natyxg

I agree. And this is why her entire personality is build on desiring power and on being in control at all times, even when she is upset. This is something that even shows up in her sadomasochistic relationship with Ferdinand, this need to control/dominate. And this is why when she finally thought she was autonomous/free she settled down. She was no longer interested in using force with Sarah and the others (PT wanted it, but she seemed okay with it), and even seemed so much more zen. Hell, she wasn't even interested in Ferdinand anymore. Time after time she chose Dyad/Neo even at the expense of her sisters because it was all she had/all she knew ( "where would I go?"), and she kept thinking she could win the game and become a person at Dyad/Neolution if she tried hard enough and climbed high enough. Well, now she climbed all the way to the top, all the way up to PT, and it still meant nothing. Now she finally knows that she will never be a person in their eyes and she finally took the leap....even though she still has nowhere to go and no one to go to.

I don't think we had seen it quite like this, though. We had glimpses of it and had an idea of what it was like, but I felt like this time they really pulled back the curtain. They made a point of highlighting Rachel's vulnerability and lack of control over anything. I was quite surprised by the detail of the nervous tick that she still continues to have even as a grown up.

Mrs. S is so, so, so dead. :(

Rachel was brought up in the system and she spent all of this time trying really hard to succeed INSIDE the system because "where would she go?". She didn't have a family or love, and she saw her sisters as numbers. Her obsession with power came from feeling powerless her whole life. In this episode she realized that she will never have that inside the "system", she will never be powerful or have autonomy or be seen as a person. She will always be 779H41. Like I said upthread, I always wanted her to change sides and join her sisters. However, after everything that has happened that's very unlikely, so I think her ending might have more to do with being free, with going off alone into the world, being herself and autonomous for the first time. Her sisters had that feeling before discovering the truth (a lot of them still do), but it's something Rachel has never had, except when she was like 5 or 6.

Susan told Cosima about the eggs after Delphine was gone. All she knew when she left was that they were gonna do something to Kyra really soon.

Maybe next episode will be Helena's? I think we're only missing Sarah and her. And I have this gut feeling that Mrs. S will die next week and the week after that we'll have Sarah's episode, right before the finale. Or something like that.

All of this is true, but I think this episode went sooo beyond that. I thought it was superb, I'm really surprised by how well they were able to "explain" Rachel so thoroughly and in such a powerful way with so little time. I've always loved Rachel because I've always found her deliciously layered because of her background and how it shaped who she is. I had given up hope that they would continue to explore her in an in depth way because it seemed like they had just made her a bad guy who was bound to die, and that's it. So I loved this episode. We see how, as a child, she was made into some sort of product that they showcased to charm investors or something. We see how she pretends to be well spoken and in control, while hidden from everyone's sight she fidgets nervously with her hands. She's only a child. I thought it was really interesting how as an adult she still has the same nervous tick with her hands. Is her cold and in control persona still a facade, to a degree? Didn't see that coming. We see her absolute lack of autonomy as Leekie (or however it's spelled, lol) and the others just examine her and experiment on her with no care about her thoughts or feelings. She knows she's a clone, she knows others are getting sick, yet she has no power to decide anything and they barely listen to her. Rachel's entire personality is born out of that lack of control and autonomy, and her fight all along has been to become powerful and become free, and an actual person. Which is why her scene with Coady was so powerful, to me. She sold out her mother and her sisters in exchange for "emancipation", yet there she was again, on an examination table without having a say about it... trying to pull down her gown to maintain some modesty, having to ask to be left alone so she can have some privacy to clean herself off after being prodded, her tag number still attached to her name on the computer screen. No one saw Rachel as a person. Not Leekie, who seemed to see the dead musician clone more like a person than he did Rachel. Not Susan, who seemed to care more about all the Ledas but her. Not any of the scientists, like Coady, who forgot that she was even a person while they prodded and examined and went off excitedly to think about what the results meant, while she was left alone and scared, without any kindness bestowed on her or any care about her thoughts, feelings and fears. Then both Leekie and Susan had the gall to be appalled because she was "a monster". "Why don't you run away?" "Where would I go?" "Who hurt you, Rachel?" "All of them." Oh man. Fantastic. PT knew which buttons to push and tricked her into believing that she was a person and would be treated like such. He even called her daughter. And during this episode her fantasy was destroyed. They still see her as a subject/experiment with a tag number. They still spy on her and monitor her. PT is a total fraud. And she sees herself in Kyra. She always had a soft spot for the girls, for the obvious reasons, yet before her thirst for power and autonomy led her to be willing to do what it took to get what she wanted and not take their side. But that now she knows that's a lie she saves Kyra, whose bracelet she did wear. I wonder if there was a cut scene where she put it on. The scene with the eye was super gross, but now she's free! I'm curious to see what's awaiting her. I've always wanted her to join the others for real, we'll see. BBC America said the next episode is so shocking that they can't show anything, so there was no promo. My first thought was that they will kill someone, possibly Mrs. S. I can't think of anyone else whose death could be so shocking. Sarah has to make it till the end and the other clones recently got their own episodes with their own resolutions, and I think it would be weird to kill one of them after that. We'll see. I think it's been implied that she's dead. MK, for example, had an X across her photo during one of her episodes. But they never explained what exactly happened.

Pretty sure Rachel's alive.

I think the person in the woods is the child with the wonderful genome that they destroyed with their experiments. The Leda's problem is not that they are infertile, they were designed that way. Their problem is their illness. And lawd, I had forgotten the politheans (or whatever). Speaking of other stuff, are they going to explain the swan in Rachel's eye? That seems forgotten. Important thing to point out, though: Mrs. S. looked super hot with that disguise.

Supposedly the Castors and the Ledas happened because PT let them both work separately, so I imagine this was all before her husband. But yeah, it doesn't feel like it fits with the other stuff. The impression back then was that Susan was recruited by Neolution around the time she faked her death, or at least after Rachel was born. I don't remember the details, but back when Sam talked about their past the whole clone thing seemed like it was something that came out naturally out of their research, no? I mean, that they just came up with it and then the government picked them up? Whatever, what I'm going for is that now it sounds even more convoluted because then Susan was faking the whole time with her husband steering things and pretending that they were happening naturally. That sounds exhausting and like why didn't she and Coady just work with PT on the island? Why involve the military? Etc. I don't know if I'm explaining myself right. But yeah, they're just making shit up as they go along, most likely.

Wow, I was dying to know Coady's past and I was so dying to find out what happened to her after we last saw her. And wow, what a cool idea it is to dedicate a full episode to explain the "monster" in the woods they introduced two seconds ago, I was dying to know about that, it's so awesome that it seems like it will be one of the mysteries of the season. Super cool. Disclaimer: This post was full of sarcasm. PS: I imagine Delphine told S about Coady for some reason.

Vera is MK's real name. Ferdinand knew her from Helsinki, from before she became MK, she was the clone who got away.

Ferdinand knew he was killing MK, he even called her Vera. She's got the burned face, it's pretty hard to miss. He was acting out a Rachel revenge fantasy against her because she was wearing similar clothes and a wig (and is her clone, of course), while at the same time taking revenge on MK herself because she screwed him over and took his money. I do wonder if he would have done the same to Sarah if he had found Sarah there.

I was as annoyed and bored as Kira was at seeing Sarah freaking out because they wanted Kira and yet again devising a plan to sneak away. I guess the point was to do it one last time before they decided to stay for real, but my goodness, that got old a while back. Also, I feel like OB spread its net to wide and liked to throw in everything but the kitchen sink, and now that they're supposed to be wrapping things up it's just not gonna be that satisfying. So many things now feel like they were pointless, others have just been forgotten and the new supposed endgame that was supposed to be part of it all along feels just pasted on at the last minute. Meh.

So, they only brought MK back just so she could die and Kira could say "i don't feel her anymore!', right? Yikes.

So, I’m all caught up thanks to Netflix. I gotta say, I was very disappointed by the second half of the season, after Michael’s death. Sometimes shows hit a wall and become stale, and they need a big change to spice things up and breathe new life into them, which is when people usually start to die and babies start to get born and time jumps start to happen. But I didn’t feel like that was the case with Jane. Her marriage with Michael was working and didn’t feel stale (yet) and I thought the show was going as usual. Michael’s death felt random totally gratuitous, to me, like it wasn’t needed at that point at all. So in other for it to feel justified what came next needed to really wow me and it really... didn’t. Things after the jump just felt, overall, like rehashes of the same things we’ve seen before. Like they made some changes, only to revert back to the same thing again in a couple of episodes. Rogelio gets in a reality show... then within a few eps is back to telenovelas. Xo spends THREE YEARS with Bruce, just to throw that relationship to the trash in a heartbeat and back to Rogelio. Rafael spends a full year with Abby... just to throw her out the window and back to Petra (or Jane). Petra’s thing with Chuck reminds me of her thing with Milos, you know, Petra with “bad boys” and then back to Rafael and insecurities about Jane. And round and round. The police investigations at this point feel pasted on... ooh, another murder! ZZZZZ. Though I did like Scott, so there goes another death of a character I liked. I don’t know, killing Michael was super drastic and I don’t think afterwards came such big improvements or things that couldn’t have been done with him there, including the time jump or Jane having a fling (they could have separated at some point or something). Also, I thought the whole fling plot was tedious and too stretched out. I imagine they wanted to show Jane’s changed attitude towards sex, but I didn’t feel like it was so needed at this point. I could have waited for it, or maybe even lived without it completely. I think Jane came across very bad, going on and on about how she just wanted to use Fabian. I also wasn’t sold on how dumb they made him, it’s not a trope I’m fond of. In a way I guess killing Michael spared him and his relationship/love with Jane from being ruined, but I couldn’t help but hold everything that came afterwards at a higher standard and it just didn’t live up to it, for me.. I did like Jane’s relationship with Petra, who is becoming one of my favorite characters/actresses. And I LOVED that the twins are perfect little angels while Mateo is a disaster, lol. Though I kept waiting for there to be a plot that actually involved the twins so we could see them as people and not props, and we could see Petra mothering them instead of just being told that she’s such a great mom.... apparently offscreen. I imagine now that ship has sailed and they will focus on other things, which is a pity. Now they brought out Jane’s first love to keep the stalling going, but they’re not fooling me at all. I’m as convinced as I’ve always been that Jane will end up with Rafael. That’s why they killed Michael, come on. Adam is just new love triangle fodder. Now that Rose is in jail and Luisa has control of the hotel I wonder if she will finally become a regular and actually be on screen. Her storyline with Rose feels so improvised and stretched out beyond its expiration date that I’m glad to see a potential change. But who knows? Maybe in episode 403 Rose escapes from jail and goes to see her and round and round we go, like with everyone. One thing to say though, I loved Yara during the scene where her heart turns dark. She's a good actress, I think, who has been very underused so far. I don’t know if watching it all on Netflix over a week or two diminishes the enjoyment of this show just because you can see all at once the repetitiveness and the way things go round and round, but I feel like I left my Netflix catch up less of a fan, to be honest, and feeling like there’s a lot of improvisation on this show and that when you see it all at once it really shows. Not particularly looking forward to season 4, though I will watch. Maybe they should end it on season 5 and call it a day.

Another thing that bothered me was how mortal characters could just defeat magical beings like that. I guess this is a general trope by this point, but it was annoying to watch Sebastian and John fight while thinking that Sebastian could just magically snap his neck with a hand movement and be done with it. But not only does he not do that, John kills him. Augh. In cases like this I always remember season five of Buffy and that even though Glory was a goddess they made her share a body with a mortal and gave her limitations so that it would be more believable that the heroes could hold their own and eventually defeat her. But most shows don't really bother with stuff like this.

So I'm done. Augh. It's hard to put into words why I was annoyed with this season, but I was. My biggest problem I think was that I felt a shift from a more female perspective to a more male perspective. While before it felt like the women carried the show, I'm not sure they did this season, and it annoyed me. Mary was mortal and couldn't kick ass like she used to, and was reduced to using her body to try to get stuff done, or to being tortured or terrorized by various people during longer than I would have liked. Anne spent the season pathetically and frantically trying to win Cotton over (the most pathetic character on the show for me, by the way). The Countess was basically gone. Tituba came and went just to mess with people and stuff, but didn't feel like she had a lot of point of view. Mercy was there... but just sort of there. She didn't feel like a driving force of any kind. I felt like the show was mostly about the men, who were more driven and more active and got more of a point of view, and it annoyed me. Even Billy just existed for John (though she was pretty pointless). The Devil, the Sentinel, John, Cotton, Isaac, etc, etc, I felt like the show was mostly theirs. It bothered me because the female centric nature of the show was the thing I liked the most, even though they were all evil. I also really disliked Mary and Anne's story arcs. In Mary's case it felt very... flat. Like too by the numbers. They were clearly "redeeming" her and setting her free (which is why they even made her mortal), and just felt hollow, it didn't grab me. Her remorse, her redemption or whatever, I just didn't buy it. Not because I thought she was incapable of it or anything, but because I found the writing flat. I liked Mary as a villain with layers in previous seasons, I thought she was amongst the best I've seen, but this season they took that away. Maybe that's why, maybe it's because they tried to fully take away the villain part and it didn't work for me. Mary was a victim who became a villain, that was part of her appeal, and in the end they tried to pass her off mostly as a victim. I guess the way they tried to dramatize her remorse and whatever didn't work for me? Maybe that was the problem? I don't know, but I didn't find it compelling. Still love Janet Montgomery, though. She was a joy to watch. Her love story with John was also annoying as always. In previous seasons I liked her love for John because it humanized her, but I liked it as a love she carried with her, yet that couldn't be. I never liked John too much. This season they went full force with them and... blah. Again, I felt it hollow and flat. Anne's arc was even worse. They decided to make her into the biggest, most evil witch/person on the show... because Cotton Mather rejected her. COTTON MATHER. He was the most pathetic character of the show for me, absolutely pathetic. I thought it was laughable that they said he was a greaaaat soul and therefore his sacrifice would save Salem if the walked into hell voluntarily. Are. you. kidding. me. Then Evil Anne was just absolutely cartoonish, and it bothered me quite a bit how she took over the finale. After the entire show of Mary and everyone else fighting and fighting for the stuff they wanted, everything was resolved with one sweep the her hand, by Anne. It felt like the show/characters were robbed of a proper ending that fit the story they had been telling. But I guess they got a kick out of the implied open ending. It felt like the idea was that people would keep trying and trying to make Armageddon happen, but something would stop it and then rinse and repeat. Things I did like: Surprisingly, the thing I liked the most this season was.... Mercy's plot. Yes, I cannot believe it either. I couldn't stand her in previous seasons, but I felt her kinda, sorta, semi redemption was done better and more believably than Mary's. While I think a brothel is horrible, I did like that she created a place where the women felt safe, to the point where they even gave her their blood freely. I also liked that when she was at the brink of death she said that she didn't have the heart to ask the women for their blood and then they came and did it willingly. I also liked her twisted love story with the magistrate, and I liked that in the end all she wanted, rather than power, was to be loved. Adding humanity to evil characters makes them more compelling, for me. It's part of the reason why I also semi-liked Sebastian's plot, too. I believed he did love Mary (as well as someone like him could, anyway) and that made him more interesting/human. Also, I thought Mercy's actress was better this year. Well, damn, I can't think of anything else. Ummm, maybe the Sentinel getting a taste of humanity and wishing for more oranges at the end? I kind of did like that. Again, injecting some humanity into monsters. Another thing to point out: they spent so much time going on and on and on about how terrible it was that they were going to destroy Salem and OH NO, WE MUST STOP IT... yet here I was hoping they would destroy it because it was such an ugly place full of terrible people, lol.

I'm six episodes in and I'm disliking this season quite a bit. I'll summarize my feelings when I'm done.

Maybe they'll be linked now or something. They made sure to show the bullet passing through Murphy before getting into her.

Damn, Addy was badass. Lucy is insufferable. And blue. BLUEEE. I can finally look a Murphy again after all this time, and now we have Lucy Blue with a Terrible Wig. Sigh. Also, I thought it was weird that her blood is blue. Murphy's isn't, I think.

So I'm catching up on Netflix. Haven't even finished with this episode, but I gotta say this because it's irking me soooo much: WHY WAS IT NEVER AN OPTION TO GIVE THE DOCTOR TO THE MAN? I mean, geez, say that the people were indebted to him because he saved them in their hour of need. Or that he was their leader and without him they were lost. Or that they were a family and they weren't gonna lose a member. SOMETHING. Instead, we have this dude with low energy and low charisma who's gonna get them all killed if they don't give him up, and Warren and the gang come in and become the whole episode, so there are no inside the compound relationships explained and no one saying that they don't want to die and maybe the best thing is to give up the doctor to save themselves. It irked me SO much. Having said that, if The Man is the antagonist of the season, I'd be down with that. I like him better than the drug gangs bs from last season. And please, please, PLEASE can Murphy stop being blue at some point? He's so ugly to look at, it's tiresome at some point. Lucy, too.

Same for me.

Best moment of the whole show, for me.

I don't mind Jane's chemistry with Rafael, and I do like Justin. The reason why I preferred Jane/Michael is because while Rafael and Jane was based on over the top romanticism, Michael and Jane was based on imo real and realistic foundations. They knew each other, they were willing to talk and compromise, they had history. They were attracted to each other, they were willing to work on their relationship... they fit. Meanwhile, Rafael seemed to be some impulsive urge that Jane's alter ego, taken from one of her romance novels, decided to pursue even though they were basically strangers having a baby together and forcing a relationship. It's why they couldn't work back then. I think they can make them work later if they want. Still, Michael's death is sad and so far I'm still on team Michael. I do agree with someone upthread who said that ultimately this was about following the expected formula. Absolutely. I agree. I've thought from the beginning that Jane and Rafael would be left standing in the end, though for a little while I thought 'huh, maybe they really did change their minds about that." Well.... nope.