It’s an episode about mangoes and drug dealings.  Now I’m hungry.

The episode begins with Rudy getting hot and heavy with a woman who thought he was Special Forces, meaning he should have a penthouse.  The woman had already been fooled before by a man who said he was SWAT, but it turned out that he just sold horse feed for a living.  Just as things start to get steamy…

…in enters Seth.  After all, the two were taught to share.

Sarah meets up with Cal and briefs him on what’s been happening.  Delphine is currently in Europe to take care of Rachel’s business, and while Sarah needs to help her sisters, Cal has something to show her and Kira: he got himself a house.  Though Cal may not be able to afford it for the time being, it’s a nice set-up, I’ll say that much.

Rudy and Seth receive a visit for some diagnostic tests and to receive their extraction order.  Though the clones say they aren’t done with business yet, none of them has the original sample.  The order is to clean up and clear out.

Scott comes by Felix’s place to also run some tests, but on Cosima, who is getting much better each day.  Her numbers are good, but Scott is unable to explain why.  Cosima needs to get back to the lab, but Scott doesn’t trust Dr. Nealon.  True as that is, he’s still a brilliant geneticist.  Plus, there’s a meeting scheduled.  As for Cosima, a new day means a new phone.

Alison, meanwhile, is ever confident that she could defeat Marci Coates in the upcoming race.  Nay, she’s confident that she could beat her like a French meringue.  Donnie agrees, but they’re still strapped for cash.  Running a political campaign won’t be cheap and the two can’t sell the house when there’s still a corpse in the garage.  Still, Team Hendrix is in for the long haul.

Then Ramon enters the scene.  Wouldn’t you know?  Soccer moms are pretty good for clients.  However, Ramon is getting out of the business soon since he’s going to college.  Ah, Mrs. Alison Hendrix smells herself an opportunity.

A game of indoor field hockey between Sarah, Cal, and Kira is interrupted when Sarah receives a phone call from Art-er, Detective Bell, as he prefers.  Two days in and he’s questioning the job because a woman came in complaining about an incident last night at hotel.  When Art saw a photo of the suspects, who look very much like the Prolethean Mark, he immediately had to take the case.

Then we see Helena being waterboarded in a very uncomfortable scene.  However, the stress tests soon stop and Helena is properly introduced to Dr. Virginia Coady, played by Kyra Harper.

Felix checks in on Mrs. S., who still feels that she’s lost Sarah after selling out Helena.  Felix has a clean call for her, though, so she can contact her dodgy friends that can set things in motion.  Even though S doesn’t want to, Felix reminds her that she doesn’t get to sit out this one.

Scott and Cosima meet with Dr. Nealon, whose first item of business is the missing Castor clone.  What would solve this entire situation for them is the original genome, but thanks to the Duncans, that precious material is now lost.  See, Leda started as a military experiment under their guidance.  When the military shut down the Duncans, DYAD recruited them.  They brought the Leda genome along with them, but they sourced genetic donors for two lines: a male and a female subject.

Duncan never did mention the male clones.  As far as the original donors, though, the Duncans took that to their graves.  Everyone thought that Castor died on the vine, but both the Leda and Castor originals are lost.

As Art continues to talk with the victim, Sarah joins in and introduces herself as Detective Beth Childs and needs to ask a few follow-up questions on what happened.  According to the woman, when she tried to leave, Rudy looked as if he was angry for Seth.  The clones then went through her ID, wrote down her information, and took a piece of her hair.

Art, naturally, isn’t a fan of Sarah’s random interference- and probably for assuming Beth’s identity again- but Sarah is just grasping at straws to find any information about Helena’s disappearance.  The woman also said that the two had the same tattoo: a two headed horse on the left forearm.

So Alison and Donnie meet up with Ramon to discuss buying his business: inventory, client list, you name it.  That way, they can keep the business running while Ramon makes something of himself at college.  That said, Ramon wonders whether Alison even has the stones for this kind of work.  But, as Alison reminds Ramon, a lot of the clients are in her circle…

Rudy calls Seth to tell him that he knows he’s been glitching.  Seth tries to play it off, but Rudy saw him glitching.  It’s not getting better, too.  It’s time to finish the job.  Rudy starts off by heading to Felix’s place.

During another clone call, Cosima reports on some research about Castor.  According to the myth, Castor was a warrior horseman, which would fit with what Cal found.  The horse tattoo is a sort of black ops insignia, which goes along with the pattern found with Castor clones: they’re purpose raised and untraceable- the perfect ghost soldiers.

Still no clear reason on why they took the woman’s hair, but a follicle alone would be a bona-fide gold mine.  While this doesn’t get Sarah closer to Helena, there is still the option of going to Mrs. S., since she can get her in touch with Paul.  They may be the problem, but they’re also the best lead right now.

Now it’s time for Helena’s diagnostic exam, but she just wants to know about the damned mangoes.  Never mind whether all mangoes are cheap.  Where are these mangoes?  When Helena provokes one of the Castor clones, the scorpion warns are against it, stating that they’ll never get any mangoes that way.

Dr. Coady takes Helena for a walk outdoors.  Helena learns that the Castor clones came to Coady when they were young.  The irony of it?  She never even wanted kids.  Next thing, she had more than she could count.  She informs Helena of how she got there: her family sold her out and decided that she was expendable, but Helena doesn’t believe that.  She can believe this, though: Coady doesn’t think that she’s expendable.  She’s overcome so much and it’s time to find out how.

Sarah shows up at S’s place for Paul, but it turns out that he’s gone dark since he got what he wanted.  S tells Sarah to take Kira away, but Sarah obviously isn’t going to take the advice of the woman who sold out Helena.  That’s a decision that S will have to live with, but Kira shouldn’t have to since that wasn’t her fault.  S is as lost as Sarah is, but she knows that you don’t fight in these conditions- you run.

Back in London, when Sarah was young, the forces against S’s group grew beyond their grasp, so she did what any mother would have done: she gathered her children and left.

Ramon shows Alison and Donnie his collection, which, at street value, runs for $80,000.  Raw cost would only be 25, but he’s built up goodwill.  Alison is willing to pay for it all and 32 for the works, until Donnie correctly reminds her that they don’t have the money for this!  However, as Alison points out, this isn’t just much needed income.  It’s also a constituent list.  She may have just found her voter base and expects them to be very loyal.

Cal gets a surprise visit from Paul, who wants to know why Sarah was in Marion Bowles’ basement yesterday.  This conversation really isn’t all that important in the grand scheme of the episode, but Paul brings up that Cal is a person of interest and has a past of designing weapons and war profiteering.  As far as Helena’s presence, though, the deal was cut to buy Sarah some time and space.  If she keeps on coming, things will be bad for everyone involved.

Kira and Sarah are staying at Felix’s for now.  As they prepare a bath- missing Cal’s phone call in the process- they also receive an unexpected surprise.

There’s Rudy in the fort.  He takes Kira hostage and demands to know if Duncan shared any of his research with Sarah.

At the same time, Cal enters downstairs and runs into Seth, who is instructed to keep Cal distracted, but he starts glitching out again.

Rudy, hearing the noise, leaves Sarah and Kira to deal with Seth.  He puts Seth out of his misery with two bullets, and then leaves.  Cal lives to see another day.

It’s decided that Cal will take Kira with him to Iceland.  S’s people will get them out of the country.  Until then, Cal isn’t to be in touch with his contacts.

So what happens now?  They find Helena and finish this shit.

Elsewhere, Grace heads to the bathroom door to check on Mark.  He’s fine.  He’s just busy burning off his tattoo.  Ouch.

“Transitory Sacrifices of Crisis” doesn’t really take us forward as far as the Save Helena storyline is concerned, but it does give us a bit of information about the Castor clones without giving away everything.  I appreciate that, even though we’re still learning about these male clones, the show doesn’t spell out all of the details through some long monologue.  Instead, we get it in pieces, whether it’s Cosima researching Castor as a warrior or Dr. Nealon explaining some background on Castor to Cosima and Scott.

Like Sarah pointed out, she and the rest of the clones are as in the dark about Castor as we are, so we get to learn about these male clones alongside them, which makes this feel more like a mystery to me.  Like Sarah taking on Beth’s identity to get more information on Rudy and Seth, she’s just making whatever move she can in order to learn something.

The Castor clones, from what I can grasp, are a lot more militant than the Leda clones.  Their personalities do still differ.  We see that Rudy is the more dominant of the clones and knows how to keep himself under and in control, while Seth- like Cosima- suffers from a sort of disease as a result of the testing.  We didn’t get to spend much time with these two to learn how long Seth has been dealing with this, but given how he told Rudy that his condition got worse indicates that he’s been enduring this for quite some time.

As far as everything else goes, I’m fine with Kira being taken out of the picture for now because, quite honestly, she’s been used as the hostage far too often and I’m hoping the writers find better ways for villains to get Sarah to talk other than holding her daughter hostage.  More than that, Sarah wouldn’t constantly have to worry about her daughter’s safety because she’ll presumably be out of the country soon.

Again, the confrontation between Paul and Cal didn’t add much to the episode.  Paul gave Sarah a warning, which he’s done plenty of times before.  We get the little bit of information about Cal’s past, but it just felt like Paul taking a shot at him and nothing else, even if it’s true.  I do have to wonder why Cal expected Sarah to eventually settle down, given how much of her life has been spent on the move.

I am glad that Cosima is getting better and that it looks like she and Scott may have something to do with investigating the original donor information.  It’s a nice little side project for them.

But I’m probably more interested in Alison’s storyline if she’s going to become a drug dealer.  Granted, this is easily something you’d expect from Weeds, but Alison is no Mary Louise Parker and looks to have little to no idea what she’s getting into since she doesn’t readily have the funds for this.  Still, it looks like it could be entertaining enough for her to try and buy votes through selling drugs of all things, given her straight-laced attitude.

Full disclosure: Alison is my least favorite of the clones we’ve been introduced to so far.  I’ve never really been a fan of her as a character because of how unhinged she is, but this storyline, without having any bearing on the main plot, does have my attention.

And Helena, like the premiere, has the worst time of the clones in this episode.  The waterboarding sequence was uncomfortable to watch and made even worse because she’s in a helpless situation.  Like the other clones, she doesn’t know much about what’s going on now, but she can’t do much about her situation right now.

So this episode raised some questions that I’m sure will be explained down the line.  On theplus side, it thinned out the cast by removing Cal and Kira for now, gave Alison and Donnie a pretty fun looking storyline, and gave us a bit more information about the Castor clones.

But really, where are these mangoes?