Orphan Black Season 1 recap – “Instinct”

My introductory post

“Instinct”

(Spoilers)

After Katja has been killed, Sarah is driving away and she finally answers Beth’s pink phone.  There is a woman on the other end who we eventually discover is Cosima Niehaus asking if she’s met with “The German.” Sarah tells her that someone shot The German, and Cosima says it must be true that someone is killing them, and that they must have followed Katja from Europe.  Cosima tells her to get Katja’s briefcase and to hide the body. 

Sarah drives out to the woods and, after grabbing Katja’s hotel card, buries her in a shallow grave.  She then power washes the blood out of Beth’s car and gets the windshield replaced.

Sarah shows up at Felix’s, barely missing a very drunk Vic.  She asks Felix to visit Mrs. S to let Kira know her mom isn’t dead.  She also goes to show him the money, only to find that Art took it and replaced it with the case file for Maggie Chen.  She calls Art who says they’ll talk everything over.

Felix goes to Mrs. S’s, and they talk about Sarah and how the funeral was a way to give Vic the slip.  Mrs. S isn’t sure that Sarah is ready to be a parent.  Kira overhears, so she knows Sarah is alive.  Mrs. S says that when Sarah is ready, she can have Kira.

Sarah goes “home” and we find that Beth and Paul hadn’t been doing so well.  He leaves to stay with a friend. 

Sarah studies the Maggie Chen case.  The story is that Beth thought she saw a wanted woman and followed her down an alley.  She then fired at Maggie Chen who was holding a phone, not a gun.  Later, when she meets with Art, we find that Art planted the phone to cover for Beth.  Sarah asks for the money back, saying she cleaned out Beth and Paul’s account, but Art says she’ll get it back after she’s reinstated.

There’s a hiccup with the hearing because Beth’s therapist says she isn’t ready to return to work.  But Sarah blackmails her saying she could tell the hearing that Beth shot Maggie because she was confused by all the medication the therapist was giving her.  So there is a hearing, Sarah goes through everything, and they will have a decision in a few days.

Meanwhile, Cosima calls asking if “Beth” had gotten Katja’s briefcase.  Sarah disguises herself as Katja and goes to her hotel room.  It is destroyed, and there is a decapitated doll.  Hotel security shows up saying that they discovered her destroyed room after some noise complaints.  Sarah blames it on a party, and has the damages put on Katja’s credit card.  She also finds out the hotel was holding her briefcase. 

Sarah breaks into the briefcase to find blood samples and medical records of several women from France, Italy, etc.  She also finds the name and address of Alison.  Cosima calls and Sarah stops pretending to be Beth.  Cosima uses the code phrase, and when Sarah can’t answer, she hangs up.

Sarah stakes out Alison’s house and sees her leave with her kids for soccer practice.  When Alison goes into the clubhouse to prepare snacks, Sarah goes in.  She tells her that Beth is dead and Alison doesn’t want to believe that.  She also doesn’t want Sarah in her neighborhood.  But she tells her to wait for a call.

Alison later calls and tells Sarah to be at Alison’s backdoor.  Sarah takes Felix to be her backup.  She goes into Alison’s and meets Cosima, wondering how many of them there are.

#

There’s a scene in the promos where Alison tells Sarah that they are clones, someone’s experiments, and that they’re killing them.  I knew that scene was coming, and expecting to be the cliffhanger of the second episode, but that’s actually in the beginning of the next episode. 

I think this episode is a great example of why the show is so good.  There’s not the big thing of someone getting shot or anything like that, but there’s still a lot of meat in this episode: glimpses of this being so much bigger than just Sarah, Beth, whoever.