Orphan Black “Stigmata of Progress” Review

This weeks Orphan Black
reeked of a filler episode and
that’s pretty much what we got. Not to
say that we didn’t get some
interesting
developments thrown our way, but for the most part this episode
did a lot of
wheel spinning.
Let’s get down to it, shall we?

Let’s start where we
left off last
week. Sarah has a maggot bot in
her cheek and no one knows what it
is or how to get it out. After the “I
need to cleanse my mouth” inducing
ending
of last week, I expected the show to pick up right where it left off
but we had
to wait for that
resolution and I think that disrupted the tension a bit. When
we first see
Sarah, Cos is studying her cheek
implant and can’t figure out what
it is. We do learn that it’s not a
tracking device (there goes that
theory) but
also could be some sort of data collecting agent. Needless to
say no resolution
came from the
underground comic book bunker, and Sarah goes out on her own for
answers.
#typicalsarah

While she goes
looking for answers she
doesn’t really find any. Sarah meets
up with the dude
she stole the phone from (MK’s contact… I missed MK this
episode) and he
basically
tells her the same thing that Cos said (yay pointless journey!) but
does
drop the name of a doctor who was
doing the implants. After contacting Art
and watching more Beth surveillance
videos, Sarah sneaks into the
dentists
office looking for the implant doctor. While the doctor is out she
finds one of
Beth’s old
informants aaaaaaaaaaaand Sarah instantly trusts her. This bothered
me a
great deal considering how
everyone in the Clone Club is super
paranoid all the time, for the
love of God Sarah suggested that
Felix’s
biological sister could be a Neo plant, and Sarah just goes “sure
you can take
this thing out of
my mouth stranger”. Ultimately we found out the informant (did
this lady
even have a name?) was working
Beth/Sarah and pretends to compromise
the bot in her mouth. Good news though
as Ferdinand shows up (thanks
S), kills
the informant, almost gets her blood in Sarah’s open mouth (super
gross), and
does very little
else besides telling Sarah that Professor Duncan (the lady
version) is still
alive. Bringing Ferdinand back
to the forefront is a good move
I just wish he would bring some relevant
information other then Professor
Duncan
being alive.

Speaking of Professor Duncan, we got our first
glimpse of
Rachel in her
underground bunker with the Neos, and guess what? Her eye doctor
is a Castor
clone. I thought all those guys
were dead? Guess not. Any way don’t
get too attached to the Cyber Eye of
Doom as it looks like they’re
trying to
make it look less Terminator and more normal. Boo. Rachel on the
other hand is
still struggling
with her recovery but making progress, but she is not pleased
with her
mother. Charlotte (the little girl
from the end of season two who just
so happens to be a clone of Rachel.
She’s like the inception of the
clone game)
is helping Rachel sneak notes to the outside (that’s how
Ferdinand knows about
Duncan) but
also has the illness which is a total bummer. The kids on this show
have
such weird existences.

And since you mention kids,
Kira has gone all
Omen on us staring off into
space, having vivid scary dreams,
and disrupting games of Cones of Dunshire
(not the actual game but who
doesn’t
love making a Parks and Rec reference when they can? Not
to mention
Tatiana Maslany did
a guest spot on that show. See folks, time is a flat
circle!). Not sure how
I felt about this. It looks like
Kira might be able to
see the future, all of a sudden, and tells Cos that
she had a dream with all her

aunts. Except this dream sounded more like a nightmare as Cos set Sarah on
fire.
That’s a very specific,
unsettling image to be throwing out there Damien, I
mean Kira. Who knows
what’s going to come from this but
the idea of Kira
getting visions didn’t sit well with me. For starters it
was very out
of the
blue and there has been nothing to suggest that those kind of powers
exist
in this universe. I’m reserving
full judgement before I give my opinion,
but this whole story line is a bit
suspect to me. New theory time!!
Maybe Kira
is actually a new incarnation of the Red Woman from Game of
Thrones.
Makes sense
since her Dad is currently looking for everyone’s favorite

khalessi.

Some quick notes before I leave
you.

• The best
  story line of the night belonged to the
  Hendrix household. Everything from

  digging up Doctor Leekie for a maggot bot to test to Helena trying to be
  Alison
  all the way over to
  Donnie’s confession to killing Leekie (which was super
  funny) was
  excellent. Best part of this episode hands
  down.

• Helena finally getting
  in touch with Sarah was a sweet

  moment, and touching when she told Sarah how she doesn’t want her babies to

  grow up to be like her.
  Forget rubbing that belly someone give Helena a
  hug.

• Art, who
  I’m sure is a fine detective,
  really needs to
  work on how he addresses suspects. That whole conversation
  with the Neo cop (I
  can’t
  remember his name) was awkward and forced. Almost like Art showed his
  hand
  before the game even
  started.
• I appreciate Beth’s
  presence in this episode despite
  the lack of flashbacks. The home
  video
  collection helped remind us that she seems to be the center of this
  story.
  Apparently she made a
  lot of headway in this case before she took a train to the
  face. Wondering
  if anymore flashbacks are
  planned.
• I felt that MK
  was sorely missed this week. Her
  presence adds such layers of intrigue
  to the
  story line and I think that was really missing here.
• I’m
  already over the Felix
  story line. Where is this leading besides the obvious, I
  should have seen
  that my biological sister was
  playing me I’m sorry Clone Club.
  Just seems like they’re trying to make
  Felix exist outside of the Clone
  Club,
  which I’m all for, if they gave him something interesting. He also
  found his
  sister pretty easily
  if you ask me. Just feels like a filler story to
  me.

There
you have it Geeklings. This weeks
Orphan
Black was a bit of a step back that didn’t really further
the plot much.
There were some
pretty cool moments but on the whole felt like this episode was
just
spinning the wheels. Hopefully next week
we can start picking momentum up
again.

 

Images from
BBC America