Things are getting interesting on ‘Orphan Black’. Season 2 presented its penultimate episode this week. After last week’s trans-clone episode, which may have been the worst the series has ever done, this week’s entry is packed with enough action and humor to rank among the show’s best episodes.
Things continue to look bad for Cosima, despite the fact that Ethan Duncan is now at Dyad and working to find a cure for her. In the meantime, Cosima needs more than just another tooth from young Kira. She needs her bone marrow. Sarah decides it should be up to Kira what happens, so she talks to her young daughter. After confirming from her mother that Cosima might die if she doesn’t help, the little girl agrees to donate her bone marrow.
Having not appeared in a couple of episodes, we finally catch up with Helena this week. She’s back at the Prolethians’ farmhouse and has been injected with fertile eggs by Henrik. Now pregnant, Helena is introduced to all the other children on the farm, although at the time she doesn’t realize they’re all Henrik’s daughters. (He’s been injecting eggs fertilized with his sperm into all the women on the farm.) Later in the episode, after Gracie gets injected with eggs as well, she explains to Helena what Henrik has been doing.
Helena tries to escape with Gracie, but Henrik catches them, knocking Helena down with the butt of his gun and locking Gracie back up. Mark shows up to try and free Gracie, but Henrik orders him not to. However, Henrik is so distracted talking to Mark that he doesn’t see Helena coming up from behind. She gets him into a headlock and tells Mark and Gracie to make a run for it – which they do. Helena then straps Henrik to a medical table and decides to do some insemination of her own. She takes one of the large insertion devices and shoves it up… well, you can guess where! The last image of Helena in this episode is her walking away from the farm as it burns in the background. Viewers are left with the impression that she killed Henrik and set fire to the place – but this being ‘Orphan Black’, one can never be sure.
The most humorous and entertaining bits of this week’s episode come from Alison and Donnie, as they work together to figure out what to do with Dr. Leekie’s body. Back in Season One, Alison showed a penchant for cleaning and keeping the house tidy, so it’s perhaps no surprise that she takes the lead here as the married couple bury Leekie under cement in their own garage. Their project is interrupted, however, when Vic shows up at the house.
After they ask him to leave, Donnie (who really man-ups in this episode, adding a lot of appeal to his character) catches Vic lurking outside the garage and threatens him with a gun. Vic says that he’s just following orders from Detective Deangelis, who’s in the back of a van nearby doing stakeout. Donnie goes out to find her and tells her to stay away from his family. Back in the garage, Alison admits that she’s now turned on by Donnie more than ever, and the two make out on top of the freezer where they’d stored Dr. Leekie’s body.
Kira is taken to a clinic where she has her bone marrow procedure. Sarah watches over her with Felix, Mrs. S and an associate of Mrs. S when Delphine arrives outside the clinic in a limo, insisting that she talk to Sarah right away. Sarah joins Delphine in the back of the limo. Delphine tells her she believes that Rachel is making a move against them and that Mrs. S’s associate is working for Rachel.
It then looks like Sarah rushes back inside the clinic to protect Kira – but it turns out that it’s not Sarah at all, but rather Rachel dressed to appear like Sarah. The real Sarah comes running back into the clinic, but it’s too late… Kira has vanished. Delphine was tricked into thinking the associate worked for Rachel, which gives Rachel the distraction she needed to sneak inside and nab Kira. The episode ends with Kira waking up inside a children’s bedroom with Rachel. Rachel tells Kira that she may learn to like her new home in time, just as she did when she was Kira’s age.
All in all, this is a pretty fun episode and a good set-up for next week’s finale. My only complaint this week is that the writers once again use Kira being kidnapped to advance the plot. I believe this is at least the third time (and the second time this season) that she’s been taken away from Sarah by one group of bad guys or another. Other than that quibble, this is one of the better entries in the show’s entire run.
