Orphan Black - S1E2 - Instinct
Well, episode two here we come. Let’s hope it lives up to the pilot!
The second episode picks up just where the first left off. A blood-spattered Sarah pulls over her (corpse-filled) car to chat with the mysterious person on the other end of the pink phone. Even rattled as she is, Sarah is able to pull out a pretty decent Beth impersonation for the woman on the other end. She is asking what happened to the German, and is not as shocked as one would think to hear that she has been murdered. It seems that this just proved what she’d been thinking. To quote Pinky Phone Gal, “Holy shit, it’s true, someone’s been killing us!” Who “us” is remains to be seen, but I would bet all of my Battlestar Galactica DVDs on the fact that PPG is another look alike. She tells Sarah/Beth to get rid of the body, but not before collecting some samples of the German’s hair and blood. Ew. She won’t come down for some group bonding body disposal, but does helpfully suggest to Beth/Sarah “You’re a cop; buy a shovel!” Not quite sure how those two things correlate, but hey, at least she tried.
It seems that night has fallen at some point during the credits. Not content with merely illegal body disposal, Sarah is also trespassing on private property to do it. She’s a rebel this one. Dayum, I wish I looked that attractive when I dug graves! Or any time, really.
Back at Felix’s, the somber post-wake party has begun. Candles and oddballs abound. Some twat in a cowboy necktie (I Googled it – apparently they’re called bolo ties) is espousing the wonder that was Sarah Manning, as Felix drinks straight from a bottle of champagne. Vic is pretty broken up, and rambling on about Sarah and his “imperfect love”. Charming fellow that he is, he tackles and begins to choke Felix, before being pulled off by Cowboy Bob. Granted, Felix was telling him that he had caused his girlfriend to jump in front of a train, but it’s still a bit much.
While the men are busy with their feels, action girl Sarah is busy rifling through the pockets of a corpse! She finds a hotel keycard and ID that gives the German the name Katja Obinger. Where have we seen that name before, that’s right, it was one of the birth certificates in Beth’s safety deposit box! After dumping the body in the hole, Sarah heads to a 24 hour car wash to clean the brains out of the back of her fancy new car.
It’s morning and Vic is still drinking. More importantly, he is still drinking on Felix’s couch, and Felix is not amused. He is even less amused when Vic says that he wants to get to know Sarah’s daughter. Felix has to remind him that Kira is not Sarah and that Sarah is dead, and definitely not hiding around the corner from them as they speak.
Sarah is pretty pissed off at Felix for the whole “my daughter thinks I’m dead” thing. Get over it already, sheesh! Felix notices some blood on Sarah’s face, and she tells him about meeting Katja. She asks him to go and set the record straight with Mrs. S about the whole not-actually-dead bizzo. She gives Felix the briefcase that should hold the pilfered $75K, but they discover Art’s bait and switch. The money is gone, and in its place are files on Beth’s civilian shooting, and Art’s business card. Sneaky fucker! Suffice it to say Sarah is not amused, and goes on a slight smashing spree. She calls Art, who is already at work at 6:30 in the morning. That’s keen. They arrange to meet at Fungs (Foongs? Funs?) this afternoon.
Sarah heads “home” to Beth’s place, where she is surprised by Paul. He has a lot of feelings. He’s worried that she is losing the plot and mixing meds. He keeps switching between douchebag mode and concerned boyfriend mode. He says he’s going to go stay at his friend Cody’s for a while, which is awfully convenient. Sarah is mostly just pissed that he described her clothing style as “punk rock ho”.
Felix cycles over to see Kira. Mrs. S sure is a sassy lady, now I see where Sarah and Felix get it. We get a little bit more backstory. Turns out Mrs. S brought the two of them over from London for a fresh start. Surprise surprise Sarah was a bit of a problem child. Mrs. S seems nice enough, in a no-nonsense Irish way. Felix is adorable when he turns on Uncle mode.
Back at the ranch, Sarah is memorizing the details of the shooting from the incident reports. She meets up with Art and, as per usual, is able to come up with a pretty good excuse for the money on the fly. He is concerned that she could be wearing a wire. He makes her run through what happened at the shooting. Art is pretty stressed because he was the one who put the victim’s phone in her hand to cover for Beth being too trigger-happy! Sarah-Beth manages to calm him down, but he refuses to return the money until the shooting gets cleared.
Sarah heads back to Felix’s to complain about Art’s money-withholding ways. Was honestly a little bit distracted in this part by how very many of Felix’s paintings have hidden penises in them. I guess I really shouldn’t be so surprised. The pink phone starts ringing again. Sarah asks Felix if she should pick it up, and then completely disregards his advice to not. She’s a headstrong gal, our Sarah. The Cranky Phone Lady tells her that she has to go to Katja’s hotel room to find her briefcase, and then hangs up. Felix theorizes that she must be Alison Hendrix. Sarah borrows some of Felix’s more effeminate clothes and heads off to be Katja.
Heading into the hotel to what sounds an awful lot like a German version of These Boots are Made for Walkin’, Sar-ja avoids the calls to Ms. Obinger from hotel staff and ducks into the elevator.
Up in Katja’s room the place is trashed. Either someone was looking for something or Katja is a crazy party animal. Honestly, having known Katja for a minute of so, I really couldn’t say which of the two is the truth. Someone has left a creepy-as-fuck beheaded Barbie doll sitting on a bible in the corner. It is covered in cigarette burns and strands of red hair. A bible passage is circled, with the word TRUTH scribbled next to it. Seriously, this is some serial-killer shit!
Sarah is startled by the hotel phone ringing. Ignoring it, she begins to have a rifle around, but is interrupted by a knocking at the door. It’s Avery from the front desk! He needs to talk to her, downstairs. This can’t be good. They are pissed about how trashed the room is. Kat-rah explains it away with an accented “Rock and Roll” and accompanying rock hand symbol. They are pretty incredulous (and somewhat impressed “You broke a sink!”). The bill comes to $6,000, or $6,437.11, as Avery is quick to correct. Ms. Man-binger (that sure sounds like a euphemism!) is cool as a cucumber. She tells them to just charge the card they have on file, and to bring her the briefcase that she had them hold for her. There’s a tense moment when we think the card will be declined, but nope, Sarah’s luck holds. Avery sucks at small talk. Sarah grabs the briefcase and leaves with a departing pun (“Are you enjoying the city?” “It’s killing me” Ha!)
In some random parking lot Sarah forces the case open. It is full of x-rays and blood samples, not just of Katja but belonging to some other women. There are photocopies of a bunch of IDs belonging to remarkably similar looking women. They are from all over Europe! Tucked in the back there is also a fold of paper with the addresses of the two Canadians, Alison Hendricks and Beth.
The pink phone rings and Sarah informs the other woman about the ransacking of the German’s hotel. Sarah decides to fuck the whole undercover thing and tell the truth (for once!) She pulls out her good old Pom voice and asks if it’s Alison she’s talking to. Alison is rather on the cautious side and hangs up on her after Sarah is unable to answer a riddle.
Sarah heads to Alison’s address. It is in some Stepford-esque suburban place, all smiling children and manicured lawns. Sarah follows Alison’s shiny soccer-mom people mover out to the place where she is (fittingly) coaching her kid’s soccer team. Despite their shared facial arrangements, Alison seems to be quite the anti-Sarah.
Sarah rings her and she answers on a matching grotesque pink phone! It’s nice to finally have a face to put to the voice, not that it’s a particularly unique face. Alison heads into a shed to cut up oranges, and Sarah follows her, chucking on her hood to (rather ineffectually) disguise her identity. Alison is pretty damn pissed off at Sarah having shown her face in her neighborhood.
Sarah informs Alison of Beth’s death. Alison is not too happy about this, grabbing the knife she’d been using to cut up oranges and waving it around in Sarah’s face. Alison is pretty upset, understandably. She tells Sarah that she doesn’t give a damn who she is, and that she should GTFO and hide her ugly face on the way out (ha!)
On the way back to her car, Sarah gets a call from Art. She tries to tell him that she’s at home, but of course he’s at her front door. She then, for the second time in so many minutes, tells the truth! Kinda. He is pissed off because the shrink has ruled her unfit for duty. This means no hearing, and no money. Sarah gets him to book her another visit to the psychiatrist, but he seems to have a lot less faith in her bullshitting skills than I do.
At the shrink’s office, Beth’s psychiatrist is pretty adamant that Sarahbeth is unfit for duty. When the regular old bluffs aren’t working, Sarah kicks things up a notch. She pretty much blackmails the lady, telling her that if she doesn’t clear her for duty she will tell everyone that she shot the civilian after mixing up meds that she had prescribed for her. As with pretty much everything Sarah does (with the exception of mothering and choosing boyfriends), this is successful!
Skip to: The hearing! We don’t get to see it, but it seems to go down pretty well. That a girl! She gets a call from Alison, who is, of course, couponing! She tells Sarah to come by that evening, with the briefcase.
Art is pleased with her. He actually cracks a smile. Sort of. They engage in a little bit of partner banter. Despite their reasonably amicable conversation, Art is still unwilling to give her back the cash until after the hearing is fully resolved.
Felix and Sarah go on a trip to see Alison. Felix is pretty horrified to be in suburbia. He is certain that it’ll give him acne. Sarah tells him that the German is dead, and then asks that he wait in the car as backup. I would personally have chosen Art to have my back, but whatever.
Alison has a gun! She warns Sarah not to wake the kids or she’ll shoot her. I already like this one. Oh shit! There’s another one. This one is called Cosima and she has awesome dreads! How exciting!
Next time on Orphan Black: They finally use the C word. Alison pulls a gun on Felix. Cosima is adorable. Sarah gets “her” badge back. Sarah and Paul get raunchy (again). There’s a severed arm!
