Orphan Black Season 4 Episode 8 Review: The Redesign of Natural Objects

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For a split second during Orphan Black Season 4 Episode 8, I thought Alison might have turned on her sisters. I'm sorry I ever doubted that craft goddess soccer mom.

I'll do my penance by watching reruns of seasons 1 through 3 or hot gluing dozens of popsicle sticks together in the shape of Alison's garage. 

One thing I love about Orphan Black is that the storytelling is always super tight due to the limited number of episodes per season. So while I'd love this show to stretch on indefinitely, I'm incredibly thankful that there's rarely any filler and every moment really seems to count.

Tonight's episode, obviously, was no exception.

I'm left with as many questions as we have answers and I'm not sure they'll all be answered in the next two installments, but hey, a girl can dream.

For instance, Alison and Donnie are clearly not out of the water now that Duko is dead and the death threat against Donnie has been called off. He'll be released from jail, but previews for Orphan Black Season 4 Episode 9 reveal that someone is still after them.

And hey, it's not like they haven't pissed a couple dozen people off. Whomever's after them next week could be literally anyone. 

Still, I'm glad Donnie is safe (for now) and Alison didn't turn on her sisters. When she blurted out to Duko that Sarah would be at the comic book shop, I really thought she'd just...turned them in. I didn't know how she knew Sarah would be there and distinctly remember thinking "huh, I wonder how she knew that..." but it still didn't cross my mind that she might be setting something up.

I'll blame the Tempranillo I was sipping while watching. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

She took a huge risk in setting Duko up and hoping he would make the call to save Donnie's life, and I'm glad it paid off. It easily could've gone the other way and Kristian Bruun would've been the one getting a nice bottle of scotch from the producers instead of Gord Rand.

But it worked. After getting some answers, Siobhan also got her revenge and Duko's dead. Poor Scotty got stuck with clean-up duty, which sort of sucks for him, but Cosima also left him behind in the lab under the comic book shop, so I'm not sure which sucks worse.

I'm growing increasingly concerned that Cosima won't be able to find a cure for their illness in time. Now that we know Mika is also sick, and that it's only a matter of time for Alison, Krystal, Rachel, et al we haven't even met yet, the rush to find a cure feels more imminent than before.

When it was only Cosima, I thought "oh, yeah, they'll definitely cure her." But now that we have another sick clone, I'm scared we're going to lose one of them to this illness which plagues all of them, and I'm scared it will be Cosima because losing her would hurt more than losing Mika. 

We've just met Mika. She wears a sheep mask. She's quirky like Helena, smart like Cosima, albeit in different ways, wily like Sarah, but we still don't know enough about her for me to really care yet. 

I don't want any of the clones to die, but I especially don't want Cosima to die. 

Hopefully bringing together DNA from both Ira and Sarah will help them figure out what's wrong with their lines.

Except I thought the Castor boys were all sterile by design, just like the Leda clones, so I'm not sure how that's actually supposed to work since technically I think the Castor boys would have no sperm, but hey, I'm not a scientist. I just play one in this review.

Bah. This is a TV show where people surgically implant fully mobile tails and a crazy evil scientist wants to use bot technology to take over the world so I'm not sure why that tiny little detail is one worth getting hung up on. (And yet...)

Evie Cho is capital E, Evil. Though I suspect that at some point something will happen and we'll develop a certain sympathy for her like we have with Susan Duncan.

However, I totally wouldn't mind if Rachel's bionic eye suddenly developed the ability to shoot lasers right when Rachel next comes face to face with the head of Brightborn. That's about all I think we can trust Rachel for.

There's literally no way Sarah, or any of the rest of the sisters, can or should trust Rachel. She might be a clone, but she's not one of them, and now she's got some glitchy swan and a man in black living in her mechanical eyeball.

Was seeing the head of the swan on the table right after saying she wants to restore Susan to the head of Neolution symbolic of Rachel's believe that Susan belongs there or that she belongs at the head of the group herself? Knowing Rachel and her motivation and thirst for power, my money's really on the latter. 

She'll say she's setting out to put Susan back on the throne, but her eye, the mechanical one, is on the prize, and that prize, for Rachel, is Evie Cho's seat at Brightborn.

What did you think of "The Redesign of Natural Objects?" How do you feel about Cosima going to Susan's secret lair? Can the clones trust Rachel or is Rachel out for herself?

Sound off in the comments below and don't forget you can watch Orphan Black online.

The Redesign of Natural Objects Review

Editor Rating: 5.0 / 5.0
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User Rating:

Rating: 4.9 / 5.0 (49 Votes)

Miranda Wicker was a Staff Writer for TV Fanatic. She retired in 2017. Follow her on Twitter.

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Orphan Black Season 4 Episode 8 Quotes

You look just like her, except with less anger and more hygiene.

Adele [to Alison]

Susan: You should take up a hobby, too. Ira, have you shown her your toy soldiers?
Rachel: Yes, perhaps I should take up carpentry. I can build us all coffins. Should I start with the smallest first?