OB Rewatch: One Fettered Slave
I wonder if Helena’s boys will ever play with Barbies.
You can read my first watch review here: https://lobsters-on-their-heads.tumblr.com/post/163868739386/one-fettered-slave .
I loved (not very much, actually)
Badass Art. Thankfully, I was wrong during my first watch when I thought that Art wouldn’t survive the series.
I liked (a few things)
You know Art makes a killer turkey chili. I hope he brings it to Clone Club get-togethers forevermore.
Scott coming to babysit Rachel, especially with his little “Hello Rachel.”
“We’re back in the frigid blue arms of the police.”
Felix prancing in on the Al Khatib / Frontenac meeting with a cheery “Hello!” He’s lucky he wasn’t killed, though.
Rachel correcting Al Khatib when he refers to Helena as “the science.”
Sarah’s low-makeup look
I didn’t like (quite a lot of things)
Not gonna lie, I skipped the nun masturbation scene. The realism (of the act itself, not of a nun masturbating and a child catching her) stretched things. Realistically, she should have been quieter, even not knowing someone was in the room. She’d only just started, after all, and she was used to doing it on the DL. Plus, I really hate linking female sexuality and sexual pleasure with Bad Women.
Habree Larratt did a killer job as young Helena. It’s just really unfortunately they did get Cynthia Galant for it. And if any of TPTB claim, “oh, Cynthia just couldn’t handle the scenes,” they could have worked around that.
Mark, again. Here’s what I hate about Mark - His only motivation is Gracie, but we saw almost nothing of him and Gracie as a happy, healthy couple that would make us root for either of them or them as a couple. Delphine’s main motivation is Cosima, but we saw them together quite a bit before Delphine started her “anything for Cosima” phase, and Delphine has other motivations. Also, Cophine had, like, chemistry. That helped.
Westmoreland pulling off his wig to reveal the liver spotted bald head of a BadGuy(TM). Come on, TPTB, you can do better than this.
Westboreland’s whole “the Future is Female!” shouting in the weird round room (that we’d never seen before and never saw again) while Mark paced overhead. It reeks of “this will make a great clip for the preview!”
Again, I hate characters telling each other “how insane this plan is.” Show us that it’s insane, and you won’t need to tell us.
Helena’s flashbacks weren’t melded well with the present day scenes. Not all of Cosima’s were, either, but hey, I didn’t mind because Cophine. We didn’t learn much that enriched Helena’s character, either.
The Sarah-as-Rachel / Westmoreland confrontation. Too squicky for me.
Other notes
“Felix says she hasn’t even cried yet.” That’s actually not super unusual, for people like Sarah and people not like Sarah. Grief is weird like that. Plus, it’s only been, like, two days, max.
Quite possibly the first time Felix has spoken to a nun.
One of the things that makes Tomas so creepy is that we don’t know everything he did to Helena. The imagination can fill in the gaps. It’s better that way.
There was quite a long time gap between Sister Irena showing Sarah the book and her telling Adele that there was blood in Helena’s room. Considering that Enger shot Gracie in the head, I expect there quite a lot of blood in that room, so she would have “said” so sooner.
I know a lot of medical gloves are blue, but every time I see them on BadGuys(TM), I think of River Tam -- “Two by two, hands of blue.”
I have mixed feelings about Art killing Frontenac. It carries a lot of weight as Art’s first on-screen kill, and possibly his first ever. Then there was his softly said “damnit” after confirming that it was indeed a kill. It also says a lot about their relationship that he called Sarah first. Echoes of Beth calling him first.
I envy Mark his death -- not the actual death, but the means. It’d be good to go without knowing it was happening. Just fall asleep thinking about something nice...
Interesting indeed that Helena recognized her own face in the clone she killed in the church. I didn’t get the impression that Tomas provided her with a ton of mirror access, after all. She was probably lucky to have a functional sink. It was pretty obvious, though, that Tomas was totally caught off guard by her recognition and reaction, and thought fast to call her the original.
Helena closed the dead clone’s eyes and rested her hand on her for a sec.
Really interesting that Helena starts cutting (her back, at least) after killing for the first time and “learning” that she’s “the original.”
Kira definitely heard Art saying “Third option, I pull the trigger for the second time today.”
Echo of Season 1 with Helena using what’s on hand to bring something closer.
Ho boy does Dyad have shitty security. I know for most places the security is more theater than function, but for fuck’s sake, Hell Wizard’s id sleeve is literally empty.
That was a damn sturdy tray table Helena banged Coady’s face into, to do so much damage to the head without knocking over the tray first.
I have questions
Siobhan’s letter was moving and beautiful, but strange. Why did she write it when she did? If she suspected Ferdinand was going to kill her, well, hasn’t she suspected similar things before? Did she write letters like that to her children often?
Helena is in Ukraine, but everything about the nuns screams Western Catholicism. According to Wikipedia, less than 1% of Ukrainians are Roman Catholics, while the majority are Eastern or Ukrainian Orthodox. Ukrainian Orthodox nuns look something like this:
The line, “Delphine gets back tomorrow from France” is spoken the day of Siobhan’s funeral. I doubt very much that Siobhan’s funeral took place several days after her death, and the shortest Toronto-to-Paris flight I found is 7 hours, meaning a half-day of travel alone, so... when the fuck did Delphine leave for France, and what has she done there?
Why? Why the dark dungeon basement for Helena’s delivery / surgery? They had surgery rooms in the hospital wing of Dyad already, so why not go there?
Why is Tomas so insistent that Helena speak English?
Is that Brightborn stuff on Cosima’s desk?
Was suicide Helena’s actual plan, or a plan she was okay with? Because really, Coady could have gotten the babies just fine if Helena died. Maybe Helena didn’t know that? Also, Delphine could have told her that puncturing one wrist wouldn’t be enough to kill herself super quickly, and I suspect Helena knew that, too. I feel like blowing air into her IV would’ve been a surer bet.
Does Dyad even have a pediatric cardio-translant unit?
Is it actually that, uh, splashy when a woman’s water breaks?
I would have liked to have seen:
Delphine at Siobhan’s funeral. Delphine present, at all, even off screen.
Helena’s interactions with other children at the orphanage.
