“These women are fighting to control what’s their’s in a world where everyone else considers them property, objects to be owned, controlled, and acted upon.” – Jonathan Raeder

After the relentless propulsion of the last two episodes, it seems natural and expected for the show to take a little bit of a breather. Where better than a log cabin in the middle of nowhere? “Mingling Its Own Nature With It” keeps the plot twists to a minimum, and by Orphan Black standards that means only a few per episode.

The obvious reveal here is Kira’s father, a bearded cabin-dweller named Cal who Sarah once conned out of quite a lot of money. We don’t learn much about him except that he’s “a moralist with money” – the perfect target. He seems like a decent enough fellow – he lets Sarah, Felix, and Kira stay with him, lies to the police for them, and is prepared to kill for them, all with the knowledge that Sarah conned him, lied to him, and stole from him. We’re so used to seeing Sarah as the protective mother and badass fight that sometimes its hard to remember how she used to be and how she probably was when Cal knew her. She even reminds us, telling Cal that she’s a different person now. Luckily he seems to believe her for the time being.

The episode ends with him as Kira’s protector, a deft move by the showrunners that allows for the clones to fight the twin organizations trying to control them without having to drag a vulnerable child around. Oh yeah: Sarah is kidnapped and gets into a car accident, but we know she’s probably going to emerge from the wreckage and continue running.

At this point in the show, each clone is battling her own demons alone, without the support of a united Clone Club. Alison is confronted by Angie in a suburban mom disguise, but quickly sees through her (though she thinks she’s with the Dyad Institute). Her abrupt “no” to Angie’s request for coffee is hilarious and quintessentially Alison. However, despite her excellent rebuttal to Angie’s inquiries, Alison is on the edge. Unable to hold in her guilt and anguish any longer, she collapses at her musical’s premiere (as we knew had to happen) after walking away from a horrific bloodied background scene. Aynsley’s death was always a bit melodramatic and unrealistic, but the show’s thankfully sunk itself into Alison’s complex emotional reaction to killing a friend. It’s one thing if Aynsley was really Alison’s monitor, but the guilt of killing her on an incorrect suspicion is an added layer that Alison can’t deal with any longer. Felix may have returned, but it may be too late for her.

The friendship between Alison and Felix is consistently referenced as one of the fans’ favorite parts of the show, and it seems like in this increasingly fractured narrative landscape that Felix has left Sarah and Kira for the time being and joined Alison’s team. Hopefully his regret once he finds out what happened while he left with parallel Alison’s regret and the two can somehow help each other through it.

Cosima’s continued interactions with Delphine and the Dyad Institute continue to inch on slowly: She learns about Jennifer Fitzsimmons, yet another clone who’s been killed by the mysterious illness that decimated Katja and has already begun infecting Cosima. Again, Delphine remains suspicious, especially after Cosima’s “sometimes I forget you’re my monitor” and Delphine’s “good.” Consistently the monitors are people’s loved ones: Beth and Paul, Alison and Donny, Jennifer and her boyfriend, and Cosima and Delphine. Surely this should be enough to rouse Cosima’s suspicions? Either way, she’s facing an incredibly difficult prospect in essentially watching herself wither away and die horribly. She even has to dissect her own clone, clutching intestines while staring at her own face, made gruesome with death. Her days are numbered, and it doesn’t seem like she has a lot of them left.

If this episode has an overarching theme, it’s fertilization. Kira wasn’t an immaculate conception after all: she had a father, and we finally meet him here. Cal’s own mysterious past ties in with the military and a bee pollination invention add to the motif and suggest that he might be involved with this whole conspiracy somehow. Finally, and most disturbingly, Hank and the Prolethians want to “breed” Helena and so conduct a mockery of a wedding, Helena confused and drugged. The camera jolting, the music leering, Hank carries Helena into a dark room and presumably rapes her.

What separates Orphan Black from any other type of escapist action series is its cunning undertones about women’s bodily autonomy. These women are fighting to control what’s their’s in a world where everyone else considers them property, objects to be owned, controlled, and acted upon. Hank mouths a belief that Helena has a soul, but he doesn’t regard her as a person. She’s an object, a creature to be bred for science, to be used for whatever purpose best suits his needs.

Humans are capable of the most profound evil when they don’t view others as actual people. Look at the countless genocides in history and it’s easy to see how clones can be dismissed. Oh, that person wasn’t “born”, so they’re not a person, despite being the same as a twin. The clones have never been portrayed or suggested as anything but fully realized people, so there’s a Kafkaesque sense of horror in how they must continually fight to be in charge of their own bodies and selves. It’s a chilling parallel to real world issues explored through the lens of near-future technology: the building blocks of all great speculative fiction. Let’s hope Orphan Black continues to do an excellent job at being both exciting, complex, and actually having something to say underneath it all.

Tidbits:

· When will we see a full blown battle between the Neolutionists and Proletheans? Bland Evil Dyad Agent was at the Birdwatcher’s house mere moments before Hank and Mark arrive. I want to see some good ole’ fashioned evil corporation versus evil cult action!

· Donny’s “you know morning is my best time” is simultaneously disgusting and hilarious.

· Kira seems to have fallen victim to a common TV child trope: she’s not great at acting and she seems unusually observant and intelligent. However, she did survive getting hit by a truck, so maybe she’s supposed to be awesome at everything.

· What is Art doing? Where is Paul? Do I even care? Just give me more clone adventures.