Once again, Alison cemented her probably permanent role as my favorite clone. Not that she was ever in any real danger of being usurped — I absolutely adore Helena but Alison is just a fantastically written character, both within Orphan Black and the entire world of television — but sometimes it’s good to be reminded. “Knowledge” was really Alison-heavy with multiple scenes at the rehab center and it did not disappoint.
First things first: These episode titles are giving me a headache. I understand that Season 2 titles are all Francis Bacon quotes and yes, that’s great, but they are really becoming a pain to type! Anyway, “Knowledge,” opens at the rehab center with Alison being her usual, quickly overwhelming self. Now that she found a friend in Victor, or at least she thinks he’s a friend, she’s eager to spend time with him and even gives him a pair of homemade gloves but he doesn’t seem to give a shit about her.
Well, that’s not entirely true, he cares enough to get the dirt just so he can sell her out to the cops. It almost works when Alison breaks and spills the beans about when she watched Ainsley die (and didn’t do anything to stop it) and it doesn’t even take much prying; she readily offers up the information because, as I said last week, rehab is lonely. Plus, she’s definitely looking for a way to unburden herself, to fully feel the guilt, and telling only Felix hasn’t been cutting it. Victor, armed with this information, arranges to meet with Angela but a lurking Alison overhears the conversation and realizes that she has to find a way to stop him. Her plan? Call up Felix, of course! They pull the Sarah Manning card and Victor demands to see her. The idea is for Sarah to talk him out of meeting with Angela because he’s still so hooked on Sarah that he’ll have to listen, right? Not exactly. The back-up plan, that Felix didn’t tell anyone about, is that he drugged Victor who passes out and crashes into a table. That’s one way to quiet him, I suppose, but it leads them into a new mess of trouble.
The whole family day at the rehab center is definitely built for both comedy and tragedy and, yep, we get a double dose. Alison’s busy dealing with Felix and Victor so Sarah pretends to be Alison (I love when the clones pretend to be each other. I would still watch Orphan Black if it were just full of scenes like that) and speaks to the whole group before getting stuck doing a roleplaying, role reversal exercise with Donnie. By the end, it all comes to a head: Angela doesn’t get any information from Victor (who, as it seems to her and the rest of the center, went on a bender because he couldn’t deal with the stress of family day) and Donnie walks in on both Sarah and Alison, too confused for him to be totally privy to all of his monitor job details. It’s a really emotional scene and Maslany as Alison truly delivers yet again.
Meanwhile, Cal is still living and traveling in the RV with Kira but soon learns that Dyad must be on to him because the company hacked his computer. They could have his location and he apologizes so much to Sarah. As I’ve mentioned before, it’s hard for me to trust anyone on this show so I’m still apprehensive about Cal, even though he’s a very cute lumberjack and seems 100% on Sarah’s side. But I’ve been burned before, television! I really don’t think he’ll end up on the wrong side which is good because I don’t think I can bear to watch him hurt Sarah.
Cosima and Delphine are temporarily on the outs when Cosima finds out that the stem cells were from Kira — and that Delphine knew but didn’t tell Cosima — thanks to a tooth Kira lost during last season’s car accident. Leekie, as we know, planted this and played them both but by the end, only Cosima was in the dark. The thing is, the stem cells seem to be working and could possibly help Cosima get better instead of suffering the same fate as the German clone. But how does she get more stem cells? By making a very tough call to Sarah, hesistantly and awkwardly asking for Kira’s tooth. In another show of good faith, Cal is really against this. He doesn’t want to bring Kira into this seedy, confusing world and he certainly doesn’t want her to get hurt in any way. It’s not up to him, though, and Sarah is intent on helping Cosima. Yet it doesn’t matter either way because clairvoyant Kira already figured all this out and creepily yanked her tooth out already.
That’s not the most shocking scene of the episode. That comes at the very end, after Rachel learned the truth about Leekie and her parents but surprisingly spares him his life. But Leekie ends up in a car with Donnie. Donnie slams down a gun in frustration and, holy shit, ends up shooting Leekie right in the head. That’s how you end an episode.