What I’m Watching: Orphan Black

Orphan Black: Season 4, Episode 9 “The Mitigation of Competition” (B+)

Now this is what the penultimate episode of a season is supposed to feel like. The lines were drawn between the clones and Evie, though there was plenty else going on in this hour. It did appear for a while that Rachel was planning something nefarious that proved that she wasn’t actually one of the good guys, but that was just the cleverness of the writing and direction in this episode. Ira revealing that Rachel was recording her conversation with Evie in which she freely admitted to engineering birth defects and euthanizing the results was great, and that led to a superb closing scene of the episode that allowed for a far more public display of victory than this show usually permits. Felix’s relationship with his newfound sister went downhill fast after she realized that he was lying to her about the triplets. Helena’s bad timing at Felix’s was well made up for by her showing up in the nick of time to save Allison. Poor Donnie, who is this show’s punching bag, and it only took a few hours of him getting released from prison to find himself in mortal danger once again. The last frame of the episode couldn’t have been more exciting, with a shot of Delphine to get us pumped for a season finale that’s sure to be memorable. This show has yet to be renewed for a fifth season but I think we more than deserve it. Evie is out of the picture but our clones are far from done with their battle to stay alive and find a cure.