We discuss the ninth episode of the second season of Orphan Black, “Things Which Have Never Yet Been Done.”

After Cosima takes a turn for the worse, Delphine comes to Sarah to ask about Kira donating bone marrow. Sarah is torn because she wants to help Cosima but doesn’t want to risk Dyad taking her daughter. Lured back to the Proletheans by their promise of children, Helena earns an unlikely ally. Meanwhile, Alison and Donnie deal with the aftermath of Dr. Leekie’s death.

Rachel

• WE ARE SO MAD AT HER RIGHT NOW.
• She manipulates and uses Delphine, drugs Felix, AND kidnaps Kira. It’s a triumvirate of evil actions. We don’t know if she can come back from that.
• Do we have sympathy for Rachel? She clearly seems to have psychological problems, and like all the other clones she has been manipulated and lied to by the clone experiment.
• Stephanie liked the internal montage better this week, though she’s still not loving them. But it did confirm that when we saw Rachel hulking out in the last episode that it was just in her mind.
• Where has she taken Kira exactly? It looks like it might be Rachel’s childhood bedroom, but where are they? Within Dyad somewhere? What are Rachel’s intentions?

Sarah & Kira

• Again, we get to see Sarah mainly trying to be a good mum to Kira in this episode.
• Really liked the scene where Sarah and Mrs. S asked Kira if she wants to help Auntie Cosima, reinforcing the importance of autonomy for our characters
• Sarah holding Kira’s hand and crying during the surgery – my heart! “What kind of mother am I?” “The best, and the bravest, and a very very good sister.”

— Fallout from Kira’s kidnapping

• Will Mrs. S be more forgiving of Sarah because she recently inadvertently put Kira in danger?
• Will Kira’s kidnapping bring Cal back into the picture?
• You know Helena will go postal on Rachel for laying a finger on Kira.
• Will people realize Delphine was tricked? Or will that just cement many of the characters’ distrust of her?

Cosima & Delphine

• Stephanie spent a lot of the episode rooting for Delphine, wanting Sarah, Felix, and Mrs. S to trust her.
• She tries to do the right thing and keep her promise to love all the clones by going to Sarah with her suspicions about Benjamin, but Rachel tricks her. DAMMIT, RACHEL. HOW DARE YOU MAKE THE PUPPY CRY.
• But, Delphine, did you take a company limo to the pediatric clinic? Not exactly the sneakiest. (Though we think Rachel had her followed the first time she went there.)
• Cosima, Scott, and Ethan Duncan start working on decoding the synthetic sequences. “He’s a virgin if you can’t tell.”
• Ethan Duncan is the most human scientists high up in the clone experiment that we’ve met so far.

Helena & The Farming Proletheans

• Kathryn Alexandre gets to have her face on screen! Tatiana Maslany’s double plays the Prolethean midwife.
• Helena and Gracie bond. Over Helena’s violence streak toward overbearing authority figures.
• Again, we see men discussing women’s fates (Henrik and Mark’s conversation about Gracie), and we learn about women’s place in this community, i.e. pretty much incubators.
• Henrik impregnates his own daughter with his offspring? Ew.
• Helena’s assault of Henrik – we’re laughing, but it’s terrible. Stephanie doesn’t exactly know what to think.
• And then Helena destroys it all.
• We learn that Mark went AWOL from the military, which makes sense given that Paul asks him what special ops group he served in “To Hound Nature in Her Wanderings.”
• He and Gracie run away. Will we see them again?

Alison & Donnie

• ARE THE BEST. Ordinary folks trying to hide bodies is (strangely) hilarious. 
• “I think we need to put him diagonally,” the pink duct tape and patterned shower curtain, “It’s asymmetrical. It’s difficult.”
• “Have you ever seen Dexter? I mean, random scuba divers are finding everything!”
• Dealing with Vic and Angie
• Donnie had the safety on this time!  Kris is pleased.
• Poor Vic – “I hate this garage.”
• “Have a shitty day!”
• Alison and Donnie do THE NASTY.

Stray Thoughts

• Title comes from the Aphorisms section of The New Organon
• Vidchat between Clone Club – so nice. It feels like we haven’t seen enough of original Clone Club this season.
• Still no Paul this week. Will we see him next week?
• Felix is in Uncle Felix mode, trying to protect Kira and being supportive to Sarah. (And looking fiiiiiiiine while doing it.)

Feedback

• From Annette:  

Ok. So now I am on board with Delphine. She was clearly tricked by Rachel. Prior to this I was not a Delphine fan because I did not trust her. I know Helena will come back to Sarah and take care of business. The scene that broke my heart and I cannot get out of my head, Sarah with Kira during the medical procedure. And Sarah who has captured my heart. I always liked her but I was not truly invested in her until I think it was Season 2, Episode 6.

• From Val:  

I totally didn’t catch the Rachel is posing as Sarah part. Damn it, you’d think I’d know by now when one of them does a switcheroo! When the hell will I learn?!  Did everyone notice it right off? One reason I didn’t catch on was because she looked just like Sarah!!,nothing was really off in that respect. Then on rewatch, I did hear the Rachel accent slip in there.

• From Avery:

I’ve seen a lot of people asking why they didn’t just use Sarah’s bone marrow instead of baby badass’. So I looked into it as I didn’t know the exact reason. In case you’re curious like me. It’s because after a certain age cells aren’t as effective.

I found this on the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine site: “Adult stem cells are extremely valuable and have great potential for future therapies. However, these cells are very restricted in what they can do. Blood forming stem cells can treat some blood diseases, and brain stem cells may be able to treat some neural diseases, but those cells can’t turn into other tissues types. What’s more, adult stem cells don’t grow indefinitely in the lab, unlike embryonic stem cells, and they aren’t as flexible in the types of diseases they can treat.”

• From Davia: 

I don’t know which notion scares me more – Rachel kidnapping Kira to be her daughter, or Rachel kidnapping Kira to experiment on her.  Some one is definitely psycho and is not Helena.  I felt so sorry for Helena when Henrik had her in the stirrups and had to explain the “cervix” to her, but she (a 30 yr old woman) had no idea what he was saying.  These Proletheans are  Scary.

• From Brooke:

I was disturbed but pretty thrilled to see Helena give him what he deserved.  Does that make me a horrible person too Kris?  Then there is the implantation of the eggs in Gracie as well.  I was not surprised that they were fertilized by Henrik but had hoped that he wouldn’t do that to his daughter.  I think that the young children are all biologically his but not their “broodmares.”  They’re just his followers, his sheep.  So for him to do that to his true daughter is another level of demented.

• From Janice:

Much has been written about the corner that the writers will put themselves in if they allow Cosima to live and the dangers of catering to the wishes of viewers.  It just seems that in this instance we have a character that is adorably cute and lovable to the point where viewers may not really see the character at hand.  It would not surprise me one bit if the writers use the popularity of Cophine to create a ginormous cliffhanger at the end of season 2 as to Cosima’s status.

• From Jo:

We have heard that the human cloning project was originally initiated by the military before it was abandoned and then taken over by the DYAD. …Maybe there is something to the idea of creating “super soldiers” after all; this theory has been around for a while. Not only the clones’ fertility would be beneficial to that cause but also their general disposition. While all our clones are wildly different they all display some form of emotional disconnection and also ferociousness.

• From Jenny:

Had to pause my episode-watching to comment: pigtails and dark makeup on S? Is she supposed to look Wednesday Addams-y?

• From Colby: 

Here are my wild predictions (or wishes) about the season finale:  Cosima will respond well to the stem cells from Kira’s bone marrow.  With ​[redacted]​, Alison and her newly badass husband join forces with Helena to rescue Kira, shake some sense into Rachel, and launch a first concerted clone club offensive against Dyad and Marian Bowles.  Paul will do something good, maybe in alliance with Cal or Mark.  We’ll find out that Siobhan is ultimately good, but was un-knowingly complicit in the laboratory bombing that killed Susan Duncan; this was her Afghanistan, and the reason why she’s been so cagey.  Helena has been carrying around a liquid nitrogen dewar containing her eggs which ol Henrik stole from her.  She’ll offer these to Alison and Cosima.  And after doing some investigations of his own, Tony will return at the end with a still living Beth Childs in tow. What Beth reveals will be something mind-blowing, and be the basis of the finale cliff-hanger (Cosima at death’s door would be too cliche, right?… Right?).

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