

When Sarah finds out that Duncan can cure Cosima, she immediately decides to turn him over to Dyad. Sarah continues to show no concern that her twin sister/assassin is currently nowhere to be found. Am I the only person with buckets of sympathy for Helena?

Art comes back with beer and some information. Turns out Tony was formerly Antoinette Selwicky, a convicted thief. Art thinks that Sammy was Tony’s monitor, and they think that whoever killed him will still be after Tony. Felix wants to hold off on bringing in Sarah until they can get more out of Tony.

They find Tony in the apartment going through Felix’s paintings and shooting up some testosterone. He offers some to Felix, who declines. Also, there’s a flirt vibe going on between Felix and Tony that is mildly upsetting because he looks just like Felix’s foster sister. It’s an incest-adjacent situation at least.

Back at Mrs. S’s house, Duncan is reading The Island of Dr. Moreau to Kira. Sarah rightly finds it inappropriate, but it’s time to bring Duncan to Dyad. Duncan gives the book to Kira and tells her not to worry, as he’s nobody’s pawn.

Orphan Black 206 and 207 MegaRecap! Road Trip to Family Day and Beyond

Hey Sestras!

Welcome to a deluxe two-in-one review of the sixth and seventh episodes of season two of Orphan Black! These would have been up sooner, but things like A-Camp, A-Plague, and A-Pain of Returning to the Hetero World have sidelined me. So what did I miss? ALL THE THINGS, apparently.

We open with Sarah and Helena camping out in a tent, on their way to find the Swan Man. Helena won’t disclose the location of Cold River, as she fears Sarah will ditch her crazy ass once she gets what she needs. Helena wants to know if she can bear children, as she is good with kids (DEBATABLE) and she’s pretty sure the Prolethians weren’t fishing around in her womb for spare change.

Helena tells Sarah she is a good mother, but Sarah is uncertain, what with the constant danger and all. Then Helena charms Sarah with some shadow puppetry and they laugh and bond together. Throw in a neverending game of UNO and it’s basically every family vacation I ever took.

You guys, I’m loving sweet, silly Helena. I mean, we all know she’s a cold hearted assassin, but she just wants love. Despite hunting them down, she just wants to be a part of the clone club. Helena and Sarah go to sleep, head to foot like a human yin yang. And then Helena cracks a massive fart. Classy move, Helena.

In the mean time, while they’re dutch ovening the tent, Paul breaks into their car and goes through the glove box. He finds the Swan Man picture, and looks… well, I can never tell what emotion Paul is trying to convey. But he looks at it. Real hard.

The next morning, Helena and Sarah are back on the road. Helena is fiddling with everything: the mirror, the radio, Sarah’s nerves. She turns on “Sugar, Sugar” and starts singing along at the top of her lungs.

Sarah is annoyed, but quickly laughs in spite of herself. It’s basically just like the movie Crossroads with Britney Spears only not at all.

Over at Dyad, Delphine is examining Cosima for any reaction to the therapy. There’s no sign of reaction, so they are safe to proceed with treatment. Cosima is worried that Sarah and Kira will get sick, and she’s upset that she’s scared them by revealing her illness.

Delphine promises her that everything will be fine once they implant the stem cells into her uterus. Cosima is unsure, as the only thing she wanted implanted in her uterus was Delphine’s finger babies.

Lab geek Scott shows up to help with all the science. Delphine wants him there because he’s the best sequencing tech around, but Cosima doesn’t want to get anyone else involved in clone club. She tries to send him away, but Scott assures her that he already knows about the clones, and is ready to get his science on.

Meanwhile at rehab, we drop in on group therapy with Alison. Alison is hesitant to share with the group, but her counselor tells her that she needs to take responsibility.

Before she can dodge any more therapy, Alison is shocked to see Vic walk into the room. Vic the Dick is back!

Across town, Felix is in the midst of an artistic vodka-fueled bender. Art walks in and Felix almost attacks him, but then settles for grabbing his ass.

Ugh, I would love it so hard if these two became a couple. Alas, Art is just there to check up on Felix.

Back at rehab, Vic confronts Alison for that time that she maced him. Alison is like, “Dude I go through a can of mace every week, you’ll have to be more specific.”

She tells Vic that she and Sarah are clones, but he doesn’t believe her. He also says that the Godhead has put her there to test him. What the fuck is a Godhead? I’m confused.

Back on the greatest road trip ever, Sarah and Helena stop in front of the church where Swan Man was last seen. Sarah goes into the church and tells Helena to wait in the car. I hope she cracked a window.

Inside the church, Sarah sees photos on the wall and meets a Creepy Church Woman. CCW tells Sarah that the photos show the Cold River Institute. Turns out the church has saved all of Cold River’s archives and is keeping them in a scary church basement.

CCW tells Sarah that a Mr. Peckham has visited the archives several times, and Sarah tells her that she’s his student and needs to examine the files as well.

Meanwhile, Helena gets out of the car and heads to a bar across the street. Dammit Sarah, that’s what child locks are for!

Back at Dyad, Scott explains that he figured out the clone secret using a lot of sciency terms that I don’t understand. Also, he wants to see a clone. Cosima tells him one step at a time.

Helena has ordered one of everything and is working her way through a pile of drinks. A big guy tells her to pace herself, but she’s like, “I’m on vacation.” He then tries to get her to join his table, but Helena is in no mood.

When Big Guy tries to drag her over, she sprains his finger. They are broken up by a cute guy named Jesse (Suits Jr. from Suits) who apologizes and offers Helena pork rinds. She offers him a white Russian. I think it’s love. Meanwhile, Belt Buckle walks into the bar.

Down in the church archives, CCW tells Sarah that what she sees in the archives will haunt her. Sarah is like, “A few days ago I was tied up in a shower and watched my once thought dead twin murder my torturer, so I think I can handle some dusty old files.”

Donnie visits Alison in rehab, and Alison is pissed he didn’t bring the kids. She tells him if she shows up without them again she’ll cut off his dangly balls. Vic tries to calm them down and tells Alison that anger is a tool. As a confirmed tool, he knows what he’s talking about.

Also, Vic is on a Buddhist kick and is bowing to people and saying Namaste and Alison is having fucking none of it.

Sarah pours over files and finds old photos of deformed babies and medical records. Also, there’s a picture of “Most Perfect Baby,” which is weird because I was born in 1984 HEYO!

Felix wakes up, covered in paint and hungover. Art is still there; he’s made coffee and is currently assembling a True Detective-style evidence map on the wall. He needs Felix’s help to make sense of all the evidence they hauled out of Maggie Chen’s storage locker.

Back at rehab, Alison finds Vic praying in the gym and starts playing one-handed basketball. She tells Vic that Felix filled her in on his douchiness, and Vic assures her he’s changed/is enlightened now.

Alison asks why she needs to fess up about her drinking, and Vic tells her that it’ll make her feel better. They play basketball together, and it’s almost kind of cute.

Back at the bar, Helena spins a yarn for Jesse about her life. She claims to have been a detective, a scientist, and a soccer mom, but now she’s having adventures with her sestra.

Jesse wonders how a simple guy like himself could ever keep a woman of a million occupations like Helena. They arm wrestle and he loses. Paul and Belt Buckle watch from the bar. Belt Buckle wants to give Helena a minute to enjoy herself, because miracles need drinks too.

Sarah is on the phone with Cosima telling her about Cold River. Apparently, they were doing all sorts of experiments on babies such as eugenic sterilization and Project LEDA-style clone shenanigans.

Cosima says that good intentions and bad science often go together, and that scientists are just poking around looking blindly for answers. Can any scientists verify this in the comments section? I had a sneaking suspicion that’s what was going on.

Sarah asks Cosima if she’s going to be okay. Cosima assures her she will be, but we know that’s not certain. Sarah tells Cosima she can’t do this without her, and Cosima is like, “obvs, I’m the geek monkey.” They discover that Duncan aka Swan Man was at Cold River.

Back at the bar, Helena continues to beat Jesse at arm wrestling. A slow song comes on and he asks her to dance.

They are actually really sweet together, and it reminds us that Helena has never experienced this before. She had no childhood, no adolescence. She’s only ever been a pawn in some evil man’s game.

Speaking of evil men, Paul and Belt Buckle are at the bar divvying up the twins. Paul will take Sarah, Belt Buckle will take Helena, and no blood will be shed. As if on cue, Big Guy breaks up the dance and Helena starts beating the shit out of him. This escalates into a full on bar brawl.

Sarah tells the CCW that there are some files missing. Maybe they were taken by Duncan or Maggie Chen. As Sarah exits the church, she sees Helena being taken away. You can’t leave that girl alone for a second.

Orphan Black Episode 205 Recap: Ipsa Scientia Potestas Est

Hey Clone of the Cave Bears, welcome to the recap of the fifth episode! This is a halfway point of the season, and things are ramping up like whoa.

We open in Rachel’s apartment, where she and Dr. Leekie survey the bloody aftermath of Daniel’s murder.

Joining them is Paul, who is back from Taiwan or something, I don’t know, I nod out whenever he’s on screen.

While Leekie is fascinated by the twin sisters joining up, Rachel sneers and calls them animals. Leekie reminds Rachel that this is a result of her being so heavyhanded/psychotic and unreasonable with the clones, but she assures him that she’s only just begun treating her genetic identicals like criminals made of garbage.

Sarah and Helena are crashing at Felix’s house, where Felix is not at all psyched about sharing his flat with a serial killer.

When Helena hisses at Felix, Sarah tells her to knock it off. She explains to Helena that Felix is her brother, and she’s her sister, so Felix is one of the seestras, okay? Fair enough.

She also starts calling Helena Meathead, which is kind of adorable. I don’t know why, but I’m totally rooting for these two to be twin BFFs. Sarah asks Felix to take care of Helena while she Skypes with Kira.

Meanwhile, in Kira and Cal’s camper, we found out that Cal has a secret stash with fake I.D.s, a gun, and some cash. Is there any character on this show not wrapped up in larger conspiracy? I’m pretty sure Alison’s children are members of Mossad.

Back at Rachel’s apartment, she tells Paul that he’s going to be her new monitor now that Daniel’s dead. Even though she’s been self aware since she was a child, she’s still part of the program, which is sad.

Leekie tells them that they have some promising results from some stem cell research, but Rachel demands that he shut it down. She plans on holding Cosima’s health hostage until Sarah turns herself in.

Speaking of Cosima, she is Skyping with her geek friend Scott about synthetic DNA copyrights and Dyad’s possible contract with the military.

Scott is desperate to work with her, but the first rule of clone club is you have to be sexing at least one clone to have access. Sorry, Scott.

Delphine shows the stem cell test results to Cosima; turns out they were meant for Leekie, but she got them instead. Cosima is pissed because Leekie promised to share all of the science with her, but excited at the possibility of curing herself because she’s running out of handkerchiefs.

Sarah skypes with Kira while at a bar/concert venue, and a waitress accidently tells Kira that the Shit Goblins are playing tonight. Sarah seems upset about Kira hearing curse words, but considering everything that kid has been through, cussing is the least of her problems.

Also, Kira is calling Cal “daddy” and she’s not a monkey anymore, she’s a leopard. Cal gets on the line and assures Sarah they are safe.

Felix drags an unwilling Helena to Art’s apartment and tells her to behave herself/not murder anyone. Helena is also wearing a fuzzy helmet, which is really adorable.

Art pats her down and handcuffs her to the table, while she makes pig noises at him. Felix wishes him luck and tells him to try to persuade her with food. These are the same instructions I give my sister when she dog-sits my dachshund.

Meanwhile, over at the Prolethian Farm, Gracie won’t confess to trying to kill Helena. Bonnie and Hank discuss how she is clinging to the old ways, and they don’t like it.

As punishment, they’ve locked her in a room and sewn her lips together!

Has Hank been taking parenting lessons from Madame LaLaurie from American Horror Story: Coven?! Looks like someone is getting a mouthful of shit for Christmas!

Rachel watches her childhood videos and surmises that Sarah is trying to learn about her. She tells Paul that even though he reports to Leekie, he works for her.

Rachel has known Dr. Leekie her entire life; he even took her in when her parents died. But now, as head of Dyad, she’s surpassed him. Paul gives her intel on Cal, namely that he has anti-corporate leanings and is most likely Kira’s dad.

Rachel digs to see if Paul still has feelings for Sarah, but he assures her he’s on Team Dyad. She tells him he has to make tough choices, specifically with Daniel’s gun, which is tied to the murder of that cop.

Art is trying to interrogate Helena, and it goes about how you’d expect. Helena is fascinated by his fish tank and refuses to answer any questions. Art wants the deets on Maggie Chen, and in an effort to capture Helena’s interest he starts making a grilled cheese sandwich.

Smart move, Art. I’d sell all my secrets for a grilled cheese sammie.

Meanwhile, Belt Buckle brings Gracie a glass of milk and a straw, which is thoughtful. He tells Gracie to confess and get forgiven, because he wants to make out with her.

He kisses her on the cheek and leaves, without making a single Billy Butcherson reference.

Helena makes herself a snack with sardines, mustard, and egg shells. Girl has obviously never had a grilled cheese sandwich.

She tells Art that the nuns who raised her called her a monster and would lock her in the cellar. So she blinded them with her bare hands, LIKE YOU DO. She also mentions the Swan Man and says he played God.

Swan Man as in Leda and the Swan? Maybe. Art wants Helena to take him to Maggie’s locker, but Helena is more interested in scarfing down his white powdered donuts.

Felix is getting ready for a hot date: clean sheets, multiple clothing options, plenty of booze. He opens the door and we see it’s Cute Coroner Colin!

They kiss, dance, and are generally adorable together. Colin whips out the lube when the door slides open and they are busted by the cops. Boner Kill.

Paul walks in and Felix tells him to leave his seestra alone. Paul puts on black leather gloves and pulls Daniel’s gun on Felix. He then forces Felix to put his fingerprints on the murder weapon, effectively trapping him.

Paul then calls Sarah on the clone phone, and tells her that Felix will be going to prison unless Sarah turns herself in to Rachel. Sarah calls Paul a clone whore and hangs up on him.

Sarah tells Art what happened and heads to his place. Unfortunately, Art turned his back on Helena for two seconds and she used a sardine lid to pick the lock on her handcuffs.

Helena is basically Houdini with a bad dye job.

Back at the Prolethian Farm, Hank cuts open Gracie’s lips and she confesses and begs for forgiveness.

Her parents tell her that she better help them get Helena back, or she’s gonna be the one carrying the child! Then her mother rips out her stitches and it is SO upsetting.

Delphine and Cosima sneak into Dr. Leekie’s office to steal his stem cells, and Cosima tells Delphine that she is going to ruin her career as a budding lesbian, which I don’t really understand because stealing stem cells has no effect on your sexuality (or does it?!). Dr. Leekie busts them and tells them the truth about Rachel shutting down his work.

Dr. Leekie then tells them the big Dyad secret about the original genome. During the lab fire that killed Rachel’s parents, the original genome was destroyed. Basically, the entire clone experiment is an orphan (black) because they lost all their history.

Cosima says that without the original genome, there is no way to figure out all the synthetic sequencing, and they are basically lost without a map. Leekie wants to know if Sarah uncovered anything, and as a gesture of good faith Leekie will ignore Rachel and start treating Cosima with the new stem cells.

Cal and Kira are having dinner and Kira is drawing pictures of all the clones.

A cop stops by the camper to question Cal, but before he can search the vehicle, Kira distracts him with some childhood adorableness and the cops leave. As always, Kira proves herself to be the most capable character in a crisis.

Sarah arrives at Art’s place to find him handcuffed, and is like, “you had ONE job, Art!” Helena left them another fortune teller riddle machine, and they go after her.

Art and Sarah arrive at the storage locker and open it up. Sarah tells Helena that she better not be planning to attack them with an axe, but Helena is long gone on a stolen motorcycle.

The storage locker is filled with an assortment of creepy props: dismembered doll parts, photos of nuns with scratched out eyes, a dirty sleeping bag. There is also a recent picture of the Swan Man, aka Ethan Duncan, Rachel’s dad. He’s been alive this whole time!

Also, there’s an empty sniper rifle box and a headless doll wearing a black shift dress, which means that Helena is off to assassinate Rachel.

Meanwhile, Rachel is wearing some fancy lingerie and tells Paul to get them some wine. Helena spies on them from the building across the street and cuts the hair of Rachel’s doll head.

While Helena sings to the doll head, Rachel starts playing out a domme scenario with Paul. Rachel being a hard top makes all the sense, doesn’t it? While she orders Paul around, Helena is setting up her rifle and preparing to take the shot.

Sarah and Art catch up to Helena and tell her to stop. Helena tells Sarah to check out the scene, but Sarah doesn’t care about Paul anymore, especially not now that Rachel is mounting him.

Helena tells Sarah that Rachel is a problem she is fixing, but Sarah warns her that Rachel’s death means Felix will get convicted. Helena is like, “brother seestra?” which is pretty funny. Sarah steps in front of the rifle and begs Helena to stop.

Helena says she’s just using her, but Sarah confesses that she was heartbroken when she shot her. She couldn’t explain what she had lost, but Helena survived and now they’re seestras and that has to count for something, right? They both cry and walk out of the room arm in arm. Art must be so confused, you guys.

Back at Dyad, Cosima is getting her first injection to see how she responds to the stem cells. Cosima tells Leekie that the clones have a proposition for him, and that proposition is beer.

Cut to a local bar, where Sarah meets up with Leekie. She tells him that Ethan Duncan aka Swan Man is still alive, and she wants Felix freed before she gives him any more information.

Leekie tells her that if she can find Duncan, he’ll deal with Rachel and get Cosima the treatment she needs. Sarah is taken aback, as she didn’t know that Cosima was sick. Leekie tells her she has three days to find him, and Sarah tells him that if anything goes wrong she’ll sic Helena on him.

As soon as Sarah leaves, Paul shows up. Leekie tells him the results could be dangerous, and to report to him first instead of Rachel.

Sarah and Helena are in the car, and Sarah wants Helena to tell her how to find Duncan. Helena tells her they have to go to Cold River, a place of screams. Is that like a Six Flags?

See you next week, when we catch up with Alison, and Helena and Sarah go on the creepiest road trip ever!

Orphan Black Episode 204 Recap: Governed As It Were By Chance

Hey Clone-Alones, welcome to the recap of the fourth episode of Orphan Black! So many people died and then came back to life this episode! It was just like The Walking Dead, only with characters I give a shit about.

We pick up right where we left off last week, with Sarah waking up from her horrendous car wreck. She sees Daniel unconscious, and grabs his gun. She is immediately joined by Cal, who decided that the best way to save Sarah was to smash his car into her car. Ugh Cal, THAT’S NOT HOW YOU SAVE PEOPLE.

A police car zooms past them, and Sarah grabs the gun. Luckily, the police car drives away, ignoring the massive accident and the girl with the hand gun. Sarah tells Cal they need to hide the car/Daniel’s dead body, so they start piling on some branches. Oh girl, no, there are better ways to hide a body.

Cal and Sarah make a hasty exit, and Cal demands to know what the fuck Sarah is up to. Sarah doesn’t want him to get involved, which is something she should have thought of before crashing his cabin.

Over in the kingdom of Prolethia, Hank is smoking a pipe and talking to Gracie. Gracie tells him that “it” is awake, and Hank reminds her that Helena is now part of the family. Gracie is not feeling it.

Inside the barn, Helena is waking up from her sedatives and wondering why she’s dressed as an Amish bride.

Hank comes in and tries to reassure Helena, but she shrinks from his touch. You know you’re creepy when Helena wants nothing to do with you.

Meanwhile, Alison wakes up looking like a hot mess. Her arm is in a sling, she’s puking, and she doesn’t know where she is. Basically, she looks like someone on day three of the Dinah.

A woman comes in and tells her to calm down. Alison is convinced she’s in some Dyad facility, but she’s actually in rehab.

Cal takes Sarah to another deserted cabin (how many cabins does this guy own?) where they meet up with Kira.

Cal loads everyone into a camper and they hit the road. Kira is pretty fucking psyched about the camper; I felt the same way when my folks bought one. Let me tell you, that excitement fades after your father accidently leaves you at a rest stop in Arizona. That’s not a joke, that’s a legit childhood story.

ANYWAYS, back at the Prolethian Farm, Art continues to spy and take photos. Hank and Bonnie discuss Helena and Gracie’s refusal to get on board Team Mom Clone.

In the camper, Cal is still trying to get the truth out of Sarah, but she’s not talking. She tells him that Daniel works for a big corporation, and Cal thinks she must be scamming them. Sarah also nicked Daniel’s phone, which she’s using to text Rachel as Daniel to keep her off their trail.

Okay, so here’s where this episode really takes off. Gracie brings fresh linens to Helena, and officially decides that she is done with this bullshit. Gracie takes a pillow and starts suffocating Helena!

I guess that’s the Christian thing to do? Gracie tells Helena to go back to Hell where she belongs, which is cold as ice. But then Helena pops back up and starts choking the shit out of Gracie. Helena can’t die, y’all! I’m starting to think this bitch has superpowers.

Helena makes a break for it and starts running through the farm to escape. After fighting her way through a room of cling wrap, Helena stumbles upon the room where Hank took her after the ceremony.

She starts flashing back to what happened: Hank drugged her and forcibly harvested her eggs. Helena screams, grabs a knife, and runs the fuck out of there. Bonnie finds an unconscious Gracie and hollers for Hank.

As the Prolethians saddle up to hunt down Helena, they are stopped by Art, who just saw Helena running by him through the field. Helena escapes.

At the Dyad Institute for Clone Boning, Cosima continues to watch Jenn’s video diaries and Skypes with Sarah while Cal and Kira make adorable origami outside.

Sarah shows Cosima the LEDA project photo, and Cosima starts telling her about the mythical story of Zeus and Leda. Basically, Zeus disguised himself as a swan, banged Leda, and she gave birth to demi-god twins. Cosima thinks it sounds like something engineered by the military.

More importantly, are the clones half-gods?! Do they have super powers?! When their powers align, can they summon Captain Planet?! I have so many questions, you guys.

Sarah tells Cosima she is coming back to town to get answers from Mrs. S, and Cosima is like, “that’s cool, I’ll just be here coughing up blood NBD.” Sarah asks Cal to keep an eye on Kira while she goes into town to shake down Mrs. S.

Mrs. S is hiding in Benjamin aka Creepy Old Man’s car and tells him about the bird watchers’ demise. She needs him to make her new papers to visit someone in London, but that someone is already here. His name is Carlton, and FYI he is not Will Smith’s uptight cousin.

Back at rehab, Alison is getting a tour and is grossed out by all the normals. She sees Felix and tells him she’s being held hostage. Felix tells her that’s not how rehab works and she can walk out whenever. After all, she willingly signed herself in, which Alison does not remember because of drugs and alcohol.

Felix tells her to treat it like a spa weekend and just relax, which we know is an impossibility for Alison. Felix also offers to take her out for brunch and mimosas when she’s sober, and Alison is like THAT’S NOT HOW REHAB WORKS. See, she’s already learning.

Sarah sets out for the city, but not before Kira gives her an origami angel to keep her safe.

Cal begs Sarah to tell him what corporation it is, and she tells him it’s Dyad. He remarks that she must have really gotten under their skin, and she’s like they literally got under my skin with needles/test tubes/illegal science.

Guess who isn’t dead? A very pissed off Daniel who climbs out of the wrecked car. Shyamalan twist!