Orphan Black Scarred by Many Past Frustrations Review

Orphan is the new Black as Helena and Sara find themselves doing hard time in this week’s visit with the Clone Club, but the reunion between the sistras wasn’t such a cheerful one as Helena seemed to still hold a bit of a grudge.

As Sara was tossed into a Castor cell after her capture last week, it seemed that Helena was much more suited for prison life, I mean; Sara didn’t have an imaginary scorpion mascot to talk to or anything! By the way, it should be noted that in the IMDB entry for this week’s episode, Tatiana Maslany is listed as Sara, Helena, Cosima AND the Scorpion. Now that’s some serious range-playing a street punk, a lesbian scientist, a crazy Ukrainian and a poisonous insect! Tatiana can truly do it all.

And this episode she does just that. Let’s start with Sara. Sara not only had to acclimate to life living in a Castor prison but she also had to come to terms with the fact that for all intents and purposes, she betrayed Helena. Or at least that’s how Helena saw it and now they were both locked up in a Castor pit. This gave us a chance to witness some sisterly bonding as Helena took Sara to task for their predicament. At times, Helena seemed liked she was buying what Sara was selling but at other times, Helena wanted no part of her sister’s excuses. The imprisonment was a great catharsis for both Sara and Helena and was also a way to highlight the stark difference between the two. Nature versus nurture indeed.

But that was all secondary to Helena’s riveting escape from the prison. I won’t give you a play by play, but let us say it involved self flagellation, tweezers, and butter. With Helena out of her cell, we came to the moment where Helena had to choose whether to punish Sara for the betrayal that put her in prison in the first place or freeing and escaping with her sister.  It seemed that Helena was nothing if not vengeful and left Sara there to rot.

Now, this was an intensely heartbreaking moment for Helena. Last season, we got to witness Helena find her humanity and find family with Sara, Alison, and Cosima. But now, after this betrayal, Helena was back in survivor mode, was back listening to that whispering scorpion that told her to abandon her sistra. This left Sara in the hellhole of Castor, in a place that only stopped waterboarding Helena because she was pregnant. Well, Sara ain’t pregnant so Helena’s abandonment might have some horrific consequences moving forward. But there is hope, as Helena made it over the wall she seemed to pause for a moment, to ignore the scorpion. Perhaps a late rescue is on the way for Sara? If not, Sara might become better acquainted with her Castor brothers and the Joseph Mengele like Virginia Cody.

Back on the home front we had some developments as well. Mrs. S and Felix began to grow concerned over Sara’s recent disappearance but they were preoccupied by the arrival of everyone’s red headed child of God Gracie. Gracie was recently exiled from the Proletheans and was on her own in the big bad world. What better way to become acclimated with the sins of the flesh, with drink and with song than through the expert tutelage of dear Felix? Yup, after years of playing nun, Gracie showed up on Mrs. S’s door, got her hands on one of Sara’s hottest outfits and was ready to go party. Well, that would have ended horribly. Can you imagine the almost Amish Gracie hitting da club? No and neither could Felix who gave her some gin and juice, cranked some tunes and made sure da club was in da house to insure that Gracie didn’t get da assaulted. It all ended a bit tragically as Gracie collapsed in mid sip.

This serious turn of event took us back to Castor as Paul found one of the clone boy’s journals. One that contains detailed notes on every woman the clone boys had sex with out in the world along with a lock of hair. It turned out that every woman the clones were with now had some kind of red eyed sex disease and Gracie has it too thanks to her time married to Mark. Of course S and Felix were now caught up in it thanks to Gracie as is Art who was following up on that girl that the clone boys sexually assaulted a few episodes back. With all this, the series main arc grew to epic proportions as an advanced web of disease and manipulation has spread out beyond our four clone sisters to encompass the world.

Things may have got high stakes with Castor but poor Cosima was too busy to notice because she had herself a date. This week, Cosima rebounded and rebounded hard on the scintillating and intriguing Shay. The new age Shay couldn’t be much different than Cosima but the two hit it off. In fact, their Sapphire (the Orphan Black version of Tinder) date was the most realistically awkward date I have ever seen on TV. With both Cos and Shay transitioning from self-conscious to heated during the course of a small talk session. It was another moment that spoke to the versatility of Maslany as she sold the uncomfortable but heated body language absolutely perfectly. With the clone conspiracy growing and growing one can only hope that Shay is not more than she seems. But seriously, after three seasons of this awesome but frequently cruel show, we know that can’t possibly be the case, right?