'Orphan Black' Recap: "The Few Who Dare"

Sabrina Petrafesa ‘18 / Emertainment Monthly President
The beauty of a show like Orphan Black comes from all the staff writers’ ability to create complex story lines without letting any of the characters fall to the wayside. It seems in its final season, Orphan Black, will keep with their trends of increasingly interesting and convoluted story lines and amazing characters brought to life by one brilliant actress.
Of course this episode had many moving parts between Sarah running around the woods with a bad leg trying to find Cosima, to Cosima trying to figure out what is happening in the village, to Alison and Donnie and Helena all hiding out in a National Park, to Felix and Art trying to find leads on where Siobhan and Kira are while Art is dealing with his new neolutionist partner. A lot of moving parts that all kind of come together and that’s not even everything that happened in the episode.

The episode opens on Sarah (Tatiana Maslany) running from Rachel (Maslany) and trying to find a way off the island for herself and Cosima (Maslany). When Sarah is in the woods hiding from the neolutionists a human shaped monster attacks her. Maybe it’s a clone gone wrong or something more sinister. Either way something scary is happening in those woods. While that’s happening Cosima is in the crazy neolutionist village with Delphine (Évelyne Brochu) who is surprisingly happy to be there working with the neolutionists.
Delphine – who is leaving on a mission for PT Westmoreland – managed to steal a portion of the cure that has plagued Cosima since the end of season one. This leads to an interesting moment though. Cosima breaks into the clinic where the cure is hidden where Sarah finally meets up with her to get her off the island when Cosima says she wants to stay. After Sarah leaves and Cosima stays she’s trying to giver herself the cure, but Rachel walks in. Now it’s hard to imagine Rachel actually helping any of the clones, but Rachel actually helps Cosima. Although not before telling Cosima that she was only helping because PT Westmorland had plans for her. Now the bigger question is why? What is PT Westmorelands endgame here and what does he want with the clones?

While all that is happening Alison (Maslany) and Donnie (Kristian Bruun) and Helena (Maslany) are hiding out in the woods. They’ve been told by Felix (Jordan Gavaris) and Art (Kevin Hanchard) to stay put but Alison obviously does not want to stay put. While she’s packing Alison gets kidnapped by neolutionists while Donnie hides and runs away leaving Alison on her own. Donnie and Alison have been through a lot and have come out stronger for it, but this move really doesn’t fit the character fans know and love. Donnie runs to his car where he is attacked by the people who took Alison when Helena who is very, very pregnant saves the day, but not without getting a stick stabbed through her stomach possibly hurting one or both of her babies. Also it turns out that Art was the reason they were kidnapped because his new partner is also a neolutionist who wants to round up the clones for PT Westmoreland.
Everything happening in this episode is because of PT Westmoreland. We have yet to see him on screen but we know he’s the man behind the curtain so to speak and has managed to stay alive for 170 years as we learned in the season four finale. In a show about clones this isn’t impossible a man was able to stay alive for 170, however the show has been pretty grounded in reality. Perfect clones are impossible but Orphan Black does a good job of making it seem possible, hopefully this sci-fi show doesn’t use its last season to become a sci-fi show that doesn’t fit with what the majority of the series has been about: Women who wanted autonomy over their own body and to be recognized as people and not property.
Episode Grade: A
Orphan Black airs Saturdays at 10pm on BBC America.