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Jun 25, 2014

ORPHAN BLACK 2/10 RECAP

As much as I liked the first episode of this season, the finale left me extremely frustrated. Conspiracy stories only work if the writers know (in essence, at least) what they want to come to in the end of the entire series, and unfortunately, it seems that John Fawcett and Graeme Manson invent stuff on the go (actually, they don't even try to hide it in their interviews, for example, they said they wanted to kill Mark off in the sixth episode, and look what happened). I can relate to their desire to try new things, including those from the technical point of view, but sadly "we thought it would be fun to try" approach rarely doesn't lead to chaos.


Anyway. To get Kira back, Sarah gives in to Dyad, and after having answered numerous questions about her sexual life and pregnancies (dramatic as they sounded on the show, there hardly was a single question that no woman has heard from her gynecologist), she signs a consent for having her eggs removed. Delphine gets relocated to Frankfurt, but she manages to send a file to Cosima with the exact time when this procedure takes places. In order to help her sister, Cosima turns a fire extinguisher into a pencil shooting mechanism. Scott volunteers to help Sarah escape and infiltrates the group of doctors performing the surgery.


People outside of Dyad also work on Sarah's release. Cal comes to Mrs S and says he's managed to get in touch with someone inside the institute over the internet. To prove this, he begins chatting with the mysterious person and mentions that he's with S. Then this person asks about [project] Castor - something that Siobhan seems to know about.


She arranges a meeting of the secret person with Paul, who, as it turns out, was a double agent all along and worked for both the Dyad people and the military. He brings documents on project Castor and gives them to the Dyad insider - Marian, who promises to release Sarah and Kira in exchange.


Rachel tries to get Duncan's key to the synthetic sequences, but he poisons himself with a special tea bag and dies right in front of her eyes (plural for now). When she overcomes this personal tragedy, she visits her sister in the ward, ready for the operation, gives her a picture that Kira has drawn with Cosima earlier on and asks for the key. Sarah says she knows nothing, so the psycho clone destroys Kira's bone marrow. Luckily, Sarah notices a fire extinguisher on the drawing - an odd thing for an eight year old to sketch, and finds one in real life, next to her bed with the label saying "sqeeze". So she does, and this leads to Rachel catching a pencil with her eye. Scott unties Sarah and gives her his access card.


This turns out unnecessary, as Marian had all doors open already, so Sarah and Kira escape the institute without any issues. 

Helena gets to Art's apartment, and the highlight of the episode for me was when she responded with "noo" to a question whether or not she has burnt the Prolethean's camp, grinning. The four semi-good clones get together under Felix's roof and dance (???). At night Helena leaves her frozen eggs inside and walks out, just to be abducted by the military at the door.   


Sarah comes to Marian's mansion, where she sees a younger version of herself - the only survivor of Dyad's 400 attempts to create another clone. We finally get to know what project Castor is - the military worked on male clones and Marian somehow got a hold of one faulty copy that looks exactly like Mark, only seems a bit more retarded. In the meanwhile another Mark-faced individual guards a military plane that Helena is escorted onto. Seems that Mrs. S has helped Paul to arrange the abduction in exchange for Sarah's freedom. At about the same time the real Mark marries Gracie, and one can only guess, whether he's a double agent, interested solely in Helena's baby inside of his fiancee or not. 


Cosima nearly dies, but Kira sort of brings her back to life, asking to read a book for her. After having listened to some childish story about puppy, the girl asks her aunt to read Duncan's book. Cosima opens it and sees something that looks like the key to the sequence inside. 


People say the introduction of male clones was inevitable, but I don't agree. We could easily live without them. Sure, this season focuses on ethical issues of having humans turned into science projects, but it's not why I enjoy the series. There's this part of the show that describes how different the seemingly similar women are, and how they get along, against all odds, and how they are willing to risk their lives for one another. The strength of this bond and this story line will be weakened by the male clones, I'm afraid. Besides, male body has never been as objectified and as... I wanna say politicized? Meaning there are still pro-life vs pro-choice wars on a national level in many countries. So hardly this new development can really add any significant emotional component. And storywise it's gonna be a mess. Well, whatever.



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