Less Than Perfect

I would love that! Charlotte been having some bad luck with guardians lately with them either dying or being Neolution crazy. Cosima is on the mend now and still seems to be skeptical of Neolution so Charlotte would be safe with them for now.

I guess she was trying to make sure Felix was safe and got a chance to bond with his other family, but still it wasn't her call to make.

hopeless romantic

Almost the last we saw, Felix brought Adele to a family dinner when he had been forbidden from revealing the location of their "safe house" to anyone because of just how dire things had become, then officially welcoming Adele into the family on Fee's behalf.

Felix had been in a tiff with Sarah when he invited her, so he had disobeyed, and when both Mrs. S and Sarah were admonishing him, he got stroppy enough to start a food fight, which was childish enough for me to figure out that he was feeling guilty.

Which suggested to me that Adele and Fee needed to have a necessary fight about secrets he was keeping from his blood half-sister about his foster family, while being reckless at the same time.

Said family still allowed/asked him to get her help to represent Adele to help Donnie get out of jail, if I remember the order of events correctly. And even though neither Allison nor Donnie wanted Fee to let Adele into Clone Club, only an imbecile would have believed that she wasn't putting 2+2 together and making at least five.

So now we're being set up (hopefully) for Adele and Felix to discover crucial information that can wrap up the series with a bow; which is a bit presumptuous on my part, but I'd genuinely rather have the final episode of this season result in either the annihilation of Clone Club or a victory over Neolution that will allow Helena's twins to at least be born in safety.... than to have the final episode go the way of a show like "Lost" which is widely acknowledged to have been made up at the last minute....

Which gets me to asking, "Why was her inclusion in the plot a bad thing, if her half-brother was previously willing to go down with the ship but cluing her in to the reason Felix had sent her away wasn't a form of rejection but rather an attempt to keep her safe from "Sarah's '****e' storm" and a form of love (which Adele clearly needed, when last we saw her drinking and using because she clearly felt powerless after the loss of her legitimate family to suddenly feeling like her past vices might suddenly become virtues...)".

Against_all_odds

I want Ira to go away. When he said "my Susan", I wanted to puke.

hopeless romantic

Agreed a million times.

Anytime a mentor/child relationship devolves into a sexual relationship, there are the obvious problems with obvious consequences, but the fact that Susan theoretically "created" Ira just makes me sick inside.

But it doesn't make me want Ira to go away. It mostly just makes me want Susan to go away so that Ira can get the counseling he so obviously needs.

Aurora Cormier

I actually feel sorry for Ira most of the time, he seems so lost, like Susan is literally everything he has. Even if she wasn't his creator and mother figure, it still wouldn't be a healthy relationship at all

MOOT

I just watched 3 and 4 back to back for the second time, they're pretty much of a muchness, each moving the story on, but not really answering any questions, something more than a filler, but not by much. Cosima may find a friend in Mud, she was evasive when the guards asked her where "he" was and she didn't sell out Cos to Westmoreland when she had the opportunity, though I think that her helping Cos could cost her dear. On the man in the woods, surely it has to be the original subject, from Coady's description it pretty horrific what they did the him. For science's sake I can't see them summarily executing him so taking him along to the island makes some sense.

Good to see S and Sarah working together, S makes the right decision not to tell who their inside person is, assuming it's Delphine of course. Sarah needs to see it working before she can go off on a rant saying that Delphine cannot be trusted.

If Adele is as good at digging as she implies then her return offers much needed support in brining down Neolution and the rather unpleasantness that it stands for. I wasn't a fan of hers at first, but if their trip to Europe pans out then she has become a worthy addition to the cast.

As for the rest, Ira/Susan is just too weird, PT needs to be taken down and the Sarah/Helena reunion was nice to see, Sarah being open for a change. Is PT's old fashioned garb a distraction, surely somebody of that age would want to be hiding it, rather than drawing attention?

Some of the longer posts make interesting reading. I hated English comprehension at school, it's why today I still dislike poetry, and so for me novels, TV programs and films are only ever stories, any hidden meaning rarely ever reveals itself to me. Truthfully I don't really believe it exists, but that is perhaps because of my dislike of comprehension. It doesn't in my meagre offerings.

Aurora Cormier

It's totally okay to watch just for entertainment

BrooklynFan

Finally got to see the episode tonight, after being away all week without a way to watch. I think I liked it a lot more than many of you did. I loved Sarah and Mrs. S working together so seamlessly, and Sarah up to her old identity theft tricks (didn't know S would be such a pro at it!). It was a surprising reveal to see Dr Coady again, not dead after all, and I liked that her explanation finally brought back into the plot the "most beautiful baby in the world" that had been introduced way back in what, Season 2?, and never mentioned again.

Sarah talking with Helena was a beautiful scene. We saw last week and again this episode how in this final season they're taking some time for slower, character and relationship-driven moments that fill in some emotional holes and resolve nagging issues. I'm here for it.

I loved Cosima with Charlotte, but was a little disappointed that her sleuthing was less about her doing something clever with the science (I'd have liked to see her do more with the tooth!) and more just tagging after Mud. Agree with those who said the revelation of the man in the woods was a bit of a dud.

I don't care one way or the other about Adele as a character, but her return made sense to me. She pretty clearly has a plot-oriented role to fill--she has the skills needed to "follow the money" and make whatever discovery in Switzerland is going to be crucial to bringing down Neolution. Of course MK would have been the other obvious choice to do this, but mentioning that just makes me sad again. While filling this plot function Adele can also help to tie up Felix's story. He needs something of his own to wrap up this season, not just tagging along helping out the sestras, so maybe making a strong connection with his biological sister will help to round out his story. Fine with me as long as it doesn't take up too much screen time!

The Susan/PT/Ira stuff was a lot of exposition. I do think we learned things we need to know from their conversations, but it was a bit too much telling rather than showing. I don't mind Susan's relationship with Ira being shown onscreen, though. I mean, the "mother" stuff is totally creepy and if I knew Ira in real life I'd be concerned about his exploitation. But there's a place for creepiness on this show, and their relationship contributes to a theme that OB has explored throughout: scientists' love for their creations/subjects, which we've been shown can be positive (Delphine/Cosima), destructive (Coady/the Castors) and nuanced/morally grey (Ethan/the Ledas). Someone used the word "degenerate" regarding Susan and I think that's apt--her love for science and the clones has some positive aspects but that's been perverted somehow, leaving her willing to make morally bankrupt decisions. Sexualizing the relationship with a clone who she helped to create shows that degeneracy. So while their relationship creeps me out I think it does so in an interesting way that's in keeping with the show's themes.

Plus, you hardly ever see a much older woman with a younger man on screen. If it weren't for the creepy "mother" aspect of their relationship I'd be cheering them on! And I wonder if the visceral reaction that some people have (not calling out posters here; thinking of some posts I've seen on Facebook) is not really about the nuances of their history together, but just people being creeped out by seeing an old lady kissing a younger guy. I'm glad to see OB probing that taboo!

Aurora Cormier

Yeah, me too, but unfortunately that isn't the case

hopeless romantic

I think it's wonderful to enjoy anything you respond to on a gut level/instinctual basis, so if it was me you were talking about, then just know that you have my blessing to mostly ignore my posts, despite the fact that I loved literature analysis in school.

Sometimes, I think it's just a matter of reading/watching the right thing at the right point in your life. I'll never forget just how alien it felt to be forced to memorize Emily Dickenson's poem, "I felt a funeral in my brain" when I was in sixth grade (which meant that I was all of eleven).

Just imagine how these verses (please feel free to skip them if you lack much tolerance for morbid thoughts, but I'm including them here just to highlight the idea that this is widely considered to be one of Emily Dickenson's greatest works, but it's precisely the last thing that an eleven year-old should be forced to read, let alone memorize, purely because the trauma she discusses simply isn't part of the mindset of modern children (although, TBH, I could easily work in a line or two about how they've been part of Kira's reality for quite a bit so I don't think the quotation is completely off-topic):

Which is to say that it's still not one of my favorite works to contemplate, so I was surprised recently to discover that she also wrote a lot of stuff that was full of joy and hope after a lifetime of discounting one of the few women in American Literature who habitually gets called "great."

I'll leave you to decide whether or not you ever want to ponder why someone who was a woman is better known for writing about contemplating her own funeral (or however you interpret the poem -- personally, I swore off most academic scholarship about her the moment I successfully recited it in class and decided that she was the most depressing poet we had studied that year!) or if she's better known for the fact that she wrote regularly and often back and forth with other well-known/influential male poets with whom her family had close ties.

Or, if you prefer, I'll acknowledge that interpreting any work of fiction or art is subjective and that what appeals when you're eleven may seem banal by the time you're twelve, but that there are things that (I hope) transcend age, so that they add to one's life experiences, opening up new reasons to enjoy things that otherwise felt... as foreign as a poem (ostensibly) about being a corpse who is about to be buried still feels to me.

MOOT

One among others, they make for an interesting read, though much of what's said in yours and others is somewhat over my head. English wasn't my favourite subject at school and it's certainly something that I've always struggled with. I love reading, words and their origins fascinate me, but putting it into use on paper I have difficulty with. I much prefer the hard facts of science and maths.

From one of your earlier post I think we are contemporaries, a little older than most on here. That poem, well it doesn't inspire me to read her body of work, but then as I said I'm not a fan of poetry. I mean no offence to those who like her work.

hopeless romantic

I genuinely wasn't trying to convert anyone to a love of poetry through that post, since that's probably the last poem I'd choose (as I said, I only recently discovered that she wrote stuff that I actually kinda... admire).

I can think of lots of other "poetic" stuff that's a lot more... pleasant to contemplate, such as simple nursery rhymes, as a way of saying that there are easily recognizable patterns that occur in most poetry written in the English language, but those same patterns also occur in every other language known to humankind, meaning that it's a lot easier to memorize something that has an obvious rhyme scheme than it is to memorize normal "dialog," which is the reason, all these years later, that I remember a poem I didn't like at the time and that still makes me shudder.

IOW, poetry isn't always inherently meaningful, let alone being deeply meaningful to everyone who is forced to read any given poem.

A lot of the time, though, it's more inherently memorable than stuff that doesn't have a predictable pattern of syllables and rhymes, so that sometimes even cereal and used car commercials use "jingles" that employ aspects of poetry as ways to get people to remember them, even though they're not remotely "deep."

And yeah, I like science and math much more than that poem too, but I'm betting that, along with you guessing my age, that you're from the UK, since you refer to "maths," to which I say, let's just head over to the pub and forget about anything I've said/you've said and just get *****faced, lol.

_________________


What I really love is the newest post about the Helena/Sarah scene in episode four, which only seems to be available on the show's Twitter feed. Seeing Tatiana tear up about how brilliant Kathryn Alexandre is in every scene we've never seen just... broke that self-conscious bit that's at the heart of everything I do that causes me to doubt myself:

https://twitter.com/orphanblack