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“Orphan Black” recap (2.08): Je T’aime

Previously on Orphan Black, Rachel found out her father was alive, Cosima found out her potential cure involves Kira’s stem cells, Donnie found out that he was participating in an illegal cloning experiment, and Leekie found out that accidental murder runs in the Hendrix family by way of a bullet to the brain.

We open on a bullet-addled van speeding down the street and pulling hastily into a garage. Someone in a bandana approaches a man with a bullet wound who uses his last breath to urge his bandana-clad friend to find Beth Childs. The stranger pulls down the bandana to reveal a new clone. That part didn’t surprise me (I’d recognize Tatiana’s eyes anywhere). What did surprise me was the beard! Sarah goes to see Mrs. S, who still has Duncan and is waiting for news from the DYAD. Felix sneaks in the back with Kira, and they partake in an adorable group hug. Duncan inspects Kira with scientific curiosity, which sort of resembles a lion eyeing a gazelle.

At the DYAD, Delphine tries to get into Cosima’s lab, only to find her passcard doesn’t work anymore. When Cosima opens the door a crack, Delphine hands her something from Sarah. Cosima takes it and tells Delphine that she doesn’t want her in her lab and promptly shuts the door on her science girlfriend. When Cosima turns around, Scott is staring with his mouth agape. He then utters the understatement of the century, “Girl fights are mean.”

The package from Sarah included the tooth Kira pulled out to help Aunt Cosima. Scott points out that bone marrow would be more effective in treating 324B21, and Cosima sighs that she knows.

Finally back from rehab, Alison returns home to find Donnie, clad only in tighty whiteys, lying in bed and claiming to not feel well. Alison proves that she’s not afraid of the c word anymore and there’s no reason Donnie should be moping right now. She tries to get him up, but when she pulls back the blanket, she sees that Donnie has ransacked the house and found all her hidden airplane bottles of liquor. (Side note: do you think Alison buys a handful of them at a time at various liquor stores or does she drive an hour out of town, wearing sunglasses, and fill an entire duffle bag with them in one go?)

The kids come home and start to walk in the bedroom, where a mostly naked Donnie is now desperately trying to drink the rest of the booze before Alison takes it, but Alison quickly shuffles them out of the room.

Art takes Beth’s place and meets up with ManClone, who introduces himself as Tony. Actually he introduces himself as Harry Freaking Potter, but you get the gist. Art thought he’d seen it all with Helena, but this takes him by surprise.

Back at Mrs. S’s house, Ethan asks about Kira, but Sarah says that it is absolutely none of his business. Felix bids them all adieu because he’s going to meet up with Art, because he has news and Sarah has more important things to deal with right now.

Exiled from Cosima’s lab, Delphine wanders around the DYAD like an indoor puppy who was send outside. She’s sent in to see Rachel, who has just finished leaving Paul a deliciously stern voicemail saying that his absence and lack of contact is incredibly inconvenient. Rachel tells a nervous-looking Delphine that Aldus Leekie has suffered a fatal heart attack. Rachel says that she will be Delphine’s boss now, which will surely be difficult for both of them, for different reasons. But Rachel thinks they can work together, because they might have a breakthrough that will save Cosima. That will save all of them. Save the scientist, save the clones.

When Felix gets back to his Loft, he finds Art there and is as surprised as the rest of us by Tony. Tony wants to know what’s going on and when he can see Beth, but Felix asks for a word alone with Art in the hallway. They let their minds explode over the trans* clone for a minute while Tony rifles around the Loft. Seems the grifter gene is strong in this one. Fee tells Art to follow his lead and when they get back into the apartment, Felix tests Tony by giving him the clone riddle that Katja tested Sarah with back in the day. When Tony looks at Felix like he’s crazy, Fee knows that Tony has no idea he’s a clone. Tony teases Felix, calling him Fifi and telling him his place looks pretty gay, and that all he knows is that Beth said they might be related.

In Kira’s room, Sarah is making a mobile with her daughter. The mobile has little paper angels all over it, and Kira says the angels remind her of Helena. Arts and crafts time is interrupted by someone at the front door, and in a heartbreaking turn of events, Kira’s first reaction is, “Should we hide?”

Luckily hiding isn’t necessary because it’s just Delphine at the door. Sarah’s first thought is of Cosima, she’s worried about her sestra. But no, Delphine isn’t here about Cosima, she has a message from Rachel. Sarah scoffs; she trusts Delphine about as much as she trusts Rachel, which is not much, if at all. But Delphine pleads for her to listen. They have a plan to save Cosima that wouldn’t involve Kira’s stem cells at all. The plan involves Duncan, he has the solution. Forget Dawn Summers, Ethan Duncan is The Key.

Cosima, coughing alarmingly more often than usual, goes into her lab to find Scott and his geek squad playing Runewars. Scott is about to pack them up, but Cosima says they’re free to stay and goes to work researching Delphine’s history.

After a few minutes, Cosima can’t help herself, and jumps in to out-geek the geeks, totally owning them in the game. Her victory is short-lived, however, because she has a coughing fit that results in a rather bloody tissue. Delphine comes in and tells Cosima that they need to talk, whether Cosima wants to or not. Delphine tells Cosima that she thinks Leekie was murdered, and that she thinks Cosima is running out of time. The tooth was a band aid, not a cure.

Cosima asks the geek squad to amscray. She has a promise to keep. She’s going to get Delphine totally baked.

Back at the Loft, Tony and Fee are bonding. And by bonding I mean Tony is trying to get a rise out of Felix, but Fee’s all too familiar with this game. He tells Tony he’s just like his sister and tells him to run his own bath.

In the suburbs, Alison goes downstairs to find Donnie secretly packing his things to leave. Alison is having none of this. They have a mountain to clone, but she’s not ready to give up on them yet. That is, of course, unless he never loved her. Donnie gets all weepy and apologizes for everything.

While Tony takes a bath, Art gives Felix the low-down. Tony, formerly Antoinette, has a known associate named Sammy, the man who was shot. Sammy has “monitor” written all over him, and Felix says that he just needs to get him a little drunk and he’ll get more information out of him. Meanwhile, Tony sneaks out of the bath and roots around, finding one of Felix’s paintings from his clone series.

When Felix goes back inside, he finds Tony shooting up. Felix looks a little relieved when he realizes it’s just testosterone. Tony asks Felix how he knew Beth, and Felix says it’s just the usual delinquent/police detective relationship.

At Mrs. S’s house, Ethan is reading The Island of Doctor Moreau to Kira. For those unfamiliar, it’s a story by H. G. Wells (the author, not the sexy time-traveling Warehouse agent) about a man who did scientific experiments on animals, giving them human traits. One of the stated themes of this book is “human interference with nature” so of course it’s Duncan’s favorite book. When Sarah catches wind of what he’s reading to her daughter, she asks him if it’s really appropriate, and Kira sighs heavily and rolls her eyes. She’s spent the last week or so running for her life with a complete stranger, she can handle a controversial story.

Sarah gets a call from Felix, who tells her about the boy clone in his loft. She asks if he is from a different batch of clones but Felix assures her they fell from the same tree. After he gets off the phone, Tony sidles up to Felix and kisses him square on the mouth. Fee pulls away and says it’s a bad idea, and Tony asks if Beth is his sister. Felix evades the question and asks what Beth’s message was.

In Cosima’s lab, Delphine and Cosima get high. They suck in helium, as though Cosima wasn’t having enough lung problems as it was. They speak in chipmunk voices and giggle all over the place. After their voices go back to normal, Delphine says that she has something important to tell her. “Je t’aime,” she says. Cosima asks if that’s why she lied about Kira’s stem cells, why she gave Leekie her blood samples against her direct requests. Delphine says she had to, Cosima’s life depended on it, but Cosima retorts that it’s bigger than just her. If Delphine loves her, she has to love all of them. They come as a package deal, these clones. Delphine says, fine, then she loves all of them. Cosima says that’s good, but if she betrays them again, she has enough dirt on her to absolutely destroy her, and she won’t hesitate to do it. And PS she loves her, too. In Scarborough, Alison and Donnie have a heart to heart. Alison confesses to her passive aggressive murder, and Donnie confesses to his accidental murder. Maybe these two were meant for each other after all.

Tony is weirded out that Felix has a painting with his face on it. He came here because he trusted Sammy, and Sammy sent him here, but he’s tired of the waiting and the lack of answers. Fee begs Tony not to leave, says he wouldn’t understand even if he explained it, that he just needs to wait a few more minutes, but Tony storms out. When he gets into the hallway, however, he runs into Sarah, who Felix introduces as his sister. Sarah tries to get Tony up to speed, but she’s never had to be the one to float the whole clone thing before. All Tony knows for sure right now is that they’re both hot. He also proves that he’s a pea from Sarah’s pod when he says, “There’s only one Tony, you’re not me.” Which is what Sarah said to Paul when he was figuring things out.

Tony wants to know who the suits were that ambushed him and Sammy, but Felix and Sarah have no idea. He tells them that Sammy was ex-military, and finally consents to relaying the message. Word for word, this is what Sammy said: “Tell Beth, keep the faith. Paul’s like me, he’s on it, he’s a ghost.”

Rachel, after once again making a phone call to try to find Paul, who seems to have taken this “ghost” thing rather seriously, welcomes Professor Duncan into her office. She apologizes for their emotional interaction last time they met, and says she wants a purely professional relationship. Ignoring her request, he asks her if she remembers him reading her The Island of Doctor Moreau and she says she does. He quotes from it, but she says she doesn’t remember it in such detail. He asks her for forgiveness, because he’s glad Leekie is dead.

Meanwhile, Donnie takes Alison to see Leekie’s body, which is stuffed in his trunk and not wrapped to Alison’s standards. Also not up to Alison’s standards was his weapon of choice and lack of disposal thereof: He used her gun and put it back in her gun locker afterwards. Not the brightest, this Donnie.

Felix and Sarah try to make sense of the message, to no avail. Fee says that with Leekie and Paul both gone, she should just count her blessings. She tells him that he’s the best, and he agrees, then she leaves him with Tony. Tony inspects all the clone portraits, his sisters, and reckons he’d get along with the one with dreadlocks but probably not so much the soccer mom, which I would have to agree with. Felix tells Tony that he can crash for now, away from the drama of it all.

Still in her office, Ethan gives Rachel a list of things he’ll need if he’s going to help them find the Kira-less cure for the illness that’s killing Cosima. Being in the room alone with her father, their creator, after all this time, she can’t help but ask: Why Sarah? Why was the “unmonitored tramp” the one who was the best of them, the one who could conceive a child? Ethan corrects her; Sarah isn’t the only success, she’s a failure. The clones were barren by design.

During this conversation, and the one in which Rachel introduces Duncan to Delphine, we see flashes of a tantrum Rachel presumably throws when she is finally alone again. Absolutely trashing her office in the wake of feeling like suddenly everything is out of her control.

Art returns to Felix’s loft and says that the DYAD is after Tony and it’s time for him to disappear. Felix isn’t worried about Tony, he knows he can take care of himself, but he gives him a clone phone just in case. Tony gives Felix a kiss goodbye, calls him a sister-kisser, and disappears.

Cosima and Scott, the cutest nerd duo, are running around the lab, making sure it’s perfect for Ethan Duncan’s arrival. Scott starts rambling about 324B21 again and Cosima finally tells him: It’s her. She’s 324B21. This washes over Scott and he looks at her in awe. He tells her it’s an honor to be working for her, though there’s a hint of sadness in his eyes. It’s not just science anymore, not just a theory or an unknown subject. This is his friend, and he knows how serious this illness is.

Delphine walks Duncan into the lab and Cosima jokes that it’s nice to meet her maker. He asks her to call her Ethan, but she doesn’t have the chance to call him anything, because she has a coughing fit that lands her on the floor, seizing, and her three fellow scientists frantically try to help her. Delphine calls out Cosima’s name and the pain and fear in her voice is heart-wrenching.

Sarah and Kira are sleeping in Kira’s bed, but Kira sneaks out and picks up Ethan’s copy of The Island of Doctor Moreau. She opens it to find science scribbles all over it, and knowing Kira, probably uses them to figure out all the secrets of the universe.

As a bonus image, this was a hard shot to see but I think it’s beautiful how Cosima got her lab and her persian rug and her couch and is lying on it with her science girlfriend. You know, before The Incident. What did you think of “Variable and Full of Perturbation”? Here are some of our favorite #clonesbians tweets from this week:

                             

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