Reviews of movies and TV focused on women
Orphan Black episode 9 “One Fettered Slave” is a funeral with no happy weddings. Helena’s (Tatiana Maslany, a multitude) early history is explored. This is a recap. There are spoilers. Continue reading “Orphan Black S5 E9 One Fettered Slave”
This episode of Lost Girl is called “44 Minutes to Save the World” and it’s a treat from start to finish.
Spoilers ahead. Recap ahead.
Episode 8 has just ended. We’re back with Bo, (Anna Silk) on the floor of the clubhouse, cranking the handle of the magic adamantine box. After the big flash of light, the innards of the box quickly turn black. Bo looks for Hades (Eric Roberts), but he isn’t around. Continue reading “Lost Girl S5 E9: 44 Minutes to Save the World”
“Insolvent Phantom of Tomorrow” is the title of this episode of Orphan Black. Sarah (Tatiana Maslany, a multitude), Felix (Jordan Gavaris) and Mrs. S (Maria Doyle Kennedy) head for London in search of the original Castor clone. Bodies fall like ninepins and surprise twists hit every plot line.
Mrs. S, Sarah and Felix enter a bar where Mrs S has a friend named Terry (Daniel Fathers). They learn from him that the number Rachel transcribed out of “The Island of Dr. Moreau” is a number from the English prison system.
They talk about the old days a bit. Terry reveals that Mrs S was in a band. Her old band mates show up – she calls them geriatric wankers.
Sarah and Felix are delighted to discover things about Mrs. S’s past, including where she used to go to shag Carlton.
Mrs. S gets up and sings a song with the old band. While she’s singing, Terry goes back to his apartment, where he gets beaten to almost dying by Ferdinand (James Frain). When Mrs. S finds him there, he whispers the information about the Castor original in her ear and dies. Mrs. S tells Sarah and Felix that it’s over, they’re going home. She sends Sarah and Felix out.
As Sarah leaves she picks up a phone. She calls a number from the phone as Ferdinand observes them. Sarah and Felix get picked up in a cab. They guy driving knows Mrs. S. He delivers them to the house of someone named Kendall Malone. The house looks dark. Sarah goes inside looking to “kill an innocent old man.”
The cab drives off. Ferdinand jumps in and kills the driver. Then he calls Delphine and tells her he’s been chasing Sarah Manning around London when she was supposed to be locked up at Dyad. Delphine asks Ferdinand to come to Dyad for a meeting.
In the house, Sarah finds a photo of a younger Mrs. S holding a baby. A woman (Alison Steadman) appears and says she is Kendall Malone. Sarah was expecting a man.
In walks Mrs. S and says, “Hello, mother.” Mrs. S obviously hates her mother, but she asks what Professor Duncan had to do with her. Kendall says Duncan came through testing inmates when she was in prison. He was looking for a donor and he found one in Kendall. She was both the male and the female original because she had absorbed a male twin while in the womb. She laughs, “I got two cell lines, me.”
Mrs. S wants to burn down the house with her mother in it, but Sarah points out that Leda needs the original cell line.
Cosima reads the file Delphine (Evelyne Brochu) gave her about Shay (Ksenia Solo). She immediately concludes that Shay is not trustworthy when she sees a photo of Shay in an Army uniform.
Cosima rejects Shay’s attempts to talk about dinner and blows out of Shay’s apartment like her pants are on fire. Shay is puzzled by her behavior.
Cosima talks it over with Scott (Josh Vokey), who points out that nothing in the file really proves that Shay is the spy. Cosima feels that she’s put everyone in danger by being fooled once again by her attraction to someone.
Cosima goes to Dyad to “eat shit” in front of Delphine. She admits that Sarah is in London looking for the Castor original.
Delphine goes straight to Shay’s. Shay seems innocent. She claims not to know what Castor is. Delphine threatens to put her in the bathtub and slit her wrists and the arteries in her ankles if she doesn’t talk. Delphine fills the tub and brandishes a razor blade.
Gracie (Zoé De Grand Maison) begs off work to Alison, claiming an appointment.
Gracie stops by the garage where Helena is gleefully dancing and making soap. She hugs Helena in a lingering goodbye.
Donnie (Kristian Bruun) was beaten to raw hamburger. Now the drug dealer Pouchy (Tony Cianchino) want all the pills back because Jason no longer vouches for the Hendrixes. A thug comes to get the pills. He takes Helena’s canister of frozen embryos with him because he can’t find the pills.
Donnie goes home to get the pills and Helena makes some gunk to put on his face to stop the pain. He tells her that the bad guys took the tank. “My babies?” Helena asks. She wants to know where the drug dealers are.
Donnie takes the pills to Pouchy. They give him the nitrogen tank, but don’t return his money. Helena, who was supposed to wait in the car, comes in. Pouchy refuses the refund and threatens Donnie’s kids. Helena pushes Donnie and the tank out the door.
When Helena comes out, she’s carrying a bloody machete, a very large bag of cash, and a pound or two of extra blood. She tells Donnie, “We should go now.”
At the same time that Delphine is threatening Shay, Gracie calls Cosima and apologizes for being the rat. She was trying to save Mark (Ari Millen). Gracie runs away with Mark.
Cosima calls Delphine and says that Shay is not the one who stole the book or told Castor that she was sick – it was Gracie. Delphine looks at Shay like she wants to kill her anyway, but she leaves Shay in one piece.
You can buy albums of music by Maria Doyle Kennedy from her website. So glad we got to hear her sing a bit in this episode.
This episode changes a lot of things and we have one more episode before the season ends! What can they possibly have left to amaze us with?
Mrs. S’s mother is the original for both Leda and Castor clones. That’s an amazing plot twist, but in looking back on all three seasons, I’ll bet John Fawcett and Graeme Manson had that in mind from the very beginning. It’s so delicious. Even though Mrs. S didn’t know it herself, it explains so much.
Alison Steadman as Kendall Malone is an excellent casting choice. She looks believably like Tatiana Maslany might age to look, although it’s a stretch to see any of Ari Millen in her face.
Then there’s the plot twist with a whole shit ton of money in the Hendrix deep freeze while a litter of dead drug dealers mean their new business is kaput. Probably a good thing – Alison and Donnie are terrible criminals.
And Shay! Shay is apparently just a girl, standing in front of a beautiful lesbian, wanting to be loved. Hot diggity dog, maybe that means Ksenia Solo will be around in season 4!
Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Farewell Speech to the Nation in 1961 pointed out everything we were going to get wrong in the future and advised us against it. We didn’t listen. Here’s the paragraph with this week’s title.
“Another factor in maintaining balance involves the element of time. As we peer into society’s future, we – you and I, and our government – must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering for, for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without asking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.”
“Things Which Have Never Yet Been Done” is episode 9 of season 2 of Orphan Black. The stakes are raised to the highest level for Cosima and Kira. Story wires stretched to breaking characterize the episode.
Allison (Tatiana Maslany, one of many) and Donnie (Kristian Bruun) provide some comic relief in a fairly dark episode by deciding to jackhammer up the garage floor and bury Leekie. Allison turns out to be handy with a jackhammer. Midway through the burial operation, Vic (Michael Mando) arrives talking bullshit about recovery. When Allison chases him off, he goes outside and climbs into a big, black police van.
Vic comes back later and peers into the garage windows. Donnie grabs him and threatens him with Allison’s pistol. Since becoming an accidental murderer who buries bodies in his garage, Donnie has learned how to put a pistol on safety and he’s grown a pair. He takes Vic out to the van where Detective Deangelis (Inga Cadranel) is lurking. He tells them to stop harassing his wife and takes a photo of them together while threatening to get Deangelis fired for her behavior.
When a filthy Allison and Donnie put the finishing touches on the wet concrete in the garage floor, Donnie draws a heart in it. Allison admits, “I’m more attracted to you than I’ve ever been.” Hiding murder victims is a bonding experience for the happy couple who “do it nasty” on the big chest freezer where once Leekie turned to ice.
Meanwhile back at the Prolethean compound, Henrik (Peter Outerbridge) is shooting fertilized eggs into Helena’s cervix with what looks like the same long metal tube he uses on cows. The nurse who helps with the implant, Alexis, is played by Kathryn Alexandre. This is the first time we’ve seen her face, although Kathryn Alexandre has been working hard on every episode of Orphan Black because she’s Tatiana’s double whenever more than one clone is in a scene. Hello there, Kathryn, love your work.
After the fertilization, Alexis takes Helena to the nursery. Helena bonds instantly with one of the children. She listens to Henrik tell a story, after which Alexis tells the children it’s naptime. When the little girl Helena bonded with lingers to feel Helena’s hair, Alexis is cruel to her. Helena shoves Alexis against a door frame and promises to gut her like a fish if she ever does anything like that again. Helena once knew a nun who was mean like that – I’m guessing that particular nun has trouble seeing these days.
Henrik tells Mark (Ari Millen) that he is expected to marry Gracie (Zoé De Grand Maison) and be a father to the babies she will bear. There’s also a military connection with Mark, who turns out to be AWOL.
We see Gracie, feet in stirrups, with Henrik peering into his own daughter’s vagina and implanting his own babies in her as hymns play in the background. Hymns. Not Gracie’s babies. Henrik and Helena’s babies. Gross in so many ways.
Gracie and Helena bunk in the same room while the eggs are taking hold and Helena learns that Gracie is carrying her babies. Mark comes in and Helena says, “You love her like puppy but you let him make her brood mare.”
Helena and Gracie decide to run away. Henrik stops them. Helena grabs Henrik while Mark and Gracie run. Helena straps Henrik to the same table where she and Gracie just were. Henrik’s feet are bound to the stirrups and his arms are bound to the bed. Helena does something to Henrik with the long metal rod used for inseminations. He doesn’t like it a bit, but Helena gets a good laugh out of it. Funny how men think they can do anything they want with women’s bodies, but when the situation is reversed they scream bloody murder. Then Helena sets the whole compound on fire and takes off.
Cosima grows sicker and sicker. She’s wearing an oxygen tube and coughing constantly.
Sarah can see during a Skype call how badly Cosima is doing. She realizes how crucial Kira is to saving Cosima.
In the Dyad lab, Duncan (Andrew Gillies) is there as Scott (Josh Vokey) puts together a bastardized computer system to read the old floppy disks. Duncan has the keys to decrypt the data in his head, and he’s only revealing the keys to the parts of the puzzle they need to help Cosima. He refuses to let them have it all, which is a good thing since nobody at Dyad can be trusted. Cosima watches. And coughs.
Rachel plays Delphine (Evelyne Brochu) like a master manipulator. She calls her in and makes her interim director in Leekie’s old job. She assures her, “We need to convince Sarah we have no designs beyond that treatment,” and sends her to Mrs. S’s place to once again plead for bone marrow from Kira.
Rachel goes into a dark room where a martini waits. It is a ritual she’s reenacting. She watches old videos of her loving family, her happy childhood. She laughs, she cries, she slaps her own face and mutters.
Mrs. S (Maria Doyle Kennedy), Benjamin (Julian Richings), Felix (Jordan Gavaris), Sarah, and Kira (Skyler Wexler) continue to hang at Mrs. S’s house. Mrs. S knows a clinic, not Dyad, where they could take the bone marrow. They ask Kira if she is willing to do it. She says yes.
All of them head for the clinic. When Delphine returns to Dyad with the bone marrow, she finds Rachel has been using her office. On her computer she sees something about Benjamin and Dyad. Delphine returns to the clinic, calls Sarah out to her car to speak without being overheard, and tells her about Benjamin.
Inside the clinic, Sarah enters and picks up Kira to carry her away. When Felix intervenes, she drugs him and we realize it’s Rachel disguised as Sarah. Seconds later the real Sarah reenters the clinic and Mrs. S snaps to what’s going on. It’s too late. Rachel’s taken Kira.
Delphine tells Cosima what she’s done, how she was played. At least we now realize where Delphine’s true loyalties lay.
The episode’s final scene explains Rachel’s internal tantrum from the last episode after she found out she was barren by design. It explains her ritualized watching of videos from her own childhood. The scene of her crazy sex life was a mere warmup glimpse into Rachel’s warped mind. Rachel is dangerously wacko.
Kira wakes up in a pink room. Far too pink. Rachel introduces herself and Kira withdraws from her. Rachel is the first clone Kira has been afraid of. Kira is cognizant of things that no one else gets, so her cringing away from Rachel says a lot. Rachel assures Kira that she will grow to like it there, just as Rachel herself did.
We ended season 1 with Kira missing. Surely we won’t end season 2 the same way. My fingers are crossed that Kira is rescued from Rachel’s mad clutches and Cosima is on the way to healing before season 2 ends. That wouldn’t leave much tension to pull us into season 3, however. Since I do want a season 3, I must accept the idea of a cliffhanger in the final episode. I just don’t want that cliffhanger to involve Kira or Cosima. How about it, Orphan Black, can you pull that writing feat off for me?
We know for sure that the Proletheans and Project Leda were somehow aware of each other, that Mrs. S was aware of both from the start. We don’t know what the military connection is yet, but there is one. We don’t know who or what the ferryman that Carlton mentioned a few episodes ago is. I’m almost 100% sure that Mrs. S is on Sarah’s side, on Kira’s side. And I’m almost 100% sure that Delphine values Cosima over Dyad.
It’s that almost that worries me.
The Francis Bacon quote for this episode is from The New Organon or True Directions Concerning the Interpretation of Nature
It would be an unsound fancy and self-contradictory to expect that things which have never yet been done can be done except by means which have never yet been tried.
In the Lost Girl episode “Destiny’s Child,” we learn some long-held secrets and unravel some of season 4’s mysteries – or do we?
On the midnight train to some other plane of existence a welder works as the train falls to bits around him. The crown inscribed Isabeau sits beside him. Does this welder have something to do with Bo’s grandmother?
Bo (Anna Silk) gathers Trick (Rick Howland), Kenzi (Ksenia Solo), Lauren (Zoie Palmer) and Dyson (Kris Holden-Reid) in the Dal. She announces she’s ready to get to the bottom of whatever is going on.
Bo brings out the bottle of dark matter she mailed herself. There’s arguing about what she should do with it. Bo is unimpressed with every other point of view but her own, and she takes the lid off the jar.
Black smoke drifts out of the jar, causing Trick pain. The smoke forms into this dude.
Bo asks if he’s friend or foe.
He introduces himself as Hugin (Jonathan Watton) and says he means no harm. He’s The Wanderer’s vessel, traveling from plane to plane. Bo knows they’ve met before and he says he and his brother Munin are the ones who took her away in a puff of black smoke. The brothers took Bo to their father’s train.
“Father?” asks Bo.
He answers yes, The Wanderer is a great man. Hugin mentions that his brother is the one who trapped him in the jar the moment Bo got on the train. Something to do with his brother lusting after his wife. He will help Bo get back to the train if she will help him take revenge against his brother and his backstabbing wife. Bo’s ready to go.
Kris and Lauren want to go, too. Hugin says no.
Bo turns to Lauren and Dyson and says, “I love you both, but right now I need you both to watch me walk away.” She touches both of them, looks them in the eyes, says, “It’s never going to get easier, is it?”
Off she goes in a puff of smoke.
Dyson takes off for the boxing ring to get a gun from his locker.
Lauren walks in behind him and says, “I was getting my science stuff.” Her jacket’s loaded up with vials and syringes. She’s ready to go kick some crow ass. (Hugin is a crow.) He gives her a knife, just in case. He looks at her carefully and says, “You know, I’m not sure if I could either.” What? asks Lauren. Choose, he answers.
“I could,” Lauren answers with a grin and a shrug. He laughs. He knows who she would choose. But what is this ambivalence he’s feeling? Is he attracted to the doctor?
Trick either has a headache or he’s thinking really hard. He gets up to leave. Kenzi and Tamsin (Rachel Skarsten) come in. They want help and answers. Trick is not helpful, in fact he’s pretty rude. There are insults and raised voices.
Trick leaves. Kenzi and Tamsin decide to search Trick’s lair for something helpful.
Hugin and Bo rematerialize in a grave yard. He cautions her not to step on the graves or she’ll be sucked into hell by the Leviathan. She wants to get what they came for and get out of there. More crows appear, shifting into human form.
The first is Munin (Joris Jarsky), who considers Bo a pleasant surprise. He caws a few times and more crows fly in and take human shape. They recite a counting crows nursery rhyme until they reach “7 is the devil.”
Bo likes the odds. Hugin’s wife appears. Marital spats sizzle between them.
Kenzi and Lauren scour Trick’s lair and find a blank book. Kenzi says, “This is it. We have to write in this book with Trick’s blood.” She’s sure he’s hiding an inkwell of blood somewhere. Back to searching.
Trick pays a call on Dao Ming (Jadyn Wong). She’s one of those Fae with long curvy fingernails who make you tell the truth no matter what.
Trick needs answers and he wants her help to release a blocked memory. She says no. He offers to pay. She still says no. Finally he says, you hate the person who’s blocked this memory. Who might that be, she asks. “Me,” answers Trick. She finds that interesting. She will help get the truth, no matter how painful.
The murder of crows have Bo and Hugin cornered. Bo’s ready to fight, but Hugin switches sides, kisses his wife, and laughs at tricking her. Now when he refers to The Wanderer as his “father” they all laugh. Their former employer has a particular interest in Bo, but he’s not a parent to these feathered fellows.
They intend to kill her – slit her throat – but wanted to have the fun of tricking her first.
Bo folds her arms and falls into a grave, descending straight into the Netherworld below. “I did not see that coming,” says Munin.
In the cavelike Netherworld Bo calls out to an echoing voice to show itself. It’s the Leviathan (Jennifer Dale). The Leviathan irritates Bo by calling her Princess. Bo irritates her right back by calling her Levi.
Levi clamps a hand on Bo’s “hand hickey” and falls to the ground. Where did you get that mark? Bo says it came from some guy on a train.
Levi’s searched for that mark for 600 years. It was supposed to be hers. She wants it. She needs it.
Bo just wants to know where the door is. Well, shucks, no one ever leaves here the Leviathan claims. Give me the mark, says Levi. Bo will fight for it. She draws a knife.
Levi wants a game of riddles. Another way to fight. Okay. Riddle on.
Bo quickly solves Levi’s first riddle with the help of some audio visuals.
We’re back to getting the truth out of Trick, which isn’t easy. He admits to massacres. He admits to loving himself more than Isabeau.
Tamsin finds a loose floorboard. Under it is a Japanese folding box. It’s impossible that Trick has one.
The box is magical. You must know how to open it. Kenzi thinks blood is hidden in it; they agree to open the box.
Bo comes up with a riddle: “She’s brilliant. He’s strong. Her life is little. His life is long. Both loves are pure. Both loves are true. If you were I, who would you choose?”
Levi says, “The man. He will live longer.”
“Final answer?”
“No. The woman. You love her. You wear her humanity like a shield.”
“So we’re stickin’ with the woman?”
“No, wait. The man. You crave strength.”
Bo shakes her head no. She demands to be sent back up.
The Levi wants to know if the answer was the woman. Bo says that as far as she knows there is no answer. Levi agrees to send Bo back above ground, even though she cheats at riddles, because very soon someone Bo loves will be dead. That doesn’t sound good.
Bo hides behind a grave stone as Hugin and Munin discuss the train and making lots of money from it. She steps out from hiding and tosses a crow into a grave. Then a couple more. Then another. Finally all that’s left are Hugin, Munin and Hugin’s wife: 3 for a girl.
Hugin thinks Bo’s still outnumbered.
Dyson appears and nabs Hugin.
Lauren arrives with a syringe in each hand and nabs Munin. The wife runs. Munin didn’t see that coming.
Bo tells Heckle and Jeckle she wants to get back on that train. Now. Dyson and Lauren chime in with descriptions of the excruciating things they can do to the Fae body. Persuaded, the brothers will get her on the train if they can leave immediately after they get here there.
Dyson and Lauren want to go with Bo. She says she has to do it alone, even though they are her family.
Bo blows a kiss more or less half way between where Lauren and Dyson are standing. She says, “Catch, lover,” and splits. After the smoke clears, Lauren says, “You know that kiss was for me, right?” Yeah, right is Dyson’s opinion. You have to admire Lauren’s confidence since, as far as we know, Dyson is the only one who’s been shooting off fireworks with Bo in the last few weeks.
Dao Ming asks Trick to tell the worst thing he’s ever done. He agonizes, then laughs and goes on the attack, saying he could write her right out of history like he did Rainer. When he mentions Rainer, the environment shakes, the wind blows. Trick says, “That’s it. I remember who The Wanderer is. How he came to be. What he is now. . . . I created all of this, didn’t I?”
Dao Ming says even with your power, you cannot escape fate. She laughs at him because even though he can change the future, he cannot change his nature. He leaves to warn Bo.
The ritual of opening the Japanese box has moved to the stage where Kenzi and Tamsin have the box nearly demolished. Finally they find the vials of blood.
There’s the blood, right in front of Kenzi’s eyes. Have we seen a close up of Ksenia Solo’s eyes in every episode? It seems like it.
They drag out the blank book.
Kenzi dribbles blood on a page and uses some of it to write BO. Nothing happens until Tamsin touches the blob of blood and picks up the book.
Tamsin can’t let go of the book. Her arms shake. The pages flip wildly. Her name appears 3 times on a blank page, written in blood.
Tamsin goes skelator and says, “I must take his soul. It belongs to me.”
Tamsin’s back in a conversation she and Trick had several hundred years ago. She flashes back to it as she holds the book.
Tamsin knelt over a body and Trick, dressed in Blood King garb, stood above her. He doesn’t want her to take the soul. She says it’s a warrior’s soul and she must take it. It is written. He knows what will happen if she doesn’t take it.
Trick calls her a vulture and says she overstates her importance. She says her lives are ending. Trick thinks her soul is damned to hell.
He asks Tamsin if she wants new life. More than anything, she answers. If I had more time, I would cleanse my soul and wipe my sins away.
Trick will give her new life, but for payment, he must have the soul of the dead warrior at his feet. Trick wants to curse him with his blood for arrogance, for thinking he can change the laws of the King. His soul will wander in eternity. “No one will remember his name. No one will remember Rainer, the defiant.” He turns and spits on the body.
Tamsin agrees. Trick cuts his hand and seals the deal with his blood.
Kenzi finds a big hammer and knocks the book out of Tamsin’s hands. Tamsin collapses. Kenzi attempts to revive her by saying Tammy about 20 times while patting Tamsin’s face. When Tamsin finally wakes up, she says, “Whatever you do, don’t trust Trick.”
Bo’s on the train. She finds the welder. She asks if he’s Rainer.
He takes off his jacket and mask. Bo pulls her knife and says, “Are you The Wanderer?”
When Bo sees his face (Kyle Schmid) she almost smiles. Then she attacks. They grapple over the knife, which he knocks away.
He puts his hand on her chest, guides her hand to his chest.
They are mark to mark. Bo touches his hand on her chest and smiles.
Lauren and Dyson are pacing the floor at the Dal. Trick tells them he knows who The Wanderer is: his mortal enemy Rainer.
Bo walks in with a cheerful, “Hey, guys.” She assures them she’s okay – great – never better. She says she found out why she agreed to be dark. It was her idea actually, so she would move heaven and earth to get back on that train. To Rainer. Willingly.
Trick is looking like, what?
Bo says she needed to break Rainer’s curse and free him from the train. She apologizes for putting everyone through everything.
Trick says, “It’s him. That’s Rainer.”
Rainer comes in to stand beside Bo.
Bo says, “I did all of this because he’s not my enemy. He’s definitely not my father.” Bo takes his hand, smiles. “He’s my destiny.”
