Orphan Black 2.04 “Governed as It Were by Chance”

NOTE: There will be spoilers.

Here’s where our certainties stand at the end of Episode 3:

1. Alison was on a fast track to hell, via falling off the stage during a performance.
2. Cosima continued her research on Jenny Fitzsimmons.
3. Rachel basically runs the day-to-day operations at Dyad. Leekie sticks to the science.
4. Donnie is a dolt.
5. Tomas is dead.
6. Siobhán took Kira to safety, but was double crossed by her former friends.
7. Helena is “married” to Henrick.
8. Cal, a former drone tech designer of some sort, is Kira’s father.
9. Kira remained with Cal, Sarah was abducted by Daniel.

“I didn’t know what else to do.”

Being hit by cars is oddly common on Orphan Black. In a family of four, depending on how you count Siobhán and Cal, approximately half of them have been hit by a car. In season one it was Kira and now it’s apparently Sarah’s turn.

Kira’s accident demonstrated her quicker-than-normal healing ability.  I’m not sure what we can learn from Sarah’s accident, other than Cal is willing to take some serious risks and and Sarah is not very good at hiding a car.  Note to Sarah, you shouldn’t take advice on how to hide a car from Back to the Future (h/t Reddit).

This episode is the first time we see some cracks in Sarah’s usually calculating, calm demeanor.  While it would be easy to attribute this to her immediate circumstances, those cracks grow continue to grow wider as the episode goes on.

To an extent, the start of this episode felt a bit like Deus Ex Cal. His daring rescue, the escape plan, the farmhouse and the mobile home (with internet access!) seemed a bit too convenient given the time frame in which it all came together. Did Cal have some prior knowledge of the events?  Or, is he just really well prepared (read: paranoid) in case of emergency?

We know that Sarah believes she’s protecting Cal by keeping him in the dark, but, Cal’s patience is wearing thin. While it is possible that he’s simply doing his best to come to grips with his new reality regarding Kira and Sarah, I’m not ready to rule out ulterior motives. I noticed a not-so-subtle “tell” when Sarah finally broke down and mentioned the DYAD Group.  It didn’t seem as if it was the first time he had heard their name.  It seems just as likely that Cal is concerned with more than just Sarah and Kira’s welfare.  Furthermore, Sarah’s insistence that Cal is outside of the issues she’s facing makes me almost certain that the opposite is true.

“I don’t believe I’ve ever done ‘the nasty.’”

Alison finds herself in a rehab center after her figurative and literal fall last week. She doesn’t remember anything before the show started.  Felix does his best to help her remember, as well as trying to frame the situation as a positive thing. He refers to it as a “week at the spa” and points out that it does get her away from Donnie for a while.  Unfortunately, the reprieve from Donnie lasts just long enough for her to get back to her room.  Donnie tells her that she has to complete the rehab otherwise she’ll never see her kids again. In spite of the fact that he spins it as the best outcome for her and her children, Alison is pretty much being held captive.

It struck me as an odd choice to sideline Alison in a rehab facility.  Initially it seemed like a plot device to shift focus off of her for a while.  The cast has gotten much larger, so it would allow for a smaller focus.  However, things became a bit more clear during Alison’s discussion with the nurse regarding the availability of drugs, specifically birth control.  It now seems as if Alison might have found herself free of one monitor only to be surrounded by an entire staff of them.  The nurse might not be aware of Dr. Leekie, but that doesn’t mean the facility can’t be connected to the DYAD Group at some level.

“Go back to hell where you belong!”

Grace not only doesn’t mind her father when it comes to Helena, but she also apparently hasn’t been paying a whole of attention either.  Helena has survived attempts on her life by all manner of weapons, including a bullet.  Why Grace thought she’d succeed where others have failed, using a pillow, is beyond me.  Regardless, she’s lucky Helena was still as drugged as she was, otherwise she might experience something much more painful than being unconscious.

During Helena’s escape she hides in a very surgical room, where she experiences some sort of flashback.  From what we’re able to see of Helena’s broken memory, it appears that cows aren’t the only things artificially inseminated on the farm.

I want to point out that Helena took Grace’s boots before she began her escape. This particular detail doesn’t really impact the story in any way, but it does illustrate the level of detail involved in its production.  Helena is a survivor, it’s not unreasonable to suspect that she could have escaped barefoot. The boots were a great touch and give just an extra bit of insight into the mind of Helena.  This obviously was not her first escape from lousy odds.  It would be very easy to overlook these kinds of details in favor of the bigger story.  So far, Orphan Black has done a fantastic job of avoiding too much gratuitous hand-waving and I think the story is stronger as a result. The little things matter.

“They can take all the pictures they want, there’s nothing to see here.”

Ah Henrick, if only you realized how wrong you were. Art isn’t even being a little subtle with his photography, and, as a result, he inadvertently becomes Helena’s lifeline.  I admit to enjoying his verbal smackdown of Mark and his fellow cowboys, buying Helena some time to get further away.  I still don’t know what Art’s end game is, but it does speak volumes that he chose to help Helena get away as opposed to helping the Proletheans catch her.

Initially I thought Art might have some existing Prolethean ties, but after doing more research (read: checking Reddit) I no longer think so. It does seem that the Proletheans have been on the radar of law enforcement for quite a while and Art is simply picking up from existing data. So, the question is, what exactly caused the authorities to become interested in the Proletheans in the first place.

“Eyes that could make me stab my own mum if they asked.”

First things first, is there a genre show that Roger R. Cross hasn’t been on? I feel like that guy shows up everywhere.  He’s in the future, he’s in Starling City, he’s Siobhán’s former lover.

“If Sarah digs any further into this, a whole world of shit is going to unravel.”

Carlton tells Siobhán that he’s come back from the UK after hearing that Brenda had been “compromised.”  It seems that he and someone named Cassof were affiliated with Project LEDA.  Cassof was the “ferryman” while Carlton was responsible for smuggling Sarah from Amelia to Siobhán, an act for which he was arrested and served 15 years in prison.  We don’t know the exact reasons why Brenda’s situation compelled him to return, but he may not actually know himself.  He tells Siobhán that she knows more than he does at this point. Siobhán insists on a meeting with Cassof in order to get as far out in front of Sarah as possible.

“I’ll have you know I’m versed in Krav Maga.”

Sarah must really trust Cal. For the second time she has left her in his care, although this time she had at least had a choice in the matter.  She and Fee return to Siobhán’s house to try to go through whatever they can to find information on Project LEDA.  Cosima filled Sarah in on the history of the mythological Leda and posited that it might have had some sort of military application (weaponized clones??).  Fee and Sarah discover that the people in the photo are Susan and Ethan Duncan, Rachel’s “parents.”  They also learn that the lab destroyed in an explosion, possibly at the hands of the same people with whom Siobhán and Carlton were working.  The Duncans, four of their colleagues, and presumably Project LEDA, are all killed in the explosion.

Sarah has been keeping Rachel at bay by impersonating Daniel via SMS.  After discovering the Duncans she decides to take that one step further and impersonates Rachel in order to get into her apartment. Felix takes the newspaper clippings about the Duncans to Cosima to add to her research into Project LEDA.  As they leave the house we see someone step out from inside a closet (or stair well?), but we only see a coat and no other identifying features.

“Straight out of Cold Bitch Digest.”

Another quick aside, and something I might have mentioned before, Rachel and Sarah have two very distinct types of British accents. Hearing Sarah bounce between her accent and the more “posh” sounding Rachel is even more amazing when you consider that it is the same actress.  I’m always impressed at how well Sarah is able to impersonate the other clones and their voices while making it obvious that it is Sarah doing an impersonation and not just Tatiana Maslany doing another character’s voice.

Once Sarah arrives at Rachel’s apartment she receives a phone call from Cosima with more details on the Duncans. They were British geneticists who had published a few papers up until around 1976 when they seem to have gone off the grid.  The consensus is that this move to secrecy most likely coincided with the start of Project LEDA.  According to Cosima, Rachel was was probably raised as a “self-aware” clone, which would create narcissistic tendencies and possibly indicate a very “clinical” home life, devoid of love and affection.  However, Sarah finds a video tape that would shows the exact opposite kind of life for Rachel. Was Rachel the young girl in the video with the Duncans? Did Rachel’s life take a turn when her “parents” died in the lab explosion? More importantly, how did Rachel end up as the Duncans’ child??

The trip down Rachel’s memory lane is abruptly cut short by a very much alive, and very agitated, Daniel. It seems that Daniel is Rachel’s lover and monitor, and has come back home to regroup after surviving(!) the car accident. We overhear his side of of a conversation with a very concerned Aldous Leekie.  Unfortunately, the phone call doesn’t prove to be distracting enough to allow Sarah to escape.  She attempts to leverage her worth to Leekie to convince Daniel to let her go, but that doesn’t go as planned.  Daniel points out that he is willing to do what Leekie won’t do, as well as pointing out that he has a bit of a personal score to settle with Sarah (presumably for the car crash?).

“There’s already too many of you.”

Earlier I noted that there were cracks starting to show in Sarah’s usually calm demeanor. By this point those cracks are more like canyons.  She manages to put up a good front, but it is almost entirely bravado. Sarah is legitimately scared, something that I don’t believe we’ve seen up to this point.  Eventually her bravado simply fades away to begging, appealing to Daniel that hurting her would be like hurting Rachel. Daniel remains very cold and unphased as he begins to slice just behind Sarah’s ear, until music from another room interrupts him.

“I followed you from Mother’s house.”

Daniel isn’t gone very long before he finds himself bleeding out from a slice across his throat. Helena appears in the doorway, her torn and tattered wedding dress covered in Daniel’s blood. At this point Sarah is completely overwhelmed and can only manage to scream and cry.  Helena, knife in hand, walks up to Sarah and tells her that they “were meant to be together.”  There aren’t words to describe the look of terror on Sarah’s face at this moment. Helena is still carrying the knife she used to kill Daniel and uses it to point to her abdomen as she tells Sarah that she thinks Henrick took something from her.  Helena then reaches out and clings to Sarah in a show of affection, as if she’s relieved to see Sarah again.

In many ways Helena is like a very frightened child.  A frightened child who is also a ridiculously well-trained assassin. Kira said that she knew Sarah had a guardian angel. At the time it seemed like Kira was just referring to the origami butterfly that she gave Sarah before she left. Perhaps Kira, who seems to know quite a few things that most seven year olds would not, was actually talking about Helena? Could there be some sort of bond, like the “sixth sense” that twins are often rumoured to experience? It’s also worth pointing out that Kira is one of the few people to have had a positive encounter with Helena.

“Just when the night is darkest, he shines a light.”

Grace survived her bout with stupidity, but the search party didn’t fare so well in their hunt for Helena. However, Henrick seems to be unphased by either development. He is more fascinated with what appears to be embryonic cell division.  It turns out that they didn’t inseminate Helena, they extracted her eggs!

The pacing of this episode felt a little different than the previous three.  There were more short scenes primarily focusing on and bouncing between Sarah, Helena and Allison in rapid succession.  Even with the short sequences, the first half of the show did a great job building slowly.  The speed of the episode kept pace with the decline of Sarah’s calm and confidence. By the halfway point, just prior to the discovery about Rachel’s parents, the pace went from a steady stream to a crashing wave.  All of that lead up to one of the most emotional, and impactful, climaxes yet.

Here’s where we stand after four episodes:

1. Alison is in rehab (and Donnie is still a dolt.)
2. Cosima, despite her health, remains a research machine!
3. Rachel’s parents were the people in the photo of Project LEDA.
4. RACHEL HAD PARENTS! (I think this warranted a second note)
5. Siobhán is very deeply involved in something related to Project LEDA and wants to keep Sarah from toppling a very delicate balance.
6. Kira is safe with Kal
7. Daniel is dead (??).
8. Helena had some of her eggs extracted by Henrick, who then fertilized them.