Orphan Black season 2 episode 7 review: Knowledge Of Causes, And Secret Motions Of Things

This review contains spoilers.

2.7 Knowledge Of Causes, And Secret Motions Of Things

If you had asked me last week if I ever thought there’d come a day when I cared about Donnie Hendrix… well, I’d have had to care enough about Donnie Hendrix to actually bother to answer your question. This week’s episode sure did a heck of a job making him relevant, though, and here we are. What a world we live in.

At rehab, Allison and Vic continue to bond, leading her to open up to him and spill the beans about how Aynsley died. Naturally, he goes running straight to Angie and demands that she show up with paperwork proclaiming that his charges are dropped, and then he’ll tell her Allison’s secrets.

Unfortunately for him, Allison overhears this and brings Felix in on the case, which delights me to no end because there are certain character combinations that result in entertainment every single time they share a screen and high on that list are Felix and Allison as well as Felix and Vic. Vic demands that they bring Sarah to him so that he can make his formal apologies, which they do, but then Felix just goes ahead and drugs him instead because… well, it’s Felix and let’s be real, what else did anyone expect him to do?

I would like to describe for you what happens next, as Sarah is forced to impersonate Allison during a Family Day public role-play with Donnie, but this is one of those times where I simply can not do the reality of it justice. It’s brilliant. It’s probably one of the greatest things ever committed to film. If years from now, after human civilization has died out, aliens arrive and find only that scene as a record of our existence… I don’t think we could ask for a better representation, I really don’t.

And it leads to one of the best things this show has done in a very long time: Donnie walking in to find Sarah and Allison standing side by side and then reveal that he had no idea Allison was a clone. As it turns out, Donnie was recruited to be Allison’s monitor under the pretense that it was simply a very long sociological study. As Allison chews him out for spying on her all these years and even letting Dyad doctors probe her as she slept, it rapidly becomes apparent that not only has Donnie not known the full extent of what he’s been enabling, but he actually, genuinely loves her. There’s something unspeakably compelling, for reasons that I can’t yet put my finger on, about the fact that despite Allison’s utter determination to be unremarkably middle class and normal, she will never be the latter because of her genetics; meanwhile, Donnie has been determined to be different as part of the experiment, but turns out to be…exactly what he’s always seemed to be. Normal. Middle class. Unremarkable in almost every way. Maybe that is part of what draws them to each other, in the end.

Meanwhile, Sarah has her hands full this week, dealing with her inability to trust Mrs S, figuring out what to do with Dr Duncan, and keeping Kira safe. And although she certainly has her part to play this week, ultimately the episode doesn’t really focus on her; she mostly functions to move along other stories. As much as I love Sarah (and I do, a lot), I think the show was well-served this week to delve into other characters for a change.

Elsewhere, Cosima receives her first treatment for the masses in her uterus and then promptly finds out that the stem cells being used to treat her came from Kira. She promptly tells Delphine off for hiding it from her, and as much as I like Delphine, between this and giving Cosima’s blood to Leekie against her wishes, she was due for this. Unfortunately for Cosima, she really does need the treatment, and so she’s forced to call Sarah to ask her for help. Kira overhears that they got the stem cells from her tooth and promptly pulls another one out for her which is the sort of thing that makes me torn between tearing up at Kira’s sweetness and selflessness or lamenting at what they’ll do when she runs out of baby teeth.

But the biggest story this week is Mrs S’s plan to divide and conquer Dyad: first she reveals to Leekie that she can give him Dr Duncan in exchange for Kira’s safety, then she invites Rachel over to see her father for the first time in twenty years. Rachel is, rightly, infuriated, and with the help of a friend of Leekie’s named Marian, she unceremoniously kicks him out of the company and tells him he’ll run and not look back if he knows what’s good for him. And he does, right up until Donnie pulls his car up alongside Leekie, takes out a gun, and tells him to get in or else. And because it’s Donnie, and he literally can not do anything right, he finally seems to be relenting on the whole shooting him thing…and then promptly shoots Leekie on accident, killing him instantly.

So many questions. Who is Marian? Who is our villain now that Leekie is out of the picture? Kira’s cells are a finite resource, aren’t they? (Note: That’s a real question; biology is not my strong suit, though I think stem cells are only present in very young people, and eventually your body stops making them. But it is entirely possible that I am entirely wrong; scientists in the comments, correct me!) Is Vic out of the picture now? Or will he just tell Angie about Allison once he wakes up? Who was spying on Cal through his webcam?

See you next week, Clone Club, where hopefully we find out exactly how Donnie plans on dealing with Leekie’s body.

Read Kaci’s review of the previous episode, To Hound Nature In Her Wanderings, here.

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