ORPHAN BLACK: A Head Trip or Two
Episode 2.07 “Knowledge of Causes, And Secret Motion of Things”
[photos: Steve Wilkie for BBC AMERICA]
Did not see that coming. Oh, poor Donnie.
Quite a few twists this week, actually a week later than I was expecting them, but it works out because not only do we get that, but we also get a clone pretending to be a clone again. That’s something we haven’t had in a while. Honestly, though, it didn’t play quite as well for me this time around.
That happens at the rehab center, in the midst of the Allison thread, as Sarah comes back into town with Kira, who’s pulled her own tooth to help Aunt Cosima. More on that in a minute. Sarah has to come in because of a deal Felix made with Victor: don’t squeal about Allison to Detective Angie and get a chance to make amends with Sarah. Vic, of course, has to turn into a thing where he’s trying to convince Sarah to come back to him — right up to the point where he collapses (in a stunt that broke the stunt man’s nose) and slams into the table where Allison was crafting — glitter and blood all over Vic. Felix “may have spiked his tea”.
So now we have the comedy shenanigans of Allison and Felix trying to hide Vic, while Angie is looking for Vic, while rehab staff are looking for Allison, and Sarah gets caught in Allison’s room and has to pretend again — something she’s absolutely not prepared for, especially when she finds out Allison has been chosen to address the group at Family Day.
Dun dun dunnn.
That’s the comedy troupe side of things. On the other side of Sarah’s story, she’s bringing Duncan back after giving him a chance to meet with Rachel, where he tells her what Aldus Leekie did. Now, note that we only have Duncan’s word for it that he’s telling the truth, and that Leekie actually started the fire and killed Rachel’s mother. But Leekie seems to confirm it when he reacts to Rachel’s threat at the end of the episode.
The wild card in all of this is Dr. Marian Bowles (played by Michelle Forbes), who knows a lot about what’s going on. Where does she fit into this? At first, it seems she’s an ally of Leekie’s, but then she sides with Rachel after Leekie’s been compromised. She’s obviously a heavy hitter in all this, and her conversation with Leekie about Sarah would seem to indicate they’ve encountered her before, even though Sarah probably is completely unaware of it (maybe this is where Cal enters the picture?).
Cosima and Delphine have a bit of a spat after Cosima realizes her treatment depends on harvesting more stem cells from Kira. Turns out the batch they have came from a tooth the girl lost after being hit by a car last season (and remember how quickly she recovered from that? Don’t think that’s been forgotten.), which is where Cosima and Sarah intersect this episode, as Cos tells Sarah what’s what and Sarah goes back to get Kira from Cal and Kira pulls her own tooth (which was already loose) to help Aunt Cosima because Kira’s cool that way.
But it’s the last scene that throws everything into upendsville. Donnie, who stumbled into Allison’s room and found both his wife and Sarah, apparently never knew he was monitoring a clone. Never knew about the program. Was told by Leekie it was a sociology study of some sort. Donnie, being the dimwitted kindly old soul he is, decides the cost to his family is just too great, and on the same evening Leekie runs away from Rachel’s threat to his life, Donnie decides to confront the man.
And accidentally shoots Leekie in the head.
I have to admit, I did a “what the what?” double-take and had to play it over in my head to be sure I saw what I saw. But yeah. Donnie. Meek, mild-mannered, put-upon Donnie.
This is going to make family reunions a bit awkward, methinks.
[Show web site on BBC] [Previous recap: “To Hound Nature In Her Wanderings”]
