Mark is taken down in a Prolethean shoot-out and Sarah must step in to help. But as Sarah gathers intel that puts her on the original Castor DNA trail, a familiar foe is not far behind and her fate hangs in the balance as she tries to save Helena. Gracie is cast out from the Prolethean fold. Alison and Donnie come face-to-face with unhappy drug lord, Jason Kellerman.
Orphan Black really does build effective tension throughout Sarah and Helena's stories in "Newer Elements of Our Defense." The Alison and Cosima plots never match that same kind of energy though. So at times, the storytelling does feel more scattered than the show is at its very best. That is simply a result of the show's narrative structure. Each of the clones has a different story and thus different stakes. Sometimes those stakes don't have the same level of energy or intensity. It's fantastic when all of the clone's stories converge in an exciting way. And yet, it is also fun seeing what all is going on in the personal and separate lives of the clones.In this episode, Sarah and Helena are in constant contact with the Castor clones - which nicely ramps up the tension as they are the season's big mystery and uncertainty. Meanwhile, Alison hits a bump in the road with her new drug business. It's a very nice story where tension is still present but also different than the main stories. Things are taut between Alison and Donnie and the uncertainty of who this new unhappy drug lord is. Donnie brings a gun to their first meeting and that's just a disturbing callback to the last time he held that weapon. And yet, all of that tension is alleviated when Alison gets into the truck and sees that this big drug lord is actually her old high school boyfriend, Jason Kellerman (played by Justin Chatwin). It turns the story away from the expected. Jason was a guy Alison's mother always liked for her and Alison is comfortable around him. He thinks her soap idea was brilliant. It turns this story into one of personal connections and not one of Alison and Donnie being in the drug business with some very shady people. That twist wouldn't have been appropriate for the characters. This reveal keeps things simple while still promising that things can still get devastating for the two of them.
Meanwhile, Cosima is still just in a holding pattern with Scott and not knowing how to crack the code that Professor Duncan left in the book. Cosima really doesn't have her own story right now. She and Delphine broke up because Delphine had to take control of the company - and then immediately left town for reasons unknown. Every episode since has just featured Cosima not making any real progress. She was able to inform Sarah that the Castor clones are biologically their brothers. And yet, that just adds urgency and complications to Sarah's story while not also enhancing Cosima's. In fact, the highlight of her screen time this week is when Felix walks into the room and starts trashing her outfit. He prompts her to go out with him and he makes a profile for her on a dating app. But it all feels like the beginning of a story that is clunky when the rest of the episode is filled with immense tension.
Things with Sarah are only getting more complicated as she spends more quality time with a couple of the Castor boys. The episode picks up immediately where the previous one left off - with Bonnie following Mark into the corn field with a gun pointed at him. Sarah has always managed to find a way out of every precarious situation she finds herself in. She is able to avoid being detected by Bonnie - even when Bonnie enters the barn. Plus, she discovers a still alive Mark and is able to get him to safety even though more Proletheans show up to collect his dead body. It's never all that clear how Sarah and Mark escaped those Proletheans in the corn field. Their presence is never again felt by those two after those opening moments. The show instead choices to further flesh out the dynamic between Sarah and Mark. He wasn't willing to listen to her when she first announced that they were siblings. Now he has to give her information about his mission because he's injured and she's the only person who can save his life.
Sarah and Mark's dynamic isn't one established with trust. They both desperately need something from the other. Mark needs Sarah to remove the bullet from his leg while Sarah needs to find the original Castor samples in order to trade them for Helena. Yes, it is convenient for her that Mark passes out after telling her all about the information he found from Henrik's former associate and that he didn't understand the meaning of it. All it took was a few pictures sent to Cosima and Sarah was able to find out that Henrik was successful in having a son with Bonnie made up of Castor DNA. It's yet another twist that makes the show so entertaining. It gives Sarah and Mark urgency and a mission in the final half of the episode as they have to dig up the grave of the child who survived creation but died shortly thereafter.
The story about the death of Henrik and Bonnie's son is played against Gracie losing her own children conceived with clone DNA. And yet, there's a violence to that story that shows just how hardened Bonnie has become throughout her life. Gracie was embraced with open arms amongst the Proletheans again only to be violently turned away following her miscarriage. It turns out the child was the only value she had to these people. Bonnie has no sympathy for her daughter. She understands the death of a child as this episode points out. But she still says that Gracie is no longer welcomed amongst them. That's cold and tragic.
While all of that is happening, Sarah is able to dig up the grave of Henrik and Bonnie's son. The coffin does contain his remains. And yet, she's not able to successfully use that to trade for Helena's life. The tables turn once again on her as Rudy enters the scene. He is the most unstable of the Castor clones. Sarah is able to reason with Mark and get him to go along with every single thing that she does in this episode. When Rudy pops up, Sarah is fearful for her life and doesn't even try to convince him not to kill her. She just hits him with the shovel and runs to hide in the house. That's all she can do. Her survival ultimately isn't up to her though. She holds none of the power anymore. Rudy is able to creepily taunt her with a disturbed thought of Kira crying out for her mother. But Rudy isn't the Castor in charge either. Despite all the bad things the two have said about each other, Mark and Rudy are still brothers and recognize the order in their relationship. It's all a part of their military training. It likely saves Sarah's life - even though things are probably going to get much worse for her considering she is now in Castor custody.
That means Sarah will be reunited with Helena. It's just both will be prisoners to the military operation. Even though Helena is able to hurt their operation a little bit by showing mercy on a new Castor clone named Parsons who pleads for her to kill him, the military has what they want. They have the ability to treat the defect that is slowly killing all of the Castor clones. It's all because of Sarah. She and her fellow Leda clones were able to piece together the puzzle in a way that Castor could not. The fact that they are siblings will likely influence the next stage of their dynamic together. And yet, it also promises to be one fraught with tension as the military looms over with absolute control.
Some more thoughts:
- "Newer Elements of Our Defense" was written by Russ Cochrane and directed by Chris Grismer.
- Ari Millen really is great. However, it's still somewhat difficult to tell the Castor clones apart. That's very deliberate because they were raised together. And yet, it was problematic because I couldn't tell if it was Mark or Rudy attacking Sarah in the hotel room. Plus, the only defining characteristic of Miller is that he is always in an army camouflage outfit. But Parsons was a character immediately as both Helena and the audience could feel the pain of him still being alive despite his skull being wide open.
- Mr. Appleyard felt too similar to all the previous Prolethean men in charge of operations.
- Even when she's being intimidated by Jason's man, Alison still makes sure to take the garbage from his lunch to go throw away.
- Donnie's Breaking Bad reference about how he and Alison should move their operation to a storage locker wasn't all that necessary.
- Seriously though, did the Proletheans just give up chasing after Sarah and Mark? That just felt too untrue to who they are as a people on the show.
- The reveal that Parsons' brain was exposed and hooked up to various machines was brutal, creepy and absolutely gorgeous.
