Orphan Black Season 4 recap – “The Redesign of Natural Objects”

My introductory post

Season 1 Overview

Season 2 Overview

Season 3 Overview

“The Redesign of Natural Objects”

(Spoilers)

Donnie is trying to act tough in his first day in jail.  But he’s is approached by this big, neolution guy who will be watching him.

Rachel and Ira are discussing her swan, as well as what to do about Susan giving up on Leda.  She says that they’ll have to do something if they want to live.  He points out that passion let her stand and speak without problem.

Sarah and Cosima are talking over their troubles when MK makes contact again through Kira’s game.  Sarah is a bit upset by that.  MK has hacked Evie and shows them the videoconference she had with Susan and Rachel and the part where she says Sarah and her sisters are a threat.  Cosima asks MK to set up a video call with Susan.

Alison goes to visit Donnie.  He needs a lawyer, but all they have is Adele who is suspended for being drunk in court.  She shows up to the jail – a bit drunk – and is a bit confused until Felix explains that Alison and Sarah are twins.  Adele then shows some competency with legal issues.  While Alison and Donnie are talking, the neolution guy comes in and Donnie points him out to Alison, saying he won’t make it to the bail hearing.

Susan is cutting up frogs or whatever with Charlotte as a hobby.  Rachel and Ira come in demanding she start work on a cure.

MK sets up a call between Sarah and Susan.  Sarah sets some ground rules, then turns it over to Cosima.  During this, Kira sees Mrs. S. getting her gun.  She goes and tells Sarah.

Sarah calls Art and they try to find Mrs. S. before she kills Duko.  She follows him and is about to shoot him when she sees Alison show up.  Duko wants to know where Sarah is.  Mrs. S. realizes that they’ll try to use Alison to get to all of them. 

Cosima talks to Susan and sends her the few lab notes they still have.  Scott doesn’t like Rachel after what she did last season, so they demand that only Susan work with them. 

Alison goes to rehearsals for Jesus Christ Superstar that they’ll putting on at the church.  She’s a little flustered and the Reverend talks to her a bit.  She calls Felix – who is being prompted by Sarah and Mrs. S. to talk to her and find out what Duko is doing – and asks him to come to the rehearsal as moral support.

Cosima, Scott, and Susan are talking about all that they’ve done, even using Kira’s cells.  But Cosima points out that Kira is only half-Leda, so there is limited use there.  That’s when she gets an idea.  If they fertilized a Leda egg with Castor sperm, they could recreate Kendall’s biology and have embryonic stem cells which they could use to make a cure.

MK calls Sarah with information she’s found on Duko.  There are a lot of shady things he’s covered-up for BrightBorn, and he’s been paid well for that.  She sends all the data, and afterwards we find that the reason she went back to them is that she has started coughing up blood.

Rachel has more visions of the swan, as well as some of an old man. 

Alison is worked up at rehearsal and finds a small bottle of vodka in her makeup case.  She’s saved by Felix showing up.  They talk, and it seems as if she just wants to know where Sarah is so she can pass it off to Duko.

Duko shows up and puts in a call to his guy in prison who has Donnie held down.  If Alison doesn’t give Duko the information, Donnie will get shanked.  Alison tells Duko that Sarah will be at the Rabbit Hole that night.

Duko watches the Rabbit Hole, and Sarah eventually shows up.  He goes in and roughs up Hell Wizard, but then Art, Mrs. S., and Sarah reveal themselves and that it was all a trap.  They get Duko to call off his prison goon – who had been beating up Donnie – and they pass the word to Felix to relays it to Alison during her rehearsal.

They tie Duko up and Art and Sarah leave.  Mrs. S. starts torturing Duko to find out what Evie’s plans are.  He tells her that Evie is taking the maggotbot program to the world; the true purpose of which he doesn’t know because that’s not his end of things.  He also says that he did what he did for his niece.  Once she has all the info, Mrs. S. shoots him.

Cosima explains to Sarah about making embryonic stem cells, and at first she isn’t thrilled with the idea.  But she does donate some eggs and Cosima takes them to Susan’s island.  Rachel wants to go help Sarah stop Evie.  She even has a vision of a swan’s head.

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I’m assuming that, with MK’s help, they’ll take all of Duko’s money and set up some trust for his niece. 

I was right that Mrs. S. would just shoot Duko for killing her mum.  I was wrong that Art would have a problem with it. 

I’m wondering what Rachel’s … game is.  I almost want to suggest that she wants to hand Sarah over to Evie as a way to get back into Dyad and all that, but I doubt Evie would honor such a deal.  And Rachel should understand that.  Unless their hostility is all an act?  The other possibilities are that Rachel figures whoever Sarah’s tech person is, they might be good enough to track down her swan visions, or she has figured something out about the visions and just needs to get off the island.  I guess we’ll just have to wait to see what shoe drops.

The other question I have is if Susan is as she’s being portrayed.  At the end of Season Two, Nealon was going to get some of Sarah’s eggs.  At the end of Season Three, we learn that he was working for Susan.  Susan has Ira for the Castor sperm, and she’s rather smart, so could she have been trying to remake the original biology without Kendall?  That’s another shoe we’ll have to wait to see drop.

There are only two more episodes this season.  As with the previous seasons, I have no idea where it’s going.  Part of why this is one of my favorite shows right now.

Movie Monday – Short film “The Butcher” (2011)

My introductory post. 

“The Butcher” on IMDB  

(This isn’t the trailer, it’s the whole movie.)

(Spoilers)

A prisoner wearing a mask is at his parole hearing.  They say he can remove the mask, and he does and they are shocked.  They then tell him he can put the mask back on.  He is in prison for killing a bunch of people, but because he works in the prison garden and due to overcrowding, he is released.

Still wearing the mask, he gets a job in some office.  He tries to fit in, even trying to work up the courage to talk to a cute girl on a park bench. 

But after his boss sees him pretending to stab people, he’s fired.  He gets a bit angry and wants to go back to his old ways.  Grabbing a butcher’s knife he stands outside watching the girl from the park. 

But then he gets a job at a butcher shop – the owner saying he’s a natural – and one of his first customers is the girl from the park.

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The film is labeled a comedy, but it’s not a laugh out loud kind.  I was expecting more of a dark comedy type of thing comparing the brutality of this serial killer with that of an office job.  So I was a bit disappointed when it didn’t go that way.

According to the description on YouTube, this was written, shot, and edited in a week.  So this is more than I could have done in a week, but I think I’d prefer the two week version.

Orphan Black Season 4 recap – “The Antisocialism of Sex”

My introductory post

Season 1 Overview

Season 2 Overview

Season 3 Overview

“The Antisocialism of Sex”

(Spoilers)

We open with Rachel working on walking.  The door to her room/cell unlocks.  She goes out and goes up a flight of stairs to a nice house and an old book.  Susan is there and she explains the secret history of neolution.  Percival Westmoreland – a Victorian industrialist – started neolution to breed a better human.  Susan built upon his work – and his home on an island – but now that Kendall is dead and Evie has taken over, there’s nothing left for her.  Rachel is upset that Susan gives up so easily.

Sarah is distraught over what has happened.  She and Mrs. S. have an argument and Sarah leaves “for good.”

Scott tries to tell Cosima it isn’t her fault, but Cosima doesn’t want to listen.  With Hell Wizard, Scott tries to salvage anything from their computers.  Cosima gets a bit testy with them, but then reveals that she stole Sarah’s maggotbot, and Scott wonders if they can dig something out of it.

Felix is talking with Mrs. S. when Kira comes in.  He learns that Sarah had left, but he goes out to find her and bring her back because she’s “the glue” holding them all together.

Sarah starts hitting the bars to get drunk.  At times, she catches a glimpse of Beth watching her.  Sarah bumps into Dizzy at a bar, but then she catches the eyes of a couple.  They invite Sarah into a back room for drugs and sex.  Felix comes in looking for Sarah, and he and Dizzy – who don’t know each other – talk for a bit and Dizzy learns Sarah has a brother and a daughter.

Mrs. S. talks to Art and they figure Duko killed Kendall, as well as put Beth onto Susan.  Art later tricks Duko into meeting him, and starts beating the crap out of him.  Art says that they can bring Evie and everything out in the public.  Duko counters that Art has secrets of his own, such as the Maggie Chen shooting and hanging out with drug dealers.  If he tries to take down Evie, they’ll take him down as well.

Evie meets with her doctor and we learn that she has shingles, and that the new maggotbots – which have just won approval for public use – will come out next week.  She’ll get one of the first ones to finally cure her.  Evie and her group have a call with Susan and Rachel to mark the complete takeover of neolution by Evie.  The monitoring of the clones will end, and the unaware clones will go their own way.  The self-aware clones, however, Evie considers a threat.

Rachel tells Charlotte that they are both sick and dying.  Charlotte doesn’t seem that concerned.

When Sarah and the couple come back, a fight starts with Dizzy.  She then suggests going back to his place.  They start to fool around, but he doesn’t seem that interested.  He discovers that her maggotbot is gone.  He asks how she managed that, and that he had a friend who had one who died.  This is the buried guy MK tipped Beth off to.  But Sarah doesn’t want to talk about any of that and ends up leaving.

Alison is really upset over Kendall.  Donnie proposes to postpone their daughter’s birthday party, but Alison won’t hear of it.  Donnie also invites the reverend over in case Alison needs to talk to someone.  She doesn’t want to talk.  During the party, cops come in and arrest Donnie for drugs.  Then Duko comes in and gives Alison his card so that they can “stay in touch.”

Kira gets a vibe that Sarah is “following Beth.” Sarah walks to a bridge over the train tracks and has a conversation with Beth.  Sarah thinks about jumping.

Cosima and Scott are talking about Sarah’s maggotbot, and Cosima suggests implanting it in herself because it was randomly turning off genes and maybe it could cure her.  Scott thinks that’s nuts.  They go up to the comic store to eat, but Cosima says she forgot something and goes back down and locks herself in.  She takes the bot, and makes a cut in her cheek to implant it.

Mrs. S. calls Felix about Sarah following Beth.  Scott then calls Felix about Cosima.  Felix calls Cosima and tells her that Krystal saw Delphine get shot, but she also saw someone else pick her up.  Cosima puts down the bot.

Felix spots Sarah on the bridge and goes to her.  Beth tells her that there’s more than biology between them, and to bring them together.  Beth disappears and Sarah goes back home with Felix.  She and Mrs. S. start coming back together.

Kira is playing a video game when she gets a call from MK.

Rachel trips going down the stairs and sees a swan.  Ira helps her up, and figures she just bumped her head.  But the swan – that looks as if it’s just floating in midair – glitches a bit, so it’s apparently just a projection in her bionic eye.

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Will Art – for his love of Beth – fall on his sword for the sisters?  Will he accept all the consequences if it means they take down Evie?  Would such an act just echo, or be repetitive to what Paul did for Sarah last season?

I saw a review that wondered if Dizzy had a maggotbot and body modifications, and I was unsure about that.  But rewatching the episode and seeing his apparent disinterest in sex, makes me think there may be something to that.

Orphan Black has a history of characters faking their deaths: Ethan, Susan, MK, Sarah.  Leekie even “died” of a heart attack while he was being shot in the head, and Rachel “died” in a plane crash.  I bring this up because the only evidence we have of Marion’s death is MK has a file of it and Susan mentions something about Charlotte have bad luck with monitors.  I wonder if Marion faked her death to be out of sight of Evie to work on an anti-Evie group?  Is Ferdinand part of it?  Are they the ones who picked up Delphine?

Speaking of Delphine, I can’t remember when I first had this idea, but before she was shot she visited Shay and gave her a card to give to Cosima letting her know she could trust Shay with everything.  I wonder if there’s a microdot or something on the card giving Cosima access to a hidden server, or something.  I was expecting Shay to play some role this season, and I’m rather surprised we haven’t seen her.  Yet.  I’m sure at some point this loose thread will be tied off.

The only evidence we have that Sarah’s bot was switching off genes is Evie, someone whose word is not to be trusted.  I wondered if she just said that to maybe trick Cosima into implanting it, but that seems too complex.  I did wonder why Evie hadn’t noticed that Cosima took Sarah’s maggotbot, but did she just switch it with Leekie’s?  I may have to rewatch that scene.

I’m still waiting for the non-mystic explanation for Kira.  I hope I don’t have to wait for too long.