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“Orphan Black” recap (2.07): Nurture prevails

Previously on Orphan Black, Alison passive aggressively killed Aynsley, Cosima got sick and Leekie assented to treat her behind Rachel’s back using baby teeth, Vic was in cahoots with Bitchface Ladycop, and Ethan Duncan didn’t die in a fire.

It’s almost family day, and Alison and Vic are finishing up making name tags. Crafting puts Alison in her comfort zone and she ends up confessing to Vic; about sleeping with Aynsley’s husband-and about that one time she sort of kind of watched her die. Murder by omission, if you will. Vic sort of stares at Alison like maybe he shouldn’t be double-crossing her, but she’s just relieved to say it out loud again. She probably doesn’t even remember telling Felix, since she was an airplane’s worth of mini vodka bottles deep at the time. Alison happily presents Vic with gloves she made him, customized to accommodate his missing digits.

Later, when she’s cleaning up, Alison realizes Vic forgot his new mittens and goes to deliver them to him. When she gets there, however, she overhears him talking to Bitchface Ladycop about giving her some dirt on Alison.

At Ethan Duncan’s house, Sarah and Mrs. S are digging through the piles of crap like they’re on an episode of Hoarders, looking for a specific box that Duncan insists they can’t live without. Sarah and Mrs. S try to come up with a plan, but only get as specific as “divide and conquer” because neither one of them knows how much they can actually trust the other.

In Cal’s trailer, Kira is sleeping restlessly while her father does some research on the DYAD. For some reason, he seems to have been able to hack into some genetic sequences, and is reading up on his science when Kira starts to fuss. He gets up to comfort her, making sure to say her name loud and clear. When he sits back down at his laptop, he realizes that the webcam light had been on, and as he stares directly at it, it turns off. He realizes in an instant what this means.

Meanwhile, Sarah finds something real gross in a gross pile of gross things and jumps back with a start, sending a pile of junk tumbling to the ground, and revealing the box they had been looking for. Duncan happily opens it and fumbles around with what looks like a bunch of junk and not important at all, and Sarah looks increasingly worried that this is the man on whose shoulders rests the fate of her and her sisters.

Sarah’s clone phone rings and Cal tells her that his laptop was hacked and probably traced, so he’s setting up a diversionary tactic, and will tell her where to meet them when it’s safe. When she hangs up the phone, Mrs. S asks who’s watching Kira, but Sarah is so not ready to trust her with that information. She tells Duncan to sleep with one eye open and disappears into the night.

At the DYAD, Cosima and Delphine are about to make some crazy science. OK, not crazy science. Real science. Real scary science. But Delphine is by Cosima’s side, holding her hand, talking her through what’s happening with sweet, soothing words and gentle kisses. Cosima looks nervous, she can hardly bring herself to smile, but even though she doesn’t have the emotional energy to be cheeky right now, she does her best to put on a brave face. Back at the rehab facility, Alison sneaks a phone call to Felix. She doesn’t know what to do about Vic; she can’t have anyone finding out about Aynsley, and she certainly can’t go to jail. She’s seen Orange is the New Black. She wants no part of it. Felix promises he’ll come by in the morning and they would figure something out.

Sarah meets up with Cal in a shipyard and he is practically running in circles he’s so freaked out that the DYAD was in his laptop. What if they found the Word document where he wrote “Cal Manning” in every font? Sarah is used to this level of invasion by now and tells him to calm down. He also asks about Kira’s creepy hand-holdy drawing. Sure, they’re not stick figures drawn in blood, but he didn’t think Sarah had any sisters, so what’s this about? Sarah balks at this question and says it’s just Kira’s imagination and no seriously calm down. He finally realizes how happy he is to see her and they kiss like maybe they can forget their lives are in danger for two minutes.

Paul goes to Leekie’s office and gives him his full report about the Proletheans taking Helena and how he followed Sarah. Well, not the full report, because he remembers Mrs. S and her biscuit-laced threats and lies through his teeth about finding Duncan. Leekie tells Paul that this report is sufficient to give to Rachel and, as soon as he’s dismissed, calls an emergency meeting with someone named Marian.

Mrs. S goes back to Duncan’s house and tries to get him to part with his cave of wonders. He almost forgets his red box and when he picks it up he starts to open it. Mrs. S groans; they don’t have time to sift through his trinkets right now. But, to her surprise, he dumps the contents and pulls out the false bottom to reveal some floppy disks. (Kids, those are, like, old school flash drives.) Mrs. S asks Duncan what they are and he responds that they are everything.

At the DYAD, Scott asks Delphine again why he can’t tell Cosima what they found; after all, they share a lab, and he came here to work with the smartest person he knew. Delphine puts her foot down and tells him, with an authority we haven’t really seen before, that she’s his boss. Her fear is permeating her every move, and poor Scott is getting the brunt of it. Also, poor Scott because Cosima overheard the whole thing. To Delphine’s credit, the lie ends here. As soon as Cosima demands the truth, she gives it. The stem cells that matched Cosima, the ones that they are using for her treatment, came from Kira. She lost a tooth on her accident and it made its way back to the DYAD. The problem is, it’s not an eternal spring of stem cells. They’re going to need Kira for the treatment to continue. Cosima is pissed. It’s like Delphine wasn’t paying attention when she said, “My biology, my decision.” Delphine says there is no choice; this is the only hope they have of curing her. Cosima is frustrated by how blurred the line is between scientist and experiment. Most of her life was a lie, and now the one person she was supposed to be able to count on to end the lying is feeding her lies. The last time they fought, the one thing Cosima begged of Delphine was to leave Kira out of it. So, just like the last time they fought, Cosima tells Delphine to get out.

Cut to New Paths rehab, where Alison is asking Vic for a chat. When Vic follows Alison to her room, Felix is there. They call him out on his snooping and squealing but he’s not even sorry about it. He’s about to storm out when Felix says that Sarah isn’t too happy with him. At Sarah’s name, Vic freezes; now they have his attention.

Meanwhile, Leekie’s emergency meeting request is fulfilled by a gorgeous woman (played by Michelle Forbes). Leekie tells her that Duncan is alive and Marian is curious how Rachel would react. Marian is worried that Rachel might be getting too tangled up in this and that she might need an intervention. As she’s leaving, the HBIC tells Leekie that it seems like Sarah Manning is causing all their problems lately, and that she would like that rectified.

Cal is in the middle of asking Sarah to run away to Iceland with her, secrets and all, when Sarah’s clone phone rings. Alison demands that Sarah come deal with Vic, since he was her problem to begin with. When she shows up, Vic starts to atone in his awkward, over-emotional way. Sarah bestows her atonement on him and tries to leave, but he wants an apology in return. To which she laughs in his face. Sarah finally gives in and apologizes, but Vic takes it too far when he starts to ask her to take him back. He starts to soliloquize about it, but stops mid-sentence and falls face-first into Alison’s craft table. Felix admits he may have spiked the tea.

While this is going on, Alison is greeting her family. She gives her kids their beautiful, hand-made name tags and leaves Donnie to grab his plain, boring one himself.

Back at the DYAD, Mrs. S saunters right on up to Leekie, and expects him to know exactly who she is. Which he does, of course. She offers him information, data he thought was lost, in exchange for a promise to call the dogs off Kira. Sarah is no longer Mrs. S’s problem, but she will do anything it takes to protect Kira.

On the way out, Mrs. S calls Sarah to tell her that Rachel didn’t know about Leekie and Duncan, so they have another hand to play.

Someone comes to Alison’s door while Felix and Sarah are trying to figure out what to do with unconscious Vic and Sarah does Alison’s squeak and answers the door, her hand covering her lack of bangs. The woman tells her that she’s needed for family day activities, so Sarah throws on a headband and follows her out. Soon after, Alison comes back to the room and is horrified to find her craft table destroyed and Vic on the floor. The families get a tour soon! They have to do something!

All the while, Bitchface Ladycop is outside, waiting for Vic to meet up with her and give her the scoop on Alison Hendrix.

Sarah gets looped into family day full-force, because of course Alison had volunteered to make opening remarks and be the first to do role playing. Even she starts to get confused; she had no time to prepare and now all of a sudden it’s Sarah as Alison as Donnie. She calls Donnie a monitor and when it’s clear this train is off the tracks, asks to tinkle.

Bitchface Ladycop sneaks into the rehab to look for Vic herself, snatching a name tag and following the sound of Vic’s phone as she calls him. Luckily, Felix has been grifting and running with Sarah for years, so he can think quick on his feet; he texts Ladycop from Vic’s phone and has her meet him outside, getting her off their trail for now.

Alison finds Sarah waiting for her in her room and is so over all of this. She rips off Sarah’s headband and scolds her for ruining family day. Donnie comes in and does a double-take when he sees Alison and Sarah standing side by side. Alison waves her hand, sick of the charade, and introduces her as Sarah Manning, runaway clone. The word “clone” hits Donnie like a sack of bricks and it becomes abundantly clear that he had no idea what he was involved in.

Paul brings Rachel to Mrs. S’s house and Mrs. S starts by laying down the ground rules: She has 15 minutes, and if anyone comes to the house after she leaves, she’ll kill Duncan dead. Rachel gives an ever-so-slight nod of the head like it’s been a good long while since anyone has told her what to do, especially in a stern parent voice.

When Rachel sees her father, the one she thought she lost, for the first time in twenty years, her usually cold eyes slowly fill with tears.

While they catch up, Paul tells Mrs. S that he now knows where Sarah got her tendency to be drawn to destruction like a moth to a flame.

When Duncan finally tells Rachel that it was Leekie who set the fire, Leekie who killed her mother, Rachel begins to cry in earnest. And it’s weirdly heartbreaking.

After Sarah puts on her invisibility cloak hood and she and Felix scoot out of rehab, Alison asks Donnie what the hell he thought was going on all these years, and he said that he thought he was just part of a social experiment. When she asked about all the scientists and probes that came in at night, he had no idea what she was talking about. Alison said she loved him, and he ruined everything, and what pisses her off the most is that he didn’t even know why he was doing it. She storms off, and Donnie’s face hardened; he looks angry…and determined.

When Leekie returns to his office, Rachel is waiting for him. Her expression is steely, her body still. She says coolly, “My father sends his regards.” And Leekie knows she knows. He tries to explain, says it was the only option, but Rachel says it’s over. She calls Marian on speakerphone, and the woman confirms that her orders are to kill Leekie. After she hangs up, she tells Leekie to go. She tells him to run, not to take his car or to go home. Disappear and you might just survive. She says she knows it’s foolish, but he was the closest thing she had to a father all these years. Her voice drips with resentment and she says, “Nurture prevails.”

After probably going over all the ways she could react to the news, Cosima calls Sarah. Sad, worried, not wanting to break the news, not when they had started working so seamlessly together. But she knows she has to. She tries to explain what happened, and Sarah is confused about why a baby tooth would help anyway.

Since Cal is helicoptering around Sarah, asking how Kira’s imaginary friends are calling her on the phone, Kira overhears part of the conversation and decides to take matters into her own hands. Well, mouth. She uses the old string-and-door trick to yank out a tooth and proudly presents it to Sarah. She just wants to help Auntie Cosima get better.

Sarah knows now is the time to reassemble the Clone Club. She takes Kira and leaves, and Cal tells Kira to call him if she ever needs him. And surely the same goes for Sarah.

Leekie slithers out of the DYAD, slinking around dark streets and trying to grab a cab. A car that had been following him pulls up and Leekie sees that it’s Donnie. Leekie rolls his eyes and tells him to leave, but Donnie pulls a gun and tells him to get in, so Leekie does. Donnie is furious. He’s shaking with anger. Why didn’t Leekie tell him what he was involved in? How could he let people probe his wife? Leekie, probably seeing the only upside to having to run for his life (never having to deal with Donnie again) calls Donnie a turnip and tells him to move on with his life. But Donnie doesn’t like being lied to, his marriage is ruined and it’s all Leekie’s fault. He slams his gun on the steering wheel to show how mad he is and…boom.

Great Scott, it’s the end of life itself. Leekie’s brilliant brains splatter all over Donnie’s passenger side window, and Donnie looks as surprised as I do.

In fact, I haven’t STOPPED being surprised. Holy wow. What did you think of “Knowledge of Causes and Secret Motion of Things”?

Here are some of our favorite #clonesbians tweets from this week:

                     

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