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ORPHAN BLACK Recap: Girlfriend in a Coma

Hello sestras and brothersestras alike: this here recap is the epitome of Spoilerville. So unless you’re all caught up on Orphan Black‘s most recent episode, “Ruthless in Purpose and Insidious in Method,” we’d highly suggest maybe NOT reading this recap. Because we’re serious when we say it is chockablock with spoilers.

Girlfriend in a coma, I know I know — it’s serious. But so was this episode of Orphan Black, wasn’t it? With the Leda ladies coming home (both literally and metaphorically) — minus that one who went abroad — the answer behind the sestrahood’s origin mystery draws ever-closer to a reveal. But first we’ve got to get some twists out of the way. Because what episode of Orphan Black would be complete without a totally clusterf***-y reveal gone bad?

Krystal (TATIANA MASLANY)

That reveal, of course, was the deep-dive into Krystal Goderich: otherwise known as the clone that Rudy and Seth assaulted at the beginning of the season. As it turned out, Krystal’s an intrepid, un-crushable soul of a manicurist with quite an aptitude for the healing arts. (Interesting, considering how the vitality of the female clones has been such a big thing this season especially.) She’s also, unfortunately, a mark of Rachel’s and Dr. Nealon’s given her blonde hair and, well, ignorance as to the workings of Clone Club. Sure, she’s thus far figured out that her boyfriends are on a two year rotation and she’s trusting literally no one, but by and large she’s not self-aware, making her the perfect clone to use as a stand-in for Rachel while she’s comatose.

Because — oh right! — Rachel is the worst, most ruthless clone to have ever existed, preferring to murder and/or deceive her sestras in order to, we assume, fall further into cahoots with Castor and gain some “control” — though we highly doubt that’ll ultimately be the case. In what was probably a surprise to literally no one, we learned at the end of the episode that shady Dr. Nealon was the Castor mole inside Leda, working in cahoots with Rachel in order to game the system and gain access to The Island of Dr. Moreau and Ethan Duncan’s cipher.

It all started with Rachel’s long game — to make Scott and everyone pity her and Delphine’s distaste for the one-eyed monster. From there she revealed that she knew how to read Duncan’s book but would only decode it for Sarah in exchange for Krystal’s identity. Sarah reluctantly agreed — because she’s still incredibly distrustful of DYAD and Delphine and Topside and basically everyone — forcing her and Felix into the saddest identity theft mission ever. Felix, using Jordan Gavaris’ IRL accent, swayed into Krystal’s salon to case her life but ultimately discovered something even worse: in her — CASTOR-BRANDED DID ANYONE ELSE CATCH THAT?! — notebook, Felix discovered that though unaware of her clone origins, Krystal was hot on the trail of figuring it out, documenting her boyfriends and her encounter with Rudy and Seth, too. It was absolutely heartbreaking to witness her insecure, doubtful fretting. “I just feel like I have to be paranoid all the time.” And while Felix’s “truth voice” may have sated her in the moment, we’re doubtful it’ll help her make it through her medically induced coma. Outside of Felix, we doubt she’ll ever trust anyone again. (And we don’t blame her!) #SAVEKRYSTAL!

Here’s hoping SOMEONE figures it all out eventually and we get Krystal officially brought into the Clone Club fold by season’s end. Every group of sestras deserves a Bitch Mistress of Cumalot.

And what’s crazy is that wasn’t even the half of what went down this episode (I know! It’s crazy)! In fact, it looked like they were burning a heck of a lot of things to the ground, for better or for worse. First there was the relationship between Leda and DYAD, with Cosima quitting and the reveal of all her and Scott’s deception. Then there was Cophine, where a momentary re-connect between these two crazy scientists revealed that Shay’s probably/definitely a plant for Castor trying to gain more information on Cosima and Leda in general.

…Or maybe one of the OTHER factions of the clone experiment?! That’s right: Dr. Coady and Mr. Shady Arlington Man basically confirmed (by not confirming) that there may be more than two factions of this experiment. Could this mean they manipulated a whole host of genes to varying degrees? It just raised so many questions (because of course it did, this is Orphan Black) that we’re likely to not get an answer about until season four. Jeez Louise: maybe DYAD is the group to trust after all.

As for the comedic part of the evening, we were treated to the animal farm that is Team Hendrix’s house and drug-money-laundering operation, Bubbles. With Helena and Gracie moved into their home, the Hendrixes have their work cut out for them. Especially Donnie, who has to not only keep his cool about Jason Kellerman putting the moves on his wife (moves to which she later acquiesced because have you seen Jason Kellerman’s swagger?), but try and avoid the creatively crafted come-ons of Helena, who totally has the hots for him. But I mean, what would you expect?! The man has the strength of two baby oxen! I MEAN HELLO!

As for next week? Well it looks like we’re headed to foggy Londontown because — as the nursery rhyme revealed — “In Londontown we all fell down and Castor woke from slumber. Find the first, the beast, the cursed. The original has a number. H46239.” (That number reads very similar to Cosima’s tag number, 324B21, by the way.) With any luck we’ll find out WHO IN THE HECK THAT MYSTERIOUS BLONDE LADY WAS, because who in the heck was that? Right? And also maybe hear more about the European cure trials and why they’ve been failing. Because goddamnit we have to find a cure for Cosima or she’s surely dead — last week’s “episode” where she bled like a very gravely ill person was not all that comforting. Are we going to have to break out the #SaveCosima hashtag again?

Loose Ends and Top Quotes:

– “Please! Denise has feline asthma.” – Scott
– “Delicate like a spider’s web, aren’t you Rachel?” – Felix
– “You should’ve trusted me.” – Delphine.

Did the clones make the right decision burning their DYAD bridges? Will a return to London FINALLY bring us some actual answers? Did Mark survive the blast? Will he PLEASE put Rudy out of his damn misery already? AND WON’T SOMEBODY PLEASE SAVE KRYSTAL? Let us hear it in the comments.

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