Orphan Black: Transitory Sacrifices of Crisis Recap

Synopsis: The Castor brothers wreak havoc to find their original genome and Kira gets caught up in the chaos. Helena meets Dr. Virginia Cody, one of the leads on Project Castor. Alison steps up her campaign to win a seat on the school board by dealing drugs to the other soccer moms.

Rating: ★★★★☆

Orphan Black is a little Castor-heavy this episode. The show opens with one of the Castor clones seducing a girl; while they’re in the throes, a second Castor brother walks in and attempts to join. As this is rape and decidedly not okay, the girl pumps the brakes, declaring that she did not consent to this, right as we cut to the main credits before we see what happens to her.

Let’s have a round of applause for good-guy Cal. After realizing he’s Kira’s father, not only did he take care of her and Sarah for half of last season, but he also decides to give up his roving lifestyle to buy a house for the three of them. Like all good things, this plan goes up in flames as soon as Paul holds Cal at gunpoint and tells him he needs to get Sarah the hell out of town for her own good.

Turns out chica from the opening scene is okay – she reported the crime to the police department, and through the Detective Art grapevine, Sarah learns their names: Seth and Rudy.

Back in creepy Castor clone land, Paul shows up to administer some tests. Looks like the Castor boys would be really good at the analytical reasoning section of the LSAT, because all Paul does is test Rudy/Seth’s inductive reasoning skillz.

Later, we find out that the Castor clone Seth is ‘glitching.’ Apparently, while the girls have the pulmonary issue, Castor boys deteriorate mentally – Seth strokes out near the end of the episode, hallucinating and writhing on the floor of Felix’s building. But more on that later.

In the meantime, Cosima and her lab partner meet the new guy in charge of research at Dyad. According to him, both sets of original Castor/Leda genomes were lost. The audience only meets him for a solid two minutes, so I have no opinion as to his general shadiness. Granted, he works for Dyad, so we’re not off to a fantastic start. Then again, maybe Delphine is in charge of hiring practices now that Rachel’s impersonating a pirate these days.

Alison is ramping up her campaign for that school board position. Since Donnie lost his job, the two don’t have the money to run a clean campaign, so instead Alison decides to buy out her dealer Ramon’s business and leverage his client list for votes. Dastardly and brilliant as always, Mrs. Hendrix.

Helena is still being held hostage by Castor’s people. They start torturing her to find out where tissue samples of the male clones are being kept. They finally stop waterboarding her after Dr. Virginia Cody, the woman the Castor boys call ‘mom,’ informs them she’s pregnant. Cody’s motives are unknown, but she does give Helena a bit more room to walk around the Castor compound while she tries to turn her against her sisters.

Finally, near the end of the episode, the Rudy and Seth clones break into Felix’s flat and hold Kira hostage to try and get the missing original genomes from Sarah. Then, Seth glitches in the middle of the operation. Rudy mercy-kills his brother and lets Kira go.

Sarah finally decides to send Kira away with Cal until it’s safe for them to return. In the meantime, she and Mrs. S are going to track down Mark, the creepy Prolethian clone, who’s busy burning off his two-headed Castor horse tattoo all of the male clones have.