A new episode of Orphan Black is always an exciting prospect. Having binge-watched the first two seasons some time ago, the anticipation is killing me with Season Three, now having to wait a week for each new chapter.
This week we open with Mrs. Johanssen armed with a rifle, having just gunned down Mark in the corn field. Sarah is hiding in the barn – which is what I would do if I were not armed. A location where she comes full circle and finds herself in at the close of the episode too. Rushing out of Mrs. Johanssen’s view, Sarah is lucky to find Mark’s gun. And seconds later, Mark himself – and he is still alive!
More extreme grossness ensues when Sarah helps dislodge the bullet from Mark’s leg. With squelching sounds and everything. All the while Sarah is bargaining Mark for information. When he passes out, Sarah sets off digging for information herself, and discovering vital clues linking the Johanssen’s to the cloning experiments, and she calls Cosima with the news. Mark soon tracks Sarah down again though, and she also tells him of the discovery.
Meanwhile, a seemingly blind Mr Appleyard has taken these prolethian strays in. Another bunch of creep weirdo, oh good. Young Gracie starts to feel pains and discovers some bleeding. Losing the child, Mrs. Johanssen tells Gracie that God took the child for her lack of belief and faith, and that she is no longer welcome there. Or rather, they don’t need her any more. Who says family values are dead?
Some place far off, Helena shields her crafty and cunning intelligence with her mad-as-hell exterior and actions, and she manages to get a glimpse of the kind of shenanigans taking place at the military base. She has the scorpion’s encouragement for company of course. Fashioning a lock pick from a piece of pork chop bone and mastering the art of pretending to be asleep, Helena roams free. She finds a restrained Castor named Parsons, brain clearly exposed, and begging for his own death. Helena is all too aware of how her brothers and sisters have been made to suffer, and wonder when this pain will end.
In the ‘burbs, Donnie thinks he was followed while campaigning for Alison’s school trustee efforts. Later leisurely eating a sandwich in their garden, the said stalker is some kind of human end trails of Ramone (the drug dealer) and insists they have a meeting with his boss. Alison is not thrilled that Donnie brings a gun to the meeting. “Remember what happened last time you had a gun in a car?” she reminds him. Turns out the meeting is with an old high school boyfriend of Alison’s. And as well as asking him if he still has that old motorcycle, offers him double what Ramone acquired if she is just allowed to get on with it.
Cosima and Scott are still trying to figure out the coding set out in The Island of Dr Moreau book. Felix senses quite literally that Cosima is still pining for Delphine – though his whiff of French cigarettes may be up there with Dr. Lector smelling Evyan skin cream on Clarice. They head to a bar, Felix’s idea no doubt, were he entices Cosima with the potential of internet dating. Yeah, we all know that is not Cosima’s thing.
So with the brain-stabbing and bullet-hole poking, Orphan Black remains fearless in its gruesome exposure. It also reverts back to the lighter side of reality with the Hendrix’s – though I am not condoning drug-dealing. The show certainly has several, clearly-defined story strands now. And we may still be scratching our heads a little bit as to what is truly happening or where it is going or what it all means. We remain a captivated audience as a result.
