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“Orphan Black” recap (3.7): Vote for Alison

Previously on Orphan Black, Alison decided to run for School Trustee while becoming a professional drug dealer, Shay and Cosima got closer despite not knowing if we can trust the holistic healer, Scott realized Rachel might be the key to the cipher Professor Duncan left them, Paul blew up Camp Castor, and Helena and Sarah escaped.

We open in a bar in Mexico, where Helena in a cowboy hat wins a game of dominoes, much to her delight.

She proudly gives the money to Sarah like a cat with a dead mouse, and her sestra orders a beer for herself and a water for ol’ prego. And also food, of course. Helena looks at her sestra’s sad expression and says that dierty Paul ended up being alright after all but Sarah doesn’t want to talk about it. She just wants Mrs. S’s friend Benjamin to get here with their papers so they can GTFO already. Helena isn’t planning on welcoming anyone Mrs. S likes with open arms, and intends to kill the woman for betraying her. And her chance presents herself sooner than she hoped, when Mrs. S strides in like a Western sheriff looking for a wayward cowboy.

Sarah has to physically get between the two of them to prevent bloodshed and somehow manages to get her angry angel under control enough to hear Mrs. S out. Mrs. S admits to trading Helena for Sarah and Kira’s freedom, and wants to open a dialogue with Helena about her feelings, but Helena would rather just skip right to the fisticuffs. Luckily for everyone, the bartender leaves Helena only a spoon, though Helena looks at it like she’s considering how much force it would take to use it to scoop out Mrs. S’s eyeballs.

Sarah is trying to stay out of it, and the bartender offers her clean clothes and a place to shower, to wash away the horrors of the past and be ready for a shiny new future.

Back in Scarborough, Alison is practicing her speech for School Trustee while Donnie does his monitoring duties by taking her blood pressure. Because the DYAD still needs their cooperation if they’re going to remain free to deal drugs as they wish. Donnie tries to be supportive and high-five his kickass wife, but Alison’s too worried about having to see her mother.

And as soon as we meet her, we can see why. Donnie and Alison go to Bubbles to meet Connie, who ignores Donnie even more than Alison does and makes Alison more nervous than I’ve ever seen her. Not uptight nervous like she was when she suspected more people of being her monitor than Spencer suspects of being A, but really, genuinely, uncomfortably nervous. She leaves the contract that would sign the store over to her in her mother’s hands and leaves, but not before spotting a Marcie Coats campaign poster on the wall of the store.

Meanwhile on the isle of Lesbos, Shay and Cosima are…playing cars. In bed.

Before they can start playing with another type of toy entirely, they hear a knock at the door. Shay begrudgingly puts on a shirt and answers it, and knows instantly that the stunner with the French accent and killer hair asking for Cosima has to be Delphine.

Delphine says Shay’s name right back at her, to show she knows who she is too, and doesn’t try to hide the disdain in her voice. Shay tells Delphine showing up here is not cool but Delphine has more important matters to attend to. Shay says she’ll give them space to talk so she goes into the bathroom and runs the shower but listens in on Cosima and Delphine’s conversation. Which honestly could be either because she’s involved in the conspiracy but could also just be a girl curious as to what the girl she’s sleeping with’s ex-girlfriend has to say to her so urgently that she came to her apartment.

Delphine is here for a few reasons: To prove to Cosima she can still find her no matter where she went, because she’s worried about Cosima’s health because of her last levels, and to check out her stand-in. She gives Cosima a cup to pee into and Cosima shuffles her out, saying she’ll see her at work and to never come to Shay’s place again.

As soon as she’s gone, Cosima calls Scott and asks him to cover for her because she’s going to be late to work again. Scott asks about the book and Cosima snaps that he can’t show Delphine, but he was asking about Rachel. She tells him to ask her about it but Scott is (rightly) afraid of the ProClone, especially after Felix’s shenanigans.

In the suburbs, Alison sends Donnie off with Jason to secure the big drug deal they need to start their new operation while she heads to the school for the last day of campaigning. Felix is there with t-shirts and hats and a pep in his step. Alison gets a text from Cosima that says she needs Alison’s pee, for science, and while I get that she wants the DYAD off her back, I would also like her to stay alive, so she should just pee in the damn cup.

Marcie comes over and judges Alison’s pinker than pink booth and judges her for having a gay campaign manager, but Alison doesn’t back down to her bully. But her campaign is interrupted by a bully she will back down to, her mother, who is claiming she’s having a heart attack and needs Alison immediately. Alison gives Felix an envelope of signatures for Sarah Stubbs and rushes back to Bubbles.

And of course the envelope is identical to the one she gave Donnie this morning before the drug deal that is supposed to contain $30,000.

Jason is seriously regretting taking Donnie instead of Alison on this endeavor, and regrets it even more when he hands over the envelope to Pouchy and his niece only to have papers and buttons fall out instead of freshly-rolled-around in cash. Donnie promises it was just a misunderstanding, so Pouchy sends Jason to switch the envelope and keeps Donnie as collateral.

Mrs. S finishes her apology to Helena but Helena has finished her meal so she’s ready to fight.

Mrs. S won’t fight a pregnant woman, and asks how Helena plans to raise the baby if she kills her sestra’s mother? Well, another of her mothers. Helena says she’s going to find her boyfriend Jesse and they’re going to live happily ever after, and Mrs. S says she hopes she’s fine with that happily ever after not involving Sarah. Helena punches Mrs. S once, twice, and then finally Mrs. S’s survival instinct kicks in and she clocks Helena one. Mrs. S wraps her arms around Helena like she’s a little girl and holds her tight, apologizing and comforting her, calling her family, until finally Helena stops fighting.

And that’s all Helena has really wanted, isn’t it? To find family. To be able to stop fighting.

At Bubbles, Alison’s mother is not having a real heart attack, just a panic attack that may or may not be dramaticized a tiny bit. Connie says she can’t sell Alison the store, because she she started it from scratch when she left Alison’s father and the thought of Chubbs owning half of it makes her skin crawl. Alison scolds her mother for calling her husband Chubbs, but then it is revealed that it’s Donnie’s maiden name. Donnie took on the name Hendrix when he married Alison. Because of course he did.

Cosima leaves Alison a message saying she’s sneaking in the back door of the school and has a pee cup ready and waiting for her. Felix finds her in his desperate hunt for Alison because photo ops have started and Cosima will just have to do. Cosima is definitely not down for cloneplay, but she’s the only one who hasn’t done it yet, and Felix says it’s how she’ll earn her pee.

Delphine interrupts Scott’s game of Medieval Farming to take Rachel into the lab for testing. Rachel sees that Scott has one of her paintings and he shows her the book, all without Delphine realizing. Rachel asks if Scott will teach her Medieval Farming, and when Delphine looks at her like maybe it’s the brain damage talking, Rachel insists she’s so bored, anything will be a welcomed change to her routine.

At the school, Cosima is being led blindly by Felix, posing her and telling her to smize. Alison returns to see her sister in her place and starts to panic. She sneaks over to switch the envelopes but has to hide when she sees Jason come in. Her mother comes in soon after and holy fricken Christmas cake, she’s screwed.

Alison’s mother pulls her aside and says she has something important to tell her. One of the reasons she always held Alison to such a high standard is because when she went to get invetro fertilization to get pregnant with her, she didn’t use her husband’s sperm, but opted for an “upgrade.” She didn’t tell her husband, of course, but always hoped for better from Alison because of it.

At DYAD, Scott goes into Rachel’s room and starts cheerily spelling out the rules to Medieval Farming. Rachel is like, please stop, but Scott gets very serious and says they’re going to make this as believable as possible so shut up and get farming, but then returns to his usual bubbly self as he continues to ramble on about farm sizes.

At the school, Felix is getting fed up with the chaos and Alison’s squirreliness and tries to quit but Alison tells him that the reason she’s being insane is because she’s a drug dealer and her husband is being held hostage by a supplier named Pouchy. Felix remembers him as the guy who attacked Vic, and knows this means Alison is in serious trouble.

Donnie, meanwhile, is being an awkward hostage. Unsurprisingly. He annoys them enough that Pouchy’s niece decides to go find the money herself, and says that if she can’t get her hands on it in 30 minutes, Pouchy is going to cut off Donnie’s nose with a paper cutter.

Alison swaps places with Cosima just in time to have Marcie throw some shade, saying she hopes Alison doesn’t choke during her speech like she did during her valedictorian speech. Alison stammers that she had the flu, but Marcie and her cocky smile are already in the wind.

Jason, having been asked to distract Mama Hendrix, is walking her through the halls, reminiscing about his and Alison’s high school days.

Jason sweet talks Connie into selling Bubbles to Alison, promising that Alison would never let Donnie be in charge of anything important enough to damage the soap boutique’s stellar reputation.

Alison gets a call from Donnie the same time she hears the call to speeches, and it looks like she has to choose between being School Trustee and saving Donnie; and frankly for a minute she looks quite torn.

Ultimately she decides to run outside and give Pouchy’s niece the money, but the niece won’t let it be a speedy drop off like Alison wants. She makes Alison sit inside the car while she counts and tries to avoid getting dollar sign glitter all over her car. Thankfully, Pouchy gets the all-clear just in time to save Donnie’s nose.

Still stuck in this hellish labyrinth of suburban politics, Cosima is forced on stage (by Felix) to give Alison’s speech for her, looking awkward, unprepared, and nearly blind.

She goes off on a tangent about how kids shouldn’t be made to color inside the lines, and how as a lesbian…er….supporter, she couldn’t color inside the lines if she tried. And can I just say how awesome this moment is? Because not only was it great to see that Cosima is so horrendous at imitating her sister, but because Cosima found herself on a platform, so decided to take up her own cause. She is incapable of doing anything but speak from the heart, so she almost instantly forgot that she was supposed to be giving the speech as someone else. Sarah has been a grifter and schemer her whole life, Alison is a trained actress, and even Helena has had to learn skills of blending in and getting by unseen or unnoticed. But Cosima has never done anything but wear her heart on her sleeve. And she’s not going to apologize for her heart, okay?

Cosima has a bit of a coughing spell (someone get Kira back and knock out a few more teeth STAT) and sees Felix and the real Alison flailing around offstage, so she excuses herself for some water, much to the surprise of the already confused and stunned crowd. Cosima says she’s hiding in the bathroom and will not be playing the part of Alison ever again, and Alison goes back on stage, turning the speech around and dazzling her peers with talk of being a mother hen and keeping all their chickens together.

In the hallway, before she can escape this life she stumbled into, Jason catches up to Cosima-as-Alison and kisses her square on the mouth, much to Cosima’s disgust and confusion.

Her response is simply, “I need to pee,” before she gets the hell out of dodge.

In Mexico, Sarah comes out of the bathroom to see a beaten Mrs S. who says Helena is outside walking around, unsupervised because no one ever learns anything on this show. She says that her and Helena have made up and that she’s ready to be a Granny to Helena’s little one. Sarah tells Mrs. S about Paul, looks at her with weary eyes and says, “I’m so tired, mum.”

She puts her head down on the bar and lets Mrs. S comfort her a little.

In the school bathroom, Cosima tells Alison about the kiss and Alison is tickled by the prospect that Jason kissed her. She asks if Cosima kissed him back and she says no and also hello you’re married, but she doesn’t even want to get into that. She just wants Alison’s pee.

But Alison comes out of the bathroom before she pees, demanding to know what’s really going on. She gives her the CliffsNotes about the Castor protein and Alison says she understands where she’s coming from but they need the DYAD when it comes to her health, end of story.

Alison’s mother comes into the bathroom and Cosima leaps into the stall to hide. Mama Hendrix says she was moved by both Alison’s earlier temper tantrum and her speech (plus also what Jason said to her) so she will vote for her daughter and hand over the store. But when Connie suggests maybe someday Alison will come to her senses and leave Donnie for Jason, Alison flips and drags Cosima out of the stall to meet her mother.

Alison introduces Cosima as her clone and says if there’s anything she has learned, it’s that you can’t choose your family. She tells Cosima to take care of herself and go, and Cosima does just that without thinking twice. Connie says she doesn’t see the resemblance between her daughter and the “mulatto” girl with the dreadlocks, and Alison is appalled that somehow her mother manages to be in denial about even this. Connie shrugs it off as a coincidence that Alison met her half-sister, which could either be legitimate maternal denial or she could know all about the experiment and is playing it off. Connie says Alison should bring Cosima by the country club sometime, but Alison is already long gone. (And I can’t picture Cosima anywhere near a country club.)

Cosima is in the bath at Shay’s, where I guess she has parked her U-Haul, and Shay brings her a glass of wine. Shay asks her lady what’s on her mind.

Cosima says she has a very serious autoimmune disease that affects her lungs and uterus, and that it’s very rare. (Sidebar, do you think the Leda clones version of the glitch is also sexually transmitted? Or would Donnie be showing symptoms by now since Alison’s infertility means she at least has it a little?) Before they can really get into detail about this disease, Shay notices that Cosima is bleeding quite a lot into the bathtub.

Meanwhile at DYAD, Rachel tells Scott that the doodles in Duncan’s book are part of his and Rachel’s secret language. Scott gives Rachel a pencil and asks her to prove it, and she starts to shakily draw squares and lines on the page. When she finishes, Scott asks Rachel what she wrote, but Rachel says that she will only tell Sarah.

What did you think of “Community of Dreadful Fear and Hate”?

Here are some of our favorite #clonesbians tweets from this week:

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