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“Orphan Black” recap: A Fool’s Tail (1.07)

Previously on Orphan Black, the clones found out they were being experimented on, Olivier started getting all up in Paul’s business, and Cosima played flirtatious games with Delphine.

We begin with Cosima and Sarah having a skype check-in about their monitors. Sarah advises Cosima, again, to stay away from Delphine, reminding her of what happened when Allison flipped. Allison, by the way, is with Donnie at a couples retreat to try to recover from the trauma of Craft Room Torture.

Cosima assures her that it will be fine because she has the upper hand, what with all the inside knowledge, but Sarah would still rather her stick to her science thing. She has yet to learn that Cosima is not exactly the rule-follower you might expect a smartypants grad student to be. 

Meanwhile, at the precinct, the detectives (one of which is Bo’s mom, so we know SHE can’t be trusted) have figured out that the dead body parts and the angel of darkness are genetically identical. Of course, since they don’t have Castle on their team, they skip the clone theory and jump to evidence tampering.

Sarah and Felix follow Paul to a club called Neolution, and Felix goes in since he’s far less likely to be recognized than the very subject of their experiments. A woman who seems like she’s in charge shows Felix around the club and explains that Neolution is a sort of self-directed evolution through body modification. I don’t know about you, but I’ve seen Repo! The Genetic Opera, and I’m almost positive this Neolution business is a terrible idea.

Across town, in some creepy locale, a sketchy man has brought Helena back to life. He asks her why she didn’t kill Sarah and she says that she felt a connection, that she was different. Her master, Tomas, disagrees. He tells her that she is the original, and that she must find “it,” bleed it, and kill it. He hands her a razor, which she immediately takes to her back, adding another scar to the lot. What’s with that? Self-flagellation of a religious extremists? Regular masochism? Is she trying to cut holes for wings? Or is she just crazy? 

I’m still not sure exactly how, but Maggie Chen’s death has something to do with this revenge plot.

In a back room of the club, Olivier is interrogating Paul, because he has just found out that someone is offing their subjects, and he wants to make sure Paul didn’t know anything. Afterwards, Felix follows Paul out back, but luckily Sarah stepped in before Paul snapped Felix’s pretty little neck. Paul tells Sarah to meet him back at the apartment — alone. There, Sarah tells him that she knows that 9 genetic identicals exist, because Beth had the information on them, but says that she has only met Allison. Which I think was smart; the less he knows, the better. Paul tells her that Olivier isn’t the one killing them off, and that he actually told Paul to protect her, no matter what.

Proving he’s oh-so-good at protecting her, he almost immediately lets her go alone to Mrs. S’s. Not that there’s a point to trying to get Sarah to do anything she doesn’t want to, but he gave her his keys. And sure enough, she doesn’t even make it to the car before Helena appears, looking crazy as ever, and asks Sarah to lunch.

At a diner, Sarah looks wildly uncomfortable, but Helena is scarfing down food, telling her about being raised by nuns in the Ukraine. She suddenly switches gears and shoves her combat boot right between Sarah’s legs to get the names of the other clones, but Sarah was quicker with a knife. Impressed, Helena scribbles a phone number on a napkin and says Sarah has until midnight to hand over the others, or she dies first.

Back at the club, in his evil lair, Olivier gets a call. From — wait for it — DR. LEEKIE. It is not surprising he is involved, but now we knows who calls the shots on Olivier’s end of things. He tells Olivier that Beth isn’t Beth, and that he doesn’t know which one it is, but that something needs to be done.

Olivier calls Paul back in and tells him that this Beth he has been sleeping with is not Beth at all. He says that the person who has been killing off their subjects looks exactly like Beth and Paul earns some of the points he lost with the poison booze by playing dumb and asking, “Like, a twin?” Though he does grow a little concerned when Olivier says this killer is from Europe.

Cosima is getting dressed on the phone a la Santana while Sarah gets her up to speed with their crazy Ukrainian friend. Cosima lets it slip that she’s been seeing Delphine and Sarah starts to scold her. They both end up frustrated and, in an adorable reminder that they do have some similarities, they both throw their phone down and yell “bitch” at it after hanging up.

Finally at Mrs. S’s, Sarah watches Kira play piano, but she’s a bit distracted, what with the crazy lunch she just had. Mrs. S can see that Sarah is preoccupied, so she gives her a scrapbook. Mrs. S tells her that she was no ordinary orphan, that she was brought to her ‘in the black’ because she needed special protection. A fellow orphanage worker, Carlton, who I’m sure will be important later, came to Mrs. S and said that Sarah needed to be hidden even deeper, so she up and left everything she knew to take Sarah and Felix away. She offers to protect Kira the same way.

Just before she leaves, Sarah gives Mrs. S a long overdue hug that says “Thank you for the years and years of protecting me in ways I didn’t even know.”

Over in the land of grad school, Cosima and Delphine are on a date, but in struts Dr. Leekie like the giant twat swat he is. Delphine asks if they should ask him to join them and Cosima does not look thrilled about this idea. She tries to provoke Delphine by reminding her that she’s single now, and Delphine insists he’s too old. Cosima says that his mind is sexy in the same tone I use when I say “I guess Paul is TECHNICALLY attractive.”

Leekie does join them and encourages them to apply to the DYAD institute. Cosima is pushing the professor, testing him, practically being rude, but he’s trying to be charming, despite her eye-rolls.

Still in the interrogation room with Olivier, Paul calls “Beth.” I’m not sure what he was supposed to ask her to do, but he instead yells for her to run because they know she’s not Beth. By the time he finishes his sentence, he’s being attacked by the guards.

Sarah and Felix head back to the club to save him, and Sarah calls Helena, who has been creepily sniffing around her apartment, asking a picture of Paul how his day was. Helena asks if Sarah is ready to give up the sheep, but Sarah says she can do her one better. 

The blonde Neolutionist spots Sarah wandering round the back hallways and drags her into a room with Paul and Olivier.

Olivier hadn’t actually seen one of the subjects in person before, and gawks at her while she sasses him about his rumored tail. He starts to unbutton his pants to show her is thankfully interrupted by Helena. The two clones are thrown in a room together and pretend to fight so they can escape. As Sarah slips out the door, Helena overpowers Olivier, pins him down, and demands to see his tail. He pulls it out and she asks him how he got it, asks if he laid with a beast. She doesn’t care much about his answer, however, because she goes right ahead and CUTS IT OFF.

Out in the alleyway, Felix is getting all kinds of terrified because Sarah has been gone quite a while. He calls up Art and says they need to talk about Beth Child, but luckily before he lets anything spill, Sarah bangs on the car window and they get the hell out of dodge.

Inside the club, Crazy Helena is in the middle of the crowded dance floor, dancing to the music, WITH THE SEVERED TAIL. IN HER HAND. AND NO ONE NOTICES.

Helena is up on the list pretty high of things that will forever give me nightmares.

Back at Felix’s loft, winding down from the insanity they just somehow survived, Sarah kisses Paul and I think this time it’s real. I think it was sort of a “thank you for risking your life to save mine” kiss and I think, as long as Paul is really on our side, I kind of like it. 

Back at Cosima’s awesome crib, Cosima is looking at the business card for the DYAD Institute that Dr. Leekie gave her. Delphine comes out from behind a curtain and talks about what a great opportunity it would be. Cosima says they should come clean about what this is all really about. Just when I think she’s going to confront her about the whole cloning business, she steps right up to Delphine and kisses her.

Unfortunately, Delphine proves she’s not a real lesbian because she does the opposite of what most of us would do and, instead of kissing her back, steps back, looking almost startled. Cosima is confused and asks if she made a terrible mistake, and Delphine just says “It’s OK” and scurries out of the room.

While all this was going on, Detectives Art and Angela have been investigating the whole genetic identical situation. When Art suggests they go to the morgue, Lady Cop about as excited as a kid going to Disney World, and she breaks a creepy record when she practically giggles as the mortician uses a finger-straightener on the severed hand. They find a match to the fingerprints and the system pulls up a girl named Sarah Manning — who looks an awful lot like Art’s ex-partner Beth — DUN DUN DUN

What did you think of “Parts Developed in an Unusual Manner”?

Here are some of our favorite #clonesbians tweets from this week’s episode.

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