S04.E06: The Scandal of Altruism

[kat165]

Godonlyknows, I was just going to mention that. We never saw how Krystal  escaped their clutches. Last we'd seen of her Delphine was removing her  eyepatch & that's when Delephine realized she was not Rachel but another clone. I'm assuming that Delephine helped her out of there. Shortly after Delephine had that struggle with Nealon and killed him.

[dampfire]

Jeff Alexander made a good point in the PTV article when he wrote: "Hey, remember how mad Sarah got when Mrs. S. bartered Sarah's twin to the bad guys? And Helena came back. Well, now Sarah has just traded away S.'s mother, and there will be no backsies this time."  Hell, on first watch, when S said, "You bartered my mother behind my back," I totally expected Sarah to retort, "You bartered my sister behind my back!"  So, yes, a good point by Alexander.  But not, given further consideration, an entirely valid one.  A false equivalency lurks.  

S made her "war time" decision unilaterally.  She didn't (understandably, understandably) ask Helena if she was willing to sacrifice her freedom for Sarah and Kira's release from DYAD (which Helena might well have been willing to do).  In this ep though, those most directly affected by Susan's proposal -- Sarah (bot); Cosima (dying); Kendall (donor) -- discussed the matter and decided, together, what to do.  SARAH didn't trade Kendall away.  Furthermore, S sent Helena into captivity, while Sarah, Cosima, and Kendall were only offering genetic material...not Kendall herself.  Sure, everything went up in flames, ending tragically.  But that was only because Evie, an outlier, intervened.

And speaking of Evie...let me, for the fun of it, engage in a little false equivalency of my own.  

At Evie's behest, Duko puts a bullet in Kendall's head, and her body (along with Benjamin's red-shirted compatriot's...let's not forget him) is immolated.  Why, Evie, why?  Evie's answer: "...we've confirmed all her samples are destroyed.* There will be nothing left."  Evie, simply put, wants to sabotage Project Leda (and Castor for that matter).  Which wouldn't be that bad in and of itself.  Clone Club would be finer than fine if the cloning crap itself were stopped.  The problem is that, in doing so, Evie also makes finding a cure for Cosima's disease way, way, way, way, WAY more difficult.  And the more immediate and deeply distressing problem is that, in order for Evie to accomplish her ends, she (via Duko) flat out fucking EXECUTES Kendall and incinerates her remains.  Then, to add sadistic insult to heartbreaking injury, she decides in the aftermath that this is the perfect time to engage in a little knife twisting and inform Cosima that, "Delphine Cormier was shot dead at the DYAD parkade."  (Rachel apparently gifted Evie the Cold Bitch Digest version of Emily Post.)

The general consensus here (and elsewhere on the Internet) seems to be that Evie should suffer a prolonged and painful and appropriately gruesome death for what she did to Kendall (and possibly Delphine!).  Hey, I'm not here to argue against it.  I'm all for it.  I hate Evie for what she did.**

BUT...

If Evie's actions in this ep are compared to what S was prepared to do in the London ep (309), Evie doesn't come off looking nearly as bad.

Consider:

Mere moments after arriving in the London pub, S is unwrapping a handgun (a "welcome home" gift from Terry).  "You get right down to business, don'tcha?" Sarah observes.  "When we find the Castor Original," S says, "there's only one way this can go. I'm gonna kill him."  It's pretty clearly implied that it doesn't matter to S if the Original is a relative innocent.  Doesn't matter if he (presumed male at this point) is unaware that he'd been cloned.  Doesn't matter if he was duped or coerced.  Moreso than the Castor Original himself, S is in London to kill Castor ITself.  She's fully prepared (and fully intends) to put a bullet through the Original's head.  (Not suggesting that doing so won't bother S.  Just that she's steeled to ACT.)

Then, at the end of the ep, S is faced with what would appear to be an horrendous decision.  Yet she doesn't so much as blink.

SARAH: S.
SIOBHAN: Yeah. Time to go.
SARAH: What are you doing?
SIOBHAN: We need to destroy every shred of DNA in this house. We can't leave a trace of her.
KENDALL: Oh, there she goes, threatening to burn my house down again.
SIOBHAN: Not just the house that has to go.
SARAH: Jesus, S.
SIOBHAN: You said it yourself, Sarah. Castor has to be stopped.
SARAH: But that's your mum.
KENDALL: This is what it's come to, Siobhan?
SARAH: Castor and Leda are... Are siblings, S.
SIOBHAN: So what?
SARAH: So if your mum has two cell lines, that means that she's our original, too. We need her. She's Leda.

It's not until Sarah finally gets through to S...makes her understand that Kendall is vital to the Leda clones' cure that S is finally dissuaded from ruthlessly taking action.  Before that, she's ready and willing to torch the place...with her own (admittedly estranged) mother in it.  (Not that S wanted to do it.  After Terry told her whom the Convict # belonged to, S wanted to leave London posthaste.)

So, looking at Evie and S in these situations, it's very easy to see the similarities in their intentions (put an end to Leda and/or Castor) and methods (bullets and fire).  Evie follows through.  S doesn't.  But that's only because unforeseen mitigating factors prevent S from proceeding.  She would have.  Yet Evie's a villain.  And S is a badass.  

Why?

Well, we, as viewers, are invested in S.  But we're not in Evie.  That's the subjective reason.  There is though an objective reason as well.  And that's the more important one.  There's a false equivalency at play in this comparison.  And it mainly has to do with motivation.  S wants to stop the Castor pathogen.  Evie wants to further her career, her reputation, and her legacy.

* Not entirely sure how Evie was so certain that all Kendall's biological samples had been destroyed...even if she was only referring to the samples collected that day at Felix's.  Frank was her lone associate on site, and he wasn't actually in the room.  Immediately after Sarah "bleached" the samples, Benjamin "escorted" Frank into the loft from the hallway and restrained him in the bathroom.  How could Frank have reported to Evie?  And even if Evie was speaking more comprehensively and, say Roxie, broached the Rabbit Hole lab and lifted any samples on hand while Cosima was at Brightborn and Scott was at Felix's, how could Evie be sure that additional samples hadn't been stored elsewhere?  PLUS, assuming Evie responsible for the data wiping trojan, how could she reasonably assume that Scott and Cosima hadn't backed up their work?  Unless Scott...NOOOOOOOooo!!!  

** Jessalyn Wanlim (Evie) seems to be handling things with good humor.  She tweeted: "Thanks to all you #OrphanBlack fans for showing your hateful love to my #eviecho !!!  I feel like I did my job!"

~~
Under-the-radar line of the ep: After Sarah starts expressing trepidations about having the bot removed at Brightborn, Cosima tells her, "I'll take you for ice cream, if you're good."

Totally missed this the first time through.  Which wasn't all that surprising.  I was a nervous wreck (in the best sense of the cliche) while watching.  406 was, truly, edge-of-your-seat viewing.

Edited May 27, 2016 by dampfire

[godonlyknows]

25 minutes ago, Macbeth said:

When Krystal said she was there when Delphine was shot - I immediately thought she did the shooting, given the homicidal tendencies of a couple of clones.  It doesn't make that she would be a witness - why wasn't she killed.  So I guess she hid somewhere.

Just watching the episode again to get the timeline straight - Delphine discovers Krystal near the start of the episode, then meets with & shoots Nealon, then goes to apologise to Shay, goes to Bubbles to say goodbye to Cosima and then comes back to the parking lot. No idea what Krystal was doing all that time or why they didn't sneak her out sooner.

[kat165]

Maybe Delephine sneaked her out, but not completely. Like, she could have led her most of the way & said, escape here, but Krystal, determined to get at the bottom of why all this bad stuff keeps happening to her lingers & decides to poke around. She could have hidden anywhere.

[possibilities]

I have thought, since the original airing, that Krystal was in the trunk of Delphine's car, that Delphine had said good-bye to Cosima because she herself was also leaving town-- sort of a self-styled witsec for herself and Krystal. After she killed Nealon, she knew she was in danger, but she didn't tell Cosima she was leaving only to save herself, she said she was fulfilling her promise to love all the sisters equally. I thought Krystal would be in danger after escaping, so the two of them would both need to disappear.

[Macbeth]

I agree dampfire about S. She was willing to kill her mother - now she's "How dare you" to Sarah about making a deal that might save Sarah and Cosima and would only need a sample from her mother.  Really?

S must have thawed up in Iceland.  A lot of mother - daughter bonding must have occured.

[KaveDweller]

On 5/21/2016 at 1:28 AM, godonlyknows said:

Is Cosima's new lab and the safe house the same place - the basement of the comic shop? If so, why are she and Sarah skyping each other?

I was wondering that too, I thought they were the same place. 

I think Cosima and Scott not having any backups of their data is the most unbelievable thing I have ever seen on the show. Seriously. I believe clones and conspiracies, but not that two intelligent scientists wouldn't back up data before handing things over to their enemy.

[dampfire]

Okay.  I just watched Delphine get shot again...and (ff) again and (rw) again.  Shortly after Delphine emerges from her car, an out-of-focus figure (a person) crosses in the foreground of the screen and moves (it appears to me) parallel to but AHEAD of the route that Delphine seconds thereafter takes.  It takes Delphine 22 steps (no editorial cuts) to move from her parked car, across a single parkade driving lane, and finally to the White Car of Apparent Doom.  She stops when she hears footsteps approaching from BEHIND, then turns to face her fate (a fate with a face that she obviously recognizes).

Obviously, I think, we were supposed to assume that the blurry figure we saw was the shooter.  With good reason.  I thought it was the shooter then, and I still think it was the shooter. 

Nonetheless, it is a little strange that the figure first appeared ahead of Delphine, yet ultimately approached her from behind.  In order to do so, he/she would have had to reverse direction and swing back around (back and to the left, back and to the left....) in very little time -- again, 22 steps.  It's certainly possible.  But why move ahead in the first place?  Then again, maybe the shooter didn't expect Delphine to go toward the white car.  Maybe he/she assumed she was headed to her office...in the other direction...maybe.  And why the hell did he/she feel compelled to approach from behind anyway?  Why not just approach her from where the hell ever his/her original skulking in the foreground had placed him/her?  

Unless the blurry figure wasn't the shooter.  Unless the blurry figure was, in fact, Krystal!

Delphine may have hastily sent Krystal on her way after the clone swap was discovered.  Quite a bit happened with Delphine after that discovery (she had her fateful "meeting" with Nealon; she visited Shay; she had her bittersweet goodbye and final [???] kiss with Cosima).  But we don't know what happened with Krystal after the discovery.  

She may have left in dither, but then thought better of it once she had some time to decompress.  She may have -- hmmmphh! -- decided she wasn't satisfied with that French doctor's bullshit explanation.  At which time she decided to go back to DYAD and get the truth.  Krystal's dogged if nothing else.  And she's no dummy (as evidenced by her ready admission that she's not that smart either). She certainly wasn't dumb enough to actually go back into DYAD itself.  Somebody in there had been holding her captive and in a coma after all.  So she went back to DYAD and waited for that French doctor to leave.  She could trust her, couldn't she?  The good doctor might have given Krystal a bullshit explanation about what all was going on, but she had helped Krystal escape.  So Krystal waited in the parkade.  The French doctor didn't come out of the DYAD offices though.  But she did show up.  She pulled up in her car.  Krystal slipped cautiously behind one of the parkade support beams, and just as she was about to approach the French doctor and get some real answers, somebody else appeared.  With a gun.  "What will happen to her?" the French doctor asked.  The gun fired.  Suppressing the instinctive urge to YELP, Krystal ducked tightly back behind and against the support beam...while somehow managing to furiously fan her face with her exquisitely maintained hand.

Nahhh.

The blurry figure in the foreground was the shooter.  Can't wait to hear Krystal's version of the shooting though.  It should be both priceless...and heartbreaking.  (We better get the story, F&M!  Straight from the whistleblowing manicurist's mouth!)

Edited May 23, 2016 by dampfire

[ganesh]

Well, we don't know for sure that they didn't back up their files. It is distressing that the computers got compromised, so I would also be freaking out. They probably can't use them anymore, and they could have lost some data for the day. They showed Cosima with one external hard drive. Certainly they could have bought two. I should hope they did. *If* they lost all their data, then that's ridiculous. With everything going on, and the show being like, "the clone club suffered a huge defeat," it's hard to shoe horn Scott being like, "but I backed up the data!"

I don't expect more than a minor aside, "Scott's uploading the data into our new computers." But it's fair to expect that they did back up their data. 

The way things have been. I'd be keeping a backup backup in a safety deposit box. 
 

[Mabinogia]

If their actual equipment has been destroyed, computers and whatnot, it would set them back. Scott or Cosima said something about how they could get back to where they were but that they don't have the time. It could be that they would have to reload all that information and possibly recatalog it all or whatever, and that is why they are freaking out. It has set them back and they don't have the benefit of time.

I'm mixed on if I want Krystal to discover the truth. On the one had she'd have a support system in her Sistras but on the other hand, she might be better off living in ignorance of how fucked up her existence really is. I wouldn't really wish the identity crisis that must come with finding out you are an exact copy of dozens of others and that you were just some experiment. Not that I don't think she could handle it, but I don't want her to have to. I think she would have been better off had she never stumbled into this mess and just went on her normal little life.

[possibilities]

If you make a disk image, you can just reload it onto another machine, and there's no lost time except maybe the time to do the actual transfer, maybe an hour or two, depending on how big a drive it is. I make a disk image of my not-at-all-life-saving computer regularly.

I think we're thinking they lost everything because Scott said "it's all over" -- maybe he meant the alliance they'd made, and not the research itself, though. I think they made the alliance because they needed more resources to speed up the research-- as well as getting the bot out of Sarah's mouth. It's not the time to re-load the data (if they aren't idiots and do have a copy), it's the time to do all the research left to do at the pace they could do just the two of them vs the time it could be done with all the resources at the disposal of Evi/Susan and their corporation.

Likewise, it's ridiculous to think they have no stored DNA from Kendall. It's slightly less absurd than them not having backed up the data, because they did have the live Kendall at hand, and storing biological samples is a bit more complicated than storing a  back up hard drive (refrigeration, preservatives). But still-- I think the biggest problem is supposedly that the process of research itself is too slow and Cosima is dying faster than they are getting answers.

I really don't have a problem thinking Krystal was in the parking garage, hiding behind a pillar or crouched beside a car, even if not in Delphine's trunk. She has shown she wants to investigate. Why not skulk around the place, hoping to overhear or observe something? Or, as was suggested upthread, hoping to run into Delphine again. She has every reason to be hiding, not standing around in full view. She could also have been walking into the structure, behind the shooter, by pure chance, and we wouldn't have seen that. Or maybe the shooter had her in hand, like a hostage, and she only got away, somehow, after the shooting. I find the hostage idea less likely, because I can't think of anyone who would hold her hostage, let her go, and also shoot Delphine. But there are lots of possibilities.

I really missed Helena. I want to know where she is and what she's doing.

[Tara Ariano]

In case you missed it, here's the Previously.TV post on the episode!

Orphan Black's Sarah And Cosima Deal With The Devil They Know

But the outcome is one that someone else Chos.

[Loandbehold]

Quote

The way things have been. I'd be keeping a backup backup in a safety deposit box.

With one of Percy's Guardians* in place just in case of emergency.

 

*Nikita reference.

[atua]

Another possibility is that Krystal was in the general vicinity snooping on Dyad, when the shot went off. Because she's not the type to just pack it up and go home after she's freed from Dyad. So whilst she's sneaking around, she hears Delphine get shot, THEN goes to the parking garage to check it out and finds Delphine bleeding out and calls an ambulance.

[Zaku]

I'm a little lost here. What were the ultimate goals of the LEDA and CASTOR project? Yes, cloning a human being is an incredible scientific breakthrough, but what are the pratical applications in the Orphan Black universe, considering that you can clone only two types of human being? And yes, you can use the infertility pathogen of the CASTOR clones as a bioweapon, but that was an unexpected development.

So what. You made a lot of clones. Then?

[Isazouzi]

1 hour ago, Zaku said:

I'm a little lost here. What were the ultimate goals of the LEDA and CASTOR project? Yes, cloning a human being is an incredible scientific breakthrough, but what are the pratical applications in the Orphan Black universe, considering that you can clone only two types of human being? And yes, you can use the infertility pathogen of the CASTOR clones as a bioweapon, but that was an unexpected development.

So what. You made a lot of clones. Then?

Yeah, I don't get it either. Evie wants to perfect the human genome with her bots and stuff, which makes sense (by the way, I love the title of the episode). And she wants the Leda project over because? How does the Leda project threaten her own research? Why can't both be done simultaneously? In the previous episode, Susan said something about how Evie's research was crude, as if they were trying to reach the same goal, but in different ways. If that were the case, I would get why Evie bothered to kill Kendall. But I don't see how the Leda project can perfect the human genome. So I don't understand why Evie went to all this trouble.

Cosima stole the bot that they extracted from Sarah's cheek, the one that was supposed to trigger the disease in her, so I imagine Cosima and Scott will now use this specific bot to try and cure her.

[netlyon2]

4 hours ago, Zaku said:

I'm a little lost here. What were the ultimate goals of the LEDA and CASTOR project? Yes, cloning a human being is an incredible scientific breakthrough, but what are the pratical applications in the Orphan Black universe, considering that you can clone only two types of human being? And yes, you can use the infertility pathogen of the CASTOR clones as a bioweapon, but that was an unexpected development.

So what. You made a lot of clones. Then?

Based on the conversation between Cosima and Susan in the previous episode, I think that the clones were created--at least in part--to be experimented upon for further scientific research.  Cosima refers to the Leda (and I assume Castor) clones as Susan's OncoMouse, which is a reference to a mouse that was engineered by researchers to be genetically-inclined to develop cancer and thereby facilitate cancer research.  That moment really struck me with how painful a realization it must have been for Cosima, way worse than Leekie's joke about her being the science.  My memory may be faulty on this one and I don't have time to rewatch right now, so someone else can chime in if I'm off in my assessment here.

3 hours ago, Isazouzi said:

Yeah, I don't get it either. Evie wants to perfect the human genome with her bots and stuff, which makes sense (by the way, I love the title of the episode). And she wants the Leda project over because? How does the Leda project threaten her own research? Why can't both be done simultaneously? In the previous episode, Susan said something about how Evie's research was crude, as if they were trying to reach the same goal, but in different ways. If that were the case, I would get why Evie bothered to kill Kendall. But I don't see how the Leda project can perfect the human genome. So I don't understand why Evie went to all this trouble.

Cosima stole the bot that they extracted from Sarah's cheek, the one that was supposed to trigger the disease in her, so I imagine Cosima and Scott will now use this specific bot to try and cure her.

My opinion is that with Evie it's part professional competition (for resources, for prestige), part personal competition (she seems to have some weird kill-the-mother vibe going on with Susan*), and part batshit craziness.  She seems to know quite a bit about Dyad (threatening Beth with a Helsinki-scenario); perhaps that's how she came up through the ranks and got access to the resources that she used to establish BrightBorn.  I wonder how connected she is to Topside.  

Excellent observation about the cheek-bot that Cosima stole!

*For this reason alone, I would love a scene with Susan, Rachel, and Evie.  

Edited May 24, 2016 by netlyon2
clarify reasoning

[Isazouzi]

6 hours ago, netlyon2 said:

Based on the conversation between Cosima and Susan in the previous episode, I think that the clones were created--at least in part--to be experimented upon for further scientific research.  Cosima refers to the Leda (and I assume Castor) clones as Susan's OncoMouse, which is a reference to a mouse that was engineered by researchers to be genetically-inclined to develop cancer and thereby facilitate cancer research.  That moment really struck me with how painful a realization it must have been for Cosima, way worse than Leekie's joke about her being the science.  My memory may be faulty on this one and I don't have time to rewatch right now, so someone else can chime in if I'm off in my assessment here.

Thanks, I didn't catch the OncoMouse reference. Very interesting. I thought the various Leda being sick was an accidental defect, something Susan didn't want or expect. What you said makes more sense.

[Mabinogia]

I hadn't thought about that but holy shit that's fucked up. Creating people to be lab rats. YIKES! But this is exactly why I'm glad we seem to be back to the Leda side of things. Building super warriors has been done. It's not surprising or all that interesting to me anymore. But breeding human lab rats is far less explored (to my knowledge) and rather fascinating. Poor Cosima, to realize she's sick on purpose is rather chilling. But it seems Susan ended up forming some sort of bond with her rats while Evie still sees them as a means to an end. I'm still not 100% sure why she needed Kendal wiped out because I don't quite get how the original being gone affects her work. Or why it's okay for dozens of her genetic copies to be walking around. But I don't care. I am already enjoying this season far more than anything during the Castor season.

[ElectricBoogaloo]

Closer Look: Siobhan & Kendall Malone:

[LittleIggy]

When did Sarah and company contract the stupids? Why take Kendal out of hiding just to take blood? Why hook a hard drive from people you don't trust up to your computer network? That episode made me mad and sad!

Edited May 27, 2016 by LittleIggy

[TomServo]

On 5/23/2016 at 6:06 PM, Isazouzi said:

Yeah, I don't get it either. Evie wants to perfect the human genome with her bots and stuff, which makes sense (by the way, I love the title of the episode). And she wants the Leda project over because? How does the Leda project threaten her own research? Why can't both be done simultaneously?

Coming in late 'cause I have to wait to watch on Amazon.

Well, there's the power aspect of it.  Plus, since all the original research is so hush-hush and likely illegal, they can't exactly go out and compete for research grants on the open market.  Whoever is financing all this (Topside or whatever) only has so much money.  If she can eliminate LEDA, then she can hog all the resources that are now being tied up in paying monitors, finding a cure for the glitch, etc.  No wonder she was so excited when she met Beth at the book signing.