Orphan Black Season 5 (1 Viewer)

[Adam Lenhardt]

The scene with Leekie's head was unintentionally funny.

Knowing this show's sick sense of humor, I would argue that the reveal of Leekie's head was very intentionally funny.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Great Rachel episode tonight. One of the tensions of the show since she was introduced at the end of the first season has been the question of whether she would ever be able to see herself as one of the sestras. Tonight we finally got our answer.

 

[NeilO]

Great Rachel episode tonight. One of the tensions of the show since she was introduced at the end of the first season has been the question of whether she would ever be able to see herself as one of the sestras. Tonight we finally got our answer.

Yes, her world view was shattered. Great episode. I have no idea how everything is going to shake out in the final episodes.

 

[TravisR]

The show is good as it always is but I do have a critique of this season. Up until the past episode, the season has not had a feeling that the story is nearing an end that nearly all serialized dramas have when they reach their conclusion.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

How do we feel about the PT Westmoreland subplot?

I wasn't really too thrilled with the tease that he was potentially two hundred years old. In the abstract, it's a potentially exciting concept, but I always liked the idea in Orphan Black that the clones were the most "sci-fi" thing about it. The show went further than what's actually possible today in regard to that one area, but generally did a good job otherwise of keeping everything else grounded. So I had mixed feelings - if there was one man who had supernatural abilities and all of the answers anyway, it makes the show a little less interesting in hindsight. (I'm also not a fan of Kira's apparently supernatural abilities - I was hoping the show wasn't going to go in that direction.) So when Westmoreland was revealed to be a fraud, I liked that better.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Big episode tonight.

The show is good as it always is but I do have a critique of this season. Up until the past episode, the season has not had a feeling that the story is nearing an end that nearly all serialized dramas have when they reach their conclusion.

A lot of series fall victim to that, where they know heading into the season that it's going to be their last, and then tell a normal season story with a rushed wrap up at the end.

I don't think that's necessarily the case here, since the season has brought things back around full circle to Neolution, and P.T. Westmoreland represents the very top of the Neolution pyramid. But the storyline got a bit overstuffed and muddled, with a lot happening but not a lot that felt essential and personal.

Last week's big step forward with Rachel was both of those things. Tonight's episode definitely felt like part of the endgame. Not only did the sestrahood publicly expose Neolution, but the pieces got moved into place for the final two episodes and three very important characters got killed:

Spoiler: 5x08

After being reminded that the "miracle babies" Helena's carrying inside her are actually her half-siblings, Gracie lied to Mark and Neolution in an effort to keep Helena's location a secret. But the phone call itself was enough to doom them. Before they could make a run for it, Art's new Neolution partner was waiting for them and put a bullet in Gracie's skull.

Later, after a wonderful celebration of family at Felix's exhibition, Mrs. S returns home to find Ferdinand waiting for her. He is not happy with her, since she helped publicly release the information that he was going to bribe Neolution with. After a very barbed exchange and a series of tactical points and counterpoints, Ferdinand shoots her in the chest and grazes her heart. But before she can bleed out, she districts him and shoots him in the throat. Both of them bleed out in her living room.

I don't think I realized just how much Felix was missed in his reduced role this season until he was back tonight. Everything about his art show was wonderful. It was nice to get payoff for all of the paintings he's done of the sestras over the course of the series. And the event itself was a terrific encapsulation of this family, both the wider sestrahood and the close-knit immediate family of S, Felix and Sarah. I loved the idea of clones as performance art. And I really loved that even when Sarah was furious at S for working with Ferdinand, when Felix pushed her out on the stage to perform, she did what her brother required of her. The little moment near the end where Felix publicly acknowledged the role that S and Sarah have played in his life was wonderful, even though it made me worry about a certain character's safety.

Now with where things have been left, the big overarching conspiracy and mythology have basically collapsed in on themselves. The stakes that are left -- Sarah dealing with the aftermath of what happened, Helena's perilous position, spreading the cure to the other vulnerable Leda clones -- are very personal.

 

[TravisR]

I'll use spoiler text since it's a big moment

Spoiler

When Ferdinand shot Mrs. S, my initial thought was "Oh man, Sarah is going to f--- this guy up so bad when she gets a hold of him." but I loved that they let the mortally wounded Mrs. S take him out instead.

 

[NeilO]

I'll use spoiler text since it's a big moment

Spoiler

When Ferdinand shot Mrs. S, my initial thought was "Oh man, Sarah is going to f--- this guy up so bad when she gets a hold of him." but I loved that they let the mortally wounded Mrs. S take him out instead.

Spoiler

Ferdinand has escaped death so many times already that it really looked like he was going to do it again, but he didn't count on just how many hidden guns Mrs. S had. She did what she promised to do and shot him in the neck. Nicely played.

Felix' art show was priceless and due to the lack of preview for the episode, due to the "shocking" nature of the episode, I was really expecting a disaster to occur there - a Neolution attack or something, but the party did go on as planned. They really could have had a preview for the episode that just didn't deal with the deaths, but they made it more suspenseful by having us wonder just what they were hiding.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

This episode really felt like the episode before the finale. After giving the fallout from S's sacrifice the weight and time it deserved, the remainder of the episode was breathless.

Even within the sestrahood, the twin bond between Sarah and Helena is one of the show's strongest relationships and the episodes where it features prominently tend to be among the strongest. Once they were reunited (by blood transfusion), the episode really came alive for me.

The young girl who played Helena is the flashbacks looks nothing like the (slightly older) actress who plays Charlotte, but much more like a young Tatiana Maslany -- so much so that seeing her looking very much like a young Sarah (or Beth or Cosima or Alison) would have made my heart ache a little bit. It turns out that Helena's complexion isn't from malnutrition or lifestyle but from acid burns as a child, and her bleached hair isn't some Eastern European fashion statement but a constant reminder of her traumatic childhood.

With Ferdinand dead and Cody (presumably) dead, the next person who needs to buy the farm is Art's duplicitous Neo partner. She delights in being just awful.

And I can't wait to see what sort of body horror they've cooked up for "P.T. Westmoreland" when he finally gets his cure for mortality.

 

[NeilO]

With Ferdinand dead and Cody (presumably) dead, the next person who needs to buy the farm is Art's duplicitous Neo partner. She delights in being just awful.

And I can't wait to see what sort of body horror they've cooked up for "P.T. Westmoreland" when he finally gets his cure for mortality.

Engers is really terrible. I don't think Art will kill her when they encounter each other presumably early in the finale, but maybe it happens later. Did Castor Mark actually die in the episode? If he is not completely dead yet, it would be more fitting for him to kill Engers as revenge for Gracie as a last gasp.

I'm not sure PT will get his cure, but he definitely will get what he deserves.

And then the last line "Babies coming!" It should be quite a finale. I wonder if they will have a link with Kira. (And will we get a jump in time to an adult or teenage Kira?)

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Did Castor Mark actually die in the episode? If he is not completely dead yet, it would be more fitting for him to kill Engers as revenge for Gracie as a last gasp.

I figured they killed off Gracie to set up Mark killing Cody, but that doesn't seem to be the case. My guess is that they wanted to clear the board of Castors so that the finale would be entirely Leda-centric.

(And will we get a jump in time to an adult or teenage Kira?)

I definitely would like a time jump. If not to an adult Kira, at least far enough into the future that we can see what lives they've created for themselves once the battle with Dyad/Neolution ended.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

A true series finale.

If I had a complaint, it's that the wrap up of the Neolution conspiracy after five seasons felt somewhat anti-climactic. I was expecting P.T. Westmoreland and Cody to meet a demise as ambitious as their evil. Seeing Cody stabbed in the neck by Helena and Westmoreland's skull crushed in by Srah was satisfying in the moment. But I had hoped that Castor would kill off Cody, and that Westmoreland's long sought after cure for mortality would be what finished him off. What we got just didn't seem to live up to the build up.

But otherwise, I absolutely loved this finale. The flashbacks to Sarah and Mrs. S when Sarah was pregnant with Kira were beautiful, and a wonderful way to tie S into the finale. Seeing that rawer Sarah, seeing the love that S had for her chicken, and then the incredibly emotional intercutting between S helping Sarah through delivering Kira and Sarah helping Helena through delivering her twins -- wow, that was amazing. This has always been, at its heart, a story about family. And this finale did a great job showing the effect that they all have on each other. S taught Sarah how to help Helena. All of them, sestras and honorary sestras, help carry the others when one stumbles.

The best, most crucial decision was to go the Return of the King route and devote the last half hour to the aftermath. In war time, Sarah was the soldier they all needed who became the general they all needed. But who is she without the war? We all remember who Sarah was at the beginning of the series: A con artist and a grifter who had abandoned her child and couldn't stay in one place for very long. In the immediate aftermath of their victory, we start to see some of those old tendencies returning. But the journey was not all for naught, her struggles and sacrifices were not pointless. She saved her sisters, and in her moment of turmoil they step in to bolster her. She has a community now, a community that she helped build.

Seeing Rachel one last time, giving her sisters a precious gift and then letting them (and all of the negative energy she'd expended on them) go, felt right.

Seeing Donnie and Alison content and relaxed in their marriage, comfortable with themselves and with each other, felt right.

Helena naming her twin boys Arthur and Donnie, after two real men, was incredibly powerful.

Cosima and Delphine touring the globe, using science to cure the hundreds of other Ledas, true partners in work and play at last, was incredibly affirming.

Most powerful of all, though, was Sarah, Felix and Kira heading out for a day at the beach from the house that all three of them grew up in, the same in the big ways but different in the little ways that have made it their home now, and not Mrs. S's. God, I wanted happiness for all three of them, and I completely choked up to see them get it. This is what they fought for. This is what Mrs. S died for. Sarah finally found her way out of the whirlwind.

 

[TravisR]

Adam, as usual, hit all the high points but I'll add...

The best, most crucial decision was to go the Return of the King route and devote the last half hour to the aftermath.

Absolutely. I was afraid they'd have too much to cram into the last episode and any kind of epilogue would be real quick.

Helena naming her twin boys Arthur and Donnie, after two real men, was incredibly powerful.

Yeah, it was equally funny and touching.

Most powerful of all, though, was Sarah, Felix and Kira heading out for a day at the beach from the house that all three of them grew up in, the same in the big ways but different in the little ways that have made it their home now, and not Mrs. S's.

Yeah, even with the bad things that happened there, it's nice to know that the three of them (I'm assuming Felix at least has a room in there) are together and happy in that house.

 

[TravisR]

Also, what played after the credits? Was it just the Manson and Fawcett thank you? I watched the episode On Demand and the M&F thing was in the last commercial break and there was nothing after the credits.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Also, what played after the credits? Was it just the Manson and Fawcett thank you? I watched the episode On Demand and the M&F thing was in the last commercial break and there was nothing after the credits.

It was this whole elaborate dance thing, a cross between the actors dancing in a studio and fan-submitted videos of #CloneClub viewers dancing in their homes:

 

[NeilO]

It was this whole elaborate dance thing, a cross between the actors dancing in a studio and fan-submitted videos of #CloneClub viewers dancing in their homes

It was a great finale. What was also interesting about the dance thing is I thought we were seeing some of the stand-ins that they have to have for the shooting.

I liked that it jumped possibly a year later (at least several months) for the epilogue.

One thing we didn't see was Engers meeting her fate. She was only knocked out by Art (as expected) and presumably she met her justice inside the department later.

 

[DaveF]

SPOILERS!
http://www.marieclaire.com/celebrity/a28676/tatiana-maslany-orphan-black-series-finale-interview

 

[NeilO]

SPOILERS!
http://www.marieclaire.com/celebrity/a28676/tatiana-maslany-orphan-black-series-finale-interview

Lots of nice answers/speculation to various questions people may have.

 

[DaveF]

This was satisfying finale. I hope to put together more meaningful thoughts, but for a quick dash this show did what many don't in sustaining five solid seasons to a cohesive conclusion that is satisfying both narratively and emotionally.

 

[NeilO]

An Orphan Black article with the creators. I haven't read it all yet.

One thing I didn't know - the science consultant friend of one of the creators is Cosima Herter
and she has her own breakdown on the finale.