Previously on Orphan Black, Cosima died but then came back, Krystal almost got abducted by Castor, Mother Coady used the Castor clones to run tests on random unsuspecting girls and also tested Sarah but she was fine, Paul blew up Camp Castor, Jason kissed Alison, Mama Hendrix sold Alison her store named Bubbles, Scott found out Rachel knows how to decode the book Professor Duncan left them and Cosima bled too much for comfort.
Phew. So much HAPPENS on this show; no room for filler.
We open with a girl doing nails, which is enough to make you wonder if you’re even on the right channel if you hadn’t just spent 10 minutes watching the “previously on” segment. But it turns out it’s Delphine getting her nails done by the mysterious Leda clone named Krystal, who is happily spilling her guts about that one time she was almost kidnapped by twins who killed her boyfriend. Krystal says she’s just like Delphine, because Delphine is a doctor and Krystal’s a healer of sorts. She looks at Delphine earnestly and says she’s been through a lot but you just can’t crush the human spirit.
I hope you feel that way next week…
In Mexico, our favorite waitress is going about her business when a burned hand grabs hers. Victoria Coady lives. She asks the waitress about twins, a blonde and a brunette, but our waitress-bless her non-traitorous soul- pretends to not be able to speak English. Coady knows she’s full of it, but the waitress still plays dumb. Paul’s double-crossing man shows up and says Victoria and Rudy are lucky to be alive, and that he has a source inside Leda. Coady realizes now that this is bigger than Castor vs. Leda, bigger than she ever suspected. But he tells her that her only job is to keep her boys alive as long as possible.
On the street, Delphine admires her new nails, and is satisfied enough with the job to believe Krystal is not a threat to Leda. Hector had been her monitor, and with him dead, they sent three more monitors to vie for her attention, and they’ll wait to see who Krystal chooses. Which I guess makes them feel like it’s okay? But it’s not. Anyway, Rachel’s speech is improving but her mobility is not, which is a bummer for Delphine who would have put a pillow over the ProClone’s face herself if it didn’t look quite so much like her ex-girlfriend’s.
Speak of the dreadlocked devil, Cosima is skyping with Sarah, glad to have her sestra back.
Still the hottest clone. HOW?
She assures Sarah that her episode in the tub was gross but she’s fine, she promises. She sciences at Sarah for a bit, and Sarah offers her a tooth of her own, making Cosima realize she didn’t keep up with her mumbo jumbo at all. Cosima shifts position and Sarah realizes she doesn’t recognize her sister’s surroundings. Cosima waves it off as just a “friend’s” but Sarah knows better. Cosima promises she’s happy, and that’s all Sarah really wants. For everyone.
Even if she has to kill for them to get it.
I love that Sarah has a very different, but very sisterly relationship with her fellow clones. Alison is the bossy one, Helena is the one she has to protect, Rachel is the bitch they would love to pretend they weren’t related to at all. But Cosima is her friend, her confidant; the only one she doesn’t always have her guard up around, the only one she knows understands that it actually might not be okay.
Sarah tells Cosima that she wants to find a way forward, that she keeps thinking about Beth and finishing what she started. Cosima thinks about Beth too, and promises Sarah she hasn’t lost anyone yet, and she won’t. Shay comes home, so Cosima has to go, but before she hangs up, Cosima tells Sarah to call Scott if she’s feeling blue and wants a little cheering up in the form of clues.
In the ‘burbs, Donnie is distraught because he finally got Alison all to himself in a storyline and Felix is dragging Gracie and Helena into it, essentially dragging Ali back into Clone Club. Alison promises Helena is fine, and so good with kids-in fact, she’s playing with Gemma upstairs right now-and besides Felix is quasi-blackmailing them, so IT’s settled.
Helena tucks her frozen babies in upstairs and comes trotting down to the basement, dressed like Alison, politely thanking her sestra for the new wardrobe, even if she looks absolutely absurd.
And so, so adorable.
In her apartment, Shay does some holistic healing on Cosima, who is joking about being in the corpse pose and coughing WAY TOO MUCH. She asks Shay her thoughts on near-death experiences, and Shay says that she thinks before you die, you see the one thing you love more than anything in the whole world. The one thing that consumes the biggest part of your heart. And she says that sometimes, that thing is strong enough to lead you back to life. Cosima was half hoping Shay would have just flat-out called her crazy, but before she can think too much on what it all means, Shay gets into her breathspace, sending all thoughts of crazy science skittering back behind the locked door in her heart.
Shots like this make me too gay to function.
Upon her request, Scott tells Sarah everything they know so far about the book, including that Cosima didn’t want to tell Delphine. Scott tries to get Sarah on his pro-telling side, but Sarah agrees with Cos, Delphine is too close to Topside to trust her. Sarah knows this means her only option is to confront Rachel.
The ProClone herself puts on a little makeup to look her very best for her sestra before Sarah skypes in. Sarah compliments her sister’s new look, and Rachel sarcasms right back at her.
“One booty joke and I will FIND a hook to kill you with.”
Rachel tells Sarah that she’s sure her father left the book with Kira because he would have wanted Rachel and Sarah to cooperate. And she says it almost desperately, though whether it’s because words are hard for her or because it’s what she wants to is hard to say. She writes her demands; she’ll help them decode the book if they help her escape to have a quiet life in Taiwan.
To prove she can do it, she translates a page of the book, and it’s a riddle: In Londontown, we all fell down, and Castor woke from slumber. Which sounds like it should be something that little girl from Hush should be singing.
Sarah is telling Mrs. S that she thinks they need to do what Rachel wants to get what’s in the book when Gracie comes in. S sends Gracie upstairs, but doesn’t wait for her to get very far before reiterating the whole plan, in detail. She calls the Castor boys mayflies, which brings Gracie right back down, worried about her husband, abomination or not. Sarah feels a little bad for the girl and assures her that Mark was the least horrible of all the horrible Castor clones, probably.
Cosima shows Shay around her lab at DYAD and introduces her to Scott. Cosima says Scott loves lesbians and Scott twitches because there really is no good response to that, excepting to ask if he can sequence her genome. Which might have sounded like a come-on if literally anyone else besides Scott said it. Shay swoons over Runewars and tries to snatch the Island of Dr. Moreau because she loves Warehouse 13 and has read everything the real H.G. Wells wrote. Cosima shoves it in Scott’s bag and says he’s anal about his things and Shay is just starting to apologize when Delphine walks in.
Not even a fake smile for Shay.
Delphine’s words are calm and polite but her eyes are screaming obscenities in Shay’s general direction while she asks to speak to Cosima. Shay starts to leave, but Cosima won’t let her, not just because Delphine is trying to be territorial. But when Cosima realizes what Delphine is there about, she agrees that Shay should go and Scott walks her out.
Delphine assures Cosima that her disapproval of Shay has nothing to do with them being lovers, but more to do with the fact that they know little to nothing about her, so surely shouldn’t be lettering her wander around the DYAD lab. Delphine looks at Cosima and implores her to work with her as a colleague, leaving the crazy science out of it.
“Now all I can think about is crazy science.”
At Bubbles, Donnie is teaching Helena how to make soap when Helena inexplicably starts to hit on him, calling him a baby ox, and Donnie’s response makes her laugh that unencumbered, spastic, wild bray laugh of hers that you can’t help but smile when you hear even though it’s a little alarming.
Joy at its rawest.
Donnie leaves her with the soap to confront Alison about Jason kissing Cosima when she was dressed up as Alison. Ali shrugs it off and says she’ll handle it and turns to welcome Gracie to her first day of work at Bubbles.
When Gracie comes into the back room, Helena greets her politely. Gracie apologizes for losing their baby, but Helena doesn’t blame her. She says Gracie will be her baby’s auntie and hugs her, kissing her on the cheek, and comforting her in a way only Helena could.
Sarah and Felix go on a mission to steal Krystal’s identity to get Rachel out of the country. Sarah tells Felix that he has to be swift and make sure she doesn’t catch on. She doesn’t want to burden Krystal with Clone Club membership. She doesn’t need another soul to carry on her shoulders.
Felix struts in and speaks in a sexy southern drawl (which actually isn’t too far from Jordan’s real voice) and says he has an appointment with Krystal, who is delighted to meet this handsome stranger.
Capturing every smile in case it’s her last.
Krystal tells Felix her life story, the same way she told Delphine, and says that her biggest fears are twins and clowns. Felix says, “Clones? What clones? You’re not a clone?!” and she says “clown” again so he distracts her from his flub with some heavy flirting. He cleverly gets some potential password information from her by asking her about her porn name, saying it’s your first pet plus your mother’s maiden name. (Which I think is actually the name of your first pet and the street you grew up on. Which would make mine Midnight Hancock…)
Krystal takes a tangent then, feeling close to Felix now, and asks if he’s ever felt like something wasn’t quite adding up. Her boyfriends come in two year cycles, almost to the day. Hector’s murder was dropped by the police pretty quickly. She just gets the feeling everyone around her knows something they won’t let her in on. Sarah can tell Felix is one glittery tear away from breaking rule #1 of Clone Club so she tells him to GTFO. Felix excuses himself to the bathroom but slips into the locker room instead, easily spotting Krystal’s notebook because she has no walls or armor. She’s an open book. Speaking of books, she has one. A notebook with the mark of Castor on it, in which she has been documenting all the things in her life that don’t quite add up.
Felix tells Krystal he has to go, and she thinks she talked too much, got too paranoid and scared him away. So Felix rips out his earpiece, drops his accent, and says it’s time for real talk: You is kind, you is smart, you is important. He tells her she’s one of a kind, and she is not alone.
Fee gets back in the car and the brother-sister grifter duo both feel like shite about the whole situation.
Scott meanders home from DYAD to his adorable apartment full of Funkos and action figures and exactly all the things you would expect to find in Scott’s apartment. Unfortunately, something you wouldn’t expect to find was also there: Rudy. And he’s holding Scott’s kitty like the evil villain he is.
Scott does his best not to cry while Rudy holds his big mean hands way too close to the kitty’s neck for my liking and demands Scott give him The Island of Dr. Moreau. Which means he has been given top-secret, very specific intel.
At DYAD, Delphine tells Cosima that she has bad news and presents a paper. A Polish LEDA clone died. Within the next month, Cosima will need a new treatment, but she doesn’t want to harvest Kira (even though she doesn’t need those baby teeth anyway!) because it’s not fair.
I thought I was leaning toward the Shaysima ship but this hand-touch set my soul on FIRE.
Delphine says fine, let’s brainstorm, let’s work together like that one time on Felix’s couch, and Cosima is seriously considering telling her everything when a panicked Scott calls Delphine and her face falls as she turns to her favorite little geek monkey and snaps, “What book?” and Cos knows she’s in trouble.
In the suburbs, Alison invites Jason to her shop to talk about the kiss. Jason takes this as an invitation to kiss her again and he does just that. She tries to send him away (though the motion seems a little half-hearted) and he tells her they’re all in bed together now, an expression she doesn’t really love.
Though I wouldn’t be surprised if Ali was the first to have a threesome on this show.
Delphine and Cosima go over to Scott’s apartment, and Delphine scolds them both like a principal with naughty students. Can you imagine what the car ride over was like? Delphine seething and murmuring “merde” every so often and Cosima shifting uncomfortably in the passenger seat and trying to turn on the radio but Delphine just snapping it off. Delphine says that Castor has the book because they didn’t trust Delphine with it. She asks who else they told, so they confess Rachel knows because she’s the only one who can read it. Also they didn’t make a copy. Delphine looks like she’s ready to literally explode with anger, Scott looks sick, and Cosima looks devastated.
Dr. Neelan shows up at Krystal’s work and when she asks if she can help him, he says she can in a super creepy voice. Poor, sweet girl. She didn’t deserve this fate.
At Mrs. S’s, Sarah is a little upset because she wanted to go forward, not in circles, but Cosima told them to sit tight, so that’s what they’re doing. Someone who calls himself the Painmaker who looks like the only pain he could inflict would be to himself by accident. He’s from Scott’s Runewars group and is acting as a messenger to send Sarah something. Cosima explains (via skype) that it’s a copy of the book, to which Sarah warns her that Delphine will never forgive her, because she’s the biggest Cophine shipper of them all. (Actually, scrap that, I think Sarah is like me; she ships Cosima with happiness/aliveness above all.)
Cosima says this is her step forward, all they need now is Rachel.
“I’ll keep Delphine busy…with my tongue…”
Delphine goes to Rachel’s room and yells at her, wishing she had let the ProClone die, but Cosima needs her in the lab so she can’t beat her to death with her Hair Straightener of Badassery just now. Scott asks if he can stay behind to play with Rachel and Delphine gives him an hour, no more. But as soon as she’s gone, the guard giggles and reveals himself as another Runewars member, who has taken out the cameras. And in one of the most classically Orphan Black moments of the episode, Scott practically jumps up and down as Rachel speeds along as fast as her electric wheelchair will take her (read: not fast at all).
Rachel rolls to Mrs. S’s, where Sarah shows her all of Krystal’s credentials, which will be handed over when the book is fully translated. Sarah gives her a pencil (nicely this time) and tells her to get translating.
Meanwhile, Cosima gives Delphine her letter of resignation.
The distance between us.
In their own world, Jason responds to a text from Alison to meet her in the stockroom, but it’s Donnie. They fight and Jason ends up knocking Donnie clean out, and for a second I thought he was dead, and for the first time in three years I realized I don’t want Donnie to be gone forever.
At DYAD, Delphine tells Cosima she can’t quit, that everyone she meets could be a threat to her, including but not limited to Shay. Cosima tells her that she can’t do this, she can’t beg her to stay but not be with her, she can’t tell her she can’t be with Shay but not take her back. She tells Delphine she has to let her go.
“Cause I want it allll, or nothiiiing at alllll.”
Cosima says that the day Delphine left, she almost died. Not emotionally; she’s not being dramatic or hyperbolic. She really almost went into the light, but the thought of Delphine brought her back. But now she thinks they have to move on, because it’s too much. While she’s talking, despite her words saying the opposite thing, she’s walking toward Delphine, not purposefully, almost like she’s being drawn by a gravitational pull. Delphine whispers, “Come here” and pulls her close, and Cosima lets her. Delphine kisses her, soft and sweet, forgetting all the complicated things that are usually between them.
via orphanblack.tumblr.com
Cosima steps back, tearing herself out of orbit, and Delphine apologizes for overstepping. But then she adds that Cosima should have just trusted her.
At Mrs. S’s house, Rachel adds more to the rhyme. “Find the first, the beast, the curse, the original has a number.” And then the code H46239, which is probably the Castor original’s synthetic sequence, the way Cosima’s is 324B21.
Pirate crew of misfits.
Before Rachel can decode anymore, men with guns bust in with Dr. Neelan close behind. Neelan takes the book from Rachel’s clutches and claims it was Delphine who sent him. Rachel tries to shout about it being her father’s book, but falls out of her chair and has a seizure. At DYAD, Delphine takes the copy Neelan confiscated but says it’s useless without Rachel to read it. Neelan brushes it off and says he needs to take Rachel to surgery, but in the elevator, he and Rachel exchange mischievous looks.
Cosima and Scott are sad they only made the one copy, and that Delphine was onto them the whole time.
After surgery, Neelan says Rachel is in a coma, possibly forever. Delphine resumes her angry expression, accepts Cosima’s resignation, fires Scott, and gives Cosima a file about Shay before shooing them out of her sight.
Sarah, Felix and Mrs. S are trying to figure out what to do next when Mrs. S points out that right now their only clue is London. Felix knows what this means; they’re going home.
At the hospital, Neelan skypes with Rachel, who is in fact not in a coma, but in another country about to get a brand new eye. Instead it’s Krystal unconscious in his care, who is likely going to lose her perfectly good eyeball soon. Welcome to the trip, man.
What did you think of “Ruthless in Purpose and Insidious in Method”? Only two more episodes left. Are you as terrified as I am?
Here are some of our favorite #clonesbians tweets from this week:
Damn, that kiss. #Cophine #clonesbians
– Rachel Blakeman (@RachelATC) June 7, 2015
This coldness is not Delphine’s natural state. She is using 95% of her energy just stuffing her feelings. #OrphanBlack #Clonesbians
– Lucy Burton (@swirlOsquirrel) June 7, 2015
Dude, does anyone else think that Delphine and Shay know each other? I mean the way they look at each other… #clonesbians #CloneClub
– Evan Zarius Gorman (@EvanGorman123) June 7, 2015
Also was that the Castor clones’ tattoo design on Krystals pink Harriet the Spy notebook?! Where’d she get that?! #CloneClub #clonesbians
– Adrienne (@legacymermaid) June 7, 2015
Tatiana Maslany is an actual gift that we somehow get to enjoy every week and I’m not sure how we got this lucky. #OrphanBlack #clonesbians
– Nic (@njnic23) June 7, 2015
A pencil? Trigger warning for Rachel! #CloneClub #clonesbians #OrphanBlack
– Josh (@YankeeJosh) June 7, 2015
I’ve spent a good portion of the night yelling “COSIMA WHAT ARE YOU DOING” at my TV. #OrphanBlack #CloneClub #clonesbians
– TheOtherNic (@CloneNic) June 7, 2015
At some point Sarah turned into the voice of reason which means everyone is screwed. #OrphanBlack #clonesbians
– Chen Drachman (@shokoshik) June 7, 2015
“What kind of monster threatens a man’s cat?” -Felix asking the real questions #OrphanBlack #Clonesbians #CloneClub
– Casey (@excitable_trash) June 7, 2015
Rudy is trying out his Dr. Evil impersonation with that cat petting. you going to try sharks with lasers next? #clonesbians #OrphanBlack
– Jerzey (@jerzeyredhead) June 7, 2015
I love Delphine, but I love Shay, too! I guess polyamory is the only solution. #clonesbians
– Christine Golub (@CatLadyTine) June 7, 2015
What the fuck what the fuck what the fuck ?!?!?!!!!! #OrphanBlack #CloneClub #clonesbians
– Audrey (@pamplemoussee76) June 7, 2015
