Orphan Black - Table of Contents

Season One. 

Season Two: 

Nature Under Constraint and Vexed.
Governed by Sound Reason and True Religion.
Mingling Its Own Nature With It.
Governed as It Were by Chance.
Ipsa Scientia Potestas.
To Hound Nature in Her Wanderings.
Knowledge of Causes, and Secret Motion of Things.
Variable and Full of Perturbation.
Things Which Have Never Yet Been Done.
By Means Which Have Never Yet Been Tried.

Season Three: 

The Weight of This Combination.
Transitory Sacrifices of Crisis.
Formalized, Complex, and Costly.
Newer Elements of Our Defense.
Scarred By Many Past Frustrations.
Certain Agony of the Battlefield. 
Community of Dreadful Fear and Hate. 
Ruthless in Purpose, and Insidious in Method. 
Insolvent Phantom of Tomorrow. 
History Yet to Be Written. 

Season Four: 

The Collapse of Nature.
Transgressive Border Crossing.
The Stigmata of Progress.
From Instinct to Rational Control.
Human Raw Material.
The Scandal of Altruism.
The Antisocialism of Sex.
The Redesign of Natural Objects. 
The Mitigation of Competition. 
From Dancing Mice to Psychopaths.

Season Five: 

The Few Who Dare.
Clutch of Greed.
Beneath Her Heart.
Let the Children and Childbearers Toil.
Ease for Idle Millionaires.
Manacled Slim Wrists.
Gag or Throttle.
Guillotines Decide.
One Fettered Slave.
To Right the Wrongs of Many.

Orphan Black � Freedom looks different to everyone.

Orphan Black: 5x10 To Right the Wrongs of Many.

Five years of this, and what I can find are disconnected thoughts on what Orphan Black was � and how it accomplished to forge its own path, to end on its own terms, something that is so often not possible for ambitious stories told in this particular format. It was a long time ago, but I started watching the show � as did, I think, quite a few other people � in the aftermath of Bomb Girls being cancelled prematurely, and tragically never being able to tell this story that should have lasted well beyond the end of WW2. 

I think the thing that stands out to me the most in this final episode titled To Right the Wrongs of Many is how eloquently it concedes that the strong point of Orphan Black was never the great fight scenes, or the moments in which the monsters finally perished. The most obvious example of this is Leekie�s rather inglorious demise at the hands of a panicked Donnie Hendrix, shot more by accident than anything else by an incompetent man who didn�t know his gun safety procedures, and then buried under a garage, to finally end as nothing more than a McGuffin. If the deaths of individual monsters made much of a difference, this would be an entirely different show, but in many ways, they simply served as stand-ins for the ideologies that the Sisters had to battle against to truly be free. Here, Westmoreland has already lost before he even goes into his final battle against Sarah Manning. He is an ailing old man, gaining temporary energy from shooting medical grade methamphetamines, which only serve to showcase how grotesque he has become. The source of his power � his myth, his island, his followers � has already been stripped from him. So he can still do damage as a person, the way any man raging over having lost his privilege can, but his eventual and again, rather unceremonious death, isn�t the point of this episode, or the grand end point of this journey. It�s a perfunctory necessity that Sarah performs quickly, with a gas canister to the head, because it doesn�t take much more to end the man who was just the most recent impersonation of an idea that stretched back centuries before his birth. 

The same goes for Virginia Coady, who by all rights should have been dead this whole time, along with her failed Castor programme and the sons she so readily sacrificed for the cause. Her contribution to Neolution was in many ways what eventually brought the entire monstrous thing down in the first place � the idea of inserting genocide to purify the human race. Before this, and without it, there is an alternative version of the show and everything that Sarah and her sisters along with Felix, Siobhan, Adele, Scott and Art accomplished where Neolution so neatly transformed itself from a mid-Victorian eugenics society into a 21st century corporate conglomerate that absolutely nothing could have removed them from the future of human history. I still find this particular idea too unexplored on the show � that Neolution, and Dyad, transformed themselves along with capitalism itself into the 21st century, that they perfectly adapted themselves into business and corporate structures that look acceptable and normal. They had a board, PR people, and their hands in every modern industry, ticking all the boxes. If it hadn�t been for Virginia�s attempt to include her genocidal rage into all of this, I wonder how much of a difference Delphine and Cosima leaking all of that corporate information truly would have made (or rather, the most horrifying thought that this show allows � that the public may have found out about the fact that Dyad copyrighted human beings and made them corporate property and wouldn�t have cared, because it fits in so very neatly with how we understand capitalism to work). 

In any case � Helena is the one who gets a chance at that particular double- (or triple-) tap, putting an end to Virginia Coady even though she is heavily in labour with two twins, because these women save themselves, and each other, and all these friends, lovers and associates help out of adoration and admiration for them. Art stands by, watching the scene unfolding with a mixture of horror and delight, which is exactly how we will look back at Helena, now that the show is over. 

Which is as good a segue as any: I wonder if Helena was always conceptualised for this trajectory, or originally intended as nothing more than the horror of a clone brought up into hatred for her own, indoctrinated into an ideology of self-hatred that translated into murder, meant to perish at the end of season one to never be seen again. And then the inevitable happened and Tatiana Maslany�s genius made her into a character too good to be lost. The other side to the story of Orphan Black�s creators having the opportunity to tell the story on their own terms, and to plan so far ahead, is that none of it would ever have been possible without an actress who could carry the burden of the brilliant concept at the heart of the show. Tatiana Maslany personified the idea that nurture can shape women with the same genetic make-up into entirely different people, that individuality and personality exist in spite of a shared biology. Apart from the still unimaginable physical effort of spending five years on a show where she was in almost every scene, often as more than one character, the sheer acting accomplishment of creating so many diverse and completely unique characters, maintaining their uniqueness throughout to a level where it was often easy to forget that they weren�t played by different actresses, is a feat for the ages that is probably unparalleled in television history. 

This final episode isn�t the story of Neolution in its death throes, and all of its defenders finally perishing, even if it is deeply satisfying to see Westmoreland end where the ideology that has so long sustained him began � in an old Victorian building, that has been closed down and is ready to be demolished. It�s about what it means for the Sisters that the people who have claimed them as their property have finally lost and no longer have a place in the world where they can exercise their power. More than that, this moment also contains one of the most important lines of the whole show: �You�ve got nothing to do with who we are�. Sarah is denying that these people who have meddled and fought so hard to cage them have much to do with who they are, as people � that their status as the scientists behind their creation gives them no power over who each and every one of them has become on their own. 

It�s about the moment of walking into the light, the �what now� of the aftermath. It�s beautiful that even before that, the show goes back to a Sarah Manning who didn�t know what she was yet, and made a choice that changed her entire life, sitting in a car with her mother Siobhan in front of a Planned Parenthood building, debating whether to have Kira or not. Sarah remembers, as she helps her sister Helena give birth to her twins. It�s the ultimate symbol of a new beginning, twins born into a freedom that their mother and aunts haven�t known until this moment. 

I have a well-documented dislike of epilogues, especially when they glance over the impact that all of these terrible experiences and losses have had. There is a reason why the �what now� is rarely part of the main story, especially when the characters have been shaped by their fight. What comes after walking away from the crater of the Hellmouth? Imagine, for example, a Sarah Connor who no longer has to fight the end of humanity, or prepare her son for the coming apocalypse. It�s impossible to imagine such a moment ever occurring in TSCC (as sad as it is that the show ended so prematurely), but even harder to imagine who Sarah Connor would be if she ever found her peace. 

Sarah, the very reluctant heroine who in the end, helped save her sisters and herself, hasn�t had a chance to grieve the loss of her mother, and the urge to run is still as deeply engraved in her being as ever. It�s not possible anymore now, both because she has Kira, and because her sisters and their extended families (which include Art and his daughter, Charlotte, Scott � a big, chosen family that has survived impossible things and is now stronger for it) keep her rooted in this place. The downside is that she lives in the house that Siobhan died in and that there is no way to outrun her memories and her grief anymore. 

She still tries, though. She runs away from sitting her GEDs. She packs up the boxes and puts the house up for sale. She sulks through Helena�s baby shower � as always, the grumpy woman clad in black finishing a bottle of beer too quickly, standing out like a sore thumb in Alison�s beautifully decorated suburban home in Bailey Downs (where Helena raises her two sons, Orange and Purple, in the Hendrixes� garage). 

After overcoming everything, after fighting for her life and that of her sisters, after gaining independence from a worldwide conglomerate of entrenched corporate power, all that is left for Sarah to do is confront the demons that never had to do anything with Dyad or Leekie, with Neolution or being a clone. It is still the moment in the car, with Siobhan, deciding to have Kira, and then finding herself unable to carry the consequences. Sarah hasn�t forgiven herself for running away, or thought about the fact that she isn�t the same person anymore who used to run away, that the automatic flight instinct no longer applies here, as much as it comes back to her like muscle memory. She didn�t do it when she realised what they were all up against, after taking over Beth�s life. The hardest part now, in the aftermath, is figuring out how she can carry that bravery and all the things she has learned about herself into a normal, everyday life, in which so many other skills that she has acquired no longer apply. She is like a soldier with PTSD, reintegrating into civilian life but more than that, writing a story about herself in which she is the kind of person that deserves a normal life. 

Sarah: I carry around all these mistakes. I don�t know how to be happy. There�s no one left to fight, and I�m still a shit mom.

The only way that all of this loss and grief was worth it if it led to them all being together, and the greatest conclusion is that the aftermath isn�t easy, because even when life is stripped of the obvious villains, it still doesn�t come easily and without burdens. The sisters try to explain to Sarah that motherhood isn�t easy even without the constant threat of Neolution, that it is part of the process to often feel like you�re failing. 

Their story is an embroidery with many beginnings, and no ends, like Helena�s story, Orphan Black, which begins with Sarah, seeing a spitting image of herself jumping off a train platform. It�s a story about Rachel Duncan who grew up comparing herself and measuring herself by all these women, always trying to come up on top because that was the only game she was ever taught to play, handing over a file of all of the clones so that Cosima and Delphine can save them, but not being allowed inside, because she has caused too much grief, too much harm, to ever be part of this family. It�s the story of Delphine, spending the rest of her life keeping her promise that she will try to save and love each and all of Cosima�s sisters. It�s the story of Alison, who will raise her own extended family of adopted children with her husband Donnie, who I guess she loves. And more than that, it�s the story of all these people who fell in love with the Sisters, who were thrown into a fight that wasn�t their own and yet gave it their all, sometimes sacrificing everything. It was all for this � for all of these children, all of these other women, never having to do what they did. 

Random notes: 

There is a lot that remains to be said about this show, but for now � in the back of my head, I�m just thinking about how much of this year�s television history has been about heroic motherhood, and mothers fighting unbelievable fights. And also, because Orphan Black was allowed to end on its own terms, I think there is no better time than to campaign for Underground to be given the same grace. 

THAT PORTRAIT OF SIOBHAN WITH THE TEA CUP AND THE GUN. If I ever spend a lot of money on a television prop, that would be it. 

�This is Yusef, my Uber driver�.

Delphine Cormier will save all of them and like a solid 20% will flirt with her. Cosima understands and accepts. 

In the end, it doesn�t take much at all to overwhelm Enger. All of these monsters are stripped of their power quite easily. 

A sidenote, at the end here: does anyone want to comment on how they feel about Cosima and Delphine curing all the other clones, but not telling them anything about their history? Should they know? Do they have a right to know about their own history? It�s obviously not as blatant a violation as that much-quoted other ending was (is it really the great feminist revolution to force all the potentials to become slayers if the very way in which slayers were first created was an act of patriarchal misogynist brutality against a woman?), but still, a bit more problematic than I�m comfortable with. 

Orphan Black - Come on meathead, stay with me.

Orphan Black: 5x09 One Fettered Slave.

Just remember my lads. Death is nothing at all, I�ve only slipped into the next room. You can call me by my old familiar name, put no sorrow in your tone. I promise we will laugh at this difficult passing when we meet again. All my love, S.

There isn�t much that can be said about this almost-last episode of Orphan Black. It�s a visceral experience to look at Helena�s childhood and see how she came to be, the little orphan girl who made the error of looking behind the veil and seeing power fail, the danger of holding incriminating information over people who hold power � a little girl who stole chocolate from a drawer, watched something she wasn�t supposed to, and was punished severely. It�s not made clear here if this is how Tomas found her, or if he would have found her in any case, but it makes it clear that Helena�s life has always been about surviving in the face of odds that were stacked against her. Even trapped in the cellar, with her head drenched in bleach, she still eats the stolen delights. 

Tomas turned this little girl into a weapon by depriving her of any context, any outside world. He poisoned her with a strict ideology that she only came to understand fully when she finished her first mission � when she realised that the copies that she is killing because they are an abomination against Tomas� god look exactly like her. It takes a new story, a new set of lies, to explain this to her, to make her believe that she is the original, the one who is still in god�s grace. Somehow, she will escape all of this, and somehow, she will understand that each and every one of her sisters (save maybe Rachel, but she�s had a hard life too) is the light. The point here is maybe that every person before Sarah, Cosima and Alison that she has trusted has lied to her, has constructed stories that kept her trapped in a small room. It leads to Virginia Coady, telling her she would not be a good mother to a child, where for a moment we think that lie leads to absolute capitulation, to Helena giving up and slitting her wrists, until it all lines up into a brilliant plan (that only succeeds because of a few gods in the machine) to save herself. Presumably, she knows how to cut herself without dying. Presumably, she guessed that her beloved sister would come to save her, because she has promised to make up for not loving her enough only recently. 

This is how a seemingly hopeless situation is suddenly turned on its head, with Scott and Comic Book Shop Guy (who apparently worked security � at Dyad?) and Art and Felix doing their best to save Helena while Sarah grieves for her mother and takes care of her grieving daughter. They figure out that Helena hasn�t been taken to the island, because the island is now lost to Westmoreland, he is on his last leg, and has carved out a new burrow in the old research building (which fittingly used to be an asylum) right next to the now police-swarmed Dyad institute. Helena�s children are a last-ditch hope for his survival, now that his life�s work, or any pretence that it was ever about anything but his own eternal life and reputation and power, are falling apart entirely. Virginia Coady is starting to doubt him, too, but not early enough for Mark, who she mercy-kills shockingly, the last of her children to go, and not early enough for her not to bear Helena�s full wrath for calling her a bad mother, and proving to be just another person ready to trap her in a cage. 

This is also the story of her life � the sister whose transgression she witnessed, where she got punished because she had realised that someone else wasn�t infallible, the insane Prolethean who raised her knowing absolutely nothing himself about the world he despised, and finally, Virginia Coady, the monster mother who killed her own children and yet argued she was the one not fit for motherhood. 

One monster is left to slay, and a few henchmen, but the substance of hundreds of years of Neolution is crumbling into dust. 

Random notes: 

As said before, this was a visceral episode more than anything, so it�s hard to really talk about the threads coming together � the other major point here was maybe that Art is at the brink as well, and kills for the sisters, finally stepping out of his role as a law-abiding police officer, when he gets rid of Frontenac. 

Al-Khatib: I told you, I don�t know where he has taken the science.
Rachel: Her name is Helena.

I�ve been quietly amazed by the choices this show had made with Detective Engers, just fascinated by the kind of brain that would come up with someone so freaking terrifyingly weird.

In a season titled with poetry, the one S chose for her own funeral seems very fitting - Death is Nothing At All by Henry Scott-Holland, "Whatever we were to each other, that we are still".

Orphan Black - To my galaxy of women.

Orphan Black: 5x08 Guillotines Decide.

Siobhan: We do what we can. Each of us, in our own way. And, we do it for each other. Chipping at the devil till he�s done. 

This episode is a celebration of family and the driving force behind the struggle of the sisters to be free, and even more than that, a thank you to everyone who has been fighting alongside with them. It�s very much in the spirit of how Orphan Black has always conducted itself that the shared joys and the glimpses of freedom celebrated in the episode are immediately followed by a horrible sacrifice.

The heart of the show, what makes it more than a grim dystopian view of a future in which a cabal of ever-evolving centuries-old companies try to enshrine the subjugation of women and the poor not just in laws, but also in genetics, is that the people so valiantly fighting forces which seem so very much greater and bigger than them are a family, and fiercely loyal to each other. That�s not just Sarah, growing to love her sisters and in the process learning to be a mother to Kira, a sister to Felix, a daughter to Siobhan � it�s also people like Siobhan and Felix helping all of Sarah�s sisters (and Delphine, helping Cosima�s), sacrificing their own lives for them. It�s Felix and Adele chasing Neolution�s corporate dirt track in Switzerland, and Delphine following the advice and plans of the battle-hardened Mrs S. 

Everyone apart from Helena returns back home in this episode to take a breather before the end, to celebrate Felix� art, which is deeply influenced by Sarah and her sisters, and all the connected themes of identity, nature vs. nurture and family. As he tries to organise everything, all of the sisters come through for him � and they all help out to make his show a success, gathering all of them in a room surrounded by pictures of their great family. The theme of the show fits the theme of Orphan Black, where women who all share their biology are thrown into a crazy world in which they can�t escape pondering what has shaped them into who they are, how they have all turned out so different from each other, and what that means � or more than that, what they still share, and how to navigate the war. 

All of it would mean nothing if they didn�t have these shared moments, and the recognition of what they are even fighting for. It�s such a massive question what they will even do after, when and if the battle is ever won � as they have all existed in this war for autonomy for as long as they have been alive, even if they haven�t always been aware of it. But it comes down to the stark contrast between Felix� apartment, ready for a celebration of life and art and the beautiful work of chance and choice, and the cold boardroom, empty of many members now that the revelations about Westmoreland threaten the entire life-sustaining mythology of Neolution. 

Felix: This woman, she chose us as her own. We are as we are because she carried two little London urchins on her wings to Canada. Watching her raise my sister, watching my sister raise her own daughter, finding my biological sister, it�s quite mad. It�s taught me that we are all mysterious works of chance, of choice, of nature vs. nurture. So to my galaxy of women, thank you for nurture.

This episode is all about the choices. Gracie chooses not to deliver Helena to Mark and Coady when she realises that Helena is pregnant, and feels that she is worthy of her love and protection. It�s a tragic and short-termed kind of support, as she falls victim to Detective Enger, who reappears here as trigger-happy as ever and ready to kidnap Helena and her unborn twins. But it�s still the bravest choice, Helena over the grasping arms of Neolution and the life of the man she loves. 

The other unexpected choice is Rachel�s, who is saved by Mrs S and Ferdinand after gouging her own eye out � of course she kept a file of all of Neolution�s dirty secrets, which is what Mrs S and Delphine need to put a stake through the heart of the organisation for good, especially now that many countries worldwide are pending legislation that would make Neolution impossible to remove. On the other hand, there is Ferdinand who sees a golden opportunity for corporate blackmail that will allow him and Rachel to build a dynasty. She quietly shares what her dream is � destroying Westmoreland for good, getting rid of the corporation that raised her to be a weapon against her own sisters and ultimately, herself, that stole the ability to have children from her. But Ferdinand doesn�t listen because he wants to impose his own ideas on her � but this version of Rachel, the woman who has fought her whole life for a seat at the table only to find out that it didn�t mean anything, in the end, that she would never be truly free, isn�t buying it anymore. 

So Rachel chooses her sisters for the first time, but Ferdinand, an ultimate example of the double-tap rule, makes it out of the boardroom alive. It�s a showdown, a woman who fought so many battles, who has hidden weapons in every nook and cranny of her house, who is always ready to fight, versus this man whose rage has killed so many Ledas, who is the embodiment of toxic masculinity and the dangers of a weaponised hurt male ego. Ferdinand shoots S, but as so often happens, he also severely underestimates her, and so she is the one who gets to watch this terrible man die. 

Freedom is so close, after so many unbearable sacrifices. Delphine and Cosima press the button together that reveals Neolution�s centuries of transgressions to the world, and Felix presents his sister, in all of her permutations � Hestia, the Goddess of the Hearth and Home, Metis, Goddess of Wisdom and Deep Thought, and of course, Athena, the Goddess of War. The others that were lost look on from the walls � Beth Childs, who started it all, and MK, friends lost in the war. They�ve chipped away at the devil, and now, maybe, they will all be free. 

Random notes: 

Siobhan: Chicken, you are a warrior and I�ve taught you everything you know.

Maria Doyle Kennedy�s Siobhan Sadler is a character for the ages. 

Rachel�s portrait serves as a carpet and dancefloor . 

Alison brought the KORG.

As many others, I am fairly convinced that Delphine was going to propose at the party. 

CHICKENS.

Orphan Black � I have a right to know.

Orphan Black: 5x07 Gag or Throttle.

Kira: Are you okay? Who hurt you?
Rachel: All of them. 

Rachel Duncan was the child of the forefathers of evolution. Ethan and Susan Duncan created Neolution, created Dyad and Castor as we know them now, their science essential for the present, and they created their daughter � and then gave her, willingly or not, to the behemoth they had contributed all of their research to. They gifted her back to the organisation that had designated her proprietary information, so that she was raised by Aldous Leekie, presented as a gift to the board, with nothing but shaky videos to rely on for any happy memories of her childhood. Nothing remains untainted, because Rachel Duncan knows exactly where does videos lead and where the woman that she thought her mother has guided her. 

The one thing that would justify all this dread and suffering, that would justify all that Rachel has endured, would be freedom and the ability to decide her own fate. If she had truly earned a seat at the head of the table, if she had truly turned the table around on those suited men that so curiously examined her when she was a child, it wouldn�t have been for nought. She recited her ID number, and that of her sisters, and later, after accepting that the prodding would never end, that she would never get to choose, or have any right to the answers to her questions, she started going against her own sisters to own herself. She killed a clone so she could give all the information she could find to Leekie � but instead of impressed, he looked at her, horrified, like an experiment gone wrong, because she was never meant to want power, or to contribute in that way. 

This is who Rachel is. There is nothing that is more important to her than being taken seriously, than being considered an equal, than having control over her own fate, and there is nothing she would stop at to achieve that goal. When Westmoreland gave her her current position, he promised her all he could, but she is now slowly coming to realise that none of it meant anything. Signing that document to regain autonomy meant nothing, because the second that Virginia Coady is back in the fold, she again is being prodded against her will, with no determination of who does the prodding or when, or any access to the results. These suited men care for nothing than the bottom line, or maybe a close relative who is suffering. Whether or not Rachel and her sisters are treated as individuals does not matter to them, and Rachel doesn�t gain any privilege out of being raised within Dyad, with a full understanding of her own existence (and the ability to read her own file). 

She sees her own past repeating in front of her eyes. As she herself was paraded in front of the board by Leekie, a curious talking dog, she sees Kira brought into the room the same way, a new Eve, a child of eight years who will give birth to the next generation of clones. Like Rachel, Kira has no stake in any of this, or any kind of control. Rachel doesn�t know that Kira has more insight into all of this than she ever had, that she is in fact very consciously working on her own freedom in telling a story that conveys secrets, that Kira is the best of her mother and aunts. What matters, in the end, is two things: Rachel realising that she was never more than a lab rat, regardless of what Westmoreland promised her, and the fact that Kira is no well on the way of sharing that fate. The result is � pure, beautiful rage, the rage of a woman who has sacrificed everything, who oscillates wildly between wanting a normal family, with parents and children of her own, and looking down on all her sisters who haven�t been raised in the fold. The thing that breaks her, in the end, is realising that Westmoreland has looked through her eye this whole time, that the implant she received after Sarah stabbed her betrays her, is nothing more than a spying device that relegates her even more to the status of an object of scientific curiosity. 

Kira: Did you hate being studied when you were my age.
Rachel: I don�t remember.
Kira: Did you get used to it?
Rachel: Yes.

Her status is even more of an insult considering that Westmoreland is nothing more than a pathetic mediocre student, John P. Mathieson, who created a myth with the help of his upper class male privilege. Rachel finally realises that none of this will ever save her, dignify her, exalt her. A trickster like Westmoreland who merely uses people to his own benefit will never grant her freedom. What Siobhan whispered to her will turn out true � she needs her sisters, so she returns Kira to them, and, when she realises that Westmoreland doesn�t just see through her eye, she makes the greatest and goriest sacrifice of all � gouging out her own eye, to be free, finally. 

Random notes: 

Cosima returns to Scott, and brings news about Kira�s fate, putting in motion the urgent attempts to save her. 

Alison returns when she finds out the dire straits the sisters are in, and the danger that Kira is facing. She made friends with a Jungian and learned all about not allowing her dark side to dominate her behaviour, but to instead find healthy outlets for her desires, like a new hair colour and a KORG (and maybe leaving Donnie? Fingers crossed). 

Mark has also returned to the fold after his brother�s death, and was apparently promised a cure by Virginia (who has no cure) � in exchange for some sperm, which will presumably play an important role in whatever Dyad has planned with Kira�s eggs. Also, Gracie visits Helena in the convent, and Mark is willing to trade Helena for a possible cure. 

Orphan Black - With fortune and fiction, that�s how the patriarchy works.

Orphan Black: 5x06 Manacled Slim Wrists.

To her fair works did nature linkThe human soul that through me ran;And much it grieved my heart to thinkWhat man has made of man. 

William Wodsworth: Lines Written in Early Spring

Orphan Black has always been about the consequences of a patriarchal system for individuals. It�s a show about women fighting for choices and freedom, and how that fight can only be possible if they love and support each other, considering how overbearing and powerful the opponent is. The opponent has had different faces over the years, but in this final season, more than ever before, he has become the literal personification of the patriarchy: a pathetic old man who created a myth about his immortality, propped it up with money and by relying on the powerlessness of female scientists in the 1960s, and literally sucked the blood from women and children so he could stay alive forever. PT Westmoreland isn�t eternal, but the system that allowed him to exist in a mansion, on an island surrounded by supporters who thought him almighty, and gave him the blood of their children, may as well be. 

There is a reason why he wanted Cosima and Delphine to put on Victorian garments, and why the messenger was so outraged about Cosima�s unconventional choice: traditional gender roles is what keeps Westmoreland right where he has always been. Without the specific social configuration of the 1960s, when he started his career, the much more scientifically brilliant Susan Duncan would have had a shot to fill his shoes, but since she was a woman, and he had wealth, he was the one who carved out a seat in eternity for himself. He was nothing but a middling student, a mediocre scientist, relying on other people�s genius to support him � and now, in older age, fearing death, this figurative vampirism has turned to a very literal one. 

While Westmoreland has his new and less ethically weighed down companion Virginia Coady bleed the children of Revival dry, the person on the outside who once again stumbles across a relevant insight about the future of Dyad and Neolution is� Krystal Goderitch. As in her two previous experiences, the message that Sarah and Art might take from their experience of being once again bested by a woman with only a vague idea about the conspiracy she has high-heeled walked into is not to constantly underestimate the clone that uncovered the evil plans of Virginia Coady and Castor and knew that Delphine was alive all along � but what they will eventually, once again, take away from it is to leave Krystal in the half-darkness that she has existed in for the past few years of her life. She could be an asset, but at the same time, constantly refuses � and surprisingly successfully, considering she doesn�t have a whole sisterhood, Siobhan and seasoned police detective to back her up � to follow anyone else�s agenda. Here, the success of hers and her friend�s Brie youtube show about the dark side of the cosmetics industry has her accidentally find Dyad�s new delivery mechanism for gene therapy � the billion dollar cosmetics industry. Her findings line up with what Felix and Adele are digging up in Switzerland � Rachel has been buying start-ups that promise new ways of proliferating Neolution technology, and Leonard Siff isn�t the ethical vegan maker of cosmetics that Krystal thought him to be. 

I actually really like the idea of an alternative history here where Krystal managed to combine all the resources she has available � industry access, a fairly awesome best friend in Brie � to find the very same thing that Sarah and her sisters are fighting for, only with much more elaborate and networked resources. Consider how much it has taken Sarah�s family to place Felix and Adele in Switzerland, with the help of deeply embedded Delphine and another source on the inside (who�s probably Ferdinand, since we received some information this episode that he was knew about Virginia Coady�s whereabouts, and likely delivered her to Sarah and Siobhan after being sent out in the cold by Rachel). Krystal gets there with barely any help at all, and only the incidental genius of a kleptomaniac best mate who happens to steal the prototype for Dyad�s future.  Part of Krystal�s dangerous half knowledge about this conspiracy has always been her own fault, but some of the responsibility falls entirely to Sarah, who, as Krystal correctly observes, has always been incredibly rude to her, and never taken her seriously. It does serve Art and Sarah right that they find themselves very much on the outside of Krystal�s investigation into big cosmetics here, only able to watch her get everything she wants using methods chosen by her, rather than following Art�s fatherly advice. 

And as much as this whole storyline is much-deserved comic relief before the gears really start turning, which I am sure they will very soon, it also fits in very well with what is happening on the island. The same mechanism that has Sarah and Art not take Krystal seriously is what kept Westmoreland on top for such a long time, and it�s the same heinous thing that has managed to trap Cosima in the basement, once again turning her into what she has always feared the most � a specimen for someone else�s research. Westmoreland�s power lies in his myth, and that power is indirectly explored when that myth finally crumbles, with the real failing of his science after Aisha dies and the very small but effective proof of a photo of him as a young man, not long enough ago. It is also explored through Mud�s relationship with him when she reveals her backstory, a junkie who stole from her parents, failed to overdose and found herself rescued on the island, by this overbearing fatherly figure. She is so grateful for this new purpose that she punishes herself for failing Westmoreland (with what happened to Yannis) by wearing a bell around her neck, which constantly sounds throughout her interactions, as a reminder of how Westmoreland got where he is today. He doesn�t even have to exercise any actual power anymore, because the way the system works his mere presence works a charm, and makes those he has managed to put under his spell work according to his plans. 

Things go wrong when his mask slips and he starts to reveal his true self, which is a person who doesn�t just strive towards scientific progress at all costs, but more than that, towards individual immortality. Susan Duncan is evil because she only considers the means of Neolution problematic, not the end goal, Virginia Coady is evil because she believes in any means necessary, but Westmoreland is a special specimen of male privilege � he believes any means are justified towards the achievement of his main goal, which is to stay alive forever. So Susan Duncan realises he is a threat to not just her, personally, but the very goal of Neolution, and that the person trapped in the basement of the mansion is very likely the best hope towards achieving what she has in mind for the future of mankind (Kira�s genetics, researched by her aunt Cosima, which is still not benevolent, but a little bit less horrifying than Westmoreland ordering Rachel to kidnap Kira overnight). It means that Ira, who he torn between his two mothers, his desire to know who he is and what he is for, has to choose a side, and eventually stays with Susan, who made him human, even though she never much worked towards a cure for him. They manage to get Cosima out of the basement, but the plan to rid the world of Westmoreland fails utterly when he plays his cards just right, and manages to get Mud to act exactly as he wants her to act, because he knows precisely what encouragement she needs to stay loyal. 

Susan Duncan dies on the island, finally. And Ira dies with her, because his time has run out. But as Revival burns, because its citizens have finally realised the full extent of their oppression, and the nature of their oppressor, Cosima gathers Charlotte and steers a boat towards safety. Cosima has always refused that she was the beautiful baseline, both scientist and the subject of science � she will never be part of any of that, because she has seen behind the mask, and knows what lurks there. 

Random notes: 

Obviously the show is gearing up towards a very bloody and tragic ending, so this little excursion into comic relief delivered via Tom Cullen was excellent. NOT THE BEARD, KRYSTAL. 

There�s also a lot of stuff going on in the background with Scott, working through his own issues (Scott on ghosting: �It�s difficult at first but eventually you get used to it.�) and Brie. Oh Scott. 

Bree: You�re like what? Normcore? 

Scott: Yeah. The normest.

Kira is ready to hustle Rachel, and that still holds true after hers and Siobhan�s plot to avoid Dyad fails and Mr Frontanac and Rachel kidnap her. 

She�s been poisoned� by big cosmetics. What about that is confusing?

You and that Australian girl are gonna like mess this thing up.

Tragic Ira does ask Virginia if there are any more brothers left� and as far as we know, there�s only Mark, right? Presumably the show would like to keep Ari Millen around until the end. 

Siobhan foreshadows when she tells Rachel that she will need them all, one day. Westmoreland doesn�t care about Rachel anymore than he did about Susan Duncan, or does about Virginia Coady. 

Orphan Black - Defy them. Defy them.

Orphan Black: 5x05 Ease for Idle Millionaires.

The core realisation in this episode comes in a heightened, conflicted conversation between Delphine and Cosima towards the end, when they discuss the central truth about their relationship. 

Delphine: I made a promise. I promised to protect you.
Cosima: And I promised to defy them. This I what we do, I push too hard and you do things without my consent. That�s our relationship.
Delphine: We can end it, or we can just accept it as it is.
[�]
Delphine: That felt like accept it.
Cosima: Yes. This is what he does. He divides women.

This division that has always worked in the favour of people like PT Westmoreland, and in general, in the favour of men, exists throughout the entire run of this show. Back in the day, after assuming the identity of a scientist who had disappeared in the late 1800s, PT Westmoreland managed to divide Susan Duncan and Virginia Coady, while still making good use of each of their unique talents, and reaping all the benefits of their research. Now, he is using the same tactic to manoeuvre around Rachel and her mother, around Sarah, Siobhan and Kira, around Delphine and Cosima. He profits from mistrust and jealousy, and even more so, from women seeking power but only along terms that he makes for them. This is Rachel�s ultimate fallacy � she believes that she has carved out an unlikely seat at the head of the table for herself, but deep down, she is still very much playing by PT Westmoreland�s rules, and every time she takes Susan Duncan, her mother, down, she is playing into his old, wrinkled hands. 

The thing is though that Delphine and Cosima realise this, and how they have both been made complicit in this whole act, from the start. It used to be Leekie who manoeuvred Delphine into the position, who started this whole charade of not quite telling the truth, of not quite trusting, of never quite telling the truth, and it always profited Dyad, Leda, Neolution. There is absolutely no question, and there never will be, about the deep and profound love that Delphine and Cosima have for each other. They have both literally returned from the dead only to find each other again, and they are both working and fighting for a way out of this maze. There is no question that the means which both of them have used have been questionable over the years, that Delphine has left Cosima in the dark too often, and not quite revealed enough about what she was doing � that, in the process, she has sometimes taken agency away from her beloved � but she has learned so much, too, and grown, and realised that this isn�t the way forward. It�s a very, very substantial realisation they come to here, that every single time they have mistrusted each other, or played this game, they have played into the hands of PT Westmoreland, and this entire patriarchal system that ensures that agency is stolen from women to the benefit of men aging towards death and scientific irrelevance. 

What better way to fight them then than to defy them utterly, in every aspect. PT Westmoreland�s little charade of Victorian properness, of dressing up for the occasion � Cosima knows it�s all shadow play, that he isn�t 170 years old, that the legend is a fake created to give him relevance, something that won�t hold up for much longer, since all of this grandeur only serves to save his literal sad little life. He isn�t just determined to create a scientific legacy, he literally does not want to die, because he thinks himself too important to, because he is too afraid of what may come after, because he believes this legend he has created of himself. There�s nothing more dangerous for him than to be found out as the fraud that he is, a man with barely anything to contribute himself, someone who has always required others to do the hard work for him. It�s hard even to see what his scientific contribution to any of this is, considering that Virginia and Susan used to do the work and now Cosima has done most of it herself. He is a pathetic old geezer who has created a legend of greatness that is far enough removed from reality to every be thoroughly checked for veracity, but the truth will catch up with him eventually. 

If his strength lies in dividing women against each other, then Rachel is playing right into it, because all she can see is that she has finally managed to best her mother, that she has proved Susan Duncan�s prediction that a clone will never be allowed a seat at the table wrong. It doesn�t matter much who is in her particular position, but Rachel doesn�t realise that, because she believes herself to be the chosen child, now that corporate leads science. It won�t matter to PT who leads this thing towards immortality, and how many children and clones have to die along the way, because all he cares about is his own sagging skin. This is another thing that Delphine and Cosima finally realise, once they have decided to trust each other enough. Delphine is the one who insists on playing the game on the surface, while Cosima has always been a more obvious, defiant fighter. In any case, they figure the whole thing out � that the children and people with cancer in the camp aren�t being healed, that the true key to the fountain of youth lies in Kira�s genetics, that the plan here is to restart cloning with Kira�s eggs, that they will try to replicate her ability to heal herself in all those new children, now that Rachel has found surrogates. 

It�s grisly, and suitable Victorian for the setting. PT stole a young child from an orphanage and experimented on him until he became a monster, incapable of comprehending his own existence, depending on Mud�s tenderness and humanity for survival. His genes lead directly to what was wrong with all of Sarah�s sisters � a defect that was meant to give eternal life, but eventually compromised their biology. Westmoreland has literally poisoned them with an experiment, gone wrong, one that he kept locked up in his basement, out of embarrassment that this would one day constitute the essence of his legacy. 

We can debate Cosima and Delphine for hours here, but the truth is that Delphine would die for Cosima as certainly as Donnie will always save his own skin first. She always comes back. Her entire life now revolved around finding a way out, a way to best this deeply connected organisation that is dominating everything. She is the one who has set up the pieces, who has gotten Siobhan involved in a game that she is so much better at playing, she is the one who has put Felix and his biological sister on the corporate money trail in Switzerland. The flashback provides us with the very moment when all of this started, after Cosima decoded the proprietary information in her own genetic make-up � 

Delphine: You can�t let them win.
Cosima: I�m intellectual property, Delphine.
Delphine: This� none of this matters.
Cosima: They made me sick.
Delphine: Then we�ll find a cure.
Cosima: There�s nothing, nothing that�s mine.
Delphine: Hey, you have me.
Cosima: You, you were paid to lie to me.
Delphine: I�m sorry. Hey, come here. I can promise you one thing. I will always work to protect you.
Cosima: They own me, Delphine.
Delphine: No, no they don�t.
Cosima: Yeah, they do.
Delphine: Not your integrity.
Cosima: My integrity.
Delphine: Not your intellect.
Cosima: My intellect.
Delphine: Not your humour.
Cosima: My humour.
Delphine: Defy them. Defy them. Live your life with every ounce of passion that I know that you have. They will never own you.

So much of this show is about identity and what it means for each of the sister�s identity that they are clones, that they are copyrighted material. It�s particularly hard for Cosima, who doesn�t have Sarah�s absolute fierceness, this natural inability to comprehend and follow rules. Defying is part of Sarah�s DNA, she has always hustled her way through life � but not Cosima. She understands the science, and even the intended consequences of intellectual property, the economic consequences of it. The idea that her beautiful mind could not be hers is more shocking to her than to any of the other clones, who aren�t scientists, who aren�t as deeply part of the very work that created them. Delphine understands this, but she also loves Cosima for all the other things that make her her, which is exactly what saved her, and kept her alive, and which is exactly what saves her, and keeps her alive, now, when PT tries to compromise her and make her his in asking her to kill Janus. She defies him, because she knows that if she kills for him, she will lose herself. It may cost her her freedom � she is the one locked up like a failed experiment � but in the end, it will win her everything, because PT Westmoreland does not own her humanity, or her choices, or her ability to be the best person that she can be. 

Cosima: You�re a woman. You�re a human being. If you don�t start there, there�s nothing to mitigate.

Which, imagine that: All of these people, desperately making up for mistakes in the past, and all those times when people like Susan Duncan and Virginia Coady chose to be weapons against themselves for the purpose of some remote sense of fame and accomplishment, this faint promise of scientific immortality. This has always worked in Westmoreland�s favour, and propped up the system that keeps undermining women and taking their agency away from them. It�s not hard to figure out who those 1,300 surrogates are that Rachel found, and what precise position of economic and social disadvantage has put them in a position of having to say yes to Neolution. This beast will continue existing unless this great and complicated plot between Siobhan and Delphine comes to fruition. 

Random notes: 

OF COURSE PT would want his women to dress up like Victorian women, like Angels at the table, and of course Cosima would defy him utterly by reversing gender stereotypes and OF COURSE Rachel would come in in a black lace dress, overlooking the scene from above. 

Ira is glitching. And of course he is Siobhan�s possibly very unreliable mole on the island, even if he delivers a semi-genuine �Your people wish you well� to Cosima. 

This is a good reminder that Cosima has been pretty much entirely cut off this whole time � Delphine is the one who tells her that Rachel has Kira, that Kira is being experimented on at Dyad. 

Sarah finally decides to let Kira in on all of their grown-up secrets, and it turns out that she might just be a natural hustler. I have every faith in her that she�ll be able to play Rachel Duncan, queen of underestimating people, like a fiddle. 

And speaking of underestimating, only an old fuck like PT Westmoreland would call Alison a crone, and not see an outline what is surely to come (which is, Alison coming down on all of this like a ton of bricks). Perhaps he should keep in mind how great mind Aldous Leekie found his pathetic end. 

Some very great hints here that the answer to all of this will eventually be the connection between all the sisters and Kira, as Sarah promises Kira to make her part of the grown-up story if she shares everything she knows about the connection. 

Yannis, or Janus - the god who looks backwards and forwards, much in the same way in which Siobhan and her science kids are trying to uncover the past of Neolution to find a way to fight them, in the future. The two-headed god was also featured centrally in many of the ads for this season, so...

Orphan Black � I wasn�t a good sister to you.

Orphan Black: 5x04 Let the Children and Childbearers Toil.

The fourth episode of this final season of Orphan Black sets the stage of what is to come. It establishes the motivations of the main protagonists and antagonists, gives some gory detail about the history governing their actions, and hints at a struggle not too far in the future. It brings back people thought dead, and unravels secrets and monsters, as well as skeletons in the closet. 

But the heart and soul of the show lies in its love for the sisterhood itself, and all the relationships surrounding it. Sarah finally finds Helena in the convent and voices what the essential core of all of their struggle is about � that feeling of connectedness, of love, of a shared life and love, that she felt when she was dying on the island. When she finally understood how Kira feels about all of them, and why it is so unbearably painful to lose someone. It�s so very fitting that the centre of the episode is Sarah and Siobhan teaming up to follow a lead that, unbeknownst to Sarah, was given to Siobhan by Delphine, a psychological researcher connected to a major figure in the Castor-Leda-Neolution conspiracy. As they travel down their dark path, doing what they both do best � stealing identities, lying their way into the heart of Neolution once again � Cosima goes on her own, solitary journey into the dark basement of Westmoreland�s Neolution, uncovering a poorly kept secret about the monster that predates the experiment that gave birth to her and her sisters. Both journeys eventually lead to the same place, and use the same Victorian gothic horror tropes � it�s Cosima, rooting around in Westmoreland�s basement to find the gory remains of an experiment, running awry, leading directly to the man in the woods who is haunting the community, and Virginia Coady, returned from the dead, retelling the story of Neolution�s first attempt at controlling human genetics. 

It�s that primal rift between Westmoreland and Susan Duncan that decides the stakes here. Theirs is an opening, for maybe a second, for things to go differently, as Susan insists that she has always disagreed with the intelligent methods, the questionable science, but never the ultimate goal of Neolution. Maybe there is an attempt here to make a broader accusation against people who willingly align themselves with a cause that is inherently evil, attempting to keep face by publicly disagreeing with the methods, yet carrying the same poisonous ideological seeds forward. It doesn�t take much for Westmoreland to bring Susan back into the fold, much to Ira�s horror, after she realises that he is on a new path with Kira. 

All of these paths, throughout the history of Neolution � how back in the Sixties, Westmoreland and Susan Duncan recruited Virginia, who proved to be much more willing to execute the crude methods that Westmoreland pursued, while Susan disagreed. How they split up, and were ultimately separated, into Leda and Castor, two very different approaches, both ultimately inhumane and brutal, but in so very different ways. And how finally, Susan Duncan gained enough leverage to have Victoria imprisoned in a mental institution (and we thought that her death was the one good thing Paul ever accomplished, but it turns out he was never good for anything after all) � but what will happen when PT finds out, if he hasn�t already, and isn�t playing this game still, after all this years, of pitting one woman after another to reap both their awards freely. 

This is clearly what this season, and ultimately this show, is working towards. Showing clearly and without hesitation how a man like PT Westmoreland, who I am completely certain will turn out to be a fraud, manipulated women over history and again and again to fight against each other, and who in the process created an environment in which women were robbed of their agency, to his benefit. Cosima is only following breadcrumbs in this episode, and finally comes to understand the horrors when she realises that Mud is protecting her predecessor, a failed experiment that directly led to Kendall Malone, and her own existence. 

The heart of this episode is between Sarah and Helena, meeting perhaps for the final time in Helena�s hiding spot, Sarah explaining how she has come to this understanding, through her near-death experiment, about their special connection, and how this is the thing that they need to protect from the corporate and patriarchal interest of PT Westmoreland. A sisterhood, a relationship between Kira and all of Sarah�s sisters, but also, this idea of family, of existing outside the grasps of this horrifying entity that has ruined the lives of disenfranchised people for centuries. 

Random notes: 

Mothers and daughters, mothers and very grossly sort-of incestuous son-lovers, brother and sister� an entire episode about so many constellations of family. 

Siobhan has recruited Felix� sister Adele for her talents in corporate embezzlement to trace Neolution�s corporate interests in Switzerland, and Felix will help her. Nobody but Siobhan knows, for now, that Delphine is behind all of this. 

Helena heartbreakingly reminds Sarah that she is reproducing the same errors of their past when she keeps Kira in the dark about her identity, because this is her struggle too and at the beginning of it lies the ability to know about herself � which is precisely how Rachel has control over her. 

IT isn�t revealed yet, here, what Westmoreland has now that he didn�t used to, but Virginia and Susan Duncan know that it has to do with Kira Manning�s unique biology. 

I think we get a glimpse of Virginia managing to steal Sarah�s visitor pass, so let�s assume she won�t be imprisoned by Dr Nemetz (how suitable to name a presumably Neolution psychiatrist who imprisons women German) for much longer. 

Orphan Black - I am a mother, and a homemaker.

Orphan Black: 5x03 Beneath Her Heart.

Alison: Who are we really?
Cosima: Yeah, that�s the existential question, isn�t it? 

Beneath Her Heart works because beyond being an episode that finally has Alison make decisions for herself and move firmly and decisively into a direction she chooses, rather than following someone else�s lead, it also serves as a meta comment on what her role has been in Orphan Black in general. 

There are so many barbs against her here, so many small, hurtful comments intended to make her smaller than she is. Rachel�s messenger doesn�t hesitate to tell her that her life is meaningless compared to Cosima�s importance as a scientist and Sarah�s and Helena�s fertility, and while she is herself constantly questioning herself, and has been ever since Beth first contacted her, the one area of her life that used to be her domain is slipping away slowly as well. After being revealed as a drug addict recently, she has lost control over the community fair that she helped to build, and as much energy and love she has put into this sphere, the people were quick to turn their backs on her. 

Orphan Black has always navigated through this questions � what it means for the identity of the clones that they are what they are, both in terms of them as individuals and them as a sisterhood, and more than that, what it means to be caught up in this conspiracy and to have to fight for autonomy. These are big questions, but almost everyone apart from Alison has an identity that seems to lend itself to the struggle. Beth, the ghost haunting them all, was a cop, the woman who started it all. Cosima is a scientist working on her own biology. Helena was raised to be a weapon against her own, and Rachel was raised within the very corporate system that birthed her. Even Sarah � a grifter � fits fairly neatly into the specific set of skills required to navigate this life that she never chose. 

Alison, on the other hand, has changed plenty in terms of who she is, but never quite in what she does. She still mainly identifies herself as a mother of two children and a homemaker, someone who tries to make sense of NEolution, Dyad and being a clone from the context of being those things. And the world she has been thrown into doesn�t forgive this very easily, and keeps mocking her for her choices, while at the same time taking the agency away from her to reflect on why she ever made those choices, and how they may fit into who she was, as a person, before all of this. Which is an interesting question as well, if we keep in mind that Donnie has been her monitor for as long as she has known him � the entire thing that her adult identity is shaped around has always been profoundly tainted by Dyad, and even if Donnie is now on her side � the fact that he was once so intimately involved with the conspiracy that was taking her agency away from her cannot be too easily forgiven. 

The other thing that comes up here is more intimate, and it�s about Alison�s grief for her best friend Aynsley. She let her die because she thought she was her monitor, a person who had betrayed her all her life, but it turned out to be Donnie. The show has never directly addressed this fact � it has talked about Alison�s guilt through her addiction but never really about Donnie�s culpability in what happened. Now, as Alison struggles with Neolution reaching for her, and Rachel literally threatening her existence by putting the police and Maddie Anger on her, she goes back to that primary question of who she is. These flashbacks to the Hendrixes and the Norrises sharing their life in this quaint suburb are heartbreaking, considering what happens later, because in spite of the artifice and the horribleness of the power struggles we�ve seen Alison � everything that makes this community run � their relationship is genuine, heartfelt and powerful. It�s a true friendship between four people, and particularly between Aynsley and Alison, best friends, supportive of each other. 

These memories go back to when all of the mystery started. Alison had already been contacted by Beth, who tried to convince her of the seriousness of the conspiracy, but Alison was reluctant to put her normalcy in danger. In the end, Cosima rings the doorbell to convince Alison that this whole thing is bigger than could be explained by coincidence � except Alison, very likely because she is overwhelmed by all of this in any case, has just tried mushrooms the first time, and Cosima�s whole thing is entirely too much for her in that situation. So she closes the door in her face, but the doubts are simmering, and they go deep � right to the core of her existence � straight away. She reflects on the fact that she is a mother and a homemaker, while these women who look exactly like her are cops and molecular biologists. 

Alison: Aynsley, do you think this is all there is for us? Bailey Downs?
Aynsley: If you really feel like there�s another purpose for you, you should trust that. 

I think the thing here is that this question goes much deeper than the fact that Alison is a clone, or that Neolution is creating this web around her. It�s a profound question about choices and purpose, and if anything, being a clone has just facilitated the process, because it�s harder not to ask that question when there are so many women with such diverse lives but the exact same genetic make up. 

Beyond that, it�s also about who Alison WANTS to be, rather than who she has always been forced by circumstances to be. She keeps manipulating herself to not to confront this, by choosing a life with Donnie in Bailey Downs, by drinking and taking drugs, but the question is still brewing and weighing heavily on her. 

Towards the end, she comes to the realisation that her sisters, whom she loves so much in spite of all the trouble she causes, have given her a sisterhood that goes far beyond the petty issues dominating the Church Fair in Bailey Downs. It has given her the ability to change the course of history and to take back control, and to save her own family. She finally comes face to face with Rachel Duncan � whom she still hasn�t met in person � and drops Aldous Leekie�s head on her table, forcing an end to Maddie�s investigation. She reminds Rachel of the fact that she has been in this fight longer than Sarah has � that she was Beth�s first, the core and heart of this sisterhood. 

And then, later, after absolving her family of most of the threats hanging over them, she tells Donnie that she needs to go away for a bit, so she can figure out who she truly is. It�s a glorious moment, and one that Aynsley would have proudly supported. 

Random notes: 

HOW IS DONNIE HENDRIX STILL ALIVE. 

Favourite comic scene this season so far � Felix closing the curtains on Alison�s speech, and then slowly dragging drugged Donnie out of sight. 

Alison�s conversation with Rachel was a good reminder that she DOES have basic firearm safety, because Beth put a lot of effort into training her and making her capable for this fight. I think all of this comes to fruition in this episode � like Alison finally realises that she has these tools at her disposal and finally finds the courage to use them. 

Orphan Black � We run on principle.

Orphan Black: 5x02 Clutch of Greed.

The cheese-mites asked how the cheese got there,
And warmly debated the matter;
The Orthodox said that it came from the air,
And the Heretics said from the platter.
They argued it long and they argued it strong,
And I hear they are arguing now;
But of all the choice spirits who lived in the cheese,
Not one of them thought of a cow.
 Arthur Conan Doyle: A Parable

The episode begins with what might be a fever dream, but in light of what we know of Kira�s powers, could be something else entirely. Sarah, once again the clutches of Rachel, Ferdinand and Dyad, sees Kira and Siobhan, and is warned that she needs to let Kira go, that she needs to listen to her. It�s a prescient warning for what happens later in the episode, and one that Sarah ignores utterly.

It�s difficult to find a common thread here, between where all the characters are going, but maybe it�s this: That in a show that is so much about biology and genetics, the thing that determines the characters is still mostly their past experience, their instincts based on how they�ve been hurt before. It�s all about fight or flight, and Sarah (and MK, who is tragically thematically paired with her in this episode) has always thought about running first. Back in the day, she used to do it on her own, leaving Kira behind, but now she is extending that primal instinct to find safety far away from danger to her daughter, to her sisters. Previously, Cosima turned her down, arguing that fleeing, in that case, wouldn�t suit any of them, especially since Delphine told her to follow the science to wherever it leads. To be truly free, the argument goes, the sisters have to understand their full story, but Sarah isn�t interested in anything that connects her to Rachel and to any kind of alliance that Rachel maps out for them.

And is this how PT Westmoreland�s parable applies to her as well? How the sisters have been fighting about the correct approach, and how, back in the day, this applied to Rachel as well. In the parable, the two approaches are both wrong because they are based on limited information, because none of the cheese mites are in any position to envision the being that they came from, as it is too far removed from their current position, from their current lived experience. How would a cheese mite imagine a cow, what all it knows is the space between the platter and the air. On the other hand, it is always relevant, in any story, who the storyteller is, and in this case it is an old man posing as a very, impossibly, old man, an none of the sisters have any proof that he actually does exist. There is no trail of documents, no data, to support his claim that he will outlive Darwin�s tortoise, that a combination of his genetics and Neolution�s science has made him immortal. PT Westmoreland is a necessary creation, but he also embodies a logical fallacy in Revival, because why do they have to chase the dream so vividly still if they have already found a solution? The only way to solve the puzzle of why PT Westmoreland is so old, whereas everyone else isn�t, is that he is somehow bestowed with special powers, which justify his position at the top of the pyramid. This is too convenient to actually add up to the truth though, so my guess is still that this man is an impostor, a necessary illusion for a scientifically pretentious religious cult that has lived in isolation for such a long time. If all of his outstanding biology is already there to be studied, why does Rachel need new surrogate mothers, to restart the cloning? Why does Revival find children with cancer from around the world, who are precarious enough that they can be studied without any resistance?

PT promises Cosima that if she chases the answers long enough, and follows the path he lays out for her beyond finding a cure for herself and her sisters, eventually she may be capable of envisioning the cow, the impossible being, that has created them all, but for now, the main reason why Cosima keeps digging, keeps following, isn�t this obscure promise, because she has no desire to become part of the collection in this ancient house, another stuffed animal, another front page in a science journal. It�s just that Delphine has told her to do this, but maybe, the reason why she used the exact same words � follow the science � is because she has already figured out that it leads to a place that is very different from the one that Westmoreland or this creepy freaking village promise.

Which leads us to Rachel, who has changed into a person who seems at peace with herself, who pursues a path, who has finally found a calling. Presumably, this is what Westmoreland does, also: He reads people perfectly, and finds what is missing from them, what they need to hear to follow his instructions. It took him no time at all to know that Cosima wants to heal her sisters, wants to find her own cure, so when he met Rachel, he must have known that she wants nothing more than preside over the future of the human race, and prove that she can do so as a clone. He has put her in a position where she feels that bringing the other sisters into the fold doesn�t mean giving up power � but then there is the other consideration to make. She seems changed entirely, especially to Ferdinand, who so desperately needs her to be her old self. But has Rachel really changed? Everything that happens in this episode, from Sarah standing in another prison cell hearing that all her sisters apart from Helena and Mika have joined the cause, to Sarah being pitted against Kira and her family when she refuses to leave the normal life that has been promised to her, aligns with what Rachel, and I mean the old Rachel, would have wanted the most. Nothing could hurt Sarah worse than her daughter deciding against her, and for Rachel, nothing could hurt her most than Siobhan and Felix arguing against her that running away and saving her family is the better option here. This new Rachel has accomplished exactly what the old Rachel always wanted the most, taking away every little thing that she envied Sarah so much. She takes Kira�s hand, and walks away from Sarah, and glimpses back, and in that glimpse, I don�t think there is a single doubt that this new Rachel is simply a fa�ade for the old one that currently works good for her, that is like a successful rebrand, but still hides the same vengeful, hateful, hurt clone who has now lost both of her parents and still feels like Sarah has stolen something from her just by being herself.

There is a tragic parallel in this as well, between Kira�s deep desire to understand herself and her connection to all of Sarah�s sisters, and Sarah�s refusal to allow her this understanding because she thinks that it will trap her in dependency on an inherently untrustworthy corporation. Most of this show has been about the clones demanding to understand their own existence against the wishes of those who created them, and now Kira is doing the same with the woman who created her, Sarah. As much as Sarah�s refusal to allow Kira to choose this path for herself is based on a well-founded concern over Rachel�s trustworthiness, and the nature of Dyad, it still leads to exactly the same outcome that she experienced herself when she realised who she was. People she trusted were making decisions against her own will. It�s tragic that the episode is resolved the way it is, with Kira walking away with Rachel, as if the only solution to this is for her to trust Dyad. But then, this seems to be the theme of the season � Sarah once again losing everything, even though she is trying so hard, because she can�t change her spots, and her first instinct is to run even when does she is trying to protect tell her that she has to find a different way.

It takes a lot of courage not to run, especially when it comes instinctually.

And I think when all else is done, when the season and Orphan Black end, we will still come back to this moment and try to grasp what it means.

This whole dynamic, of an old man deciding the course of so many people�s lives, of an entire organisation built on the subjugation and exploitation of others but particularly women � an organisation that picked poor women off the streets to use them, that has deprived them of basic rights, and often killed them in the process � leads to this scene. Ferdinand, a sad, sad man, sexually frustrated by a woman who refuses to give him what he wants, takes all of that frustration out on Mika, who is wearing that woman�s identity, but who has also taken all of his power, all of his money, away previously. Ferdinand stands for everything that Dyad, and all its previous and future mutations, stand for when you take away all the pseudo-scientific veneer, all the branding, all the fake respectability of the learned and old. He is a misogynist, a man who hates women, a man who hates when he doesn�t get exactly what he wants. Rachel tells him that he has to change his ways, because she is trying to turn Neolution into a different project, and Ferdinand the way he has always been is like the inevitable ghost of the past haunting it, one  that is so hard to shake off because this entire institution is inherently patriarchal and brutal, as much as Rachel is attempting to change it.

Because he hasn�t gotten what he wanted, and because Sarah has slipped through his fingers, he tramples Mika to death.

There is no other way of saying this � in this episode, Ferdinand jumps on her, and doesn�t stop until she has died. It�s viscerally horrible, it�s a brutal scene that is incredibly hard to watch, and even though it ends with him being sent out on the street, it stands for everything that Dyad has been throughout the ages. At its core, it steals autonomy from people, turns their bodies into proprietary information and takes the ability to lead independent lives away from them. The direct violence Ferdinand uses in this episode is just another expression of that very same ideology that uses women and thinks nothing of depriving them of agency.

These are Mika�s last words for Sarah � that this whole thing is so much bigger than about her and her daughter, that losing sight of the enormity of their undertaking will mean that they lose this war. Dyad will always come back in one way or another, because the ideology behind it is so deeply embedded in our society.

I think Delphine knows, and she also knows that the only way to do any lasting damage here is to contact Siobhan. These two will be interesting as a team, because they should make up for each other�s shortcomings perfectly: Delphine was never one to whom acting covertly came naturally, and Siobhan isn�t one who blends in well. Delphine is very much not a ghost, and I suppose we will finally find out what she truly meant when she told Cosima to follow the science.

Random notes:

Who is Mud? She lives in the mansion, and talks to PT Westmoreland daily.

We get confirmation that Helena�s twins have the same uncanny ability to heal themselves that Kira has, and Helena escapes from the hospital after doing something pretty terrible to a doctor who might or might not have been a Neolutionist. Donnie, for his part, does what he does best: Runs away.

It is kind of beautiful, that Rachel starts the episode by promising that only the results of the non-invasive studies on Kira will be proprietary information, while Kira herself remains Sarah�s: Because Kira isn�t anyone�s either, she�s her own person too, which throughout the ages has been a contended idea.

This is a tiny throwaway moment, but the comic shop guy tells Ira that �his mom will be okay�, very much not realising that Susan wasn�t exactly motherly to him. Also, Ira is going back on the island to spy for the Clone Club, because he has many reasons to hate Rachel.