Orphan Black: Echoes Season 1 Episode 7 Review: The Dog’s Honest Truth

Orphan Black: Echoes Season 1 Episode 7, “The Dog’s Honest Truth” offers a slower-paced outing but keeps up the show’s momentum in building emotional investment.

Kira continues to deal with the fallout of her choices when Lucy’s surprise visit tunes Eleanor into the truth. You want to feel bad for her but she sounds more and more like a mad scientist.

Keely Hawes’ vulnerable delivery of such unhinged dialogue makes her stand out as an anti-hero. She genuinely wants to help Lucy and Jules but seems incapable of accepting her fault for what she’s done to her family. 

To Eleanor’s point, shouldn’t she have known better after her childhood? If the show is trying to say grief warps you beyond recognition, then message received. 

The most surprising part of the episode is the impact Lucas has. The poor boy has to learn his mother died and is now a clone, which is not an easy thing to accept. 

Before the purpose of having Lucas as a part of the story wasn’t clear, but he’s the only normal person in this mess. His reactions speak even more than the ones we see from the clones or Kira because he can react from a place of true naiveity and sanity. 

At least Lucy keeps her head in the game in wanting to rescue Jules. I sort of enjoy Lucy getting to go back into “psycho-mode” when she confronts Jules’ creepy therapist Dr. Teller (also Krysten Ritter looks badass in her Jason Bourne-esque turtleneck).

Dr. Teller reminds me a lot of the cult-y neolution people in the original series. She has an idol workshop of Darros that’s sadly all too common in how figures like him are treated now, as scientist gods instead of corrupt billionaires. 

On the compound, things are less tense, at least initially. The would-be love story of Jules and Xander veers a little into cliche territory. Just look at the framing of them lying side by side in the print tank.

Fortunately, Jules is no manic pixie dream girl here to save Xander. Instead, she drugs him with her custom concoction and tries to escape, because like her older counterpart, she is a wild card. 

Xander having a drug-induced flashback of a little sister and Darros’ subsequent rejection for his failure to tame Jules does humanize him some, but the show is already testing our empathy with a new print-out each week. He may have to formally join the rebel alliance of print-outs to get back in our good graces. 

Last episode it seemed like Eleanor would be the missing piece to everything, and that sort of turns out to be true. Not only does she unravel the mystery of Lucy and Jules shared dream (which is a sad but anti-climatic story about her father killing himself) but she also proves a valuable ally. 

The printouts are fighting back led by an escaped Jules who outwits Tom who is following her. Darros may treat them like science projects but they aren’t, and seeing them take power back is satisfying.

A cliffhanger on Darros’ big plans that Kira learns from Josh’s computer ratchets up the tension for the final stretch of episodes. 

What did you think of this episode of Orphan Black: Echoes? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

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Orphan Black: Echoes airs Sundays at 10/9c on AMC and BBC America.

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