“You
wanted to build a society, Princess. Let’s build a society.”
For
some reason, this episode’s central
image of a scummy and unpopular but ultimately innocent person being hung by a
wild and angry mob based on the thinnest of pretenses seems especially relevant
to today’s culture.
Not that such behavior is a recent
development by any means.
What I’m tempted to call the
“Charlotte Arc,” if you’ll forgive me, really display what the show was going
to become, something pretty unsparing and unflinching, and it does it so well
that it’s hard to see the dismissive attitude levied against the show being a
“teen soap,” or having the lingering traits of one, even among its current and
regular viewers as small-mindedness bordering on chauvinism (it’s hard not to
notice how often the leads of shows that get dismissed that way are female),
simply because they managed to tell this story while still very much a teen
soap. The standard setup of the meek mascot ends up killing two and almost
shattering the group—imagine if Neville Longbottom killed Ron and then plunged
to his death to keep Harry and Malfoy from getting hurt by Crabbe as a
consequence. It establishes that not only are there stakes, they are big
stakes, and the fact that they spring from a complicated intersection of poorly
considered statements and immature choices, and that every action simply makes
things worse until Charlotte can only solve the problem by eliminating herself
from the equation, so much the better.
Much as I’ll sound, again, like a
broken record, it still should be pointed out how much events of this episode
are fueled by youthful ignorance, inexperience, and impulsiveness. Bellamy and
Clarke both gave Charlotte words of advice last episode, and while only
Bellamy’s come back to haunt him here, that’s simply because Clarke’s were too
weak and lame to make an impact. Neither of them caught the import of what
Charlotte was actually telling them, because they weren’t actually equipped to.
Here, neither is willing to strike any sort of balance in handling the
discovery that Wells wasn’t killed by any still-unseen Grounder—Bell thinks
they should just continue with that lie, even though Clarke clearly can’t abide
that (his sudden death has given her cause to only remember the good times with
Wells) and it makes the 100’s unity precariously fragile, and Clarke can’t wait
so she just starts shouting accusations at Murphy, oblivious to how his
behavior has primed the 100 to turn on him and heedless of how cavalier the
society they come from is about executions. When things turn ugly, Clarke and
Finn are powerless, and Bellamy escalates things, seeming to see how under his
regime, he’s on in power if he does what the crowd wants. Obviously, the
cataclysmic near-detonation of a fledgling social group is a common trope as
well, but very refreshingly in this case, central characters are tossing the
bombs.
Murphy, also driven by immaturity,
contributes by making it really damn easy for everyone do decide to kill him.
Without the handy target Wells provided, his sadism gets directed at everyone
and anyone. But it’s a very childish, bullying sort of sadism, his actions the
sort of thing someone who’s been kicked a lot does when they’re in power, and
the showy knives he makes, yeah, seem a bit deranged, but also kind of
child-like, and that he apparently puts his initials on them is more than a
little like a kid at camp who’s desperate to protect his stuff. That’s
important shading. And while Clarke and Bell argue over the value and dangers
of full disclosure on a society, Murphy the one with the real insight—law that
falls unequally on the unpopular and the adorable isn’t really worth following.
He doesn’t express this thought, but, you know, he isn’t much of a philosopher.
Far more than Murphy, though, this
episode gives some texture to the other clear villain, Kane, who takes time
from glowering to give condolences to Abby over Clarke’s (non)death and says
with regret that the 100 were a long shot (then he’s back to threatening to
float Abby and Raven, too). We finally get the chance to luxuriate in the Ark
in this episode, outside the halls of power, at least. It has a black market,
headed by scummy Nigel that appears to run mostly on the Ark’s only renewable
resource: booty. And it’s also home to something that isn’t exactly a religion,
but certainly appears to be some sort of faith, or possibly idolatry, in the
small group that gathers around a bonsai tree and dream of the day their
great-great grandchildren will walk the ground again, which is headed by Kane’s
mother, from whom he seems to be estranged. While not stated directly, that
estrangement appears to be because he has drifted away from the tree group,
possibly, since he’s mocked by Nigel for his past association in the same scene,
being bullied out of it. When I first started watching, I’d continually refer
to Kane as “Evil Dez,” but small moments in this episode do a lot of work
making him more than the obvious nasty tyrant he initially seemed to be.
Nigel is sort of a big deal, which
might seem a surprise since I’m pretty sure this is her only appearance. The 100 gets a lot of credit for its
diversity, there is, though, an increasingly prominent philosophy meant to encourage
colorblind casting and increase representation that holds you should look at
the fundamental traits of a character, and, well, if they don’t need to by
white, they don’t have to be. I can’t say for certain, but it sure seems like
this thinking was used on Nigel, to the character’s great benefit. A Nigel who,
as the name implies may have been initially conceived, is a white guy that is
oily and odious and pervily calls Raven “little bird” as he tried to turn her
out to the Chief of Electrical would just be another loathsome and pointless sex
offender in a genre that’s pretty lousy with them. But the Nigel we got is very
memorable, in part because she plays with stereotypes—as was observed in one of
Community’s earliest jokes, pop
culture has conditioned many of us to see middle-aged African American women as
kindly dispensers of wisdom. There’s not a lot of wisdom coming from Nigel,
though, she’s really deplorable and irritating, and makes the Ark feel much
weirder and more unexpected than it would otherwise.
In the end, Clarke and Bell find an
accord, hash out some punishments that aren’t execution, and despite all the
talk of the need to lie to The People, restore peace through full disclosure,
and things are looking up, until Monty’s attempt to MacGuyver a communication
device zaps all remaining monitoring bracelets. The Ark thinks they’re all
dead, and the 100 have no way to confirm they are alive. It’s their lowest
point, and it pushes Clarke and Finn to some pretty graphic for network TV sex,
even as Raven, who has some history with Finn drops through the skies toward
them. This is a teen soap after all, but any viewer should know by now that
lowest points are anything but.
No comments:
Post a Comment