“What
do you say, Abby? Are you ready to see your daughter again?”
So
I’ve written about death, survival, morality, and the meaning of such things in
the show because they’re handy and noteworthy things to grab a hold of, but
they aren’t where the real pleasure of watching the show comes from. It’s a
pleasure to watch because it’s really goddamn exciting and thrilling. And it
just so happens that my two favorite moments of thrill come in this episode.
Firstly, we have Bellamy’s big
speech. Big rallying battle speeches have been a much beloved trope (or cliché)
since at least the day Prince Hal made big promises at Agincourt, and probably
well before that, but I’d trace their modern form to Braveheart, which set the standards, and later The Lord of the Rings movies, which kinda perfected those standards,
and is what I feel all everyone is subsequently aping. You know how that aping
goes—guy stands before the assembled troops, offers some poetic platitudes
about how awesome the assembled troops are, invokes high-minded ideals of
freedom and liberation and democracy (even if or perhaps especially if the
speaker hails from a culture that would find modern democratic ideals of
egalitarianism and self-rule preposterous), and eventually the violence (which is what we’re here for) actually
starts. Obviously, they rather suck much of the time, but writers love them,
and actors love them too, even though they are very rarely as rallying and
exciting as they’re meant to be.
Bellamy’s big speech is great,
though. Why? Well, for one, the music. It’s not great music, mind you, I know
full well that it’s very obvious and more than a bit uninspired, but what can I
say, I’m an easy mark, and it’s propulsive, so it does the job. Anyway, no,
what I think makes it truly effective is that it isn’t full of platitudes, or at least not empty ones. He’s actually
saying something specific and pointed to the 100—this isn’t a speech that
happens because, hey, there should be a speech. It’s pre-battle only in the
sense that it comes before a battle, but everyone isn’t lined up for a fight
(at which point you’d hope everyone involved understood the reasons they were
about to fight, at least in theory), and because there’s an alternative, a damn
credible one. I mean, it may be Finn’s alternative, but it’s also Clarke’s and
it’s backed up by Lincoln, so I was sold, and it’s to not fight and run for the
sea instead.
The speech Bellamy gives in response
isn’t about inspiring the 100 to stand for some vague, high-minded ideal (good
thing, because they are a pretty un-high-minded lot), but rather to get them to
rethink how they see themselves in light of a very simple fact: once they left
the Ark, there was no turning back, and by virtue of being on the ground, they’re
now Grounders, too. Since this isn’t a group very likely to sit and listen in
reverence, one of the assembly jumps in to point out they’re also Grounders
with guns. It’s a very rare speech that actually convinced me along with the
characters. Hellz yes, let’s fight!
And then, Clarke swoops in and steals Bellamy’s speech right the fuck out
from under him! Before he even knows it’s happening! It’s awesome, she hits
him with speech judo, redirecting the momentum he’s given the crew in the
direction she wants it to go, and she does it without appearing to contradict
him or giving him any reason to intervene until it’s too late. When it’s all
over, she even gives him a “Fucken what?” look. Clarke does a fair number of
bad ass things, but this might be my favorite.
But my favorite moment, the one that
really gets me pumped, comes at the end. The Ark survivors now have time to
take stock of their home’s condition, and that condition is “dead.” Precious
little oxygen remains, so rationing ends and everyone is told to make the most
of their final hours. Notably, for Abby and Kane, this means remaining at work
which is futile, but rather ennobling, but just to emphasize, is futile, and is
also fairly sad—are they expressing their true purposes, or has Ark life left
them so unfulfilled, they can’t think of what to do now that they’re ending? But
Jaha inadvertently ends up in the one place Wells and Clarke can help—watching home
movies, which is where he gets his radical idea. They don’t need another exodus
ship, because they’re already aboard one.
Love it. The Ark was a compelling
but rather limited setting, and its time was clearly at an end, so why not
bring it down as audaciously as possible? And it is pretty audacious, Kane,
Sinclair, and Abby all seem pretty aghast and shocked at the suggestion. But
Jaha remains so certain and casual, it’s fairly awesome to behold, he’s even a
little smug about it, asking (unmaliciously) if Kane has a better idea. This is
pretty much without contest the coolest Jaha has ever been. As scenes that
smash cut into a “To Be Continued” go, this is pretty first rate.
But the thrills this moment offers
isn’t, or at least isn’t just, the promise of a kick-ass action bit, but of an
irrevocable shift in the status quo, and all sorts of new, fresh story avenues
to explore. That’s a really great feeling.
Those are two events in a really
goddamn eventful episode, one that already complicated the 100’s world and
state quite a bit. There’s Monty’s continued disappearance, taken by something
that seems utterly new and foreign, the arrival of bloodthirsty and
eyebrow-deficient Tristan, an agent of the mysterious Commander and a stark
contrast to the sympathetic but doomed guard Clarke killed last time, and the
discovery of the creepy, cannibalistic Reapers (here, incidentally, Lincoln
solidifies his bad-assitude with moral clarity and by getting shot with an
arrow, not saying anything about it, and treating the treatment of the wound as
an inconvenience), and mostly, Murphy.
I alluded to the concept of the “useful
psycho” when Clarke first convinced Bell that Murphy should stick around, and
it seems to me to be an aspect of post-9/11 madness best exhibited by, well,
noted season 7 Buffy shitshow “Get It
Done,” wherein Buffy, hero, yearns for the days her best friend and sometime
lover were still vicious murderers because we’re at war, dammit, and that’s
what we need. And more or less, that’s also how Clarke justified Murphy’s clemency—“We
need the numbers.” Now, we’re not in a full bore allegory here, The 100 is not repudiating Bush II-era
military recruitment policy directly, but I do think the Murphy story here has
resonance among the armchair philosopher generals of that era as a vicious
element in a society which that society thinks it can harness against The
Enemy. As it turns out, maybe Murphy wants to wreak vengeance upon the
Grounders, but he’s perfectly happy to wreak vengeance upon his own, who also
wronged him pretty badly. In trying to harness Murphy’s trauma (and in the
process not trying much to mitigate it), some unknown number of the 100 get
murdered, both Jasper and Bellamy are nearly killed, Raven gets critically
injured, a bunch of their gunpowder and a few bullets get wasted, they are
temporarily sealed out of their best shelter, and lots of time is lost.
No, Murphy is not a metaphor for the
returning war vet at all. But he does highlight the dangers of thinking you can
simply turn those wronged by your society loose on your adversaries without
consequence.
No comments:
Post a Comment