Orphan Black: Echoes: 1x09 Attracting Awful Things.
Who am I? Who are we?
I like how Echoes, although shaky at times in terms of general consistency, has combined the idea of a greater power struggle against technology being misused by a powerful billionaire with questions about identity and belonging. The show would be emotionally empty if the viewers weren’t so invested in Jules, Lucy, and Eleanor’s struggle to find meaning in how they were created, knowing that they’ve either come into the world without memories or that those memories belong to someone who has died. Lucy, who is age-wise right in the middle, has had the most time to create a life for herself that she finds grounding in – she wants a future with Jack and Charlie, her found family. It’s much harder for Jules and Eleanor, who have both spent the last year being told lies by people they thought they could trust and now have to find an entirely new way to exist. Having seen the final episode of the season, Jules telling the others that she has found belonging with her “selflings” (a great word coined by Craig) is deeply heartbreaking. It’s meaningful that her foster mother Neva is involved in the episode when she helps Kira and Delphine dig up financial dirt on Darros, but has no interaction with Jules – it’s like all that’s left for Jules are these new people deeply involved in the conspiracy, and her fate is bound to them – even though she’s so young, her way to claim agency is to fight Paul Darros.
The other thread in the episode is about characters trying to create a meaningful life after having done something horrible. Again, it’s interesting that this comes from Craig, who has been characterised as the most selflessly helpful, non-judgemental character – someone who immediately came to Jules’ help, in spite of not really knowing her well, someone who believed Lucy when she told him about the complex and fairly unbelievable conspiracy. After Xander’s accidentally shot him, he refuses to go to the hospital, and explains to Lucy that he was involved in a death in his youth – an idealistic man, he was part of a group that burned down the office of a pharmaceutical company, believing it to be empty. His guilt has haunted him (hence the drinking, which he continues to do), but he has tried to create meaning by helping others and by getting Lucy back on her feet. Like both Felix and Delphine have been telling Kira, the way to move forward from guilt is to prevent worse things from happening and to take responsibility. Eleanor’s guilt is of a different kind, since she has now learned that her memories aren’t really her own: a flashback completes the memory that Jules and Lucy share with her, and we find out that her father was still alive when she found him, but asked her not to call an ambulance. It has been implied that his depression weighed heavily on the whole family, that it, along with her mother’s early-onset Alzheimer’s, has determined how Eleanor proceeded in her life from then on. Eleanor wanted to spare Jules and Lucy from the truth of what happened (or felt ashamed), but both of them have always felt a sense of guilt over the memory, and Lucy, after seeing Craig shot, has put the pieces together, and is now struggling with the question of what it means that she is based on a person who would have made that decision.
The way to resolve the dilemma is to cling to the idea that they are still individuals with control over their own lives, that even though they have been created from the same base information, they can develop and change into their own, unique lives. It’s a greater struggle for Xander, who, having consumed the rest of Jules’ drug, now has even more memories at his disposal to learn about who Paul Darros is. He’s been raised with the idea that he is meant to be the perfect spitting image of Darros, but what he finds in those memories deeply disturbs him. He learns that there was a previous version of a print-out, who was no viable without medical intervention, and so Paul let him die, telling him a line about how hard it is to be the strong one that shines a horrifying light on the previous memory with his sick sister. Has he done this before?
This memory is triggered when Xander helps the others to unlock Darros’ vault. It’s a new piece of technology that only works if the person using the token associates the symbol with the correct thought pattern, so Xander’s availability is truly fortuitous. The servers contain medical files for everyone in the United States, including the full-body-scans that patients receive regularly at their doctor’s appointments – meaning that Darros, in theory, has the ability to print anyone he chooses to. They find that he has accessed the files of twelve anonymised patients, a fact that is certainly connected to the big launch that is just ahead.
Random notes:
The corporate logo for Darros is the pendant he took from his sister, the same pendant he put on a dying first version of Xander.
Also – if we ever do get a second season, which I very much hope we do: Xander shouldn’t be able to remember the fate of his predecessor. At first I thought that maybe his memories are based on a more recent scan of Darros, but then, that shouldn’t really be possible because of his age! And someone like Paul Darros would be deeply unhappy about not being able to transfer full consciousness, because he would love to live forever. I feel like maybe he’s managed to alter the technology somehow to create some kind of continuity, which would have interesting implications if any of the characters ever should die…
Delphine Cormier is back! And Évelyne Brochu still has the perfect grasp on the character, who is pitch-perfect, as if we’ve never left 2017. My favorite moments were when she ribbed Cosima’s dreadlocks (a stylistic choice already widely considered problematic way back when) and talked her way into the bank’s basement by connecting with a fellow French-speaker. It was a nice reminder that Delphine, in the later parts of the seasons, fought back against Neolution by digging into its finances.
“I’ll tell you what I told Cosima a hundred times. It doesn’t matter how you came to be. What matters is your passion. That’s who you are.”
“If anyone understands making mistakes out of scientific curiosity, it’s me.”
Tom! I’ve mentioned before how perfectly Dominic Reed has played a slightly unhinged villain (he even has a little board on his wall, with strings and everything!), very much in the tradition of the original Orphan Black, and his truly sinister nature comes to the foreground in this episode. He exchanges tickets for a Celine Dion concert for some info on Jack’s unit, tracking down Tina’s house, and then proceeds to kidnap Charlie, whose been left alone with Tina because Jack was needed to help with Craig’s gunshot wound.
