Orphan Black S05E04 Recap: Let the Children & The Childbearers Toil

Siobhan goes undercover as we discover a mystery woman, search for the identity of a mystery man, and reunite with a long lost bio-sister.

So we start this week with Susan Duncan recovering from her near fatal stab wound inflicted by her charming daughter at the end of last season. Who should be by her bedside but old PT, telling her he’d treated her wounds because he needs her, despite having turned her daughter against her. They discuss her involvement in the ‘breakthrough’, but she says ‘she done’ with it all. She’s disappointed that he let her greenhouse die, but isn’t surprised as he never gets his hands dirty, and the creepy old shit counters that his ‘dirty mind’ remains active. Susan says she can’t forgive him for what has happened in the past, but he produces Ira, and tells her “don’t say that” as Ira and Susan have a tender reunion. Also in the village, friends Charlotte and Aisha go to check on the village pigs, and find one missing, so wander off into the woods in search of her, finding her bleeding, but feeding on food someone has left out. Mudd suddenly appears and ushers them back to camp – “quickly!”. Charlotte picks up what she assumes to be one of the pig’s teeth before they go.

That psychoclone daughter of mine tried to kill me.

Ira and Susan are in the creepy gothic looking greenhouse – dead plants and weeds everywhere. Ira wants to know what went down between her and old PT and she tells him that years back he took another path with another scientist – one that led Rachel to stab you, points out Ira. How can you work with him and his insane vision? Susan makes it clear that they share the vision, it’s just the means of getting there in which they differ.

Needs someone with a green thumb and a penchant for human cloning to get this place back in order.

We’re now in S’s house, and Sarah is sitting on the bed chatting to Kira, as she gets ready for school. She’s pushing and pushing wanting to know what Rachel is doing to her at Dyad, but all Kira is interested in is finding her shoes for gym class. Rachel isn’t hurting her she tells her mother. So when Sarah pulls her in for a hug and Kira pulls away in pain, Sarah discovers the great big gash that Kira put in her arm last ep. Of course Sarah thinks Rachel did it and hauls Kira downstairs to show S and Felix, where Kira tells her – no, it was me, I wanted to see how fast I would heal.

S then instructs Felix to take Kira to school, collect her afterwards and take her to his place for a sleepover; but he must stay awake as someone is going to call on him. Sarah is not happy with this – she wants Kira with her. But they have only 3 days, says S, before Kira has to go back to Dyad, so Sarah is staying with her while they sort out some leverage. Felix has taken Kira back to his loft, they’re eating pizza, hanging out, Felix is sketching her. She sees her mum in the sketch. Felix’s comment, “you’ve been reminding me of your mum all day – stomping around, breathing like a pug,” was redonk cute. Kira says she’s going to Dyad to help her mum, that Sarah’s acting dumb, but Rachel just wants to find out what makes her special. Felix gets pretty serious on her, and tells her that no matter what she says or does, they still can’t trust Rachel, as they don’t know what she wants to do with “that special part”.

Pugs are actually very cute, Uncle Felix, despite the unfortunate naso-respiratory difficulties that have been bred into them over time.

Felix’s loft and Kira has fallen asleep on the red satin sheets, when there’s a knock on the door. It’s Felix’s crazy half-sister, Adele, who barges in saying, “S probably didn’t tell me everything, but enough about all those clone sisters of yours, Jesus Christ. She trusted me…” and this as she pours a couple of gins for them to down while they debrief. She also tells him she wasn’t disbarred because of her drinking, but because she’s an embezzler – “real good at followin’ the money”. Apparently there’s a job for Adele and Fee in Switzerland doing something to do with all that embezzlement stuff and tracking global money trends and shit like that… Felix’s dead-pan response: “I hate fondue.” (Actually fondue is pretty rad, I’m pretty sure it’s all the other incomprehensible money-garble that he’s shying away from – just a hunch).

Hey bro – I’m parched. Vodka martini sounds good to me.

But gotta ask – what the fuck is Siobhan up to??

Sarah and Siobhan are visiting Scott and friend (never did get that guys name… anyone?), and they have been digging around to find info about PT. He did this, did that, was a founder of this, did experiments on that and disappeared into the jungles of Borneo presumed dead in 1898. S gets a file of hacked emails on some ‘mystery woman’ from Friend but won’t tell him why, nor will she tell any of them where she’s dragging Sarah off to next. “Do you think she tells me anything?” Sarah asks Scott and Friend drily. S has something set up and she and Sarah head into a swanky looking bar, and both case the joint as they enter. S tests Sarah to see if she’s picked the target – and well done, yes she has. Dr Elizabeth Perkins – daughter hates her so much she’s suing her, we need to get her ID as she might hold the key to old PT. Sarah is all over this scam like a rash, and next thing S has a shot of bourbon thrown in her face and Sarah is storming out with Dr Perkins’ wallet in her grasp. Dr P invites S to sit with her because “at least your daughter talks to you.” Sarah goes to the bathroom and rifles through the wallet, checking different cards out, while S makes small talk about Dr P’s studies and papers, and her issues with her own mother – Dr P goes to give S a business card (but of course the wallet’s not there), and at the same time, Sarah walks in and slides the wallet onto the table. As she gets up to follow Sarah out, Dr P gives her some free advice, “Your daughter is struggling on the threshold of what it mean to become you.” S looks at her like, WTF, that is deep lady, and off she goes.

Love to keep my scamming skills sharp and up to date!

Cosima is checking out some of Charlotte’s medical signs and declares she’s getting stronger. She sees the tooth, and Charlotte tells the story of where it came from, and that they heard something in the woods. Mudd says it was a bear, but she thinks it was an ogre. The scientific name for an ogre is “ogre ogrus notrealicus” Cosima tells Charlotte, but I think she just shattered the beliefs and childhood values of a whole generation of young millenials – and I dare her to tell Shrek and Princess Fiona that they’re not real. At the very least, we all know that ogres are multi-layered, like onions, so I think she could have incorporated “onionus” in there somewhere. Anyway, it’s all beside the point. According to Cos, the tooth is not a pig tooth – it looks pretty human to her. Cos goes to confront Mudd about spreading all this bullshit about there being a bear in the woods, and Mudd just about craps herself in fear. All she’ll give away is “You’ll get me in trouble”; “It’s not his fault”; and “stay out of the woods, there’s a bear in the woods.” You can see she almost gives up some info to Cosima, but at the last minute storms off, too scared to say anything.

Tell me something Mudd, I need to understand! (Also gratuitous Cosima pic, cos let’s face it – she is the hot one!)

Later the two goons who were chasing Sarah in ep 1 are questioning Mudd, saying they know she’s seen ‘him’ and want to know where ‘he’ is. She says she doesn’t know what they’re talking about and goes off to this strange wooden structure just on the outskirts of the village, pulls back a broken board and goes inside. Cosima, who has been watching all of this, follows her and does the same. Except it seems as though Mudd has got a back entry to the Big House, as Cosima follows past the creepy greenhouse and inside the house where Mudd is attaching some contraption to old PT who says he’ll let her know when it’s done. Cosima decides to have a little sticky beak around.

Sarah and Siobhan are on their way to the psychiatric facility where Dr P is expected tomorrow. Very convenient that she and her contact have never met face-to-face, so Dr P – aka S – and her assistant – aka Sarah – are going to arrive a bit early and see what they can find out. It’s a secure facility, so the person they’re looking for, most likely a Neo defector, and most likely being held against their will, will be hard to get to, but they’re going for it anyhow. Sarah asks S who her contact is that’s this close to old PT, but S, in her “need to know only” ways, tells Sarah nothing. So Sarah pulls a swifty on her, and says, seeing we’re out here, we’re going to drop into a convent. They arrive and Sarah is led into a room where Helena is sitting on the bed. “Hey meathead…” Helena’s face lights up, “Sestra!” Sarah sits with Helena, who looks at her and says, “I think your heart is heavy…” They sit, they talk. Sarah says she finally knows what it feels like to really feel Kira and her sisters, as she felt Kira flow through her when she was half-dead on the island. They connect and it’s really beautiful, and Sarah says this is exactly what Rachel can’t have. Then Helena says when this is all over we will kill Rachel and the man… but Sarah smiles gently and tells her, no (*meathead*) you’ll look after your babies. Truly heart-warming scene.

I haven’t been a good sister to you.

You are the bestest of ever sestras.

Sarah comes out and S has changed into her Dr P outfit, and off they head to the ‘facility’. Of course, there’s no record of them arriving and their contact went home hours ago, but Sarah sweet talks her way in with S playing the ‘meanie boss’ role, the kind young man at the desk signs hands over Visitor passes. Ward 1 only, no patient contact until tomorrow. ‘Of course,’ says Dr P. Methinks they’ll be looking beyond Ward 1 and might be trying to have a conversation with a patient or two. They head in and ask for Alex Ripley, with S telling Sarah that when she sees Ripley she’ll have to dig deep and stay calm.

S – woman of disguise.

A woman in a wheelchair – Dr Virginia Cody, the woman from the desert, the ‘mistress of the Castors’ the one who Paul sacrificed himself for so Sarah could escape from in season 3. Yep, it’s her. That S is a sneaky one, for sure! Virginia is out of it on some drugs, S gives her a shot of adrenalin to bring her around, and Sarah gets right up in her face… “Look where you ended up you genocidal bitch. I hope you’ve had a bloody lobotomy.” As Cody comes out of her drug-addled stupor, she recognises Sarah, and insists on them getting her out of there before she’ll tell them anything. Sarah gives her a slap (from Helena), and just about strangles her in her anger, but S remains calm and tells her she has to earn her way out of there. Who put you in here? Cody replies it was a dear old friend – someone who once shared the same vision to control human genetics and the future of the human race… Susan Duncan… When Castor lost, Leda won.

You monster.

The slap was from Helena, this is all Sarah Manning.

Cody tells them of the ‘beautiful child’ they were experimenting on, long before cloning, before they’d found Kendall Malone, and they were using the child with the perfect genome, the one who grew tumours and became brain damaged. She wanted to push forward, but Susan was ‘squeamish’ and wanted to stop the experimentation. At the same time, Cosima is looking around the Big House and comes upon the old unused lab. It seems the ‘bear in the woods’ may have been kept in there till just recently, judging by the blood on the walls and the chains and bed and other paraphernalia. Mudd finds her, freaks out completely and forces her out, all the while Cosima is asking, ‘who is he?’ Mudd sneaks off back the way she came carrying something large and cumbersome, and Cosima follows. You just know that this isn’t going to end well for Cos. Mudd takes some warm clothes into the woods and Frankenstein’s monster comes and snatches it, making terrible noises at her. Hang on, is PT actually Victor Frankenstein?

She is just so difficult to control…

Back at the hospital, Cody tells them that PT kept them apart after things went pear-shaped with the experiments, Susan got Leda, she got Castor. The good doctor and her assistant are uncovered, but not before Cody jumps at Sarah, trying to strangle her, and grabbing her visitor’s badge – the one that will open the doors and get her out of there – at the same time. In the background, a woman with long blonde hair watches everything. Back at the creepy greenhouse, Susan is telling Ira she had to imprison Cody at the psych facility because her means are really bad, her science unsound, she’s a liability and she needs to be kept away from old PT. Get read for some fireworks, Susan, because Virginia is coming your way.

Meeting at S’s place with Siobhan, Sarah, Felix and Adele. This is a whole new level with old PT says Sarah, we need to trust S, and it was her call to bring Adele on board. S’s ‘boys’ have been digging and there are at least six subsidiaries of Neolution in Switzerland – Adele can follow the money, but she needs Felix to be the hustler, the survivor, to keep them out of trouble. He’s unimpressed.

Resting bitch face

Finally, we’re back at the Big House and Susan agrees to come back into the fold. She’ll be head scientist, with access to all the data that comes from Dyad about Kira’s anomaly. She tries to argue with old PT that Rachel (the corporate psychopath who tried to kill me) is too damaged to run the whole thing, but it seems old PT has decided to separate business from science. She can be science boss, but Rachel still holds the overall reins. Unhappy Ira is listening just outside the door…