Agreed. I found it particularly effective considering that not a minute prior to the hug, Sarah was considering killing Helena outright. (And her reasoning made sense, given the information available to her at the time.)

He's more often than not used in a subplot that serves as comic relief, so it's hard for me to dig into the question (torture, who's at fault, etc.). Those scenes are tonally different from the rest of the show.

I have to commend the show, too, for the way it's handled the character of Mrs. S. At the beginning of the season, it looked like all she would do was deny Sarah all requests to spend time with Kira.

She finds Sarah too alive :)

There was a line from some Random that purported to explain "Why now," but the real reason that Art watched the tapes only now is that this was the episode where he needed to find out. It's a little lazy.

The show got close to doing the silly, predictable thing where Sarah pretends for the viewers that she's about to shoot Helena and then shoots the lock. We didn't quite get that, but it was pretty close. And, as you say, the gun's main reason-for-being was to facilitate that who-do-I-shoot scene.

The level of venom Aynsley showed after the intervention surprised me. It made me ask why Aynsley would even bother remaining in Alison's life.

"Felix" used to mean "happy."

I was disappointed that Cosima, in the end, looked a little dumb for leaving those files around and falling for the Get-me-some-ice-cream trick. I didn't buy that line about expecting Delphine to ultimately be on her side (despite knowing that Delphine was spying on her).

I don't understand Aynsley's (early) motivations. Let's assume she's not a monitor. She has been nosy even before Alison slept with Chad or turned the intervention around. Does she want to displace Alison in the local social hierarchy?

Saline play with holy water!