dampfire

HELENA’S JOURNAL (poorly) TRANSLATED [by someone with the handle elle18she/her on a site called punk rock no]: (Big thanks to google translate!!! Italicized are the parts I’m least confident are correct.) “But they are their own people. I have no control over that. What form they take. Their health, the shape of their noses they appear, then they will be children by chance. They will heal me/her, my little miracles, they must choose that horror, and I’ve been looking for so long…How far we have come, how much road there still is. And that’s all -” I can't vouch for it. But it's a starting point; it's something to work with.

My first reaction to the whole miserable MK fiasco was simply -- why the hell didn't she just slip out the backdoor with Sarah? Ferdinand was laboriously occupied with that door for quite awhile. MK's contention that changing outfits with Sarah was, "...the only way," made little to no sense to me. Sorry, Mika. No. Get the fuck out the back. BOTH of you! Far better option. I've seen criticism of Sarah for leading Ferdinand to MK. Sarah gets blamed for a lot of things...a lot. S (and not a few fans of the show) blamed her for Kendall's demise. But Kendall wasn't forced into anything by Sarah (and/or Cosima). Kendall consented to the bio harvest. Don't get me wrong. Totally get S's inclination, even need, to reflexively "blame" someone (beyond Evie Cho and Duko) for her mother's death. But I certainly don't think it was Sarah's fault (especially "exclusively"). Nor was MK's death. "I'm coming to get you. You're not giving up, MK," Sarah proclaims. "This isn't the plan," MK protests. Um, true enough, Mika. But, according to the plan, you were supposed to disappear down the rabbit hole at The Rabbit Hole. Had you, Sarah never would have led Ferdinand to you. (Then again, seeing as Ferdinand was tailing Sarah, she would have led him, instead, straight to the meet-up with S, Felix, and Kira. A whole new can of worms THAT.) Besides, a good part of this plan was yours, Mika. After Felix tells S, "...MK thinks that she might be able to get Sarah and Kira away," you, Mika, inform Sarah, "If you can get Kira out from under their surveillance, then I can move you today." The implication here is that you weren't coerced into this attempted extrication. Asked for your help and your input, yes, maybe...probably. But it sounds like you proposed, or at least suggested, most of the logistics. Sounds like YOU formulated the better part of the plan. Should have stuck to it, Mika! I don't mean to sound harsh. I love Mika. Whatever our Core Clones (save Helena -- a special case if there ever was one) have been through over the last year or so (show time), Mika's dealt with much of the same and more (much more) for a significantly longer period of time -- since Helsinki and apparently well before. "I've been running my whole life," she tells Sarah. It's not at all surprising that she's "tired" of it all. The onset and progression of her illness only serve to exacerbate this. I want her to find hope in the cure on the horizon. But apparently it's too late. Apparently, Mika has no capacity for hope left. It's thoroughly disheartening. But, sadly, I understand. What I don't quite understand is what the hell she was still doing at Felix's anyway. If she was done, if she wanted out, why didn't she just bug out and vanish...yet again? Was she just going to claim Scandinavian Squatter's Rights and stay at Felix's for(so to speak)ever? You know, when I rewatched 502's loft related scenes, I thought all this might have more to do with Ferdinand's unexpected appearance than I at first suspected. But after Sarah announces, "I'll take you to Scott," Mika counters, "No, you're not." The exchange takes place before Ferdinand shows up. Mika's made her decision already. NOW -- were the plan all along for Sarah to pick Mika up at Felix's, it might have made sense for Mika (on Ferdinand's arrival) to bail on the plan in favor of a last ditch effort to exact vengeance for Nikki and the other Helsinki victims. But the scenes don't bear this out. As depicted, Mika's attempt at revenge with the knife is pathetic and desperate and heartbreaking. Her murder itself is nauseatingly brutal. I can't readily recall having seen anything quite like it on TV or in film. (Hearing this season's brutal beating of a certain female character on another show -- set in the upper midwest -- was bad enough.) Even Chris's bloody-pulp beat down of Michael's mother's boyfriend in The Wire wasn't as bad as this. Part of the reason may have been that, in that case, we were witnessing a victim of child/sexual abuse beating just such an abuser. Here, in OB 502, we have a former special ops guy stomping (STOMPING!) full force a sick, frail, wisp of a woman to death. We can hear Mika's sternum and ribs cracking for godssake! Fucking Ferdinand! You whiny bitch boy! "You hurt me, Rachel!" Boo Fucking Hoo, Ferdinand. Talk to the Helsinki 38 about it why don't you! You can't? Precisely, you loathsome prick! It is interesting to speculate (as natyxg points out above) about what would have happened if Sarah (ostensibly as Rachel) had been waiting for Ferdinand in the loft. After he handily thwarts Mika's knife attack and manhandles her to the floor, Ferdinand quickly and easily identifies his foe as none other than Veera Suominen. "This is like two revenge fantasies in one! I even get to finish Helsinki." Are we to believe that this duality is what pushes Ferdinand over the edge? Perhaps so. But only perhaps. For the rage fueling Ferdinand's savage, and eventually lethal, assault is much more pointedly directed at Rachel. After spitting in Ferdinand's face, Mika defiantly declares: "You can't hurt me anymore." Ferdinand's response? "Oh yes, I can. You hurt me, Rachel." Mika is little more than an afterthought by then. Even IF things had progressed in much the same way (which I doubt) with Sarah plugged into the scenario, it's fairly safe to assume that she would have put up a better fight than Mika could manage. Sarah would have r-e-a-c-h-e-d out and grabbed a stray bong (hey, a rock on the island of Doctor Moreau is the rough equivalent of a bong in Felix's loft) to smash over Ferdinand's head. Sarah (at least until very near the end of the series) has plot armor. Mika, sad to say, was used, to far too great a degree, as a plot device. A clone had to die to demonstrate the danger the sestrahood is facing. Mika drew the short straw. She deserved better. She died in the ultimate clone swap. Her death (while she was serving in the end as a surrogate for Rachel) wasn't even completely her own. That aside, it wasn't Mika's death itself (its occurrence or manner) that was the primary problem. It was that her death wasn't given proper context. What ultimately made this schemer, this fighter, this survivor, this glorious ghost in the machine give up that ghost ("...there's no data, there's not enough data, we need more data.")? It was something we barely witnessed. It was, essentially, left to our collective surmise. Just hope it's better, or at least less cryptic, than Tony's message about Paul. And I really hope she doesn't follow Helena's lead and whisper it in S's ear. I don't trust Rachel. I'll never trust Rachel. But depending on how much credence one gives to Kira's prescience about and connection with the sestrahood, her assessment about Rachel that, "...it's different now," could give a somewhat more trusting one than me (AftermathTV for instance)...due cause for pause.

Just as Krystal's been sayin'.

More than with you on this. Fact is, at first I was wondering if Mary Elizabeth Winstead was, like Ewan McGregor, playing dual roles in this. I knew MEW had been cast in the show, but I was totally unaware that Carrie C*** had been. Can't deny that I (a diehard Clone Clubber) would have loved to have seen MEW playing two parts. But I'm absolutely thrilled that CC's in the cast. Much love, respect and admiration for both actresses.

Tatiana Maslany. True, a lot of people probably still don't know who she is...even after she finally nabbed her much deserved and long overdue Emmy. She is, to state the obvious, a great actress. She has extensive experience in improv. She's displayed -- on Orphan Black alone -- that she can portray a diverse array of characters. Plus she's shown (time and time again) in the dramatic context of OB that she has serious comedic chops (with her Alison, Helena and Krystal iterations especially).

Bliss.

Tatiana Maslany: where the impossible and the inevitable converge.

The 23rd ep was 303: "Formalized, Complex, and Costly". A lot of stuff about Mark and Gracie. Assorted visits to Willard Finch's farm. Rudy returned to the Castor Compound after having offed Seth...requiring a certain amount of debriefing. Bonnie and Alexis resurfaced. So, yeah, while it was a comparatively Leda Lite ep, Tat was still on the screen for better than half the running time. The only thing close (and it wasn't really even close) to a major multiple clone scene was an impromptu skype conference (what to do with Seth's body) involving Sarah and Cosima (plus Art and Felix) early on in the ep. Sarah and Cosima also had a brief telephone conversation (Castors and Ledas are siblings) near the end.

Yeah...don't want to beat a dead horse (even less so, a live Hannah), but feel somehow compelled to take one last whack anyway. It's pretty hard to watch Jennifer move from the relative optimism of, "...the amazing news is Dr. Aldous Leekie of the DYAD Institute says he can help, so they're going to fly me out for treatment," to her puking her guts out before demonstratively peeling off her head covering and bitterly stating, "Dr. Leekie couldn't even help me. He lied. How am I doing? I'm going to die here," and to reconcile oneself to the fact that this is screentime destined for the discard pile.

Oh, you silly chocolatine wabbit, you! I'm about as good a tweaking things on the computer as Tat is bad at acting. As impressively informative as your post was, most of it (paragraph one especially) went whistling right over my head. Never so much as heard of GitHub until I clicked on a link (courtesy of Allisonmac) on reddit yesterday. Am glad to hear that the site is collaborative in nature and that Hannah wouldn't in all likelihood, "...take the update as criticism." Just gave the Jennifer Fitzsimmons stuff a quick once over, and I came up with 3:14. Most of that came in ep 203. 2:43 when Delphine first tells Cosima about the Jennifer vids. 10 seconds at the autopsy (only counted the actual "face time" of Jennifer's corpse). Plus there was a 21 second snippet of one of Jennifer's vids in ep 204. Cosima's watching it but is interrupted by Sarah, skyping from Cal's RV. If you want get involved, chocolatine, feel free. In the interest of absolute accuracy, I suppose it would be a good thing. But it's hardly necessary in the more general sense. Hannah's data, whether or not 3 minutes are added, confirms what I think we all pretty instinctively knew already. Amazing as well: in 17 out of OB's 40 eps (if I'm reading the chart correctly), Tat actually logs as much (3) or more (14) screentime than the show itself is long! (ETA: Perhaps you can stand down, chocolatine. See below.) Ummm, Not Beth...a quick admission of utter stupidity (and outright negligence)...I completely missed Hannah's explanation for all this down near the bottom of her page: I decided to exclude home videos and corpses (RIP Beth and Katja) because including those scenes often repeated footage and also made it appear that Beth was alive and kicking in several episodes. For consistency, Jennifer's appearances via video and autopsy in season two had to be treated equally and therefore her scenes are not included in this analysis. My bad for failing to notice this. Nonetheless, I'm not sure I entirely agree with Hannah's rationale for these exclusions. I kind of get why she didn't want to acknowledge repeated Beth-related vid footage more than once. But none of Jennifer's vid footage was repeated. Furthermore, whether or not the characters were "dead" when the vids appeared seems relatively irrelevant to me. Those characters were "alive" when the vids were made. More importantly though, Tat had to "act" those parts. So I don't see any real reason not to credit her with "acting" screentime. Same goes for the corpses. If Tat was actually "playing" the corpses (not all that easy to do as an actor), I'm not sure why such work should be categorically dismissed. All of which is undeservedly argumentative hogwash on my part. Hannah explained her methodology, accounted for these exclusions. That's more than good enough for me.

Just in case there's any doubt about who the hardest working person on TV is.... http://hrecht.github.io/orphanblack-update/ ETA: Certainly don't mean to criticize. Totally blown away by Hannah Recht's painstaking analysis. But she actually might have been able to credit Tat with a couple more minutes of screentime (which would have put the total over the1600 mark) if she counted the Jennifer Fitzsimmons vids...which I'm not sure she did. Regardless, BRAVO, Hannah! Great work. I thank you. And I'm sure all of Clone Club thanks you.

After MH's nearly two season physical absence from Orphan Black, the running joke in Clone Club has pretty much been some variation on: Where's Cal? In Meereen. After Daario asks in this ep, "Who comes after you? Who follows Daenerys Stormborn, the Mother of Dragons?" and Dany answers, "A great number of women, I imagine," I just couldn't keep myself from immediately registering it as a meta-reference. Not that I'm seriously suggesting that it was. But it made me chuckle anyway. You're right, Daario. "Fuck Meereen!" A great (and growing) number of women do indeed await you, Da...ahh...Cal. So get your self-pitying, absentee ass back to the Many-Same-Faced Acting God, Tatiana Maslany, and thank your luckies (not to mention the Old Gods and the New) that she might still be willing to do a scene or two with you! (Besides...Kira misses you.)

I understand that Evie was suffering from shingles. I understand why she'd choose to have a bot implanted. I understand, in general terms anyway, the purpose of the bots. What I don't understand though is the purpose of the toxicity. For the tadpole test subjects, okay, I kind of get it. And there might even be some nefarious ulterior motive for retaining (yet not disclosing) the fail-safe feature when the tech is openly and enthusiastically marketed to the public en masse. I just don't understand why those "in the know" like Evie and Leekie and Nealon would willingly expose themselves to that toxicity. It seems to me that the "kill switch" is an ancillary function of the device which has nothing whatsoever to do its "medical" purpose. I mean, implant the bot, sure. But remove the toxin and its delivery system (described thusly by Leslie to Sarah at the Dental Implant Clinic: "I've penetrated the device, which now means that the slightest movement on your part will cause it to erupt....If you do move, a burst of tendrils will release a fatal dose of tetrodotoxin...."). Yikes! As if the toxin ain't bad enough! But...tendrils! Yikes!

Anybody else see what looked like a female body (a "swap-out" body for Delphine?) in the back of the van when the door was opened? Absolutely thought I saw a body on first viewing. The more I look at it though, the less convinced I get. A little disappointed that Duko turned out to be the one who shot Delphine.* Sure, it makes objective sense if Evie was the Neo tasked with eliminating Delphine. But Delphine asking Duko, "What will happen to her?" makes less sense. Delphine (as Leekie's protege) in all likelihood knew who Evie was. And she may have even been vaguely aware that Duko was Evie's henchman. But why would she assume that Duko knew to whom she was referring when she asked the question? Henchmen and hitmen oftentimes are merely acting on orders and don't necessarily know a lot about the reasons behind those orders. (During the course of S's interrogation of Duko in 408 he pleads ignorance saying, "That's not my end of things!") Then again...Delphine really didn't have anyone else to ask under the circumstances, did she? * Hey, JohnSmithSensei. Looked to me like Duko was moving in for the head shot before Krystal's "ringtone" distracted him. ~~ Good grief!!! Was Rachel w-w-working that cane of hers for all it was worth or what? I'm inclined to agree, at least in part, with Ferdinand's assessment: "I like the cane. Elegant. Multi-purpose." [emphasis mine] ~~ Where the hell is the Island of Doctor Moreau anyway? Initially, I was under the impression that it was located at a significant remove from most of the action. (If Delphine's account of Rachel's journey after her escape from DYAD is correct, that is. "We know Rachel flew to Austria as 'Krystal Goderitch,'" Delphine tells Nealon. "She took a car to Innsbruck, was admitted to a private hospital, and disappeared." Why take Rachel all the way to Austria for eye surgery only to bring her back to, essentially, the place where she started?) I just kind of assumed that the island was off the coast of England (Susan being from England) or something. But the way people just seem to be hopping on helicopters to go and come (rather quickly) to and from the island, I'm thinking it's in Lake Ontario. Or maybe Lake Erie or even Lake Huron. One way or another, it seems it's in a substantial body of water. Not just some little lake with an island in it. No biggie, I know. But this show makes me think this way. ~~ I understand the rationale behind Sarah going to the island alone. Nonetheless...WTF was she thinking!?! Okay, maybe she didn't want to take Helena because she's pregnant. Or because Helena's on a new path (a path she's negotiated so successfully already that she's managed to only kill 5 or 6 people while on it!) Or maybe Sarah thought Helena's solution to the problem at hand might escalate, be it figuratively or literally, to OVERKILL. Maybe she didn't take Felix because she wanted to keep him out of danger...or it might merely have been because, typically, the comically caustic nature of any interaction between Felix and Rachel tends to suck some of the seriousness out of any situation. (Rachel's, "You're not immune to me, you cockroach!" nearly managed to do this all on its own.) Might be that Art couldn't accompany Sarah because (a little late for this line of thinking, Sarah!) she didn't want to get him that directly involved in this mess. And maybe she wanted to continue to keep Alison (cocked and loaded and raring to go as the Special Extended Scene showed us she indeed was) as insulated from the main action as possible. And maybe she didn't want to bring Krystal because, well, Sarah's just not used to being so summarily dismissed. (Gotta admit that the prospect of this pairing going on a "mission" together is actually so awesome that its sheer entertainment value probably would have mitigated against the dramatic intensity F&M were shooting for in the subterranean showdown between Sarah and Rachel.) MK might have flat out torched the island, reducing it to little more than 4 billion year-old Precambrian rock. Goes without saying that Benjamin was unavailable because he was attending a memorial service for Kendall's driver...a person nobody else in Clone Club seems to have given a flying fuck about. And yes (of course, of course), S has to watch Kira...just like she was when Sarah was confronting Van Lier while Art and Felix were searching for Rachel. Oh, wait.... And what BTW was Sarah's Exit Strategy? Is there some Special Fucking Neolutionist Regulation that helicopters can't land on this island and just...fucking...WAIT? ~~ I suppose Evie's fatal comeuppance was ironically apropos. Killed by her own tech. Agree with others though that it was a bit anti-climatic. Would have loved to have seen S be the agent of Evie's demise. Duko's exit was satisfying. And he was, no doubt, despicable. But he was (or at least may have been) something of a pawn (a pawn, to be sure, who seemed to enjoy his work a helluvalot more than a little too much). It's just that S dispatching Evie with extreme prejudice would have been so, so, so much sweeter. What I kind of don't get is the actual method of Evie's death. I mean, seriously? The latest iteration of the bot -- the one Brightborn apparently intends to mass market -- still employs the "kill switch"? Really? I kind of understand why the prototypical versions experimentally implanted in the "tadpoles" were engineered to attack the hosts when removal was attempted. Even that seemed a fairly risky practice to me though. Too many tadpoles (with fucking maggot-bots in their cheeks!) start turning up the victims of lethal doses of tetrodotoxin...before the likes of Frank and Roxie and Duko can intervene...and the whole sinister scheme could have, so to speak, exploded in Evie's face...long, long before before her own bot did exactly that. (I mean, look what happened when two plucky dreamers, Brightborn "carriers" named Tabitha and Kendra, made an impromptu vid, hit the road, and managed do their damage with a more than respectable survival rate of 50%.) Furthermore, it just seems to me that if millions of people are supposed to have these things put in their bodies, the scandalous (and, oh yeah, legal) consequences for Brightborn could and would grow exponentially even if people were just getting socked in their jaws or having car accidents or faceplanting after one too many tequilas...and were, oh by the way, being poisoned to death in the process. I mean, WTF? And why the hell would Evie allow herself to be implanted with a potentially toxic bot (unless, I guess, Van Lier did so surreptitiously)? Why, for that matter, would any of the Neo bigwigs (Leekie, Nealon, et al) agree to having toxic bots? I don't get it! Efficacious, maybe. But dangerous, definitely! Am I missing something? Is there some reason that I can't imagine that bots sans tetrodotoxin couldn't be designed and manufactured? Is there some reason that the bots wouldn't properly function for genetic therapy without the toxin? If so, it's beyond my understanding. So too with the design of the bot. Does it really have to look like a maggot or a worm? Sure, a lot of potential customers would opt for the benefits of the treatment regardless of the appearance of the device. But don't tell me that a good chunk of business wouldn't be lost simply because of the "creep out" factor. I mean, Ewww. Gross. Couldn't the device look a little more innocuous? Look like a capsule or something? ~~ Totally surprised by Krystal's reaction to the revelation of her clonehood. Expected her to friggin' freak. Instead: "Right, whatever." Personally though, I would have loved to have had her fill in what happened to her after Delphine discovered her captive and comatose at DYAD. What happened to her between that point and Delphine's shooting? How and why did she end up in that parkade? True, that might not have added much of note to Delphine's inarguably important story. But it would have expanded on Krystal's. Which, although it may not exactly have been vital information, would certainly have been fun to listen to. Hell...fact is, I'd pay good money to hear Tat as Krystal doing kind of an e-book recap of the entire series after it ends next year. So Sarah gets off this train. At Huxley Station. I've been there before. But like only once I think. Place smells. Like, baddd. Anyways, Sarah makes a call to what turns out to be Siobhan...about Kira. But that doesn't go well at all. Sarah's been missing...out of the picture for going on a year. Not good. Not good at all. So she like slams down the receiver of the pay phone -- I swear, a pay phone! -- and she's kind of muttering, "Bitch!" to herself -- about Siobhan -- when she notices this other woman a little ways down the platform. The woman's sobbing. She puts down her bag. Then she steps out of her heels. Then she takes off her jacket, folds it...very neat, and puts it by her heels. Sarah finds herself like moving towards the woman without really realizing it. Then the woman turns and looks at Sarah. They look exactly alike! I swear! Well, not exactly exactly. Beth, the other woman, is normally like an 8. No question. And Sarah's a 7 on her best day. Sarah's kind of shocked. But Beth is a blank stare walking. She's not looking good. At all. This is definitely not a normal day for her. Beth's a 6 -- tops! -- as she turns towards the tracks.... ~~ "I worry about all the sisters," Kira tells Sarah in this ep. "There's so many we don't even know." Sarah answers: "We're doing this for all of them, too. I want us all to be free." Which leads me to wonder about just how many of the remaining clones MK may be aware of. How exhaustive is her list? Is it anywhere close to comprehensive? I'm under the impression that, at least since the Helsinki Purge, MK's been obsessively monitoring and scavenging every scrap of information about the clones that she's been able to access. She was probably the first to identify Helena's European killing spree. And she probably contacted Katja after determining that Katja was an imminent target. Cosima tells Sarah in 103 that, "...six months ago, Katja contacted Beth with this crazy story about her genetic identicals being hunted in Europe." Yet in 401, after MK asks Beth, "Did you tell the others about me?" Beth answers, "I never reveal a source. That's why you brought me into this in the first place, isn't it?" Which would seem to contradict, at least partially, Cosima's version of events. Which, in turn, is understandable. Because Beth is quite intentionally withholding information about MK's existence from Cosima and Alison. While it's still possible that Katja was the first clone to contact Beth, it's probable, even if that's the case, that Katja did so at MK's urging. MK was the conduit. MK was orchestrating things. Hence Beth saying to MK, "...you brought me into this...." Beth knew about other clones too...clones she didn't bother to tell Cosima and Alison about either. Tony, certainly. Sarah and Krystal quite probably. And others, it's likely, as well. Exactly how many others we don't know...and may never find out. Alison was probably Beth's first physically verified identical...mainly because of the convenience proximity afforded her. Beth probably made the effort to contact Cosima because of her Evo-Devo status. Why bring all this up? Well...'cuz. But it does seem kind of important because if Clone Club is indeed finally in possession of the cure (kindly allow me to indulge in a little optimism over the 40-some weeks of the show's hiatus), they'll have to find a way to distribute it to, "...the many we don't even know," to whom Kira refers. That, of course, is assuming that Clone Club doesn't decide to go public. If they don't, an effort will have to be made to find out who the Clones Unknown are. Which is why I find myself wondering how extensive MK's list might be. And how much Beth may have additionally known. In my most current meta-fantasy, I find myself imagining Sarah and Cosima (in the Series Finale?) showing up at the door of a modestly successful actress originally hailing from Regina, Saskatchewan. Which does raise an interesting question. What was the DYAD/Topside policy regarding "fame"? One or more of the clones becoming famous...or infamous (as a modestly successful actress, as an assassin, as a notorious soccer mom slash school trustee slash drug dealer slash manslaughterer, as the first scientist to ever appear on the cover of Scientific American... just to float a few thoroughly arbitrary hypotheticals) could certainly draw the attention...at least of other clones and those who know them. The whole thing could snowball quickly out of control after that. Was it DYAD and/or Topside's general practice to hasten the demise of clones flirting with fame? Or was it more usual to merely conspire influentially against such personal notoriety ever coming to fruition? If it's the latter though, that would go a long way toward explaining why the modestly successful actress from Regina in my meta-fantasy has yet to snag the fucking shitload of Emmys that she so richly deserves! ~~ Delphine! Delphine! HEY! DELPHINE!!! I'm feeling pretty damn hypothermic myself here!

Okay. Duko may be a PDA rep. I don't know. I'm mostly going by what Art said this ep: SIOBHAN: Cosima said the man who pulled the trigger was tall, bearded. She thought maybe the detective you tied to Beth. ART: Martin Duko. Beth's union steward. Additionally, in 401, the lieutenant told Beth after the Maggie Chen shooting: MIKE: They'll take you down now to get your statement. This is Detective Duko. He's with the union. Yes, Duko is a detective. And as such, he no doubt has "police" duties above and beyond anything he does for the union. And (although he's not referred to as a lieutenant or a captain or anything higher than that) perhaps he is a "detective" of a slightly higher rank. Just seemed a little odd (but hardly impossible) to me that Duko would be the one in the position to order the Slumber Party Raid. The case belongs to Lindstein and Collier. Who are both detectives too. Sure, Duko might be their direct superior in some way, but that would seem pretty coincidental to me. I'm thinking more along the lines that Duko nudged Lindstein and Collier along, that he fed them some scale-tipping information that prompted the bust. Duko did seem to sort come slinking in at the end -- like he'd been along for the ride, rather than heading up the operation -- to get all creepy and ominous with Alison after the general chaos was beginning to subside. Very much reminded me of the time Paul came strolling into Felix's loft (to frame him for Tom-the-Cop's murder) when the cops were executing their trumped up search warrant.