ORPHAN BLACK Is Governed by Crazy

Episode 2.04 “Governed As It Were By Chance”

[photos: Steve Wilkie & Jan Thijs for BBC AMERICA]

Hm. Not quite… sure… what to think on this one.

Let’s pick up where we left off last episode: truck slamming into the car with Daniel and Sarah. (side note: this has become a very tired cliché by now — time to retire this) Turns out it’s Cal coming to the rescue. And this thread gets very quiet and small while moving forward on several fronts, which is good because we don’t always need huge reveals and big sequences to get from plot point A to plot point B.

The whole episode is a little more compact than previous episodes, and it’s a good chance for everyone to catch a breath and get ready for the crazy. Because this hour sets up plenty of crazy.

Let’s take the Sarah/Cal track first. Cal’s become Sarah’s Number One Guy, supplanting Felix as her go-to guy for helping take care of Kira. Only now she needs to find Siobhan and find out what she knows about Project LEDA. So leaving Kira in Cal’s care — he’s her father, after all, right? — she heads back into town to check on Felix and see if she can pick up any clues to Mrs. S’ whereabouts.

Felix, meantime, is helping Allison adjust to the fact that she woke up in a rehab facility, broken arm in a sling, with no clue how she got there. Turns out, she and Donnie checked her in after her tumble off the stage. Felix, of course, is trying to put a positive spin on it — this is a chance for Allison to regroup, get herself put back together, a week without Monitor Donnie — and while Allison isn’t quite sure she wants to stay, Donnie’s threat of keeping her away from the kids will prevent her from doing anything rash — for now, at least.

Cosima continues to review Jennifer’s death-march diary tapes.

And Helena jumps back on board the Crazy Train this week. Surviving an attempted murder from Gracie, Helena escapes from the Prolethean compound — but not before stumbling into the lab where she remembers a procedure. Henrik did something to her, and she remembers bits and pieces, along with the fact that there was a group of people in her room, so she knows something happened to her. Given that we’ve seen Henrik working with insemination tools already, we’re led to believe he might have implanted something in the Crazy Blonde.

Her escape is made possible by an unlikely ally — Art, still watching the compound and taking all sorts of photos (seriously, what is he going to do with them since he’s technically not on a case?). Art manages to keep the Proletheans at bay with the simple fact that they don’t have permits to be running after people with long guns on public property, and so cuts down Mark’s posse by half and gives Helena time to make her getaway.

Of course, everyone’s going to regret that, right?

Sarah and Felix search Siobhan’s place, while Siobhan makes contact with her old network and learns that Carlton is in town. Finding him, she rekindles an old flame in a hallway and then asks him about the little girl he brought to her oh, so many years ago. Carlton only has a piece of the pipeline, and Siobhan knows more than she’s telling about Project LEDA, this much is certain. Not sure how she fits into the overall conspiracy yet, but you can bet we’ll get at least two more twists in her story.

The rest of the episode has Sarah making her way to Rachel’s apartment. She’s got Daniel’s cell phone and is keeping track of Rachel’s itinerary with his calendar, looks like. Sneaking in, she gets a firsthand look at Rachel’s life — neat as a pin, orderly, a guy in her life, and lots of home video. With Felix and Cosima on the other line, they figure out that Rachel was adopted and raised by the scientists in the LEDA photo — Susan and Ethan Duncan — who seem to have been very normal parents to young Rachel. At least until they were killed in a lab explosion. Could that event have been what caused Rachel to go Borg-cold on everyone?

And oh, noes! Daniel’s not dead, as we thought. Because he can walk into a secure high-dollar apartment complex covered in blood and make it all the way to his and Rachel’s apartment with no one asking him what for? And oh, noes! He catches Sarah in the apartment. And oh, noes! He strings her up in the bathroom and gets ready to torture her with a shaving blade. When suddenly…

OK. Now we get into a little deus ex machina here. Just a little. Helena, it seems, found her way back to Siobhan’s house and followed Sarah to Rachel’s apartment. So Helena is there just in time to attack Daniel with a big knife. Not Crocodile Dundee big, but big enough.

Let’s review: Daniel, covered in blood and gun on his belt, makes it up to the apartment without a hitch. Helena, crazy blonde in a wedding dress covered in blood, also makes her way to the same apartment in the same high-dollar complex. And she’s carrying a knife. Daniel at least lives there, and might have already sold a story about being Rachel’s bodyguard/boyfriend/whatever to justify showing up toting a gun. But the blood would certainly raise some eyebrows, yes? And then to have Crazy Blonde come in not ten minutes later — also covered in blood — and we don’t get any scene with anyone reacting at all? No one would think to call the police?

Of course, it almost makes it worthwhile just to see the reunion of Sarah and Helena — because Tatiana Maslany’s Freak-Out-Face is priceless, and I have never ever seen a better one. Seriously. And don’t think I didn’t catch the “angel” motif here — remember, Helena was described as an “angry angel” in the first season, and now Kira has given Sarah the “guardian angel” in the form of an origami butterfly Cal made. If Helena’s on a redemption arc, it’s rather cleverly disguised…

And then we learn that Henrik wasn’t putting something into Helena. He was taking something out — namely, an egg. Which has taken to fertilization quite well, if Henrik’s giant flat-screen home movie is any indication.

Crazy Train is leaving the station, y’all.

[Show web site on BBC]     [Previous recap: “Mingling Its Own Nature With It”]