"I hope you know you're all incredibly special to us."
Dr. Tsing saying that to the Ark kids that she was killing for their bone marrow seemed to hit the very limit of outrageous entitlement. The writers must have given her that line solely so that Jasper could lob it back to her in that incredibly satisfying moment in the elevator when she was dissolving into a puddle of radioactive goo. Please tell me that it's gently wafting curtains for Dr. Tsing. Please.
The title of this episode was apt because everyone seemed to be going just a bit too far and to the point of no return. Upset and disappointed, Abby told Clarke that she had crossed the line. Did she? I think she did. Yes, there are 47 Ark kids (or actually a few less by now) being actively dissected in Mount Weather, not to mention an unknown number of Grounders in cages. But how many were at the meeting in TonDC? Is this a numbers game? Yes, it was ultimately Lexa's decision to not evacuate in order to protect Bellamy, awesome inside man and superspy, but Clarke agreed with Lexa or it wouldn't have happened. It's something Abby would never have done. Maybe Kane would have, since he was the one who did the culling thing back on the Ark, but he's not in charge any more.
(I absolutely loved Clarke and Kane talking about leadership and delegation. Clarke delegated Kane to attend the meeting in her place. And he went!)
President-elect Cage absolutely crossed the line sending a missile to strike TonDC, but he's been crossing lines for quite awhile now. Strike that. The Mount Weather inhabitants crossed the line generations ago when they began sacrificing Grounders to stay alive. Making people into Reapers was another line. Killing the Arkers for their bone marrow, hey, what's one more line? It's true that the Mount Weatherites are highly motivated. They're trying to stay alive and I can understand that living inside a mountain has gotten old. But they didn't have to turn into Nazis, did they? Bone marrow can be donated without killing the donor, you know. Dr. Tsing wasn't even springing for anesthesia.
President Wallace may have followed the tradition of his people in bleeding Grounders, but he couldn't sanction doing the same thing to the Arkers. That's something of an arbitrary line. He's evil, but only a little bit. It's interesting that President Wallace just sacrificed eleven of his own people to do what he thought was right, and Clarke and Lexa just did much the same thing. Guess it's fortunate that Octavia, along with the rest of the cast, was busy in the woods when the missile arrived, or Bellamy would have been pretty darned pissed.
What now? How many more missiles do they have up there on Mount Weather? What will the Arkers do about the dam? It sounds like we're approaching a real mess of a battle in the season finale.
In the somewhat boring B plot, Jaha and twelve followers (how New Testament of them) trooped out to the wasteland to visit the spot where that nice family that betrayed Jaha used to live, and there was a girl named Emori waiting there to fool them twice. I'm sure the City of Light will end up being important, but it would be nice if they got there already because it's taking us away from the Arker/Grounder war on Mount Weather, which is a lot more interesting. Even if Jaha did take Murphy along. I like Murphy now. He's always fun to watch.
Was Emori lying to Murphy? Nah, she dug him. He thought her deformed hand was badass. Due north. New York City? A million lights they flicker there, a million hearts beat quicker there. No skies are gray on that great white way. That's the Broadway melody.
Bits and quotes:
— Lincoln is a shadow of his former self. He was practically whining. Octavia was not amused.
— As they were running for their lives, Abby kept stopping and demanding that Clarke tell her what was going on. The way Abby keeps trying to wrench power back from Clarke is sort of driving me nuts.
— There was a self-conscious art shot of the Jaha expedition climbing a dune in the dark with a huge moon in the background. I nearly laughed.
— Delegates from the Ice Nation showed up at the meeting in time to get blown up. Would that be Canada?
— Why hadn't the evil Dr. Tsing gotten some bone marrow herself by now?
Murphy: "Touch me again and I'll end you. (pause) In a noncriminal way."
Lexa: "This is war, Clarke. People die."
Duh. But really. I do think that Lexa and Clarke went a bit too far. Awesome Bellamy saving the day, or not.
President Wallace: "And it only cost you your souls!"
This was a terrific episode. Four out of four art shots,
Billie
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Billie Doux loves good television and spends way too much time writing about it.
Great review, Billie. I think that Lexa not only went too far but also was very dumb. Sure, she couldn’t save everyone, but why not at least warn the leaders and get them out? Wouldn’t the various different Grounders’ tribes be suspicious of all their leaders dying and Lexa conveniently escaping? As far as strategies go, this one blew, no pun intended.
ReplyDeleteI was upset that Clarke followed Lexa on that one. She sacrificed several grounders just to make sure her 47 friends plus Bellamy would be ok. If that wasn’t enough, she choose to get her mother out but kept Octavia in the dark about the situation, risking Octavia’s life. What a selfish backstabbing at Bellamy right there, I’m sure that if he were in Clarke’s place he would’ve gotten Abby out.
The 47 conquering their level was SO AWESOME. And, yes, Dr. Tsing’s line seems to be there just to create a wonderfully satisfying moment later, and, boy, did it work. I cheered. I rewound. I watched it several times.
Billie, I enjoyed your observation that President Wallace’s line is arbitrary, and it speaks tons about his character. He sees the Grounders as people who are below the Mountain People, savages, animals, poor, culture-deprived. On the other hand, he views the 47 teenagers from the sky as “high society”, as equal (or nearly equal), and therefore he can’t do to them what he does to Grounders. His protectiveness of the 47 doesn’t come from a place of good, but from a place of prejudice. That’s a very clever critique on selective justice seen so much on today’s society.
I look at it a bit differently. Had Lexa and Clarke been given a few days heads up, they would have gotten the commanders our, but they didn't have that kind of time. They had to make a quick decision, and the fact that they knew there was a spotter meant they couldn't run around looking for people and risk the evacuation being discovered. Be cute the second it was discovered, the spotter would have called for the missile launch and they all would have died. Yes, the crossed a line, but it was an understandable action based on the information they had at the time.
Delete*because not be cute
Delete*out not our
Although i agree that Clarke and Lexa were wrong and betrayed several of their closest allies trust they had a decision that all leaders in a war would have and that was the point.. In Lexa's mind they lose that Grounder village that may have hundreds to save thousands i.e the Army from the fog AND the hundreds of grounders in the mountain.
ReplyDeleteThere are two important parts of their plan that have been revealed so far..
1..Is to release the grounders within the mountain at the right time...(Im guessing Bellamy's cage friend will come in handy later)
2. Disable the acid fog
If Bellamy is not successful then they automatically fail, especially because of point 2
Just to complete that cheesy but at the same time kinda beautiful shot of Jaha and co,...He has a white staff and has come on all religious recently..Jaha is Moses seemingly on a holy pilgrimage. He is boring but John makes him a little bearable.
Anonymous, I should have mentioned the white staff. :)
ReplyDeleteLamounier, the situation with the Mountain Men and the Grounders keeps reminding me of how the Europeans treated the Native Americans. President Wallace seems to think of the Arkers as Europeans, too.
This episode irked me the first time I watched it and this time around I didn't feel any better about it. It makes zero sense to me that Clarke would follow Lexa out of the camp and leave any of her people behind. She's been aggressively protective of her friends since she crashed down on earth and all of a sudden she's jumping on a 'good of the many' bandwagon? My mother would've called Lexa a bad influence. And, to add insult to injury, the writers didn't even commit to the bad choice they made. Every main character survived missile attack? Really? Give me a break.
ReplyDeleteTotally agree with what you said about Dr. Tsing's comment.
One last thing. I'm sort of loving the 47 character development going on in Mt. Weather. They had all been following Clarke and Bellamy for so long. It's nice to see them successfully take matters into their own hands.
As someone who has seen this season before, I can say that it only gets more mortal gray. Enjoy the ride over the next three episodes, they are amazing examples of quality television. I am especially interested to see everyone's reactions to the events in Blood Must Have Blood Part 1.
ReplyDelete*morally
DeleteTonDC... I only got where the name comes from after you spelled it out in the review. Brilliant. :) Glad that at least one vowel survived on whatever they got the name from.
ReplyDeleteConveniently the entire cast went to the woods at the right time so we most likely didn't lose anyone of value in the missile strike. Way to cheapen the blow so to speak.
Damn you made the same Canada joke here as I did two episodes before in my comments.
This episode would be probably just as good as last week if not for the deadzone trek, but hey season 3 storyline need to be established beforehand, don't they?