Review: 'Orphan Black' Season 3, Episode 8, 'Ruthless in Purpose and Insidious in Method': Rachel Makes a Power Move

PREVIOUSLY: Review: ‘Orphan Black’ Season 3, Episode 7, ‘Community of Dreadful Fear and Hate’: Life With the Hendrixes

Cloning Around

After focusing much of the season on Sarah, Helena

and the male clones, the eighth episode continued on last week’s thread of refocusing

on the original four sestras, and how

they’re dealing with life under Topside. Much of the episode followed Cosima,

her illness and her new relationship with Shay, which allowed viewers a little

more information about the infamous book and how to cure the disease. It also

allowed us to spend a little more time with Rachel, who (despite her physical

disability) proved to be just as crafty and connected as ever.

Science Class

The secret language in the book was finally somewhat

decoded thanks to Rachel’s bribe. Unfortunately the only clue Rachel was able

to procure before she was extracted by Delphine and co. was that the original

Castor could be somewhere in London. Naturally this will lead to a trip across

the pond with Sarah, Felix and Mrs. S in the near future (a.k.a. next week) and

a potential new clone for Ari Millen to portray. Given that most of Millen’s

clones are dead right now thanks to Paul’s little explosion, it will be nice to

see the actor extend his chops with a fresh take.

Meanwhile, the truth came out that Cosima has maybe

a month left before her system collapses again, meaning the race for a cure is

definitely on. (And that we may see yet another steamy kiss or two between her

and Delphine – IF Cosima and Scott ever get their jobs back.)

Star-Crossed Lovers

The way Delphine immediately pushed Cosima aside

this season was unlike the character we met in Season 1, but with her newfound

power and need to protect the Leda clones it was a decision that made sense.

Getting too close to Cosima wouldn’t allow her to property protect her. The

past few episodes, however, have focused on Delphine’s supposed jealousy of

Shay, and led to a weird character turn for Cosima. Sure, we all do dumb things

for love (or whatever it is she has with Shay), but Cosima is supposed to be

the smartest clone of them all. For her to not clue in to Shay’s intentions

drove home that she may be book smart, but she doesn’t have Sarah’s street

sense. Now, because of Shay, the Castor clones have the book and the Leda gals

still don’t know what it all means.

Double Crossed

Thanks to Rachel’s physical impairments since the

pencil incident, it’s been easy to forget how ruthless she was when she was at

full capacity. As a result, Delphine’s desire to potentially eliminate her

seemed brash and personal. Perhaps that’s because there was something

comforting about rooting for Rachel becoming good and joining the Clone Club

ranks, rather than reverting to her evil wine-drinking ways. But as we saw when

Dr. Coady resurfaced earlier in the episode, there was a leak in the Topside ranks

and Rachel had everything to do with it. Now, instead of Krystal being able to

lead the easy, non Clone Club life, she’s forced to become “Rachel”

while the real one gets away — new eye and all. There’s no telling where she’ll

resurface; it could be with the Castor clones, or it could be with some new

entity we have yet to meet. The episode did allude to there being other

divisions of this experiment, after all.

Feline Peril

Of all the people for Rudy to target, of course it

was Scott. Shay obviously knew he had the book on him and it would be easy to

grab, but putting the cat in danger was a low point. Thankfully the animal

survived. Scott’s gamer persona come to life, however, may not. For now, we

should be thankful Rudy left Scott alive at all; the mercenary has proved he

has no qualms about killing random people in the past.

Salon Time

Tatiana Maslany is a genius when it comes to

breathing life into new characters on this show, but often it’s these

characters’ interactions with Felix that makes them truly pop. This week we got

to see Jordan Gavaris drop the accent in favor of his Canadian one as he

attempted to steal new clone Krystal’s identity by flirting with her. The aesthetician’s

light, charming ways were immediately likeable, even if her rant against twins

being creepy wasn’t the most kosher.

Homecoming

It’s a wonder that it’s taken this long for Helena

to spend some real time with the Hendrix family, given how different Helena and

Alison are. The comedy could write itself. But the real gem of the episode was

watching Helena and Donnie come to something of an understanding over “baby

ox.” It’s probably been a while since Donnie felt good about himself, and

Helena can certainly provide that. Unfortunately Helena also goes a little too

far for those in her life, and now that Jason and Donnie have duked it out to

such extremes, here’s betting Helena takes matters into her own hands.

Lab Results

This week was a progressive episode in terms of

dealing with a lot of the trust issues that revolved around certain characters,

while managing to push the story a little further with the semi translation of

the book. With two episodes to go there is a lot of ground to cover if the

writers would like to deliver a finale that somewhat answers the many questions

raised so far this season. With Rachel on the loose, however, hopefully she –

or whoever Sarah, Felix and S meet in London — will be the one leading

everyone to the next chapter.

Quote of the week

“You can’t crush the human spirit.”

Let’s hope Krystal really meant that, shall we?

Grade: B+

“Orphan Black” airs

Saturday at 9pm ET on Space and BBC America. Next time: The crew heads to

London and Helena gets bloody.

READ MORE: Antiheroines are the New Antiheroes: The Killer Women of ‘Penny Dreadful,’ ‘Orphan Black’ and More



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