mistressofthelearningplateau

[mistressofthelearningplateau]

To Right the Wrongs of Many

Okay, now is when I don’t know what to write.

It makes sense that the final battle plays out and the war with Neolution wraps up about halfway through the episode. That’s never really what this show’s been about, after all, and once we’ve dealt with the business of dispatching the villains we can spend time on what this series has actually been about all along, which is the lives and relationships of the four (five?) main identical women at the story’s center. Actually, the first half does that as well, with a laser focus in on the connection shared by actual twins Sarah and Helena. Art eventually gets in on the action as well, after first dealing with minor villain and major thorn in his side Detective Enger (it’s really satisfying; she is the Absolute Worst), but the two major antagonists have to be taken out by Sarah and Helena themselves. Coady comes in at Helena with yet more mind games, but she has no power over Helena anymore. The connection she has with her twin has reawakened the fight in Helena, and turns out when Helena’s got fight she can murder a person while literally about to give birth. Sarah gets faced with a demon of her own, the man behind the (both figurative and in this case literal) curtain, the man who calls himself Westmoreland. He similarly tries to play mind games with her, and she similarly holds on to her connection with her twin to fight him off. And then things all go a bit sideways and some violence breaks out. Sarah shoots the guy, and then nearly gets suffocated. But the most important bit is what happens next. That man is responsible for the suffering of Sarah, all of her sisters, and so many more around the world. Poor squeamish Sarah bashes the guy’s head in with a metal canister. She doesn’t even flinch.

It’s all about cycles. Cycles of violence and manipulation and abuse of power. Helena puts an end to letting people tell her who she is, and Sarah puts an end to running. Or rather, that’s what that was supposed to be for her. More on that in a minute. Because first is another, which is a reminder of how the women in this weird extended family take care of each other, in a supremely well-edited sequence. We cut back and forth between the past and the present in a way that makes them almost blur together. I’ve mentioned before while watching other shows that I absolutely hate birth scenes because they’re drawn out, uncomfortable to watch, and usually go in for a sort of bland sentimentality designed to trick the audience into an emotion based on what we’ve been conditioned to feel by real life in those circumstances without ever really contributing to the story or the characters or being about anything at all. I’ve also mentioned that there are a small handful of exceptions. This is very specifically the exception I was talking about. This scene is about Sarah and Helena and their crazy intense connection. It’s about how Sarah feels the loss of her mother, and it’s about how she had hoped that her decision to have Kira would turn her life around, break her out of her own cycles of fucking up, but it didn’t and she just turned out to be a pretty not great mother. It’s about a fresh start and it’s about how there’s really no such thing as a fresh start. Sarah had hoped, years ago, that her decision to have that baby would turn her life around and break her out of her own cycle of fucking up. It didn’t. But now, everyone again is hoping that this marks a new chapter in Helena’s life, one free of violence and suffering. And it just might.

And all of that is just the first half of the episode. Because the second half lets us just live in their world, see what life looks like for them after the madness has died down. It’s not happily ever after. (Fun fact, everything wrapped up and uncomplicated happy endings for everyone is another pet peeve of mine in storytelling.) Life is messy, and stuff is complicated. Killing the monster didn’t cure Sarah’s restlessness. If anything, it brought it back. At least when they had a war to fight, she had something to fight against. Now she’s lost at sea again. In the past, this probably would have been the cue to run away and do some self-destructive behavior. That’s not an option now. So she does some different self-sabotaging, skips her GED test and starts pushing people away. And they don’t let her. It’s not neat. It’s slow and it’s messy. It’s not about happily ever after, it’s about the idea that she’s trying, and she’s going to mess it up, but she’s got a whole team full of people now to pull her up and also call her on her shit. Sarah’s still got her demons, but she’s better than she was at the start of the series when she stepped of that train. She and Kira and Felix will figure the rest out together, with her sisters at her back when she needs a little extra help.

Lab Notes:

Too long. So sorry. So many things I didn’t even talk about. This is what happens when I’m watching a super high quality show. I’ll talk forever.

"How could you let a woman in labor escape!" Okay, but it was Helena.

"You're a shitty partner, Enger." Again, so satisfying.

Sarah spends a fair few minutes of this episode in a video game stealth section.

"You never caged us. Not me and Helena."

I swear, it's like Sarah's never seen a horror movie in her life.

Donnie's now in the business of concrete floors. Among other things. But I assume that’s a man who knows his concrete.

Tony lives in Cleveland.

"It's just a human." Felix, you are the worst.

Cosima immediately turns around and hands off to Delphine. "I don't want to hurt you,” she explains to the baby, as one might talk to a full grown adult. Look, that whole thing is Things Cosima and I have in common.

"It's always when I eat, he poops."

The show was very kind to sneak in one more opportunity for me to joke about Delphine being in love with Sarah.

Sarah and Alison are always going to have the sort of relationship where they get under each other’s skin and argue. But that’s part of the strength of the very specific relationship dynamic that they have.

Oh, every single person at that party has fantastic barbecue fashion.

"There's no one left to fight, and I'm still a shit mum."

"Every time I look, the baby is eating sand. I turn around, sand. Where does this sand come from? I don't know, so I let them eat it."

It’s fitting that Rachel shares her last scene with Felix. He is in many ways, Leda’s handler. He manages to have a meaningful and unique relationship with each and every one of them. There was no way she could face the others, not after everything that had happened, but she still became one of them in spirit at least with the olive branch of everything Cosima needed to cure them all.

[mistressofthelearningplateau]

One Fettered Slave

Lighting people love that hair.

We tend to think of Helena as this unstoppable force of nature, but she’s not. She’s a human person. A human person who has a past that led her to become what she is today. We finally see flashbacks in this episode of Helena’s past. We see her as a child in the convent, being doused in bleach and thrown in a closet. That was when Tomas came and took her away from there, but we of course know that that was not an isolated incident. The way Helena speaks about the nuns (with the exception of Sister Irina, who was kind to her) makes it clear that she was always horribly mistreated in that place. And then Tomas came and took her away from that place. She must have seen him as her savior.  But where Sarah was taken out of the system and put in the care of someone who loved her, Helena’s guardian saw her as just another tool, telling her mythical stories about the science devil copies and the original who walked in the light of God. But he lied to her. I mean, obviously, we know that. Helena’s not the original. But his worse lie, I think, was one of omission. Because he only told her that she was the original after she discovered the woman she’d just murdered in cold blood had her exact face. And by that point, she was years deep in indoctrination. Helena was conditioned to not question the things she’d been taught. And now she’s being told she has to kill herself again and again. So come the angel wings.

And this is where the part about Helena being an actual person, not just a force of nature comes in. Because part of being a person is carrying scars from your past in your psyche. Helena is actually kind of an incredible person because despite the fact that her childhood and early adult life was basically an unending horror show, her base motivating force is love. But she’s still a person with the scars of her past, and Virginia Coady very nearly defeats her by telling her all of the things that she’s ever feared about herself are true. That she is actually a monster, and that all she causes is suffering. And she’s been isolated from her sisters for too long. She very nearly buys it. She tries to sacrifice herself to end the cycle of suffering and abuse. But then Sarah shows up out of nowhere and reminds Helena that it’s all a lie. Because she has a family now, and they love and look out for each other.

Lab Notes:

The show asked a few episodes back if Art would be willing to murder for the sisters. He was willing to, so they didn’t make him. Until now. I mean, I still wouldn’t consider it murder, but there is blood on his hands now.

Mark’s death is actually super moving. He was so excited about the future that he didn’t realize never existed.

"You killed your own sisters. You stink like an animal. What kind of mother could you possibly be?"

Sarah’s now known Helena long enough to know exactly what that look Helena shoots her means. That doesn’t mean she’s ready for it though. Poor squeamish Sarah.

"You are shit mother." You’re damn right. Helena’s back.

[mistressofthelearningplateau]

Guillotines Decide

This shot comes from the first minute of the episode; there’s absolutely no reason I should have a folder filled with four other shots, other than I seem to have a compulsive need to collect stills from this beautiful show.

This is another of those episodes where I don’t even know what to say. It is so good and so heartbreaking and I just don’t know what comments I could possibly make that would do this incredible character justice. Siobhan Sadler is the fucking rock upon which clone club is built. She brought structure to the side of the war that Sarah was essentially helming by running from one place to another and skulking in dark corners. Sarah is reactive by nature, but Siobhan put Leda on the offensive, not bothering to wait for the other side to do something so that they could react, but actively searching for the upper hand to end this once and for all. Without Siobhan on their side, they never could have won. It’s that simple.

But of course this episode spends relatively little time on the conflict between Leda and Neolution finally coming to a head. Most of this episode’s runtime is spent celebrating. In the context of the story they’re celebrating Felix’s art show and an end in sight to the madness, but the episode itself is also celebrating. It’s celebrating and showing off the relationships between the characters. We get to see just how important of a figure Siobhan has become in not just her own children’s lives, but Sarah’s various sisters as well. There’s also interaction between so many other characters as well. Sarah and Adele got a rocky start to their relationship, and Sarah does spend part of this episode getting Adele drunk for information, but then during Felix’s speech at the end, it’s Sarah who invites Adele up on the stage with the rest of them. Likewise, Felix and Delphine got off to a rocky start way back at the beginning (who among us could possibly forget their first meeting), but it’s clear here that they’ve become fairly friendly. In fact we see quite a bit of the people who look out for Leda interacting with each other in this episode, all having a chance to relax together. The sisters can’t all be seen at the same time at the party, but that’s no reason for the likes of Donnie, Art, and Delphine to not have a good time. Not that Delphine is there the entire time because she and Siobhan are another pair who get to have cool interactions this episode. In the end, Siobhan is there for all the Ledas, even the one Sarah never would have agreed to. Rachel ends up putting just as much trust in her as all the rest of them have at one point or another, and she does her best to warn Siobhan about the danger she’s in. But they both knew what the probable outcome would be. That’s why Siobhan included Delphine at all. She needed someone she could count on to fill her role if something should happen to her. Because she knew. Maybe we all did? Wars like this one always have a cost. And it’s usually the one that hurts worst of all.

Lab Notes:

Me: I don’t know if I even have anything to say about this amazing episode. Also me: Writes that wall of text.

"Okay, so you wanna spend the morning safeguarding the genetic future of humankind, or do you wanna have brunch?"

"An art opening. Do you think that's a good idea right now?" "Nope!" "Yes." The quick “Nope!” Sarah sneaks in there is amazing.

"Now tell me, how do you feel about long stares and large groups of people?" "Oooooooh, no."

"Why am I getting texts from my sister saying that you and S are up to something?" "I don't know Felix. Maybe it's because we are up to something."

Sarah gets up onto the stage and immediately flicks the v’s at the applauding audience because she is nothing if not always on-brand.

"She just wasn't that into you." Siobhan goes down, but not without a fight. She had hoped for a better outcome. But at least she got to watch that bastard die.

[mistressofthelearningplateau]

Gag or Throttle

Some words of wisdom for you today: Liver deep.

Rachel Duncan has always enjoyed a sort of precarious position in her world. She had the privilege of being the only Leda clone to know the truth about the circumstances of her existence. But this episode makes it clear that any sense of independence or agency they might have given her was an illusion to keep her in line. A gilded cage is still a cage, a box built specifically to keep Rachel in line and get her to do their bidding. Rachel has a vision of her younger self, asking her why she didn’t run. She knew, after all, that she was their prisoner. She responds that she had nowhere to go. I found myself wondering something while watching this episode. They always talk about Rachel being raised in DYAD, growing up in boardrooms. Was that literal? There’s a bedroom for Kira in the building. Rachel literally grew up in a lab, didn’t she? They always talk about how she was raised by Neolution, but that leaves out half the picture. The unstated thing there is that she was raised away from anyone on the outside. There was no one to help her escape.

That’s why the Rachel we know today tries so hard to win the game from the inside. She’s convinced that if she steps on enough people, if she amasses enough power, they’ll have to let her in on the game. She’ll be running the show for once, instead of being run by other people. And they’re good, too. They make her think she’s winning her freedom. But it’s just more lies. She’s still just her clone tag to them, still just a data set for their scientists. Even when she’s told that she’s the new right hand of Neolution, that she’s running the show now, there’s still the old man behind the curtain looking over her shoulder. That’s when she realizes. She’ll never win playing their game. This system is rigged to keep her under their control. So she does the most reasonable thing a person could possibly do in her situation. She plucks out her own eyeball with a broken martini glass.

Lab Notes:

Scott: "Just so you know, I'm really not in the mood for any surprise late-night D&D." Me: “What? Why? Surprise D&D is literally the only thing I want in life.”

I mentioned that Rachel has been wearing a lot of black this season. So it’s significant that she spends a large portion of this episode, the part where she’s taking her life back, in white.

Man, Alison has really done her homework on Jung, she’s spouting off some seriously Jungian ideas in this episode. Although modern psychology has largely moved on from the ideas presented in the first half of the 20th century, Jung was not nearly as full of absolute horseshit as his contemporary, Sigmund Freud, so I am willing to accept Alison’s embrace of his work.

[mistressofthelearningplateau]

Manacled Slim Wrists

Sarah has a lot of fun watching Krystal kick ass.

All the walls are closing in now. Cosima spends most of this episode in a box, Susan is foiled in her attempt to kill Westmoreland, Ira declines fast, and Kira is now in the hands of Neolution. But when the walls close in, they close in on everyone. Revival is no more, as Cosima reveals the truth to the villagers about the man they’ve put all their faith in. Also, Krystal shows back up, still chasing down leads about cosmetics conspiracies. She’s somehow managed to uncover a way for Neolution to use unwitting people in their experiments. No, no one knows how she does that.

We finally learn who Mud is in this episode. She’s nobody. Or rather, she’s someone who Westmoreland found and knew he could make do and believe anything he wanted because she thinks she’s nobody. It’s not surprising. I mean, that’s what this guy does, right? He uses women to get what he wants. Only now, he’s got Cosima locked in his basement. Cosima is his complete and total opposite. Of course she’s able to escape and convince the residents of Revival of the truth. But there’s only so much she can do all the way out there on that island. It’s time for her to go home, reunite with her sisters, and finish this once and for all.

Lab Notes:

"Is she actually necessary because she's so rude."

"Nobody ghosts Krystal." "It's difficult at first, but you get used to it eventually."

Fortune and fiction = how the patriarchy works

"Did Krystal just fall ass-backwards into something big again?" "I do not know how that girl does it."

Sarah is Australian, apparently.

Hey that’s Tom Cullen, as if Tat wasn’t already having enough fun being Krystal as it was.

"Okay. Steer him to DYAD. Don't make it obvious." "Len, you sold your company to DYAD."

"Young blood for old veins." That...that can’t be how blood works.

Rachel Duncan has been reunited with windows, and all is right with the world.

[mistressofthelearningplateau]

Ease for Idle Millionaires

Rachel and Delphine are for sure having a Dramatic Entrances competition.

This episode goes ahead and points out exactly what the issue in Cosima and Delphine’s relationship is, and it’s a pretty major one. We’ve long ago accepted that Delphine is on our side, but the two of them have nevertheless gone through pretty long stretches of time where they straight up don’t trust each other. And now it makes sense. Delphine promised Cosima that she would always protect her. The way Delphine does that pretty frequently involves doing shady things and hanging out with shady people because the best way she knows how to protect Cosima is from the inside of the systems that would harm her. It’s a pretty good plan, actually. Only thing is, they had this conversation when Cosima was at one of her lowest moments, when she was feeling backed into a corner because the two of them had just discovered that Cosima’s biology was patented intellectual property owned by DYAD. And so she made a promise to Delphine that she would defy them, that she would always fight for her autonomy. From those same systems. They had to know there would be issues, right? Not that I’m complaining. I’m a fan of big dramatic story arc and complicated relationship dynamics between characters, and this whole five-season thing between these two is a really great example. Like, they’re so clearly in love with each other, and that is their shared primary motivation, but it’s not their major driving objective because it can’t be. There’s too much else going on, and they’ve got their own roles to play. As a result they sort of weave in and out of each others storylines in a way that I really enjoy.

Cosima’s constant state of righteous outrage at reckless and inhumane science is my favorite thing. She spends a majority of this episode piecing together all of the threads that have been left, and is then horrified by what she finds at the end of the road. It’s one thing for her to know that she is the product of horrible and illegal human experimentation that flies in the face of basic decent humanity. It’s another to see the misery and suffering that’s been wrought, be in the presence of the people who caused it, and know that they have absolutely no intention of stopping. Delphine tells her more than once to stop pushing, that she’s putting herself and quite possibly their entire operation in danger by insisting to keep investigating. But she had to know that nothing she said would keep Cosima from digging until she found the bottom. And what she finds there is a horrible, empty, shadow puppet of a man so completely devoid of any empathy or humanity that the pain he causes doesn’t even register. It’s almost as if the people of the village spent the episode hunting the wrong monster.

Lab Notes:

"Delphine. Looking windblown."

"I'm sorry. If it helps." "It doesn't."

Rachel is wearing a lot of black this season. Which is significant because her signature color is white. It’s like she’s been thrown off-balance and is searching for her new power.

"Whose DNA is in the sequencer?" Cosima pulls a fucking tooth out of her bag as if that answers the question.

"You have a lot of dead things in here." Cosima gets a lot of enjoyment out of being really difficult. She gets almost smug when doing the exact opposite of what she’s been told to do. It’s really not helping Delphine’s cause. But she kind of gets a kick out it anyway.

"I'm gonna be a hustler too." Well apparently it runs in the damn family, so might as well.

"You're a woman! You're a human being! If you don't start there, there's nothing left to mitigate."

[mistressofthelearningplateau]

Let the Children and Childbearers Toil

Sarah pulls the same thing on this guy as she did on Raj back when she was being Beth.

All I want is more of Siobhan and Sarah’s mother/daughter cons. We get two for the price of one in this episode, and they’re both fantastic. They don’t even plan the first one, they both know what the goal is and who their mark is, so they just improvise off of each other, both knowing the game. They have a little more time to prepare for the second one, which is put to good use. The first time they were essentially playing themselves, but the second time requires a change of outfits and a fake ID. And accents. Which they practice in the car together. All of it is just so good.

It all leads up to the revelation that Virginia Coady is still alive and that she was part of Susan Duncan’s original team with Westmoreland. And Coady’s not the only one telling this story. It’s on Susan’s mind as well, now that she’s been fully usurped (and fully stabbed in the gut) by her own daughter. We’re going all the way back to the beginning now, back to the start of these experiments on human genetics, well before human cloning was even on the table. The reason we’re going there is because there is finally just one question left: Why? Why are there dozens of identical women (and Tony, no I haven’t forgotten him) roaming around all over the world? Why do Kira and Helena’s babies have Wolverine healing powers? We may not have the answers yet, but everyone is closing in on the same central focus. P.T. Westmoreland.

Lab Notes:

Charlotte, don't go wandering in the woods. Geezus, I know I’ve said this about the Ledas before, but clearly impulsiveness is genetic.

I really love this show’s commitment to continuity regarding Sarah’s scratched to hell face. Events on this show happen very quickly, so it makes sense that she’d still look like shit, but some shows don’t bother with that stuff episode to episode. (Which has always bothered me.)

"You always do this." "I rarely do this." It’s a little concerning that there are circumstances in your daily lives to ever do this.

"The boys have been digging." Okay, so Scott and Hell Wizard fully work for S now. When she refers to “my people” Scott and Hell Wizard are now among that number.

[mistressofthelearningplateau]

Beneath Her Heart

It’s an Alison episode, everybody.

Very often on this show, whatever’s going on with Alison can tend to feel tangential to the rest of the action. Alison’s trying to figure out who her monitor is, Alison’s in rehab, Alison’s a drug dealer, etc. It’s been the case since the very beginning that Alison was unclear of the role that she played with her sisters. That’s why Beth’s bank account was filled with Alison’s money. Beth was the cop, Cosima was the scientist, and Alison funded the whole thing. Since then, the group dynamics have changed. Art is now their cop, Sarah’s their soldier, Cosima is still their (actively dying) scientist, and Alison is...Alison. Like Sarah and Rachel, all she wants is control over her own life. She’s just unsure of how to get what she wants. Until they push her just a bit too far. The showdown between Alison and Rachel is amazing. These two have known about each other for ages, but this is the first time they’ve actually come face to face. Rachel makes all of the same assumptions about Alison as everyone else always has. And then Alison hands her Dr. Leekie’s decomposing head in a bag. Which she carried. Very casually. Into the building. And placed on the desk.

During all of this, Alison is not the only one being pushed to their absolute limits. Art’s been stuck all season under the thumb of Neolution, which has now fully infiltrated the police department. Art is a good cop, but he’s also a Good Cop. He broke the law for Beth when he helped her cover up her shooting, and he does some seriously shady shit for Sarah and her crew, but they always make sure to not ask too much of him. Art has a strict moral code, and to ask him to violate that would be to cross a line that can’t be returned over. And they respect him enough to never ask that of him. The show as a storytelling function has no such qualms. This show is all about the core of who its characters are as people. At his base, Art wants to protect Beth’s rather extended family. So the show asks just how far he’s willing to take that. It makes it as easy as possible for him. It gives him an open grave, no witnesses, and a motive that literally anyone would forgive. It also makes his potential victim the most insufferable person on the planet. And then it asks him: “Would you kill for them?” And the answer is yes. Of course, he doesn’t have to. That’s not the important part. Art is saved from having to actually carry through with it because that part’s really not important. What’s important is that he was committed to it. He knows now. Art would kill for them. There’s no going back on that, regardless of the actual outcome.

Lab Notes:

Alison was high on mushrooms the first time she met Cosima. It’s so perfect.

"I am highland dancing later today. Is that breaching my bail conditions?"

"What if I told you it might not be a miracle at all. It might actually be something in your genes." "That's what Auntie Cosima thinks." "Yes, she would."

Art’s new partner, by the way, is The Absolute Worst. And it makes her a really excellent character.

"I should like to put my hands around your neck and squeeze." "Then we're not so different, you and I."

[mistressofthelearningplateau]

Clutch of Greed

Now they’re just showing off.

There’s something really interesting about a show with a protagonist whose first instinct is to run away. Normally someone like that would exist firmly in the anti-hero territory (Don Draper comes to mind), but Sarah has always existed somewhere in the grey area between hero and anti-hero. The more focused she is on saving her sisters and putting an end to all of this, the more heroic she becomes, but there’s always that anti-hero pull to save herself and her family first and leave the rest to fend for themselves. It’s fitting for a show that’s so focused on duality and how people can be many different things. But this is the final season, and Sarah is our hero, whether she likes it or not. Which means that running away, as important a part of her as it is and as well as it’s served her in the past, just won’t work anymore. This is endgame. This time when Sarah tries to run, she’s punished for it. She loses a sister and the trust of her daughter. The closer they get to the final showdown, the less Sarah is able to fight this war on her own terms.

There’s a thing I really appreciate about the violence on this show, and I think we can all agree that this is a violent show, at times gory and full of body horror. The violence is always hard to watch. Even when it’s violence that benefits our heroes, or it had to happen for them to survive, or even when someone particularly awful is getting their comeuppance, it’s ugly. It’s rough and brutal and lacks any sort of grace. The people committing it are not cool and collected, even when killing is what they do. They’re sweaty and out of breath and they’ve got blood all over them in ways they were not prepared for. I love a badass, expertly choreographed and executed fight scene as much as anyone, but this is the kind of violence in entertainment that I really appreciate. When Ferdinand kills Mika it’s hard to watch because we love her, but it’s also hard to watch because it’s hard to watch. It feels so real, and there’s no remove from it the way you might find elsewhere. This is the very real world these characters live in, and these are the life and death stakes they are playing with.

Lab Notes:

"Cosima's on the mend. Alison in her craft room."

"Why don't you choke on your own vomit." Siobhan remains the best of us.

"Who do you think invented sneaking out of this house?" "I did!"

"I told you. I'm too tired, Sarah. I've been running my whole life." "I know you have. So have I. But we run on principle. It's all we've got left."

Mika takes off her pants and is wearing more pants under them. And I can’t even make fun of her for it because, as previously stated, I dress a lot like Mika.

"I'm not a ghost." "Yeah, I heard."

"I don't have that much time, and I don't know who to trust." "Neither do I." S and Delphine are just going to get a joint Sketchy Award here because at this point, the two of them run the sketchy game.

[mistressofthelearningplateau]

The Few Who Dare

Rachel is less trustworthy than Sarah, but also probably way more qualified to do medical procedures.

We’ve been peeling back layers on Neolution since the very beginning. First was the super weird but ultimately harmless Leekie groupies who wore white contacts and hung out at cybergoth clubs. But diving down to each new layer found darker and more sinister goings-on until we landed here. On a far-flung island, in an isolated camp. And the hundred and seventy year-old founder of Neolution is supposed to live up on that hill. He’s got a Plan. That apparently involves Rachel, Delphine, and Cosima. Nothing horrible has happened, though Cosima is being kept locked in a yurt and they clearly don’t want her and Delphine to have a chance to trade information and conspire. But there is a definite feeling that something is off. There’s something else going on here, and they’ve only got part of the story. But, as usual, the only way to find out what’s going on is to play along, or so says Delphine. I mean, she has been here longer than us, so she probably knows best. The biggest problem with that plan is that Cosima has never been great at just keeping her head down and doing as she’s told.

While every other character in the episode, both at Revival and on the homefront find themselves in deep with Neolutionists watching their every move, Sarah’s life has briefly turned into a Far Cry game. This always happens to her. Everyone else gets a moment to stop for a second, whether they want to or not, but not Sarah. She has to keep moving. In fact, she’s almost literally moving every time we see her this episode. She stops for the night, she gets attacked. She finds the boathouse, there are men with guns and dogs. She finally reunites with Cosima, her entire reason for doing this (and also a lot of the things she does), and still only gets a brief moment of calm (if you can call it that) before she has to run away again. And then she gets a tranq dart in the neck right before her chance to escape. At least she can stop moving for a second?

Lab Notes:

Yeah, let's put all our trust in a mysterious guy who lives in a mansion up on a hill while we all live in yurts.

"It's sort of a school." "Okay. That's weird."

Donnie running through the woods, dragging his suitcase behind him is such a great image.

Cosima searches the bottom shelves first, forgetting apparently that Delphine is tall, and tall people hide things on tall shelves.

"Oh my god, you're bleeding." Fucking understatement, Cosima.

"You're meant to put that in your uterus?" "I was kinda hoping you would, actually." Another situation that Sarah finds herself in all too often. Poor squeamish Sarah.

[mistressofthelearningplateau]

From Dancing Mice to Psychopaths

I’ve missed Delphine so much, but here’s the deal: X Company is a fantastic show.

Rachel Duncan has gone off the fucking deep end, and it is such good television. She has decided that she would like to be in charge of Neolution. Why does Rachel want this, when she has shown absolutely no interest in Neolution in the past? Well, it’s because she’s realized that that’s who’s pulling the strings. Rachel has the exact same goals as her sisters; she wants to be free and in charge of her own fate. A cure for the disease she will inevitably get wouldn’t be a bad thing either. But she’s looking at the picture from a different angle than all of the others. Rachel was raised by Neolution. She grew up around DYAD and in boardrooms. It almost seems related to the concept of learned helplessness. It’s not that Rachel doesn’t think she could possibly be in charge, as it would if it were truly that, but more like it’s impossible for her to understand the concept of freedom outside the system because power coming from the inside of the system is all she’s ever known.

I think that’s probably why Rachel hates Sarah so much. It has very little to do with the pencil, which by the way had very little to do with Sarah. Rachel’s mother and those that came after her raised Rachel inside the system. Using that system is the only way Rachel knows how to win. But then she looks at Sarah, her complete opposite in so many ways. Sarah was raised completely outside of the parameters of the experiment by a woman who taught her punk politics and how to question everything and everyone. Rachel feels trapped by the systems that use her for their own gain, but she exists inside of them and tries to manipulate them for her own purposes because that’s all she knows how to do. It must infuriate her to see Sarah want the same things as she does, freedom and autonomy, but be able to fight for those things not playing by anyone else’s rules. And Sarah’s way works better.

Lab Notes:

"Why are you here, Krystal?" Everyone always has that reaction to her, but she gets shit done.

"How does Krystal figure this shit out?" Broken clock, I think.

Reminder that Cosima has been actively dying since season 1.

"And secondly, even if you could drag a comb through that hair, she's like a seven on a good day, and I've been told I'm a ten."

Shout out to Jenny Slate. Just...thank you.

"He has his socks on."

"P.T. Westmoreland wrote the doctrine right here in this room." Cosima shrugs. "That's weird."

Dead of Winter is a good game.

"Krystal would kick your balls into your throat." She absolutely would.

"It's because it's bloody Rachel, isn't it?" "No! No, it's because it's Cosima."  Everyone loves Cosima so fucking much that S takes this as an acceptable reason for Sarah’s insane plan.

There...there have to be other ways to warm people up, right? I mean, I don’t think anyone’s complaining, but still.

[mistressofthelearningplateau]

The Mitigation of Competition

Not the picture you were expecting to see, I’m guessing.

I think Sarah probably gets a special enjoyment out of hanging up on Rachel while Rachel is in the middle of a sentence. She absolutely hates that they have to be working together right now because she really really does not trust Rachel. At one point Sarah states that all Rachel wants is power, that she’ll cut all of them down to get it. Which is true. But there’s a point that Sarah hasn’t considered, which is that Rachel is a vengeful dragon, and that she has a personal vendetta against anyone who has ever stood in her way for anything. Girl can hold a grudge. So although their motives may be different, Sarah can absolutely count on Rachel to take down Evie Cho. It’s what she does.

In other news. Delphine. Delphine!!! Okay, we had already heard from Krystal that the last time she was seen she was alive, but now we’re seeing her alive, which is something else entirely. I would like to say, and evilandskanky can back me up on this, I never for a moment thought she was dead. We watched the season three finale together live, and I was shocked as we all were, but also absolutely not buying it. But it’s one thing to think it and another entirely to see her sitting there. Which she is. Sitting there. On the island. That Cosima is currently on.

Lab Notes:

I’m mostly bragging that I never believed she was dead because of my well-documented history of my favorite character on every show ever dying.

"Ira, you fertilized my sister's eggs for science, you don't get to speak too."

Felix’s hair is so good in this episode. As is his entire outfit, really.

"How about you, how are yours?" "Yes, much kicking. They're fighting like us."

"You really don't like each other, do you?" "She put a pencil in my brain." Only very technically. That was mostly Cosima’s doing.

I love how much Charlotte loves geology.

"This is I should go." This is a thing that should work its way into my regular speech.

"I think he's fascinating. For a racist blowhard who thinks that poverty is genetic."

[mistressofthelearningplateau]

The Redesign of Natural Objects

Two sister friends, both back from the edge of the Void, having some tea together.

Alison Hendrix has always existed sort of on the fringes of this story. She’s a major character on the show, and she’s important to her sestras, but her prime goal has always been to be able to just live her life as normally as possible. She has been determined to do so come whatever hell or high water. Which frequently means that while everyone else is in safehouses or out of the country or in a secret lair underneath a comic book store, Alison is right out in the open. This isn’t the first time she’s been targeted by someone who realizes that she’s the easiest to get to. The difference here is that Neolution is so powerful, has so many people in so many places, that it just about works.

And if this had happened earlier in the season, it probably would have. Sarah was isolating herself from everyone in her life. Hell, the last conversation we saw her have with Alison before this episode ended with them getting in a fight and hanging up on each other. But Sarah’s back from the brink now, with a renewed fire in her. Her Beth hallucination told her that she needed to bring her sisters together, and that’s exactly what she aims to do. Sarah is ready to fight again, to scheme with Alison, to trust Mika, to save Cosima. She’s even willing to work with Susan Duncan to get what she wants. Even if that means some really weird genetic workarounds and sending Cosima directly into the lion’s den. They’ve come this far. Can’t stop now.

Lab Notes:

I think the defining characteristic of Sarah and Alison’s relationship is scheming. Those two participate in cloneswaps more than anyone else, often at the same time.

I know that all of the other candidates are currently out of the picture, but I’m bringing back the Sketchy Award and putting it directly in Siobhan’s hands. She tails Duko, hooks him up to a car battery, and shoots him in the chest at point blank range with a fucking hunting rifle. At least we know whose side she’s on.

"Beth told me about you. How's your illness?" "Um, you know. Incurable, so that sucks." Cosima is still just sort of actively dying.

"You look just like her, except with you know, less anger and more hygiene."

Susan suggests Rachel get a hobby. "Yes, perhaps I should take up carpentry. I can build us all coffins."

[mistressofthelearningplateau]

[mistressofthelearningplateau]

The Antisocialism of Sex

Took the most screenshots I’ve ever done so far watching this episode.

Well. This is the best episode of this show. And there are some great ones. But this one sort of traps me in it. I’m along for the ride with Sarah, trapped in her headspace as she circles down to the very bottom of the spiral she’s been in since the beginning of the season. It’s sort of difficult to know what to say about Sarah’s journey over the course of the episode, other than just to shout the praises of how well done the whole thing is. It’s so well written and performed and shot and edited and just every single thing about it is gripping an intense. Sarah is being haunted by Beth all night, but really she’s the ghost here, returning to her old habits to try to escape her new reality and the ways she’s failed in her own eyes. And Tat is so present as a performer for every moment of it, even and especially the moments in which Sarah is trying so hard not to be. I think I can honestly say that of every episode of television I’ve ever seen, this is the one I most wish I had been a part of making. And that list is some stiff competition, let me tell you.

With all of the things going on with Sarah in this episode, I always seem to forget that it’s also the episode where Cosima goes down a very similar path. She is also caught in a depressive spiral of despair and self-blame, and she’s losing all hope. She and Sarah, who have always been so close, even reach the ends of their respective ropes at pretty much exactly the same time. She was going to sacrifice herself for the sake of science, except what she was actually doing was reaching the point where she was just unable to keep fighting anymore. The scene where she locks herself in that reinforced basement and all Scott can do is shout at her as Hell Wizard attempts to bust down the door he built is emotionally harrowing. Because guess what, Tat is amazing here too. Early on in the show’s run, Cosima told Sarah to keep her sense of humor, that Beth couldn’t. Neither Cosima nor Sarah is laughing anymore. Felix has been distant all season, understandably. He’s his own person with his own shit. But also these women are so incredibly important to him, and he would do anything for them. It makes sense that he would be the one to save both Cosima and Sarah from themselves. None of them can do this without him.

Lab Notes:

That’s a really scattered episode post. Turns out, this episode is so good, it’s kind of difficult to get into it.

If you've had chickenpox, the shingles virus is ALREADY INSIDE YOU.

Peaches tho

"She has a daughter?" "Yeah. Sometimes." Oof.

Kira plays Minecraft. Which she didn’t pick up from Sarah, Felix, or S. It could be the time she spends with Cosima, but actually my money’s on the influence of her newest babysitter, Hell Wizard.

Okay, I know she falls at the end, but huge props to Rachel for navigating that house with all those damn stairs. That place was not built with accessibility in mind, but nothing stops Rachel Fucking Duncan.

[mistressofthelearningplateau]

The Scandal of Altruism

My hands really did not want to correctly type the word “altruism.” And again that time.

Whoa. Man. I am really feeling the loss of Beth right now. Over the course of the series, up until this season, she’s been more of an idea than anything. Cosima and Alison both knew her a bit, and Sarah learned about her through her environment and people who knew her, but Beth herself was just an idea. That is no longer the case. Over the course of this season we’ve gotten to know the real actual Beth through flashbacks. We’ve seen her investigating Neolution and learning all of the terrible things that Sarah is now also finding. And now we’ve seen the events in the hours immediately before her death. She was protecting them. She was cornered and scared and dealing with some substance abuse problems as a result, and her state of mind definitely contributed to her decision in that she was feeling completely defeated and like she had started an unwinnable war. But ultimately, she didn’t kill herself because she couldn’t handle the truth of her existence any longer, which has sort of what’s been implied up to now. She killed herself because she was fighting this war alone and she felt outmatched. It was the only thing she could think of to do to protect so many people who were, in her eyes, more innocent than herself. Hers is a tragic story told efficiently, and all the more emotionally brutal for it.

The editing in that sequence at the end of the episode is something else. It’s a thing this show tends to do really well, matching the pace of the editing with the tension. The quick cuts between different timelines are jarring, as are the rapid tonal shifts. We jump back and forth between the brutality of Beth’s assault on Evie Cho and the subsequent bloody mess in her sink and yelling at a Mika who so clearly understands what’s happening all too well and the deceptive quiet of the moments after Kendall’s murder. It’s an emotional barrage. We watch Beth decide that she’s out of moves and her only remaining option to protect them is to die. Cosima is informed that Delphine was shot dead in a parking garage. Mika is helpless to stop Beth from the path she’s on and we watch her realize she’s lost another sister. Cosima has to make that phone call and inform Sarah and Siobhan that Kendall is dead. And we have to watch Beth make that walk down to the train tracks, already knowing the outcome is fixed, that nothing can be done to save her. This episode is so good. But also, it’s A Lot. And the barrage isn’t even over yet.

Lab Notes:

"Most people think rare cards must be awesome, not so. Tell your son to play the game, not the market." Hell Wizard and I would be friends.

"This is Ira, my assistant. A breed apart." "From what, dobermans?"

"Ethan saw the best in people. I see the most." Gross.

"International intrigue lacks flair."

This is the second episode in a row where Cosima swipes something without anyone noticing. Last episode it was Susan’s access card (off of her coat no less) and now it’s the face maggot right off the desk. I know Sarah’s our grifter, but Cosima’s got some skills.

"Ever since I smacked this French doctor at the DYAD, I just keep injuring people everywhere I go." Thank you for reminding us of that moment, Krystal. Please keep mentioning it forever.

[mistressofthelearningplateau]

Human Raw Material

Krystal Goderitch remains an absolute gift of a character.

This episode is absolutely hilarious. Until it isn’t. At which point it becomes a creeping horror show determined to demonstrate to us just how depraved and detached from humanity Susan Duncan and the rest of her Neolution cohorts are. More on that in a second. First, Krystal Goderitch! We knew this was going to be a good fun time when the episode opened on Krystal beating the shit out of her very surprised trainer. We get to spend the most time we’ve had yet with Krystal just being Krystal in this episode, and it’s so great to learn more about her. She’s gotten surprisingly far into the right track on her investigation given that she still has no idea what’s actually going on. Which leads her to Brightborn on the exact same day and time that Donnie and Cosima are doing their infiltration. Krystal and Cosima somehow manage to make absolute fools out of the bad guys despite having never met and Krystal not even knowing about Cosima’s existence just because it never occurs to our evil geniuses that there might be more than one Leda out and about. Plus, we get to see Donnie interacting with and reacting to Krystal, and anytime people meet Krystal is my favorite thing.

The best thing about the farce half of this episode is that its tone serves as perfect camouflage to bring us into the super upsetting end. The tonal shift between Krystal’s Brightborn adventures and Cosima’s is stark, to say the least. The idea of eugenics has been sort of floating threateningly around the edges of the series since the very beginning. It’s always been there, but rarely mentioned and usually just alluded to. But now here it is front and center. It’s interesting to me that Cosima, our science friend, is probably the most moral of all the clones. I’m sure that’s not rare in actual scientists, but TV scientists tend to think more along the lines that Susan is talking. If any other character on the show had seen all of those things and then been faced with Susan Duncan, her arguments would have been in danger of starting to sound reasonable. (Well, probably not. But if you’re a nefarious scientist, or really any figure with authority on a certain subject, you can make the uninformed believe that you know best.) But because we’re seeing this through Cosima’s eyes, we never for a moment forget the horror of what’s happening. Cosima is a deeply moral scientist who only cares about knowledge and discoveries as much as she cares about ethics and her own humanity. Susan Duncan is the perfect foil for her.

Lab Notes:

Sarah Things: Sulk around, look miserable, con people

It’s nice that Kira gets to at least hang out at a comic shop. The comics and the games probably provide a nice outlet and distraction for her, and maybe some other worlds to hang out in for a bit.

"Enhances your embryos how?" "I have no idea, I am very lost."

Sarah’s hair is so good in this episode.

"Bitch.”

"Perhaps babies with dimples are more likely to be photographed." This is what I’m talking about. Susan is able to suggest that Cosima’s suspicions are the product of her own confirmation bias, and she’s able to do that because she knows how to talk as a scientist to other scientists.

"Big blonde hair, perfect nails, voice like a can opener." "Krystal Goderitch?"

"Evie, that's Krystal Goderitch." Susan talks to Evie, a very accomplished woman, like Evie is a goddamn moron.

Hey, both of Cosima’s tattoos are visible in this episode. Everyone always talks about the nautilus shell, but she has one on her other arm as well. It’s a dandelion puff thing, being scattered by the wind. The nautilus of course contains that golden ratio, the pattern that the universe seems to be determined to follow on every scale imaginable. But there is no order to a dandelion puff being scattered in the wind. There is no scientific way I am aware of to predict or determine where they will fall. It’s up to chance. Like the clones themselves. Same genetic structure, any difference between them unpredictable and in some cases unexplainable. Order and chaos in equal measure. I like that.