Saturday, April 9, 2016

The 100, Season 3, Episode 10: The Fallen



Time for another week of cringing delivered by The 100.

First lets look at the rebellion – a major battle between who controls the Skykru which, nevertheless, is eclipsed by Octavia and Bellamy’s family drama. She makes it clear again and again how much she hates him while he lowers his head in guilty Manpain with a side order of “it will all come right in the end.” He’s trying to step on the Redemption Train but after Lincoln’s death (mentioned in passing), Octavia keeps pushing him off again. At least Kane is also a little suspicious of him but it’s clear Kane is happy for him to try and earn his place back – so it’s going to happen. I also think Bellamy’s general support of awfulness this season is basically going to turn into a family drama between him and his sister. Oh. Yay. Imagine how eager I am for this.

First step on this redemption train is when Monty tries to join the rebels after his mother turns him in (they have a kind of emotional not goodbye which is all nice and touching it if weren’t for the whole turning-him-in thing. What is it with this season and people making terrible decisions which are obviously terrible which they regret and try to pretend the decisions weren’t obviously terrible when they made them). Monty only tries to join the rebels because he’s super ineffective and instead leads Pike to them. Bellamy then doublecrosses (triple crosses?) Pike by leading him to the Grounder blockade where they plan to exchange him for the blockade being removed.

Pike ends up injured, captured and taken to the new Heda – Kane going with to try and plee Skykru’s case. And yay we can have peace (except for the dead guards who were killed but who cares about red shirts?)

Of course this all depends on new Heda

Time to join her. Looks like Ontari is in waaaay over her head, especially since the Flamekeeper has left and she can’t perform the proper ceremonies that only the Heda can do with her proper chip upgrade. Don’t you just hate it when new software isn’t compatible with your current tech? She relies a lot on the ominous and-never-right Murphy to guide her (he is alive and in this position of power because of epic plot armour). He wants to use lies and cunning. She wants to use horrific violence


Which works. Seriously, an ambassador declares “hey this is the sacred ceremony, every last Heda before you has done this. It proves you are Heda. You can’t be Heda without it” She says no and puts out his eyes. Everyone is quite happy to let the ceremony go. This doesn’t speak well for her future leadership. Or the Grounder leadership. Let’s replace essential ceremonies with brutal violence! Yay that will work!

She also decides to have sex with Murphy – now I was going to make a joke about further bad decisions – but that’s too lightening this scene. Murphy is literally kept in chains at the moment, constantly facing death. When she first strips he says “no, there’s someone else”. He says no. She reminds him she can kill him and he submits. Yes he does it while smirking and saying “the things I do to survive” which I think we’re supposed to see as a joke – but that’s a literal, honest statement. He said no. She threatened him while holding him chained and able to kill him at any moment, minutes after putting out another man’s eyes. That’s not a wry joke before sexy times. That’s a literal statement of a chained rape victim.

The 100 is really trying to be terrible in every way

Which brings us to Arkadia where Jaha and Allie and their little cult is taking over. Raven desperately tries to resist the Allie in her brain only to have Allie repeatedly torture her over and over after Jaha tells her that free will is totally something they can dispense with and all humans in the City of Light are just tools to use as she sees fit.

Yes, Jaha has literally reduced all their humanity to tools, objects, free for Allie to use. Jaha manages to be even worse than Pike

And can we have an aside here – Pike is apparently running an ever more oppressive police state but he just completely ignores this growing cult right under his nose that is taking over a substantial part of his populace. Really? This just flowed under his radar?

Having made his case that humans should be just Allie’s toys, that’s exactly what Allie does to Raven. Yes, Raven who has existed on this show to be eternally tormented again and again and again, has now become a literal puppet. An object, a mouthpiece for Allie. To compound this, Allie then slits Raven’s wrists to force Abbie to take the Mind Control pill as well… Abbie does and, as a doctor, she advises the whole of Arkadia to take the pill

There is no Arkadia, just the City of Light, Allie and her little pawns. Pike really should have paid attention to that

The one exception to this is Jasper, another guy with infinite plot armour. He manages to escape carrying Raven (for more torment next week), running into Clarke during their escape.