Less Than Perfect

Sorry, similarly painful situations. I don't need to see her in any more pain this season. Even if this pain will bring her the babies.

Aurora Cormier

Oh right, I agree

Less Than Perfect

Guess it didn't take long before Helena got herself into a sticky situation.

I didn't mean to make that pun but now that I've typed it out I'm going to leave it there.

Aurora Cormier

Aurora Cormier

“But they are their own people. I have no control over what form they will take. Their health, the shape of their noses, they are appear so they will be children by chance. And they will be my little miracles. They have to decide that horror I’ve been trying to figure out for so long. How far we have come. How long will this road takes? And all…” x

hopeless romantic

Is that the translation of what Helena was writing?

OMG. I was already so terrified for Helena's bebies. After seeing how her instincts to protect brother-sestra Donnie put her in danger of losing them, my first thought (hopefully this is not a spoiler because I'm not sure I could bear it if it turns out to be her solution to being sidelined by incipient motherhood!!!!) was that the reason she was hiding in a convent, despite the horrors of her formative years, so I was actually afraid that she might choose, for their sakes, to turn her back against a lifetime of pent-up fury against her surrogate mother and atone for having murdered her by offering her own children up for adoption.

I honestly don't have a clue how the sestras are supposed to come out of this season alive, let alone how Helena can give birth and try to bond and breast-feed and still fulfill the role of avenging angel that has so often been the difference between life and death for Clone Club since season two.

As much as I enjoyed seeing Alison step up to the plate, and as confident as I am that she's much better with a gun than Donnie will ever be, Rachel's newfound interest in the DNA of Helena's childers is rather terrifying (which, I suppose, makes Helena's choice of hiding in a convent strangely... rational, since I would always have believed that would have been the last place she'd seek refuge).

It also concretely reminds me of the biblical story of Rachel, who was barren, so that she forced her husband, Joseph, to have sex with her slave (this story is imbued with absolutely no ambiguity in the book, The Handmaid's Tale which now has a very uncomfortable nexis with OB in that Kristian Bruun has recently acted in the current serialization of the book), whereas, in Greek mythology (and we do know that TPTB behind OB love their Ledas and their Castors!!!) by potentially placing Helena (who I've always assumed to have been named after Helen of Troy, who was the mother of Leda in some versions, and the mother of Castor -- and in other stories, also the daughter of Leda, since it can't be an old enough myth unless there are variant stories that deny agency to women in even the events of their pregnancies and the naming of their children!!!) -- so if all of that uncertainty does/doesn't creep you out enough with the incestuousness of the underlying mythos, then I encourage you to look up a song called, "I'm my own Grandpa" to suddenly feel like all of the lyrics make OB's genelogies seem... like Helena's fears about the DNA of her bebies, let alone their futures in a world ordered by Neolutionists is just another example of -- that hated word, "the patriarchy," (and yes, I know that I'm hyperventilating and talking too fast, but the mind-twist of Helena only now being close to have viable children, at the same moment that Sarah (again, a biblical name and... just to twist the underlying incest knife a bit, the half-sister of Abraham and thus the grandmother of Joseph -- not to mention that there's a lot more to the ugliness of the later story involved with Abraham being willing to "sell" her into the Pharaoh's harem) was most recently seen to be badly injured by her encounter with Rachel (sorry, but the pun of the knife twist seems inescapable since that single action really nauseated me in the season 4 finale...), and Alison is "taking a break" from "her rock" while Cosima seems to be operating almost entirely on her own, which seems to leave... Krystal?!? as Clone Club's best backup, at least until Helena recovers from her episiotomy...)).

UGH!!!!!

I desperately hope that the writers can limit the clone deaths this season to MK and maybe Rachel, but it's very hard for me to figure out how Clone club can survive without the skills of all of the sestras, let alone how they can manage protecting their most vulnerable members, and I currently see both Helena and her bebies as being the characters who are not only at the greatest immanent threat, but I can't see how "normal" scientists (AKA, people who are into genetics but aren't even remotely Neolutionists) wouldn't want to study children who seem to have healed in utero in a matter of hours.

Aurora Cormier

I know I'm sure Helena would kill Rachel if she even came close to the babies, though.


I love all those references you pointed out, they mention the Leda/Castor myth in the OB book that I'm reading

Less Than Perfect

It's good to see Helena so calm and at ease for once. I liked the little we saw of her this episode but they really downplayed the extent of Helena's cutting.

Simon Spier

So much love for Helena.

Aurora Cormier

Yeah, well, they had years to deal with that and chose to spend time on her eating habits instead

Less Than Perfect

Yeah. They really haven't done much with Helena since S1.

hopeless romantic

I can't disagree more.

The Clone Club dance party was the season finale for season two, and I thought it was epic, but just in that single season, we got Helena attempting to bond with Gracie, even though Gracie considered her to be an abomination, then escaping, reaching Sarah just in time to save her from Daniel only to terrify Sarah by drawing her into an embrace, then giving Sarah and Art clues to "Swan Man" and attempting to kill "Dirty Paul," only to be talked down by her "sestra," their epic road trip, her decision to undergo the IVF that followed the rape of her ovaries because she wanted to have bebies....

I could go on and on to compliment the writers and the performers who have worked with Tat to create a rounded version of what happens to the psyche of someone who was trained to be an assassin and taught to hate everyone who looks like you and been caged like an animal when you try to believe in yourself, but for me, the most exquisite/painful moment came when, after she had been annoying Allison, Donnie sat her down and explained how hard it was for Allison to love Helena because Allison had wanted her own babies, so sometimes she was jealous, and Helena decided to leave the wonders of eating whenever she wanted to and wearing Allison's clothes and making soap and feeling like she was a part of a family and even made a grave for her embryos just to make things easier for Allison.

I could go on and on, from the facts that she returned to "rescue" Sarah from Castorland, then managed to forgive Mrs. S for the worst sort of deliberate betrayal I can imagine would force me to disagree, but I'll just end with a mention of the most beautiful scene I think I've ever seen in the show, which was Sarah asking Helena to forgive her for her neglect and Helena's easy, gracious answer, "Yes."

Aurora Cormier

When's the Helena episode, btw?

Less Than Perfect

I wonder if it's next week's episode?

I'll give you the Swan Man clues but since S1 they've mostly only brought out Helena when they want someone dead. In similar ways to Alison and Rachel, Helena has only really done the same things she's always done which is unfortunately kill people. She hasn't been given a big overarching storyline.

hopeless romantic

They've done a lot of work on socializing her throughout the series.

It started with Gracie, when Helena told her that she shouldn't have the baby if she didn't want it (which surprised me quite a bit, even though we know Helena loves children and was raised into an uber-devout version of Catholicism), and even though we also know that Gracie tried to kill her, so she didn't really have any responsibility to be kind to someone who had only ever treated her as an "abomination."

That was followed by Sarah bringing her home to meet Fee and, with a bit of work, she was told that she had to be nice to him because he was "brother sestra," followed by her meeting Alison and Cosima and being transformed by being welcomed by them (as she said in that wonderful scene between her and Sarah just in 5x05).

I could give a lot more examples, but I'll just bring in all of the wonderful bonding moments she's had with Donnie.

I realize that he's not exactly a popular character on this board, so I suppose there's a chance that people are just skipping those scenes? in which case I encourage you to rethink, just because they're the scenes where you can most see how Helena has been blooming under the bonds of trust she's gained by knowing that she can fit into an immensely supportive, nurturing relationship with people who accept her for precisely who and what she is, and if she says/does something that's not socially appropriate (which is kinda the definition of what it meant to be Helena most of the time), Donnie in particular is willing to patiently work with her on her social skills so that she probably still pours sugar on her food, but she seems to have a much better grasp on what it will take for her to be a good mother.