Orphan Black - S3E1 - The Weight of This Combination

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Previously on Orphan Black

The episode opens with a dream sequence that rivals the clone dance scene from season two as the scene I would choose if I had to watch one on a loop for eternity.

Helena is pregnant with “Monkey number 2!” Cosima is way better, thanks to science! Alison is baking and Felix is grilling! Sarah is smiling! Can we please just stay in this happy sestra world for the rest of the episode? Please?

I guess not.

In this show you get Helena trapped in a box with a scorpion, not happy endings. Scratch that – a talking scorpion. Oh Orphan Black, how I’ve missed you.

I guess I can add a pencil getting pulled out of an eye to the list of things I really didn’t need to see. Ever. On the plus side (possibly?), Rachel is alive.

Sarah and Felix are interrupted from their day at the riverside with Kira by a fiercely dressed Delphine. To quote Felix, “God. She looks good.” Delphine is there to pull Sarah back into Dyad business. They’ve captured one of the Castor clones, but he won’t talk to anyone but Sarah. He’s also a little less than sane.

Delphine tells Sarah that Dyad’s head office is sending a ‘cleaner’ to check on the place. She, naturally, needs Sarah to pretend to be Rachel so the guy doesn’t find out about the pencil incident. Any excuse to play dress up!

Back in suburbia, Alison is doing some of her own political maneuvering, deciding to run for the school board. Donnie is fired and has to ride home in the school bus with the other children. When did I start liking this doofus again?

S gets jumped in the kitchen by a castor clone with a terrible mustache. He’s looking for Duncan, or at the very least, his research. S tells Sarah she was the one who betrayed Helena. She is not thrilled, to say the least.

Delphine comes by the loft to find Sarah, but finds Cosima instead. She has to dump her, for love! Cue fandom tears. Scott is thinking of quitting all the lesbian drama, but Cosima entices him back in by showing him Duncan’s notes.

Delphine and Sarah-as-Rachel go to meet with the cleaner, Ferdinand. Sarah tries to just say hello and then leave, but Ferdinand won’t allow it, demanding that they go see Sarah. Luckily Delphine has prepared for this by dressing Alison up as Sarah. I feel like she could have thought of a less convoluted plan. Alison does a pretty good Sarah impersonation, even when dealing with the extreme creepiness of Ferdinand. He is surprised that Delphine hasn’t taken out Sarah’s ovaries yet, which was certainly a surprise to Sarah.

Ferdinand has obviously got a thing going on with Rachel, so Sarah decides that it’s a great plan to meet up with him later, alone. What could go wrong?

The scar-faced Castor clone exercises naked. I repeat, he EXERCISES NAKED! Thank you, writers, for this gift. The guards outside his cell are far less thrilled about the nudity than I am, that’s for sure.

On the subject of things I shouldn’t find as attractive as I do, Delphine heads to the hospital to interrogate Rachel. She can’t get anything cohesive out of her, even when she resorts to poking at her injured eye. Is it wrong to find her torturing Rachel hot? Don’t answer that.

Luckily for Sarah, Ferdinand’s idea of a good time seems to be submitting to Rachel. He tells her that Alison is about to be killed. Sarah starts to choke Ferdinand (which is, luckily, pretty in character for Rachel), but is interrupted just in time by Delphine. She intimidates Ferdinand into calling off the hit on Alison, just in time.

Things aren’t all going to plan, though, as the scarred Castor clone gets sprung from his cell by the Castor clone with the terrible moustache. (I’m really going to have to learn their names at some point, aren’t I?)

Overall Thoughts:

• I’ve gotta say, my heart swells every time the clones refer to one another as their sisters. Or sestras.
• Donnie really is useless, isn’t he? Alison’s quote of the episode has to be, “I will dig ditches for this family but I will not go back to work at my mother’s store.”
• “With soldier clones running around, and you know, all this lesbian drama, I don’t know that I want to work on the super secret shit anymore.” Scott has a point.
• I think I’ll start referring to the scarred Castor clone as “Naked Buddha”.