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S04.E03: The Stigmata of Progress


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As Sarah reels from the shocking discovery of Neolution's biotech, she's desperate to find answers. Always impulsive, she follows a lead into a harrowing encounter that requires the help of a reluctant new player. Eager to assist, Mrs. S strikes an alliance with an old nemesis. Rachel receives a visit from her keeper and takes a fraught step forward towards recovery. Meanwhile, Helena is mistaken for "Mrs. Hendrix" when she answers a visit from suspicious visitors.

 

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Wow, Alison was my MVP this ep. First, she allows herself to be probed which we all know she hates. Then, upon learning about the implants, immediately devises a plan, thinking only of her sisters ('my sister has a robot maggot in her face'). She digs up Leekie, which is a huge risk to herself and her family, and we all know how much she hates to get dirty (props to her pink hairnet). All the while she's having to coach lily-livered Donnie even though he has a damn mask on.

My girl. My heart. This is why she's still my fave, no matter how useless other people say she is.

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Kira is getting creepy. Not loving that.

Not sure if I'm into this Felix finding his birth family stuff. I like the character, but his scenes kind of pulled me out of the episode. I didn't have a big interesting in his convo with the sister.

 

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Christ on a crabcake, there was some gross stuff on the show this week!!

And lots of gagging going on this ep!  Sarah at the dental place(I gag easy if I get dental work) and Donnie and Alison digging up Leeky.  Man, I can only imagine the rank smell emanating from his corpse.

Edited by Valny
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Why would it matter who was in charge of the campaign functions? Wouldn't those flyers be all over the place, so that anyone in the world might have had one?

Enjoyed the discovery that Rachel and Charlotte were collaborating to sneak info out. I don't usually enjoy Rachel at all, but that was a nice moment.

I don't like that Felix is so cut off from the rest of the story, but I also don't blame him for being annoyed that Sarah likes to basically use him as an accessory to her own life, and has no interest in him otherwise.

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Really wonderful to have Helena back...she and Donnie made a lovely couple as the police tried to question them. Agree with slf, once Alison commits, she is there for the whole ride. Digging up Leakie was almost as amusing as watching Donnie and Alison bury him. Show did a nice detour into the seriously macabre with that rotting head. And Cosima trying to feign patience with Donnie's ramblings...how I do love the sistras. Well, except for Rachel. 

Rotting corpses and extreme dental work...enough to make anyone gag. 

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I loved the way Alison and Donnie told Cosima that he had killed Leekie and they buried him in their garage. I forgot that nobody realized what really happened to him. 

I was rather surprised to see another Castor clone, but he seems more interesting than the unhinged nutbags from last season. 

So far, I am really enjoying this season, and the story has been tighter and more focused than last season. 

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I wonder if Charlotte really was cloned from Rachel or if her mother just said that to manipulate her. She has to know Rachel is going to try to escape at some point and that Rachel has always wanted a child. If she feels connected to Charlotte, like maybe this is her chance at motherhood, she'll stay. Especially since they had to know Rachel would eventually find out the girl is sick. (I dislike Rachel but that's still messed up.)

Wasn't thrilled to see another male clone, so I hope he actually serves a purpose.

This phasing out that Kira keeps experiencing, could this be just an extension of her weird little clairvoyant moments from previous seasons or might it be related to the implants?

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43 minutes ago, slf said:

This phasing out that Kira keeps experiencing, could this be just an extension of her weird little clairvoyant moments from previous seasons or might it be related to the implants?

I think it might have something to do with Helena's pregnancy.  Kira has a weird link with her mom and all her aunts, so she's bound to have some weird connection to her cousins.  Helena thought her twins were fighting each other so why not?

Is Felix's real sister played by an American?  Her accent seemed really weird to me.

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Alison always commits, whether it's to Hip Hop Abs or exhuming a body for the robot maggot embedded in the face. Cosima is too sick to go all the way to Alison's house to retrieve said robot maggot which means poor Scott is going to be the one stuck digging it out of Leekie's face.

ITA that finding something from Alison's campaign at the murder scene means nothing. Just like any other flyer, it's very likely that someone picked it up and then dropped it there. Alison was pretty aggressive with her campaign so she probably had a billion of her buttons, stickers, and handouts all over town. Anyone with a kid in her neighborhood could have picked up a flyer and left it somewhere else. It's not like Alison and her campaign team were the only ones with access to her stuff.

Helena continues to crack me up. I loved seeing her empty out the refrigerator. Alison wasn't kidding last week when she said Helena is eating them out of house and home. I also loved the shot where you could see Helena and one of the kids had been lying on the floor watching tv and there were chips all over the floor. But I also appreciate that Helena has enough awareness that she doesn't want her babies to have a childhood like hers.

Kira zoning out and having visions bothers me less than seeing her abruptly sweep an entire gameboard onto the floor. At first I thought she was just acting out because she's tired of being cooped up in the basement/comic book shop and hearing everyone pass her off onto someone else whenever they have to leave to do something important (which I'm sure makes her feel like she's unimportant). But after learning that she was having a vision, maybe she was just upset by what she saw and she took it out on the game.

Sarah, at least send Art a quick text so he knows you're okay! She must have had plenty of time to do that between the time that the dental hygienist told her to wait and the time that the office actually closed (there were still several patients in the waiting room so it's not like Sarah showed up five minutes before they closed).

I thought Art was still going through the hundreds of hours of footage on the hidden camera but then we saw Sarah watching the same scene where Beth pointed her gun at Paul. So are they rewatching all the footage to see if anything else jumps out? Or did Sarah bookmark that scene so she could torture herself by rewatching?

I understand why Felix decided to search for his birth family and I don't blame him. He feeling out of sorts for a lot of reasons. Not only is he constantly getting yanked around and forced to drop everything at the last minute so that he can put his life at risk while investigating the latest clone craziness, but Sarah doesn't really hang out with him anymore. She calls him when she needs him to do something for her, which isn't the same thing. On top of that, Sarah is actually related to Siobhan which makes Felix feel even more left out. But I would guess that part of his desire to find his birth family is just like anyone else who was adopted or raised by non-birth parents: they just want to see who these people are, what they're like, if they have anything in common. There's nothing wrong with that. And after seeing Sarah bond with her sestras, he probably hopes that he can do the same with some of his blood relatives. If I were Felix, part of me would want to find my birth family just to make sure that they weren't Castor clones, Neolutionists, or anything else related to the craziness in Sarah's life.

But that doesn't mean I trust Adele at all. Sad to say that with the far reach we've seen the Neolutionists have, I would be really suspicious of anyone new in their lives. For what it's worth, this is the character description on the BBC America website:

Shameless, brazen, and spontaneous, Adele is a wickedly intelligent lawyer that outwits even when heavily intoxicated — and that’s often. She made her way through law school relying on the laurels of her IQ. With her practice suspended, her benders have grown to epic proportions. Regardless of her activities, she presents in high-fashion corporate wear — a somewhat jarring juxtaposition to her crude brand of humor.

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Loved this ep especially the continued Alison/Donnie/Helena dynamic. Also still loving how Art and Sarah are still partners in all of this and YES!! The return of Ferdinand! Not 100% sure about Adele and Felix, he should know better by now to just accept a new person into his life after what he's seen with the sestras and their monitors. I can understand how Sarah would feel re: his search for his blood relatives when to her, he's had family all along with her and S, then Kira, then with all the sestras, and I hate that his journey is straining their relationship. Sad face. OTOH Kira's dead eyes during her phase-outs are creepy enough but I really cannot stand the actress' insistence in being slack jawed as well, it annoys me to no end. I'm sure there's more but I'm having formatting problems still. ARGH.

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True, I do love Cosima almost as much as Helena. If you need mayhem, Helena is your girl. Cosima's face processing that Donnie and Alison killed Leakie and buried him in their garage, and are now busy digging him up...priceless. Cosima needs a love interest, or at least a friend to hang out...is Krystal still around? And Felix with his newly found drunken sister with the floating accents...this does not seem like a positive development.

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That scene with Sarah and the dental lady was so intense. Especially when Ferdinand showed up and slashed her neck and Sarah had to grab the dental instrument to make sure it didn't move. O_o So much tension in that one scene. Even if it was all faked by the dental lady. Sarah believed it and so did the viewers.

Alison, Donnie and Helena's subplot had so many funny moments this episode. And did we actually get to see Oscar in the background? Isn't he the one that they only alluded to in season three because the actor is obviously a few years older as opposed to the show's timeline of a few months?

I completely understand that Felix is distancing himself from Sarah's shenanigans, considering how he's been having to drop his life for her for so many months now, but I don't care for his biological sister or their subplot in this episode. Sad really, considering it's Felix. :( I also don't like seeing Sarah and Fee at odds like this.

Is Kira psychic now? I really don't want this to be a thing. Can Kira go and join Cal? Not on GoT or wherever he is, but you know what I mean...

Is the show actually making me feel sympathy for Rachel? Especially with how she reacted to noticing that Charlotte has what Cosima has. Doesn't Rachel wish she hadn't halted DYAD's progress with Kira's stem cells in her rampage to get Sarah to do as she wanted? If she hadn't, maybe Charlotte could be taking a cure right now.

And Ari Millen is back. I'm not sure whether I'm pleased about this or not. I guess I'll have to see more of this clone first, before I can make that judgement.

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3 hours ago, kat165 said:

Did Ferdinand remove the worm from Sarah's cheek? Everything happened so fast I couldn't tell.

No, I don't think so.  He was too busy murdering folk and hauling ass.  He did tell Sarah that the self-destruct mechanism hadn't been activated (or else she would have been dead already), so she would put down the dental tool and run, too.

Edited by netlyon2
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19 hours ago, placate said:

 

Is Felix's real sister played by an American?  Her accent seemed really weird to me.

She sounded kind of Canadian to me, but maybe Midwestern 

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Cosima: "You killed Aldus Leekie?!"

Donnie: "Boy, did I ever, yeah!"

Me: "Never change, Donnie!"

As usual, I love pretty much everything Alison and Donnie.  I loved how concern Alison was once she heard that Sarah was in trouble, and how she was willing to risk digging up Leekie's body again, getting dirty, and even being close to throwing up several times, because she wanted to help.  Despite her complaints and goofy behavior at times, Alison really can be loyal as hell to the rest of her clones.  And Donnie continues to be one of my favorite supporting characters; both with Alison and Helena.  But I just love how Alison and Donnie are so casual about this entire thing, when it really actually pretty freaking dark.

Helena pretending to be Alison was great too.  She really would be someone who would learn everything she can about her "sestras."

Ferdinand!  I was wondering if he was going to show back up.  Can't wait to see what crazy shit he will cause.  Plus, I enjoy seeing James Frain play someone who is completely evil.  Sure, maybe 80 to 90% bad still, but not completely!

Kira is starting to creep me out.

Rachel!  Between the robotic eye/patch and having to be in her wheelchair, she continues to be one of the best Bond villains, who never actually appeared in a Bond film. So, it looks like she and Charlotte are in cahoots, and working with Ferdinand on the outside.  They also are being watched by not only her mother, but another Castor Clone, who doesn't seem quite as messed up as the rest of them.  At least Ari Millen can take it easy only have to play one character for now.

I do hope Felix's story ends up factoring into the big picture soon, since he does feel a bit separated from the rest.  This new sister of his is kind of suspicious.  Not sure why, but there has to be more to her then what she is saying.

Art, buddy, I'd be careful, since I have a feeling that this Neolution detective will have no problem going after you, if you start asking too many questions about Beth.

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22 hours ago, Kaboom 2.0 said:

Loved this ep especially the continued Alison/Donnie/Helena dynamic. Also still loving how Art and Sarah are still partners in all of this and YES!! The return of Ferdinand! Not 100% sure about Adele and Felix, he should know better by now to just accept a new person into his life after what he's seen with the sestras and their monitors. I can understand how Sarah would feel re: his search for his blood relatives when to her, he's had family all along with her and S, then Kira, then with all the sestras, and I hate that his journey is straining their relationship. Sad face. OTOH Kira's dead eyes during her phase-outs are creepy enough but I really cannot stand the actress' insistence in being slack jawed as well, it annoys me to no end. I'm sure there's more but I'm having formatting problems still. ARGH.

I quite enjoy the show.

However, it is irksome to no end to see Kira's constant open-mouth, jaw(s)-agape, blank-face countenance. Also, I wish for the cessation of the Kira moniker, "Monkey", as it is most tiresome, annoying, and verging on maddening.

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2 hours ago, BookElitist said:

I quite enjoy the show.

However, it is irksome to no end to see Kira's constant open-mouth, jaw(s)-agape, blank-face countenance. Also, I wish for the cessation of the Kira moniker, "Monkey", as it is most tiresome, annoying, and verging on maddening.

This episode she was a "chicken."

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I find Kira boring.  The "cute child urchin who stares ominously and makes weird predictions" has been done before.  I recommend "Poltergeist" or, pretty much, anything in the horror genre.

The moniker "monkey" has never come off as authentic with me but I just chalked it up to my own dislike of calling people animal names.  (It's from survival school.  Being told to "Move your hoof, cow" for 24 hours got old fast.  I call no human my "pet" or my "chicken".  Ever.)  Now, with the advent of chicken, I realize it's just annoying and I'm not the only one who finds it so.  

And I want the whole "Fee finding his birth family" plot off my screen -- starting with the horrific sister.  Jesus, she was awful.  Came out of nowhere with drug and alcohol and disbarment problems -- instant mess vomited up on our screens and no explanation other than "did a little research and this is what I scraped off my shoe."  Ugh.  What was that God-forsaken accent?  American south?  They should sue.

Edited by Captanne
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Every single week when I see the opening credits I have a moment of "why do they list so little of the cast when there are so many of them?" Before going "oh....right."  Amazing that even with Helena's hair covered in a towel, before she even speaks, you know right away it's her just by her face.  

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2 hours ago, Conan Troutman said:

They really missed the opportunity for an Alison-as-Helena-as-Alison scene during the interrogation. Would have loved to see Alison's take on Helena's accent. Maybe the cops visit her again?

The cops don't know she exists, do they? Helena pretends to be Alison so no one knows there are more than one of her.

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They really missed the opportunity for an Alison-as-Helena-as-Alison scene during the interrogation. Would have loved to see Alison's take on Helena's accent. Maybe the cops visit her again?

The cops don't know she exists, do they? Helena pretends to be Alison so no one knows there are more than one of her.

 

If / when the cops come back, if it's really Alison, they might ask her about what happened to the accent. Then our little actress will have to give Alison-playing Helena-playing Alison a go.

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12 minutes ago, Loandbehold said:

If / when the cops come back, if it's really Alison, they might ask her about what happened to the accent. Then our little actress will have to give Alison-playing Helena-playing Alison a go.

Good point! That would be tons of fun.

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On 4/29/2016 at 11:32 PM, Valny said:

Kira is getting creepy. Not loving that.

Not sure if I'm into this Felix finding his birth family stuff. I like the character, but his scenes kind of pulled me out of the episode. I didn't have a big interesting in his convo with the sister.

Is Kira just daydreaming or can she see the future now ?  We already know that she has Wolverine-like healing powers, just knows stuff, and has mild precognition powers ("They're coming"), is this just the latest power to add to her skill set.

I really don't like what they are doing with Felix and Sarah -- they have such a long history and now Felix is basically "fuck you, I found my real family".  Don't buy that at all, so the writers had better make this worth the payoff story-wise to put up with it.  And watch is real sister turn out to be a Neolutionist plant -- since they appear to be everywhere.

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1 hour ago, ottoDbusdriver said:

I really don't like what they are doing with Felix and Sarah -- they have such a long history and now Felix is basically "fuck you, I found my real family".  Don't buy that at all, so the writers had better make this worth the payoff story-wise to put up with it.

I just think he's tired of feeling like Sarah and company only want him when they need something.  Obviously we saw in the first season that they have a real sibling bond, but even then, she was bringing her crappy problems to his door (Vic and the coke, anyone?) and getting him into her trouble.  We've never seen him bring her into his problems.  So even though her level of stress and danger is genuinely higher now, it reads to me like this has been their dynamic for a long time.  And while Felix loves Sarah, he has realized he needs more than to be her sidekick, as he tried to tell her.  With Sarah, there will always be another emergency, another crisis, another piece of drama.  And I think he's feeling like he wants to be loved for himself, not for his ability to get into a Neolution club, or to seduce a coroner, or whatever else Sarah can think up for him to do.  (Ok, seducing the coroner was his idea--but Sarah had him in their IDing the wrong body in the first place...) 

While I doubt the bio family thing will work out in the long run, if only because it has to either connect to the clones or die another kind of death, I understand his urge to find them and to find out about his origins.  I don't think he means it as a rejection of his foster family--he obviously told Adele about Sarah, and was willing to have Sarah hang out with them.  He just wasn't willing to jump back into clone drama just because Sarah crooked her little finger at him.

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3 hours ago, Loandbehold said:

If / when the cops come back, if it's really Alison, they might ask her about what happened to the accent. Then our little actress will have to give Alison-playing Helena-playing Alison a go.

That's what I'm hoping for. I don't want to get Alison in trouble, but she's really at her best when she is...

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3 hours ago, maraleia said:

I'm thinking that Felix's sister is actually his mom with the way she was asking him questions.

I was wondering about that possibility. Seemed rather quick that he was able to find a relative. His sister -- it can't be that easy on this show.

Of course, another possibility is it's another Dyad/Neolution/Whomever ploy.

Whatever's going on with Felix, they need to wrap it back into the main storyline somehow.

Cannot get enough of Alison/Donnie/Helena. Husband Donald.

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We can assume that Cosima's been checked and doesn't have a bot and we know from the first Alison-Donnie scene of the episode that Alison is fine. I wonder whether Rachel and Charlotte have them since they're with the head neolutionist, Susan Duncan. In that respect, I wonder whether Ira (did they really just decide to give him his real name backwards?) has one.

Was the last we saw of Krystal was her fleeing Dyad with Delphine's help? I can't quite remember. She could connect Felix's biological family plot to the show. If she wants to find out what happened to her, the only logical starting point she has is the guy who conned her out of her ID since Delphine's dead and Dyad is gone. Maybe the sister isn't really his sister and just a friend of Krystal's trying to help her find out more about him. And the drug dealer mixup with Sarah was just her ploy for if Krystal came to the place (with a disguise) to speak to her while Felix was still there. I know it's a stretch, but just wanted to voice the far-fetched idea.

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To be fair, this isn't the first time we've heard "chicken." That's Siobhan's pet name for Sarah and Felix. I'm okay with "monkey" because Mr. EB has been referring to our nephews as monkeys since they were born (although he uses it more with me than with them, as in "Hey, we're going to visit the little monkeys this weekend").

if the police come back and ask real Alison why she doesn't have an accent anymore, I would guess she can just tell them that she was working on accents for a play and then remind them that she starred in a local musical. I don't think anyone would have a hard time believing that she's a drama queen.

I actually thought that Helena made up names for the people who worked on Alison's campaign. I thought the first name she listed was Carole Lombard.

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14 hours ago, Ailianna said:

I just think he's tired of feeling like Sarah and company only want him when they need something. 

I think its that Siobhan is biologically connected to Sarah that spurred this. 

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I noticed the Carole Lombard reference, too, and had to laugh.  No one in the show reacted to it so maybe it was an inside joke, like, "The audience won't catch it because they are too young and hung up on Kardashians."  When there was no further reference, that's what I defaulted to.

We'll know in the next couple of episodes if the cops return and say, "Those names you gave us?  Actresses of the 1930s."  (Also, why would Helena know of Carol Lombard?  She was a) not born yet and b) being raised by mean nuns in a Ukrainian convent and then turned into an assassin.  What is this, some sort of Through the Looking Glass La Femme Nikita?  Did she learn about 30s starlets in deportment class?)

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5 hours ago, Not Beth said:

We can assume that Cosima's been checked and doesn't have a bot and we know from the first Alison-Donnie scene of the episode that Alison is fine. I wonder whether Rachel and Charlotte have them since they're with the head neolutionist, Susan Duncan. In that respect, I wonder whether Ira (did they really just decide to give him his real name backwards?) has one.

Have they checked Kira yet ?  She has been in the custody of so many questionable/sketchy people over the first 3 seasons it's possible.

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(edited)

I think the Carol Lombard reference was meant to have the audience go "Oh Crap!" and think Helena was making it up, when it actually was a real woman, because Alison didn't even respond negatively  to the name. If I remember correctly she responded along the lines of "How did she know all that?" which to me meant the names were of real women who were working her campaign. Not unusual for parents to name their kids after famous actors / actors they absolutely love. I'm named for a movie my mother loved about Napoleon's lover. Just don't have the same last name as her. 

Edited by Desiree
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Something else I was thinking about was Kira's vision. It was something about her aunties setting Sarah on fire, right? Does anyone think this might be the key to getting the bot out? Though possibly not actually setting Sarah alight - that would be something very difficult to recover from. Maybe holding a flame close enough to the bot might cause it to malfunction/leave the host?

2 hours ago, ottoDbusdriver said:

Have they checked Kira yet ?  She has been in the custody of so many questionable/sketchy people over the first 3 seasons it's possible.

I'd assume so, since that's the first thing that Sarah tried to do at the end of the previous episode when Kira wondered what was worrying her. I'd have thought once Mrs. S knew why Sarah was so flustered, she would have checked Kira for it off-screen, just as I am assuming Cosima was checked and cleared off-screen.

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Alison's campaign flyers the cops had seems to be quite a few of them in a neat stack, maybe that's why they wanted names of her campaigners. 

That description upthread of Adele supposedly being wicked smart didn't really fit with what I saw. A girl shows up with the exact same accent as Felix and Adele  deduces not that this girl might be Felix's foster sister that he told her about, but a drug dealer? Ooookaaay…

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On April 30, 2016 at 9:21 PM, snarktini said:

Felix's sister sounded southern, maybe Texas. She had an exaggerated drawl.

I'm glad none of the clones have had southern accents so far if TM can't do it. On 11.22.63 the guy who played Lee Harvey Oswald could not do southern to save his soul, and it came off sounding like a speech impediment with marbles in his mouth.

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I wish I knew if the terrible southern accent was just the actress not being able to pull off a southern accent or a clue that she is not who she says she is. I really hope it's the later. I would hate to think that's the best they could come up with for Felix' sister, some southern knock off of him, with the drinking and the casual drugs, it was all just too much. She's got to be a fake. Right?

I love, love LOVE the Hendrixes. That Alison did not hesitate to dig up Leeky speaks volumes to the level she will go to save her sisters. I am not easily grossed out but OMG Leeky's corpse was just...I don't blame Donnie one bit for puking all over the place. lol

Wasn't happy to see a Caster. Nothing against the actor (though he does nothing for me, all his clones seemed the same, and this one is no different) I just hope we never revisit the Caster disaster. I hated that storyline.

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"They" say that the American southern accent is the easiest one for a British speaker to pull off.  So I guess the actress isn't English, huh.

The sister's accent is just -- so bad.  I can't.  There are no words.

(That's why Minnie Driver had that inexplicable southern accent in The Riches which, if you haven't seen it, is a lot of fun.  I'm sure it's on Netflix.  It was cancelled too soon -- although the plots were all over the place. I forgive Eddie Izzard most anything anytime anywhere.)

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