Orphan Black 3×6 Review: Certain Agony of the Battlefield

This show has always been intense, but this week they turned it up to 11.  I am genuinely surprised at some of the turns the story took this week, not to mention I’m unexpectedly emotionally distraught.  This show isn’t exactly Game of Thrones or Whedon levels of main character death, but death does happen.  Despite that, I felt like I was hit with an emotional sledgehammer and it’s going to take me a while to recover.

Before we get into the topic that’s causing me severe emotional trauma, I just have to talk about the Hendrixes. Allison and Donnie are my favorite couple on the show at this point.  More importantly, their kids still exist!  I was starting to think they’d disappeared into a Black Hole or something.  Donnie and Allison’s plot is funny, entertaining, and a much needed comedic relief from the dead serious nature of the rest of the show.  It is starting to feel rather disjointed, though, as every other character is dealing with the conspiracies surrounding Project Leda and Castor while Allison is off on her own Nancy Botwin-esque journey.  I love it dearly, but I’m wondering if she’s ever going to be brought back into the main story with the rest of her sisters or she’s doomed to be the wacky suburban clone for the rest of the season.  Or hell, the rest of the show?  She deserves to be part of the main story.

Speaking of couples that mean a lot to me, Delphine and Cosima still own my heart, but I wish her the best with her new girlfriend, Shay.  She deserves happiness.  The Cophine ship breaking up definitely damaged me, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want them to seek emotional comfort elsewhere if the opportunity arises.  I feel like something bad is going to happen, though.  Cosima already freaked out when Shay knew the name Sarah.  If Shay isn’t involved in the conspiracies, she may still be put in danger by getting too close to Cosima.  It’s definitely anxiety inducing.

The main focus of the episode, however, what the biological warfare plot.  Apparently whatever is wrong with both the Leda and Castor clones is some sort of protein something something (I’m not a scientist, forgive me Cosima) that can be sexually transmitted.  It affects the brain of the men it infects and destroys the reproductive systems of the women.  At least that’s what I gathered.  I’m not really the best with all the biology talk, but the point is that this is some bad baaaad thing that they intentionally infect Sarah with.  Sarah, being the super special awesome clone that she is, was able to fight off the disease just fine.  That doesn’t really give us much comfort, though, because the Castor clones have been off spreading this Super-STD in the general  population for a long time.  It’s out there and not everyone is Super-Special-Sarah able to fight it off.  This is some crazy crap going on.

I really don’t like Paul anymore, but his death was still pretty emotionally damaging.  He loved Sarah, and you can’t deny that.  While my love for him disappeared when it was revealed he was working for Castor, my heart breaks for Sarah who has to live with even more guilt surrounding his death.  She clearly had strong feelings for him and while I am rooting for her and Cal to be an end game couple, you can’t exactly just change what your heart wants.  There’s also an added layer of guilt with his admission that he never loved Beth, but did love her.  It’s a lot of weight for Sarah to carry, so while I’m not really distraught over Paul’s death itself, I’m upset on her behalf.

The Beth scenes were extremely intense.  We haven’t seen much of her outside of the recordings Sarah watched and that brief tearful moment before she jumped in front of the train.  All other glimpses of Beth came from what those who knew her had to say.  Was this an accurate representation of Beth?  Was Sarah hallucinating or was she having a near death experience?  This show hasn’t veered into the metaphysical yet, sticking firmly to science fiction, so I’m leaning towards the former explanation.  Still, it was really great to see Tatiana Maslany dig deeper into this character.

While Tatiana Maslany is always going to be the most stellar actress who ever acted, I’ve got to temporarily take the title of ‘Most Amazing Performance’ away from her for an episode and give it to Jordan Gavaris.  Don’t worry, Tatiana, you’ll probably get the title back next week.  Felix had an extremely powerful scene with Rachel this week that left me feeling strengthened in my love for the character.  Felix has been kind of part of the background decoration for most of the season, but him taking matters into his own hands and forcing information out of Rachel proved that he’s still very much a character worthy of our attention.  He’s more than just Sarah’s brother or background decoration or the token gay male character.  He’s Felix and he’s fabulous.

Next week looks like it’s going to be another roller coaster.  This show doesn’t ever really slow it’s plot down, though, so we should just get used to being taken along on this wild emotional ride.

Author: Angel Wilson

Angel is the admin of The Geekiary and a geek culture commentator. They earned a BA in Film & Digital Media from UC Santa Cruz. They have contributed to various podcasts and webcasts including An Englishman in San Diego, Free to Be Radio, and Genre TV for All. They identify as queer.

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