Orphan Black: The Weight of This Combination Recap

Synopsis: With Rachel incapacitated, Sarah is forced to play the corporate clone to trick the ‘cleaner’ Ferdinand and save her sisters. The Castor clones run amok while Dyad and Leda people try to find answers; Sarah tries to track down a kidnapped Helena.

Rating: ?????

Orphan Black is back, seestras!

After last season, things were looking grim for the Clone Club – Cosima and the others are slowly dying from a pulmonary condition, their creator Duncan killed himself without spilling his secrets, and another piece of the puzzle just clicked into place that promises to be more dangerous than ever.

Let’s start with the last bit.

Project Castor: the militarized male companion-clone project to our Project Leda girls. They all have the same face as the creepy male Prolethian who was getting with the young redhead in the cult.

Turns out that Dyad didn’t know about Castor until recently. With Rachel incapacitated from that pencil that got launched into her eye**, and Leekie buried in a concrete grave underneath Alison’s garage, Dyad restructured.

**Shoutout to the producers for the graphic scene where surgeons slowly remove a solid 4 inches of buried, bloody pencil from Rachel’s eye socket. That’s cool. I didn’t want to sleep anyway.

Delphine is the recipient of Rachel’s job at the top of the corporate ladder – she’s got the killer pantsuits and awesome straightened hair to match. She’s also got her hands full of psychotic male assassin clones.

Eh. Win some; lose some.

Delphine’s people managed to capture one of the Castor clones, who was about to hurt a Leda clone. Too bad she let the other Castor clone escape. She brings in Sarah to talk to the captured Castor clone. He says some vaguely threatening things to her before telling her to go “count her sisters.”

Everyone’s accounted for except Helena. Castor’s people trapped her in a box in a box in a box. The blond (pregnant?) clone is going a bit mad chatting up a scorpion she may or may not be hallucinating.

Apparently Mrs. S traded Helena for Kira’s safety. A fact which doesn’t win her any favor with Sarah or with the Castor clone who tries to shake her down for information about Project Leda and his captured brother.

In other clone news, looks like Cosima’s doing better after receiving Kira’s stem cells. She’s still working on the cure to the clones’ disorder. Delphine ends things with her in light of her new position at Dyad, but she promises to care for all the female clones. Ice cold.

In the seedy suburban underbelly where Alison lives, the campaign for the school trustee begins. The incumbent wants to redistrict to move Alison’s children out of their school. Momma bear Alison isn’t having it for a minute. She marches up to the current trustee and tells her that she’ll be running against her. Donnie’s suddenly grown a spine and quit his job. In a pleasant turn of events, he completely supports Alison’s decision to run for the trustee position. #PowerCouple

Back at Dyad, before Sarah washes her hands of the corporation, Delphine begs her for help impersonating Rachel. A ‘cleaner’ is coming to town to investigate the happenings at the corporation. Sarah negotiates to get Delphine’s help to rescue Helena in exchange for playing Rachel.

Ever obliging, Felix transforms Sarah into Rachel and sends her to meet Ferdinand.  Sarah figures out that Rachel and Ferdinand had a romantic relationship. After Ferdinand interrogates ‘Sarah’ (aka Alison dressed as Sarah), ‘Rachel’ invites him to her apartment to learn about his plans.

After some vague references to Helsinki, Sarah learns that Ferdinand hired an assassin to kill all the female clones just like he did in Finland. He’s on his way to kill Alison and her family in a house fire as they speak. Panicking, Sarah rushes off to the bathroom to call Alison and warn her. She doesn’t pick up – then Ferdinand interrupts her.

Flash to Delphine standing over Rachel’s bedside, asking the brain-damaged clone to tell her what she and Ferdinand have planned for the clones. Rachel isn’t cooperating, so Delphine does what any good handler does. She shoves her thumb into Rachel’s wounded eye socket.

Ice cold, Delphine.

Good news: Delphine’s torture tactics worked.

Flash back to Sarah and Ferdinand the Cleaner in Rachel’s apartment. Just as Sarah’s about to kill Ferdinand via strangulation-thinly-disguised-as-kinky sex, Delphine rushes in to stop her. She gets him to call off his assassins and threatens his life and position at the corporation, saving the sisters in the process.

Well. For now.

The episode ends with the Castor clone who tortured Mrs. S shooting the guard of the other Castor Clone. The two flee.