Season premiere was last night. I enjoyed it a lot.
Getting a lot of Beth backstory was welcome, the new clone (Mika? MK?) was interesting. A bit of Helena (the accent) a bit of Cosima (braininess), but the paranoia and autism is new.
I admit that I had forgotten a few details of what happened previously. What was the deal with the weird maggot thing that went into someone’s mouth in one of the "previously on"s? And at the end, when MK called up, who did she say they were coming to get? Some woman’s name, was that the mother we met last season?
Am enjoying the new season so far: the previous season ended with a tag “the only way forward is back”, so it’s great to have a Beth-centered episode – probably with a few more left to come!
I remembered that Art was divorced and lived in an apartment; Helena was stashed there at some point. Didn’t remember him having a daughter though, and it was too early in the plot to trust Helena with kids anyway.
There were mild suspicions that Art and Beth had more than a partnership, but it was well-disguised in earlier seasons since many of his actions also reasonably fell under the Loyal Partner Cop trope. Early in season 3 Art admitted loving Beth while searching for Mark with Sarah. It’ll be fun to rewatch the first season with knowledge of all the backstory plays out and see how consistent the narrative is.
This season is also returning to the Neolution storyline, which lofted back up in a big way in the last episode of season 3. The worm appeared in the interaction between Dr Nealon and Delphine in that episode, so it’s worth rewatching; whatever it is, it looks central to the Neolution storyline since Neolutionists are willing to kill for it.
Neolution is also willing to kill for the clone germline; Kendall Malone is the chimera mother/father of the Leda/Castor clone lines, and yes, it’s her that Neolutionists are coming to get from Sarah et al in Iceland at the end of this episode. Neolution has access to at least one clone (Nealon sent Rachel back to her mother, Professor Duncan, to get a new eye) so there is presumably Something Important about Malone’s genetic material.
It’s really worth watching at least the last few episodes of season 3 to ramp up for this season. If you don’t have that kind of time, the best episode recaps I’ve seen are at Entertainment Weekly, ew.com.
The one bit that seemed to be purely about exaggeration was the removal of an entire cheek just to extract the small worm. Any child with a knife and a forceps could remove the object with a single incision. Wholesale removal of the skin was … unrealistic and, therefore, silly. Doctors, in a similar situation, would be much more concerned about the patient’s comfort, the possibility of infection, and the after-procedure skin appearance (ie: not leaving a large scar on a person’s face). The actual removal of the object isn’t interesting or difficult at all.
I loved learning more about Beth. I loved seeing MK. It was really wonderful seeing Aldous Leekie again. He’s such a happy lunatic.
My take on it was that they valued the worm infinitely more than the host’s cheek. They cut the whole cheek off so they could be sure not to hurt the worm. The host was going to be killed anyway.
What I liked best about this episode, is how much suspense it wrung out of scenes that were foregone conclusions. Even as Beth leveled a gun at Paul, I knew that she couldn’t possibly have gone through with killing him (because this is a flashback episode and he survived Beth), but it was still a very tense moment. Likewise, when Beth was spying on the neolutionists removing the slug and she gave herself away, I found myself gripped wanting to see how it played out - even though I knew that whole sequence would end with the civilian-shooting that was so pivotal to Beth’s backstory already.
I sort of remember Art mentioning having a daughter (IIRC, he had to call his ex-wife and change his visitation weekend when Helena was abruptly dumped on him.) I always figured Art had been in love with Beth (though wasn’t sure they’d ever slept together), but … was Art helping Beth cover up the shooting new information? (Well, not ‘cover up’, but arrange it to make Beth look less culpable.) I don’t remember that ever being brought up.
Help me refresh my memory, how many clones have we met so far already? So far, I can think of Sarah, Beth (RIP), Katja (RIP), Alison, Cosima, Helena, Rachel, Jennifer (RIP), Tony, Charlotte, Krystal, and now Mika. Also, Katja had dossiers of at least four clones scattered across Europe (all RIP), and there’s the nine clones from Helsinki (eight of whom were killed, one supposedly survived and will show up eventually, I’m sure.) Did I miss anybody? And have all the (known) Castor clones been dispatched?
Isn’t there one clone who is still a child? Is that Charlotte?
Was Jennifer the one we only saw in flashbacks who had cancer?
This show has a LOT of plot. I definitely should have re-watched the final few episodes of the previous season.
Yes, I think Charlotte was the name for the little girl. Jennifer (again, I’m not positive) was the one who died of the degenerative condition that Cosima has.
Sarah was a bit of a dick about it, but she was right. THEY are Felix’s family, not some randos that happen to share DNA with him. Not saying he’s wrong in what he’s doing, just she was right but said things in a really bad way.
Regarding cutting out the entire cheek to retrieve a small little worm, maybe it has something to do with that new video that Sarah saw of the worm suddenly “exploding” into numerous branch-like “arms”?
I forget if it was in the little segment during the commercial break or the awful aftershow, but they talk about how long and hard they worked to try and get the mask for Mika just right. That much work and they essentially get a carbon copy of what Erick Rowan’s been wearing in the WWE for a couple years? (He did recently replace it with a different version, for the record).
Of course those neolution one white eye people are taking after another WWE guy, Kane. Or maybe WCW’s Glacier. Nah, no one would take after Glacier.
Those little graphics that pop up are annoying. They mention they examined over 25 sheep masks, which to me means they Googled “sheep masks pics” and looked at the first 25 on page one.
I really enjoyed the most recent episode. Lots of entertaining plotlines, some gloriously creepy stuff (how tense was the scene with Sarah trying not to move, and then Ferdinand shows up?)
Helena pretending to be a calm and normal person will never not be funny.
Helena + Donnie are hilarious when they’re together.
And how great of an actress is Tatiana that you have to keep reminding yourself that the guy playing Donnie is just working with the same woman who he usually works with, just with her in a different role? Give that girl all the awards.
Allison is my own personal favorite - let’s see Helena twerk with Donnie on a pile of cash :D.
I’m still waiting for Helena’s permanent druggie/half-starved/extreme exposure victim pink “eye-shadow” to clear up - she’s certainly been wolfing down enough food in decent shelter for awhile now. Unless she has some nervous tick of constantly rubbing them.
