REVIEW: Orphan Black, S5 Ep2

If last week’s episode of Orphan Black was just laying the groundwork for what’s to come this season, boy did we jump into the fire this week.

Sarah wakes up in a cell at Dyad, but surprisingly Rachel is willing to let her go, and release Kira and Mrs. S as well – so long as Sarah allows Rachel to study Kira’s “unique physiology.” Both S and Kira are eager to go home, and with Alison and Cosima already under Rachel’s thumb, Sarah doesn’t have much of a choice except to agree. I still don’t trust Rachel at all, but the fact that she actually offered Sarah this choice to go home is an interesting gesture of goodwill – considering that Rachel had all of them within her custody, she could have easily kept them there and done the testing on Kira without Sarah’s permission.

At the house they’re reunited with Felix, and quickly start to form a plan to escape from Rachel’s clutches. Felix and Scott’s attempts to reach out to MK were successful, and she offers to help Sarah and Kira go into hiding. MK has also been watching Dyad, and says that Rachel has been recruiting surrogates so she can restart cloning.

The first half of their plan to “kidnap” Kira from school goes well enough, with Sarah pretending to be Rachel, and S, Felix, and Kira leave the school together. Upon learning that MK didn’t leave Felix’s loft as planned to head to the lab, Sarah makes a detour to go pick her up – with Ferdinand following right behind her. MK protests that she’s too tired – she’s suffering from the same illness as many of her sisters – and says that Sarah shouldn’t have come for her. Initially Sarah refuses to leave without MK (“We’re all tired, MK, but we can’t do this without each other”), but with Ferdinand closing in on them, eventually MK convinces Sarah to leave – MK will pretend to be Sarah, to buy her more time to escape with Kira. Sarah leaves the loft through a second door (has that exit always been there??), and as Ferdinand breaks down the main door, MK grabs a knife and prepares to face him.

Now, Orphan Black has never shied away from violence. Helena alone has done some pretty messed up things, including one in this episode that I’ll get to in a bit. But for me, this scene between MK and Ferdinand was probably the most disturbing and difficult to watch of the entire series so far. It doesn’t take long for Ferdinand to catch onto MK’s true identity, and with her dressed as Rachel – who Ferdinand has become more and more angry with as Rachel casts him aside – he sees it as a way to carry out two revenge fantasies. I could barely watch as he repeatedly stomped onto MK’s chest, and a sort of sick feeling stayed with me the rest of the evening.

As if her death wasn’t already heartbreaking enough on its own, in the end it feels a bit like she died for nothing. She stayed behind so Sarah could save Kira, but once Sarah meets up with her family, Kira refuses to get in the van that’s supposed to take them away to safety. Kira’s protests become even stronger once she realizes that MK is dead – she can’t “feel her” anymore – and she says she wants to go with Rachel for the tests (Kira’s “I wanna know why I’m like this!” was another emotional punch in the gut). With Kira’s position perfectly clear, S sends the van away without them. And knowing that over the past four seasons, Sarah’s biggest concern was always protecting Kira, seeing them so at odds here just hurt.

On to the rest of the sisters – Helena’s at the hospital, and while the stick has been removed, there’s concern that one of her babies was injured. But when the doctors do an ultrasound to check, the wound is no longer visible. I don’t know why this didn’t cross my mind last week, but I’m really not surprised that Helena’s babies have the same super-healing powers that Kira does. Still concerned, the doctor wants to collect amniotic fluid to check for an infection, but Helena is convinced that the doctor’s real goal is to collect DNA to study the twins’ biology. Even though I knew some kind of attack with the needle was coming, watching Helena actually stab the doctor through the face was more than I was prepared for. Helena escapes the hospital by herself, but at least Donnie knows where she’ll be hiding.

We don’t see much of Mud this week on the island, which made me a bit sad, but she does take Cosima to meet PT Westmorland. Cosima’s intrigued by the girl, asking, “Who are you, Mud?” and the fact that Mud doesn’t answer makes me feel like there’s a lot more to her than we currently know.

Essentially, PT wants Cosima to stay once the cure is finished (and good news – the initial tests show it seems to be working!), and continue her work there. As part of the conversation, PT states that they “follow the science,” which brings to mind Delphine’s instructions to Cosima last week to “follow the crazy science.” Was this what Delphine meant?

And despite the fact that Delphine supposedly left last week for Sardinia – an island in the Mediterranean Sea – she showed up at the end of the episode to secretly talk to S. Whatever she’s there to tell her, Sarah can’t know: “It’s safer if they don’t know that we’re communicating.” But who is “they”? Any of the clones? What is Delphine actually up to?

We barely saw Alison this week, as she’s basically under house arrest until Donnie and Helena are found, but based on the preview for next week, we’ll be seeing a lot more of her soon!

So – your thoughts on this episode? Any guesses on what Delphine has to tell S? Were you as horrified by MK’s death as I was? Leave a comment below!