Uh-oh, Rachel is laughing maniacally. That can't be a good sign for Clone Club on this week's episode. It's probably not a good sign for her, either.
You know what I miss? Seeing the main Clone Club trio together. Having them chat over video just isn't the same, and I'm worried that Cosima might die before they're all reunited.
But let's kick things off with the Murder Hendrixes. Donnie and Alison need to do something with Leekie's body, and at first, Alison is the one in control. She treats the wrapping and hiding of the corpse like any other household chore. She comes up with the plan to hide the body (Alison gets her crime tips from Dexter, but it's too bad she can't watch Orphan Black herself; then she'd know that the writers love to torment her) and she works the jackhammer while Donnie sputters and cries.
But once Vic appears on the scene, everything changes. When it was just Alison with him, Donnie let himself wallow, but once a threat to his family emerged, old Donnie found his spine. He's shed his tears over committing manslaughter, but now it's his superpower. His hands are already dirty, so why not use them to play the badass?
He overplays his hand a little bit, though, when he confronts Angie about spying on Alison. He could have just pointed out that Art was suspended for investigating the connection between Sarah and Beth and left it at that, but no, Donnie is too proud of being immersed in the conspiracy and newly enlightened. "All these women, and you just can't put it together," he says to Angie. And Angie? She's listening.
This new Donnie turns Alison on something fierce, but she's not so caught up in the moment that she doesn't need to choreograph their post-corpse hiding coitus. Then BBC America gives us Donnie butt. Thanks, I guess?
Plus, the perpetually unlucky Hendrixes sign their work with a Murder Heart. No way that comes back to bite them. Nope, not at all.
Finally we get to see what's going on with Helena. Henrik knocks her up the new fashioned way, with an embryo transfer device. Despite the whole forced marriage and theft of her eggs business, Helena initial seems down with hanging around the Prolethean compound. After all, they made her pregnant, the feed her, and there are lots of kids around. Helena does love kids. By the way, should we assume that most, if not all, of those kids are Henrik's? We know that Grace is his first born, which implies that other children came after her.
It's interesting to compare Henrik's revisionist retelling of Frankenstein to Ethan's reading of The Island of Doctor Moreau last episode. Henrik uses Frankenstein as something of a child's sermon, imposing his worldview on the Prolethean children. Ethan used The Island of Doctor Moreau as a means of secretly passing on his scientific knowledge to Kira. Fatherhood has been a major theme of this season, and for Henrik fatherhood means being fruitful in passing down his genes and his philosophy. For Ethan, it may mean empowering the next generation.
But the Proletheans have a bit too much in common with the nuns who raised Helena. When Helena threatens to kill a woman who shakes and scolds a child for being the tiniest bit disobedient, it's the first sign that she won't be content on the compound for long.
The second sign is much, much more disturbing. Even though Grace helped bring Helena back to the Proletheans, her father still forces her to carry Helena embryos (and, disturbingly, his own). Congratulations, Henrik, you maintain your title of the worst person on this show. I guess it's wise not to put all your eggs in one uterus, but all of the Prolethean women who can are carrying the Helena-Henrik embryos. It's basically Project Leda's worst nightmare.
It also means that Grace and Helena are now linked not just by similar upbringings, but also by biology. And when Helena is the first person to offer Grace a choice in the matter—telling her not to have Helena's babies if she doesn't want to—Grace decides to throw her lot in with Helena. Henrik interrupts their attempt to escape, but he makes two mistakes. First, he underestimates Mark's affection for Grace—not to mention how disgusting even his loyal follower finds the whole put-my-embryos-in-my-own-daughter thing. Second, he turns his back on Helena.
Second rule of Clone Club: NEVER TURN YOUR BACK ON HELENA.
You remember a few episodes back when Henrik drugged Helena and carried her off to his lab? We didn't know exactly what was going on, but we knew that eventually, Helena would get her revenge. Henrik wants to put his medical equipment in Helena? She's going to do it right back.
Then she burns down the Prolethean compound. So long, Proletheans. I'm sure we haven't heard the last of you.
The big arc this episode, though, is the one that links Sarah, Cosima, and Rachel. Rachel promotes Delphine to director of the Dyad Institute, which Sarah ominously points out makes her the new Leekie. Delphine's job is to convince Sarah to hand over Kira's bone marrow so that the Dyad scientists can reboot Cosima's immune system—while Rachel tries to convince Delphine that her interest in Kira is purely medical.
Meanwhile, Ethan, Cosima, and Scott are working on a long-term solution for the clones' respiratory problems. Ethan has the encrypted sequence that rendered the clones barren—which is also apparently responsible for Cosima's illness. (Really? You didn't suspect that deliberately giving people an autoimmune condition might have unintended consequences?) Ethan is nervous that Dyad is going to use the additional artificial sequences to create more clones, but Scott is just happy to be here.
Somehow, Siobhan just happens to know someone who runs a private pediatric clinic (because Siobhan knows everyone), and Kira agrees to donate her bone marrow to potentially save Cosima. Sarah has a great deal of ambivalence about subjecting her daughter to an invasive medical procedure after Dyad has done so much to the clones, but Cosima is family now, and Sarah isn't going to lose her sister if she can help it.
But Sarah isn't ready for Rachel. Marion pays another visit to the Dyad Institute and rattles Rachel with her talk of how interesting Sarah is.
On the surface, Rachel is so put together. She's stoic and poised. But underneath she's full of longing, and the betrayal of her fathers—Leekie, who killed her mother, and Ethan, who deliberately rendered her barren—put some cracks in her perfect facade. The small insult from Marion, a woman she has visibly emulated, crushes Rachel but doesn't crumble her. If Sarah views Rachel as the path not taken—the girl with parents and self-awareness—then Rachel sees Sarah the same way—the mother with a child. But while Sarah can only visit Rachel's life in videotapes, Rachel figures she can just take what Sarah has.
Sarah is an adept con and improviser, but Rachel is a schemer. She uses Delphine's distrust of her to trick Delphine into thinking Benjamin, Siobhan's ally, is a Dyad plant. Delphine dashes right to the clinic to warn Sarah, giving Rachel an opening to pose as Sarah. She accomplishes her deception partially by not letting anyone look at her too closely, but I can't help but Rachel's a little too good at playing Sarah. Has she impersonated clones before?
So Rachel gets what she thinks she wants: Kira. She doesn't just want to study Kira; she wants to raise her within Dyad the way she herself was raised. I can only imagine what Rachel will do once she learns that there are Helena embryos out in the world.