Review: Orphan Black, Season Three ‘Episode Nine’

A black cab pulls up, the weather seems meh, and a pint of beer is being poured in a pub. Welcome to London. Following the location clue left by Rachel’s coding, and accompanied by Sarah and Felix, Siobhan means business – and she intends to kill the original Castor. Elsewhere, Rudy is glitching, but Dr. Coady reassures him they will also find the original Castor. And that is all we see of those villains this episode, oddly enough.

At least for the time being putting business aside for leisure, Siobhan, Sarah, and Felix tuck into pub grub egg and chips, before old friends show up to say hello. Old friends of Siobhan’s from the band no less. The band? A pub sing-song follows, and is cut back and forth with Terrance (her old time associate / flame) taking a beating from the henchman of that creepoid Ferdinand. Great vocals though Mrs. S – I, for one, will never forget The Commitments.

Terrance dies as they discover him, and Siobhan demands they all have to go home. Sarah, obviously, refuses to leave it alone until they find the original Castor. Armed with only Terrance’s phone, she (and the reluctant Felix) arrange to meet with whoever it was that called three times that day. Oh yeah, Sarah is pretending to be Siobhan. Good God. The guy who picks them up is not best pleased to discover they are not in fact Siobhan. And although agrees to help them he too soon has his throat cut. Ferdinand again. He was not this ruthless with Rachel’s bits in his face.

  
On the hunt for a certain Kendall Malone, Sarah soon finds her, just as Siobhan shows up too: “hello mother” she says. Having somehow absorbed a male twin many, many moons ago, Kendall is both the Castor AND Leda original. AND Siobhan’s mother. You read that all right. My head is spinning too.

The badly beaten Donnie is avoiding Alison for the time-being. How long does he think those kinds of scars take to heal? More importantly, how stupid does he think his wife is? Anyway, he is later visited, uninvited, by a drug dealer wanting the pills back (remember he was casually eating a sandwich in the Hendrix garden a few episodes back). The bad news is Donnie allows him to leave with Helena’s frozen embryos as collateral – neither know that is what they are. For now.

Like a protective Velociraptor who has had her eggs taken by humans, which is not too far from the truth, Helena (pretending badly, but amusingly, to be Alison) joins Donnie to retrieve said canister. They get it back easily enough, but when the drug dealers threaten Donnie’s kids Helena goes full “Roar!”. We don’t see exactly what she did, but wielding a dripping cleaver / huge paper slicer / human gasher, and covered in blood herself, we can figure it out.

Cosima is putting the pieces together about Shay – the wrong pieces it seems. Her and Scott believe she may be a spy. Cosima seeks help from the reluctant, and still bitter Delphine. Wow, the atmosphere can be cut with a knife. Delphine pays Shay an unexpected visit, and demands she tells her what she knows. Turns out it was not Shay who took the book, but Gracie, who made a deal to be with Mark again. Turns out their love can move mountains. And bite the hands that fed her. Tut tut. I guess we suspected something when Gracie gives Helena a rather somber goodbye hug when merely leaving for her “doctor’s appointment”. Betrayal pays off in Orphan Black. For a while.

Watching this episode, you cant help feel like you are simultaneously being dragged right into the mix with each scene, and pulled further away from any form of closure. Neither are negative criticisms of the show, both demonstrate the show’s tricky-to-keep-track appeal. Orphan Black continues to throw twists and turns at us, though, which may or may not have clouded our better judgement in light of the closing chapter. We long to keep up, so onto the season finale we go.

  

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