The 100 - 'Wanheda'

"I'm on a horse."

With the Arrowverse in mid-season hiatus and Sleepy Hollow having spent the last of its goodwill capital with us, it's time to go back to The 100 and see what we missed in the entirety of the last season. You know, since the next one is coming up(1). We begin with the two-parter 'Wanheda'.

When last we left our ragtag band of post-apocalyptic survivors, Jaha had led Murphy to an island where they found the AI who scorched the world, and we open with Murphy going insane in a bunker until finally being allowed up to the mansion where Jaha and the AI, ALIE, offer to let him in on their little salvation game. Having spent a couple of months watching the tapes made by ALIE's guilt-wracked creators, Murphy is, to say the least, unconvinced. He not only knows that her sexy lady appearance is an imitation of one of her creators who suggested that she needed an avatar, but that she was built to 'make life better' and swiftly diagnosed that the Earth had a 'too many people error.'

I don't know which makes me more sad; the severe haircut or the loss of the
signature goggle.

Back at the former Fort Jaha, now renamed Arkadia since Jaha went nuts and took off looking for the City of Light, the survivors of the Ark are doing pretty well. A peace with the Grounders continues as the 'Skaikru' search for the populations of the other crashed Ark stations. Chancellor Griffin is wary of drawing too many supplies from Mount Weather given the risks of associating themselves too strongly with the Mountain Men, and the understandably bad memories the place brings up; especially for Jasper, who has gone, how you say, cray cray. During a mapping mission with Bellamy, Monty, Octavia and Kane, he tries to snatch a locator beacon from an Ice Nation raiding party who are searching for 'Wanheda' and laughs as one tries to cut his throat. Meanwhile, Lincoln is going stir crazy staying in to duck a Grounder kill order, and Octavia is giving him evils for putting on a guard jacket. Indra, Octavia's mentor in the Trikru, shows up to explain that 'Wanheda' means 'the Commander of Death' and refers to Clarke. Grounder belief is that you command what you kill, so if the Queen of the Ice Nation can kill Wanheda, she will be able to defy the Commander's peace and make war on anyone they like.

"It's a grunge thing, apparently."

Out in the wilds, Clarke is living rough and killing panthers. Straight up; we are reunited with her as she kills a panther so that she can sell the pelt for butchering services and supplies at a trading station run by a lass who shields her from bounty hunters looking to hand her over to the Ice Nation. She explains that she is grateful for the end of the Reaping, and the two of them get groiny with comparatively little foreshadowing. Compared to her awkwardness with Lexa last season, it's apparent that mass murder and living in the wilderness like a feral animal is a grand way to get over your coming out nerves. I guess you would get perspective.

"This also is a grunge thing."

Bellamy, Kane, Monty and Indra set out to look for Clarke, but run into a group of survivors from the Farm Station, including Monty's mother, Hannah and Captain Pike. Having crashed in Ice Nation territory, they have lost a great many of their number to Grounder attacks, including seventeen children who went out of the station to play in the snow (thanks for that, The 100, although actually thanks for not feeling the need to show it.) Understandably, if incorrectly, the Farm Station survivors are still very much in the 'all Grounders must die' phase, like the 100 in season one, despite Kane's assurance that not all Grounders are alike. I strongly predict that shit is going to kick off when Pike (or possibly Hannah) kills someone who is actually on their side.

After making a walk of shame from the trading station, Clarke is captured by a warrior of the Ice Nation who turns out to be Lincoln levels of unbelievable badass, taking out three members of an Ice Nation patrol who try to swipe his bounty. He coshes Bellamy when the latter tries to rescue Clarke, then takes her on her way despite having already received a nasty stab wound at her hands. This, we will later learn, is Roan, banished Prince of the Ice Nation, and he is taking Clarke not to his mother, but to Lexa, where Clarke responds to the hand of friendship with the fury understandable when meeting up with the woman who punked out on a military victory that would have prevented the need for all that gassing and then had her dragged across the countryside to ask for her help.

"Of course I'm a prince; check out my coat."

Murphy and Jaha are picked up by Emori, the scavenger who robbed them on their way to the City of Light. Emori is a tech-scavenger, and tries to rip off Jaha, forcing she and Murphy to kill ALIE's giant major domo. They discover that the tech they have stolen is ALIE herself, but Emori's brother is converted to the City of Light and they have to exchange the AI core for their freedom. In the City, essentially a VR environment generated by ALIE in the minds of her followers, the major domo assures Jaha that here there is no death.

So, somewhat unexpectedly, Season 3 of The 100 turns out to be less the Tom Hanks section of Cloud Atlas and more like the fourth Matrix movie. It's still the same great-looking, well-acted ensemble piece we know and love, although I am a little worried that the Farm Station survivors will be retreading the same blind hatred subplot that we followed with the Skaikru in Seasons 1 and 2, where we could be doing something new.

(1) And the problem is of course that leaving it so long means that you look for a background detail on some new character and find out that they're due to die in five episodes, or worse to kill a former regular.

The 100 - 'Coup de Grace', 'Rubicon', 'Resurrection', 'Bodyguard of Lies' and 'Blood Must Have Blood'

Clarke: Thinks she gets Grounders.

Okay, so we kind of binged on finishing this one. I don't think I'll be able to recap everything, so it's going to be quick and dirty to lead up to my final thoughts.

In 'Coup de Grace' the Alliance is gaining ground. They capture a Mount Weather scout and Clarke sends him back with a badass boast to keep President Wallace from looking for Bellamy. Bellamy is in trouble after Lincoln's relapse, but Maya helps him escape. He kills a guard and goes undercover in Mount Weather. Meanwhile, Wallace is overthrown by his son when he tries to stop the marrow treatments and the remaining 47 are locked in. By this point, Monty and Harper are in a bad way.

Octavia: Gets Grounders. Remember when I called the
character 'too stupid to live'?

In 'Rubicon', two more of the 47 are taken for their marrow and killed, but Maya and Bellamy irradiate the level, killing Dr Tsing and several guards. Bellamy learns that there are children in Mount Weather (obvious, really, but we hadn't seen them before) and insists that they need a plan that doesn't kill everyone. Raven works with Bellamy to disable the acid fog, but when Bellamy overhears a plan to destroy the Alliance conference in Tondc with a missile, Clarke allows Lexa to persuade her that she has to let it happen or risk exposing Bellamy. As a result, the missile hits, killing hundred. In the desert, another traveler offers to lead Jaha's party to the City of Light, but instead leads them into an ambush.

Despite a promising start, Murphy spectacularly fails to get
any.

In 'Resurrection', Abby is outraged by Clarke's decision, but Kane reminds her that she learned ruthlessness from her parents' generation. The missile spotter pins the survivors with sniper fire, but Lexa, Clarke and Lincoln flank him while Octavia steps up and leads the other seconds to dig people out of the rubble. In Mount Weather, Cage sends guards in to capture the surviving teens, but an ambush leads to a bloody reversal and several guards are slain. Fleeing the level, the survivors are taken in and hidden by those who oppose Cage's plans to harvest the marrow of the teens, including Maya's father.

"Didn't we have a stool for this piano? And a rug? Oh, yes, and
45 high-value prisoners!"

In 'Bodyguard of Lies', the Alliance's plans move forward and the army gathers on the edge of Mount Weather's defensive perimeter. Clarke confronts Lexa when the latter tries to have Octavia killed because she knows they knew about the missile, which ends with Lexa and Clarke kissing. Raven and Wick - remember him? - guide Bellamy to disable the acid fog undetected, but Cage and his guards have discovered the radio and trick them. At the last minute, Bellamy is able to blow up the acid tanks and the army advances unchecked. In the desert, Jaha's group becomes trapped in a minefield, picking their way through to discover that the 'City of Light' is an abandoned field of solar collectors, watched over by drones. When one of these activates and heads out across the sea, Jaha leads the others to a boat and they begin to cross.

By this point, Jaha is off the res and into full-on messianic
mode.

The two-part finale, 'Blood Must Have Blood', begins with the assault on Mount Weather. As the main force of the Alliance march on the doors, Indra leads Octavia and her other warriors into the mines, equipped with tone generators to disable the Reapers, and Wick and Raven go to blow up the Mountain's power station. Bellamy releases the Grounders from the Harvest Chamber, but Cage appeals to his people to hand over the 'terrorists' in their midst, and his guards start executing sympathisers. It is the elder Wallace, however, who ends the threat of the advancing army, advising Cage to strike a deal with the Commander - release all of the Grounders and keep the Sky People.

I can not deny, this series has some impressive crowds.

And so to part two. With the Grounders gone, Mount Weather sends teams to capture more Sky People and begin the curing of its population. Clarke, Bellamy and Monty head for the Mountain's control room, while Maya smuggles Jasper and Octavia into the sealed level where the population have gathered. Clarke tries to force Cage to stand down, while the captured Kane tries to reason with him, but Cage is possessed of the sense of destiny. Jasper decides that he has to assassinate Cage, but before he can strike, Clarke and Bellamy are forced to make a terrible choice, and opt to annihilate the people of Mount Weather, including Maya and every child in the Mountain, to save their own, the remaining members of the 47 and anyone else who has been or might ever be captured.

Mutant gorillas are for amateurs.

Meanwhile Jaha and Murphy alone reach the end of their road, in no small part because Jaha feeds another guy to a monster; literally, he chucks him in the water so he and Murphy - whom he clearly considers his disciple or something - can escape. And then he leaves Murphy bleeding on a beach. The injured Murphy finds his way into a bunker/playboy bachelor pad (led by the strains of 'Werewolves of London, which start up when he clears a solar panel,) where he finds the suicide tape of a man who claims to be responsible for letting 'her' get the launch codes and bring about the apocalypse. 'Her' turns out to be an AI called 'Allie', who greets Jaha at her palatial mansion and thanks him for his 'gift'; the warhead from the missile he rode to Earth.

The Sky People return to Camp Jaha in a bittersweet mood, but Clarke can not live with what she has done, at least not among her former people. She walks out into the wilderness to the strains of a female vocal version of 'Knockin' on Heaven's Door', carrying the guilt of her monstrous deed so that the rest of the Sky Crew can go on with their lives.

Right, so; that was Season 2. From massacre to genocide in sixteen brutal episodes. The recurring themes of the series seem to be cultural identity and loyalty, what we do to survive, and whether survival is enough.

"I'd probably be more sumpathetic if I weren't so needlessly evil."

The leaders of each group are determined to protect their people - Clarke the 48, Lexa the Grounders, Cage the Weatherites - to such an extent that they blinker themselves to the humanity of their foes. In the last few episodes there are an awful lot of characters insisting that they must look after their people, that their people come first and that they are constrained - the phrase 'I have no choice' comes up a lot - because 'they will not stop' (where 'they' are another group.) Cage flatly refuses to believe that the Sky People would donate bone marrow to help the Weatherites, and therein lies the fundamental fallacy of the season; that the conflict between Mount Weather and Camp Jaha was always unnecessary.

More than anyone else in a series full of flawed, brutal, complex characters, Cage Wallace and Dr Tsing are almost cartoonishly evil, because their insistence that the 47 have to die is so obviously down to impatience and callousness. Their deaths alone felt like pure karma, with none of that nasty moral ambiguity.

"None of us are innocent."

This being the case, Clarke and Bellamy really did have no choice. Jasper was in no real position to make good on his assassination attempt, and it's by no means certain which way another act of perceived terrorism would have tipped the remaining population. Clearly Cage wasn't secure in his power, as shown by the willingness of his guards to kill civilians, and the loss of nearly all the treated guards in capturing Abby and Kane's party confirms that his confidence in their conquest of the ground was misplaced. More than likely, however, Jasper would have been lynched and the processes continued. The only options were to allow many of their people to die, or to become the monster that war demands.

And somehow... they made it work. Somehow, slaughtering an entire population made Clarke more sympathetic, because the show ran with the consequences, and because while it gave us every reason to understand, it never tried to tell us that what she and Bellamy did was right. The core of this is in her talk with Lexa about survival. Clarke argues: "Maybe life should be about more than just surviving. Don’t we deserve better than that?" She's right, of course, but events don't allow her that luxury. She has to choose whether her people will survive, even if that means she no longer believes that she deserves anything better. It's a choice made - rightly or wrongly - by military commander the world over throughout history. Allowing the destruction of Tondc was analogous to the sacrifice of Coventry during the Blitz, and the destruction of Mount Weather parallels any bombing of civilian populations.

To sum up what the series is saying, let's look to the characters.

When Jasper sees Maya dying he screams out that she was innocent (as a note, the Alliance had previously decided that the innocent would not be harmed,) and she responds: "None of us is innocent." A case could be made for the children on all sides, but for the protagonists its the simple truth. No-one comes out of this season clean. Similarly, when Clarke tells her mother that she tried to be the good guy, Abby finally has to concede: "Maybe there are no good guys."

But if there are innocents, if there are good guys, it is because someone like Clarke does something horrid. "I bear it, so that they don't have to," Dante Wallace tells Clarke, and later she echoes the sentiment.

Not that there aren't those who look for a better way, a land of peace and prosperity. But Jaha's quest proved vain, his guiding genius the influence of a malevolent computer. To give the final word to John Murphy: "Your promised land sucks."

The 100 - 'Remember Me' and 'Survival of the Fittest'

"And remember, the port passes to the left."

It's all go in 100-ville. The death of Finn still stings, but the truce with the Grounders is established. 'Remember Me' establishes that the Grounders' own intertribal alliance is rocky, held together by the Commander's will. Lexa has been referred to elsewhere as a visionary, and it is clear that she is assaying a new style of leadership and trying to affect real change in the 'Tree people'. When it seems that Raven has tried to kill her, everything goes to pot therefore, but ultimately her own bodyguard is fingered as the culprit, having put poison in the cup as he tasted it in order to save her from an alliance he believes will kill her. His own execution shows Raven what Finn would have suffered, and she is reconciled to Clarke.

In Mount Weather, Monty manages to splice a signal into the transmitters, but is caught sabotaging the jammer and placed with Harper in a set of forty-seven cages.

The cast await word of whether the show has been renewed or not.

In 'Survival of the Fittest', the alliance continues to be shaky. Clarke is basically putting everything on Bellamy getting into Mount Weather and shutting down the defences; the Grounders are all for having some other plan. The acid fog is a pretty compelling point in Clarke's favour, but her approach is terribly all-or-nothing.

The Grounder warriors are unimpressed with the Sky People, who do not hunt, but Octavia shows her moxy by getting smacked around and not quitting, leading Indra to offer to train her as her second (a big thing in Grounder culture.) In a conversation with Kane about what happens after Mount Weather falls, it becomes clear that Octavia is thniking of herself as more Grounder than Sky Person.

Yet another general tries to murder Clarke, before a run in with a mutant gorilla - no, really - kills off Major Byrne (I totally did not see that coming), the general - Lexa cutting his leg to buy time for the others to run - and another Grounder, and leaves Lexa and Clarke fighting for their lives against Mighty Joe Fuck the Lot of You. Lexa and Clarke have a bit of a heart to heart. Lexa seems to be determined to teach Clarke to be a cold-hearted badass (honestly, as much as the show seems to want us to see her as an emotional character, I think that ship has sailed) and Clarke to prove her strength without going full-Grounder.

Bellamy almost makes it into Mount Weather as planned, but Lincoln has a relapse and that bit goes pear-shaped. Elsewhere, Jaha is pleading a minor exodus to the City of Light. Murphy, once more slapped down for getting into a fight with a Grounder who calls him out for being present at the massacre, goes with him, although he seems aware that the former Chancellor is less of a visionary than a madman. Murphy also gets quote of the week, referring to 'Camp You' when talking to Jaha.

The 100 - 'Fog of War', 'Long into the Abyss' and 'Spacewalker

"It's not murder; it's sacrifice."

In the aftermath of the massacre at Lincoln's village, tensions run high, even after Finn and Murphy are cleared of blame by the Chancellor and... whomsoever else might be involved. It's unclear if Abby is just ruling by fiat.

Following a lead provided by Raven, Abby takes a team to sabotage a radio tower which Mount Weather is using to block communication with any other surviving Ark stations (because heaven forfend that a Chancellor remain in the seat of power for more than a week.) Split up by acid fog - the titular 'Fog of War' - the team make a number of significant discoveries. Bellamy and Octavia are attacked by Reapers, including Lincoln; Abby and Raven crack Mount Weather's broadcasts, learning that the fog is a weapon, and choose to leave the jamming active in exchange for this line of intelligence; Clarke and Finn hide out in the bunker of sex and death and realise that neither of them recognises Finn anymore.

The massacre continues to have repercussions as Kane and Jaha seek a diplomatic solution to the Grounder war. They learn of the atrocity in their cell and are given a simple ultimatum: One of them will kill the other with a knife left in the cell; the Commander will negotiate with the other. This provides Kane's moment of transcendence, as he hands Jaha the knife and tells him to kill him, offering himself as a sacrifice, not to atone for past mistakes, but to save their people. Jaha isn't doing as well, and tries to take the Grounder girl who was left to observe them hostage, only to discover that this girl, Lexa, is the Commander.

On Mount Weather, Maya reveals that she believes the radiation leak that nearly killed her was faked, and tells Jasper and Monty about the harvesting of Grounders. Jasper suggests that they volunteer to provide drug treatment until Clarke returns with rescue, but Monty is pushing for escape.

Back at Camp Jaha, its namesake emerges from the forest with a warning: They have two days to leave, or the Grounders will kill them all.

This meeting here is, like, important, yo.

In 'Long into the Abyss,' Mount Weather is looking more like a trap. "We're criminals," Jasper finally accepts. "Let's be criminals." Even as they are searching for answers, President Wallace's son is pushing his father to allow Dr Singh to harvest the bone marrow of the remaining 47; all of it. Wallace refuses, but Cage Wallace and Dr Singh seem to be going ahead anyway, starting with third-tier 100er Harper.

Jaha is arguing for flight into the desert, with a view to finding the City of Light he was told of. Abby is less convinced, especially when Clarke brings the possibility of a bargaining chip - their medicine might just be enough to do what the Grounders can not and restore a Reaper to humanity. Interestingly, while Abby makes what is probably the right call (there is no way that the Ark survivors would survive that desert with two days to prep and evacuate) it is for the wrong reason; she says that she has faith in Clarke, but she seems more to be standing by her daughter than judging on Clarke's own ability. Still, it's a step towards accepting the remnant of the 100 as capable adults. Jaha - who seems to have a dose of the prophesy - tries to take back power and lead another exodus, but Major Byrne goes by the letter of the law and sticks with Abby.

This too is important.

Grounders surround the camp in force while Clarke and Abby struggle to prove their case. Their guinea pig is Lincoln, and despite a very close run thing, it seems to work. Peace in our time... as soon as the perpetrator of the massacre is handed over for death.

Which leads us to 'Spacewalker', in which we learn - among other things - that Finn never actually took the space walk he was sentenced to die for; he was covering for Raven, who was already 18. This is a reminder of the Finn we used to know; the apparent joker who never failed to step up and be a hero when it was needed. Eerily, the flashback - the first we've had in a while - also showed us that an accident while helping Raven get into space cost the Ark the oxygen that doomed those culled in Season 1.

The good folk of Camp Jaha once more display the solidarity for which they are justly renowned, responding to the call for Finn's blood with a defiant cry of 'okay!' Abby resists, and of course the other 100ers are agin it, although from an outside perspective it's hard to support their actions. Kane returns with an offer; he believes that the Commander will accept justice at the hands of the Sky People, which even if they execute Finn as a war criminal (and, as much as people argue against it here, he did massacre a whole mess of non-combatants) will be better than the excruciating death called for by Grounder law.

Bellamy, Raven and Clarke lead team 'Save Finn', and at one point Raven makes it clear that her solution is to give the Grounders Murphy instead. He was there, after all, and he has form. This, and an injury to Clarke, provide Finn with a moment of clarity. He lays out a valiant defence of the dropship, then hands himself over to the Grounders.

Clarke makes one last appeal to Lexa, but it's been made clear that although the Commander is a progressive leader, she is pinned in this by Indra, leader of the massacred village. If she flinches from justice, she will die, and then the Sky People. This leaves Clarke with just one move.

Now, I don't think I necessarily watched this episode in the spirit in which it was intended. While the death planned for Finn was horrific, the general principle that 'he's one of us' - let alone 'he's a kid', which they are otherwise fighting to disprove - is weighed against the fact that he did something unforgivable. Throughout the epsiode, the Sky People try to claim the moral high ground against the Grounders, but they gave that up when Finn committed a massacre of civilians. Some might argue that the Grounders did the same attacking the 100, but I don't think that the Grounders have ever looked at the 100 as civilians. Anyway, it's no excuse to be 'only as bad' as your enemy; not if you want to moralise, and the mealy mouthed posturing to try to save Finn's life did not cut much ice with me, coming across not as righteousness, but as cultural arrogance.

But the core of these episodes has been one word: Sacrifice. Kane names it when he offers his life so that Jaha can negotiate, and that is what Finn and Clarke both choose at the end. Others find it harder to make this choice, although they talk about it. The planned cull in Season 1 was a massacre that became a sacrifice when volunteers filled the roll. Kane is willing to give up himself, but Jaha tries to bargain with the life of an innocent. Abby is ever-willing to let strangers go, but not her daughter.

Not everyone really gets it, however. Dr Singh calls the harvest of the 47 'a sacrifice for the greater good', and Raven wants to give up Murphy, or to kill Lexa and rescue Finn in the confusion, regardless of the consequences.

The 100 - 'Many Happy Returns' and 'Human Trials'

So, clearly groups in this thing are going to be fluid, so I'll try to be clear who I'm talking about without a constant frame of reference.

'Many Happy Returns'

Clarke and Anya: Our feuding tough girls spend most of the episode like a pair of bad girl stereotypes in a prison break movie of dubious quality, tied together, pursued by warders, constantly fighting and increasingly covered in mud. There is, however, not a trace of sleazy exploitation; the relationship is hard and spiky and genuine. It becomes clear that Anya despises Clarke because she's basically rubbish and still whupped her clan, and that she is heavily invested in proving her superiority, even down to ripping a tracker out of her arm with her teeth and damn the blood poisoning. When Clarke gets one up on her it's using tech (a slickly palmed Mount Weather tranq dart,) but that and the sight of Camp Jaha are enough to finally convince Anya - reluctantly - that an alliance against Mount Weather might be worthwhile (but see below under 'everything is Major Byrne's fault.)

I violently dislike this woman, and I'm not sure if I'm supposed to or not.

Back at the Ranch: Camp Jaha has a new electric fence, and Raven is set to work with Ark engineer Wick on a radio beacon to contact the other crash survivors (if any.) Wick is heavily pimped as Raven's new love interest, but platonic or romantic they have a nice little theorist-vs.-practitioner rivalry. Wick makes her a leg brace and they create a beacon suspended from a weather balloon which guides Clarke home (but see below under 'everything is Major Byrne's fault.)

The Rescue Rangers: Bellamy, Finn, Murphy, Sterling and Monroe stumble on a crash sight. Everyone is dead, save a girl called Mia; a friend of Sterling, as it happens. Finn convinces Bellamy to leave Mia hanging from a cliff while they go after Clarke, but Sterling is already abseiling down to her. When the rope slips and Sterling dies (because, you know, I think none of the 100 has otherwise died this season) Bellamy gets a bee in his bonnet and refuses to leave, because Sterling was one of them and died to save Mia, and because Bellamy is getting the point that Abby (see next episode) is struggling with, that making the hard decisions is about saving who you can, not who you want to.

Under fire from Grounders, the Rangers are rescued by Olivia blowing Lincoln's fog-horn, and Bellamy is saved from falling by Murphy, of all people. With Monroe shot and probably poisoned, the team heads back to Camp Jaha, but Murphy and Finn go on. Bellamy gives Murphy a gun, and we all groan.

Jaha: Jaha is found in the desert and taken in by a family whose son is scarred by radiation and thus outcast from the Grounders. He bonds with the son, but in order to make the journey across this 'dead zone', the parents trade Jaha for a horse, there being a bounty on Sky People.

Everything is Major Byrne's Fault: This week, Major Byrne, the voice of authoritarian fuckwittage, first shot down the signal balloon on the grounds that it makes Camp Jaha a target and tells the Grounders where they are. Wick points out - quite rightly - that they fell to earth in a football stadium. Nevertheless, Byrne gives orders to shoot anyone approaching the camp, which results in Anya being killed just as she agreed to give a recommendation which might have secured the audience which Kane has gone to seek out, and Clarke hit in the face with a rifle butt.

'Human Trials'

Back at the Ranch: Abby spots Major Byrne hauling in her 'Grounder' and recognises Clarke, which sadly results in zero consequences for Byrne. Abby wants Clarke to take it easy, but Clarke is determined to rally a mission against Mount Weather before her homies start being used for dialysis. As if this weren't emotional enough, the Rescue Rangers make it home, reporting the loss of people but plethora of supplies at Mia's part of the station. Byrne of course opens by taking their guns, but Clarke runs in and hugs Bellamy. It's not something Octavia or the audience ever expected. Even Clarke and Raven have some serious bro-hug action going on.

Abby okays a mission to catch up with Kane and bring him up to speed, but nixes sending anyone to stop Finn and Murphy going postal on a Grounder Camp which is now confirmed to contain none of their people. Bellamy confides in Clarke that Finn has changed - like, a lot - and so they break out of camp with help from Raven and Wick. There is yet another charged scene where Olivia demands not to be left behind, since she is the only one who knows the Grounder territory at all. Bellamy simply hands her her pack, showing that he gets that she is not a little girl anymore.

Abby is slower on the uptake. She slaps Raven for helping Clarke to do exactly what she unabashedly helped Bellamy to do, and earlier almost went ape on Bellamy for bringing out the trufax that she's willing to trot out expediency if her daughter wants to take a risk, when she ignored it if someone wants to take a risk for her daughter. Like Bellamy, Raven has some home truths for Abby:

Abby: “She thinks that because of what she’s been through, she’s changed, but she’s still just a kid.”
Raven: “You’re wrong, Abby. She stopped being a kid the day you sent her down here to die.”

I really hope that Abby is getting a clue here, because after last episode's Major Byrne blamefest, this week (almost) everything is Abby's fault.

We heard a rumour that some folks still thought we were,in our way, quite
reasonable. We can't have that.

Mount Weather: When the President fesses that she left, Jasper and Monty are planning to head out after Clarke, but a radiation leak puts Maya in a coma and of course Jasper has to martyr himself when the sinister Dr Singh suggests an 'unorthodox procedure' to save her.

Meanwhile, deep below the mountain, an even more sinister Weatherian is turning Lincoln into a Reaper by conditioning him to fear a whistle using electroshock treatments and getting him hooked on a drug so bad that he'll fight and kill for it.

Kane: Kane plants his mother's bonsai tree and sends his guards back while he goes on to talk peace alone. He gets coshed for his trouble and thrown in a pit with... Jaha!

Finn and Murphy: Finn and Murphy come to Lincoln's village. Finding the warriors off tracking Reapers, they try to sneak in. Finn sets fire to the food store then takes everyone in the village hostage while he searches, threatening to execute a young woman when he finds a bunch of scavenged Ark jackets. The healer whom Octavia held hostage for Lincoln tries to keep his people calm, but one makes a bolt for it and when Finn shoots him it basically triggers a massacre, into which walk the Rescue Rangers Mk II.

Finn is all 'I found you, let's hug', but Clarke reacts basically the way you'd expect someone to react on finding their decent, upright, peacemaker boyfriend slaughtering villagers while Murphy of all people pleads with him to calm the fuck down.

-

So... Man, I do not know what is going on with Finn, because he has gone from zero to completely off the res in no time at all. Still, it's nice to see that Murphy genuinely seems to have changed for the better, even if purely from a survival imperative, because so far no-one else seems to have gone that way and it's been pure downhill since a little girl reacted to Bellamy's inspirational speech by shanking Wells in the neck. Maybe Murphy and Finn got brain swapped or something; or soul swapped.

Of the 'adults', only Jaha, Kane and Sinclair (aka the dude from Battlestar Galactica who is still playing supporto-guy) currently have my vote. Abby's self-righteous hypocrisy is nauseating and Major Byrne is a self-justifying psychopath who wants to keep being the giant in the playground. None of them seem able to grasp that the 'kids' they sent to Earth in an unguided box are now adults too, even the youngest of them mature beyond their years.

The 100 - 'Reapercussions'

Well, that's a relief. I thought this episode was going to be creepy and horrible.

No Jaha this week, so we're looking at our three standards, with the addition of 'Clarke and Anya' and 'Team Bellamy'.

Clarke and Anya: Clarke lets Anya out of her cage and they escape into the tunnels beneath the Mountain; Reaper tunnels. Over the course of the episode we learn that the Mount Weather group leave their almost-dead filter captives for the Reapers, because just using Grounders as living dialysis machines wasn't creepy enough for Chancellor Not-Hitler. We're starting to get definite aspects of horror in the mix now.

Ultimately they escape in the manner of The Fugitive (film, not series) and Anya knocks Clarke out, intending to use her as her trophy to get back in with her tribe. Hanna is getting ticked off with Anya's ongoing hostility, but on reflection she has lived with the (admittedly nebulous to her) threat of the Reapers and the Mountain Men for her entire life, and from what we've seen the tribe is pretty tough on failures. I do agree that I wish they'd stop bleating about all the people who were killed in the Drop Site Massacre, because they definitely started that one, so they just sound like they're whining about getting whupped by a bunch of kids.

The 48: Life is pretty good for the 48 still, but with Clarke on an extended absence, Monty gets spooked and Jasper starts to wonder if maybe he was a bit of a dick. He's started leaning on local girl Maya for info, but it's not yet clear if this will be bad for him or for her.

The Grown-ups: Kane has Abbie punished for letting Bellamy go, the punishment taking the form of 10 lashes. It's clear that he does so to appease the fractious military element in Camp Jaha, who miss the absoluteness of the Ark, but he flip-flops between necessity and higher aspiration a little too quickly. In the end, he decides to seek peace with the Grounders, taking a mission led by a Grounder prisoner and leaving Abbie in charge as Chancellor pro-tem. Given that Abbie tends to make exactly the opposite bad decisions that he makes, I can't help feeling that a middle ground candidate would be good, but there really isn't one.

Team Bellamy: Bellamy, Finn, Murphy and the two minor characters capture a Grounder who has Clarke's watch and question him. In a decidedly uncomfortable reversal, Bellamy takes the moral high ground in this exchange, while Finn's feelings for Clarke turn him from the moral core of the crew into a complete dick, whaling on the prisoner and ultimately shooting him in the head once they're done.

I know that there's a serious Lord of the Flies motif going on, but it's weird how Bellamy and Finn have switched over here, and disappointing to see Finn completely abandon the principles he held on to throughout Season 1. Did something happen that we didn't see? Was there some trigger that we don't know about? Some particularly vile threat leveled against Clarke by Tristan, the ranger who captured Finn?

Octavia: Once more, the girl who was too stupid to live comes through. When her first offer to work with the Grounders to rescue the Reaper captives is violently rejected, she pushes until they accept her and proves herself in battle, winning their respect in a way that the more wily and manipulative Clarke fails to do with Anya. Sadly for Octavia, Lincoln - on whom she is pretty much fixated having abandoned or lost the rest of her world - is no longer among the captives; he's apparently been taken to Mount Weather - the plot thickens! - where a tech directs him not to 'harvesting', but for 'Project Cerberus.'

The 100 - 'Inclement Weather'

The character I initially dubbed 'too stupid to live' turns out a total fucking
badass.

The big news this week is that The 100 has a proper credit sequence. Woo!

For the rest, I'm going to break it down into the same three groups as last time and Jaha, since he hasn't popped his clogs after all.

The 48: Clarke continues to distrust the apparently perfect community at Mount Weather, especially when a patrol comes in, apparently suffering gunshot wounds. Jasper continues to press her to accept their new lives, but Clarke's fears are borne out by a startling discovery in medical.

Olivia: Silly, useless Olivia proved to be the surprise moral core of the original 100 last season, and now emerges as some sort of fucking ninja, taking a hostage to bust Lincoln out from his tribe's retribution. Unfortunately the hostage exchange goes pear-shaped when it is interrupted by Reapers, who in a surprise twist take the men and leave the women.

The Grown-Ups: Kane is set on establishing a base before sending out more search parties. Abby is critical, although given that a team of three armed members of the Guard (whose training Kane has brought up when denying Finn and Bellamy's requests to search themselves) are overcome and crucified by Grounders without firing a shot in return, you can see his point. Nonetheless, with Raven in recovery, Abby helps Finn and the two kids from last episode (Sterling and Monroe) to bust out Bellamy and Murphy to go looking for the rest of the 100.

And Jaha: Having not died last episode, Jaha finds a baby in a locker and determines to get it back to Earth in a missile. The baby vanishes though, proving to be a hallucination pushing him towards survival (later turning into a grown Wells Jaha to talk him through the last steps) and a crash landing somewhere in the wilds of Earth.

One of the things I'm really enjoying about The 100 is that is has few cut and dried situations, although a lot of reviewers seem intent on finding them.

Okay; it's obvious from a narrative perspective that Clarke is right about Mount Weather, but internally it makes sense that the 48 want it to work out, and while Jasper may be blinded by this, he is also right that they shouldn't be making waves. If Clarke were smarter she would realise that the last thing she wants is for the residents of Mount Weather to decide that she is a liability, but subtle is apparently something that happens to other people. A more measured approach would also help her to maintain the trust of her cohort.

With the Grown-Ups, it is again on the surface obvious that Abby, Bellamy and Finn are right about going looking for the others and that Kane is reverting to dictatorial jackass. Look closer, however, and note that a) Finn and Bellamy are actually going looking in the wrong place and b) the loss of the Guard patrol so close to base camp means that Kane has a solid reason for every decision he has made. On the other hand, he also needs to recognise that the 100 have developed skills that he would be smart to trust in, rather than insisting that the Guard are more Earth-ready.

I really hope that the series maintains this ambiguity.

The 100 - 'The 48'

I paint; like that nice Mister Hitler.

After the bombshell ending of Season 1, The 100 returns with an episode ominously entitled 'The 48', and we quickly learn that our - for want of a better word - heroes have been split into several groups: The 48 are the surviving members of the original prisoner mission who have been taken by the 'Mountain Men' to Mount Weather survival station; Olivia has been rescued by Lincoln; and The Grown Ups have escaped capture and soon make contact with Kane and Abby's team from the downed Ark.

Clarke breaks out of her cell at Mount Weather and takes a hostage, but the folks there seem mighty welcoming, explaining that she was just in quarantine and... I don't know, apparently explaining this at any previous stage would have been a contamination risk or something. She immediately takes against their hosts, not just because the old timey world of Mount Weather looks too good to be true, but because they did not bring everyone back with them. The rest of the 48 seem willing to go with it, especially Monty and Jasper (the latter pretty smartly hooking up with a local girl.)

In the immediate case, this conflict displays how much Clarke has absorbed the necessities of the wilderness, becoming almost feral. In the longer term and simply based on the need for drama, I am guessing that Clarke is right on this one. Aside from the fact that their president is a bit creepy, they apparently flat out left Raven behind. My guess is that this is because what they really want is healthy breeding stock to integrate their bloodlines with the superior radiation and toxin resistance of the 'Sky People'. This is the only reason I can think of for not immediately beginning to add the battle- and environment-hardened members of the 48 to their patrol and search and rescue efforts.

Olivia has a poisoned wound, so Lincoln heads back to his village to get the antidote, despite being an outcast traitor. It looks as if this Romeo and Juliet plot could run and run.

The Grown Ups - the name I am assigning based both on their hooking up with the actual grown ups and because Bellamy, Raven and Finn represent the most 'mature' archetypes in the 100; Bellamy's pragmatism, Raven's practicality and Flynn's moral coherence - are rescued from the Grounder Tristan by Kane and Abby's party and return to their base, although Bellamy is almost immediately arrested for whaling on multiple traitor and murderer Murphy.

It's clear that acting-Chancellor Kane and Bellamy (and probably Finn and Raven as well) are going to clash a lot over Kane's age and experience, and his pronouncement that the law is back, measured against the 100's hard-won Earth skills. Currently, this looks to be the most interesting strand of the season, as it is less obvious which way it will go. I am waiting for an episode where Bellamy and Kane are trapped together in a Reaper tunnel or something.

I am assuming that we haven't seen the last of the Grounders either, and his reappearance at the end of the episode (accompanied by the mysterious sound of a crying baby) hints that Chancellor Jaha will also have a role to play, despite being stranded on a dying space station.

The 100

The 100 - too stupid to live, too cute to die.

The 100 is the CW's big-budget, post-apocalyptic tale of cute teenagers sent down from a space station and struggling to survive the rigours of Earth, 97 years after a nuclear holocaust.

The high concept is that, due to the tight rationing needs of the Ark - a space station made up of assorted individual stations that were combined after the war cut them off from the ground - all crime carries a death sentence, but for those under 18 the sentence is commuted... until their 18th birthday. With resources running out, 100 young offenders are sent to Earth to see if the surface is survivable, while on the Ark a political struggle threatens to tear apart all that is left of humanity.

I call it 'Planet of the Hunger Flies'.

The 100 crash land miles from their target point, an old FEMA supply station on Mount Weather, although a quirk of the apocalypse means that where they actually land looks more like British Columbia than Virginia (because after the nuclear winter, the Earth's surface will resemble more affordable filming locations).

The key players on the ground are the rival natural leaders Clarke Griffin, an idealist, and Bellamy Blake, a pragmatist, reckless daredevil Finn, Bellamy's hot but useless sister Octavia, Wells Jaha, the son of Ark's chancellor, and nerd bros Jasper and Monty. On the Ark, Wells' father and Clarke's mother are joined by the ruthless Kane, worker's champion Diana Sydney and hot young technician Raven (who later ends up dirtside with all the other hot young things.)

What the show does surprisingly well is mess with your expectations regarding its characters. At the start of the show, Clarke and her mother, Abby, are the obvious moral cores of their respective groups. Bellamy is an anarchist opportunist and primary antagonist, mirrored by the authoritarian Kane, Octavia is too stupid to live, Finn is a chancer and Monty and Jasper are comic relief.

As the show progresses and needs must, it is Finn and Octavia who emerge as the truly moral characters, with both Bellamy and Clarke sacrificing integrity to perceived necessity in the fact of attacks by 'Grounders', a human culture living on Earth since the war. Meanwhile Abby's flaws are revealed and both Kane and Bellamy are revealed to have compelling and sympathetic reasons for their actions, with Kane in particular emerging as one of the strongest and most sympathetic characters in the series.

The series thrives on a continuing sense of peril, with the characters rarely allowed breathing room. The Ark bounces from disaster to disaster, first as Kane tries to secure a cull of the population, then as - with direct parallels to the Titanic - it is revealed that there is only enough space to evacuate some of the remaining population to the ground. Meanwhile, on the ground, each week sees more of the kids killed, by grounders, poison or each other; it's brutal as anything (the first episode of Season 2 has the title 'The 48'), and sometimes surprising.

For all my snark above, I've enjoyed the first season of The 100 a lot, and I'm looking forward to the second, since for once a series I've got into has actually been renewed.