All about changing the world through storytelling. Change the story, change the world. Lead troublemaker at @wecreatecommons

Feb 4, 2016

The 100: Wanheda Part 1 (A Review)

Some of us have been broken by, it but most of us are still here. — The 100 Intro

The Introduction Or When We Meet Again

If you’ve read my intro to these reviews, you’ll know that I’ve been watching The 100 for a while now. Hopefully you’ve binged through the show so you can be up to date for season 3 (note: all my reviews are full of spoilers for the episode I’m reviewing- be caught up before you read them). You’ve gotten to ride the rollercoaster of emotion from “Will the 100 ever find food/shelter/a shower…will they be able to defend themselves from the grounders?” all the way through the heart-sick pain watching Clarke and Bellamy make an unimaginably hard decision to save their friends. You’ve gotten to sit heart in throat, hands shaking while Clarke said good-bye to Finn, Raven screamed with a scalpel in her back, and Octavia stood up again and again for what she believed was right, no matter how hard someone knocked her down. You’ve grit your teeth with Lincoln as he does his best to fight the monster everyone wants to make him into. You’ve furrowed your brow at Jaha and Murphy, on a pilgrimage that just can’t possibly end well. You’ve probably screamed, sighed, cried, and laughed with the Trikru and the Skaikru (possibly learned a new language) and generally suffered right along with them in a show that pulls no punches when it comes to hard decisions, hard emotion, big mistakes, and real, terrible consequences.

When Wanheda Part 1 opens and Bellamy introduces the story to new comers he says:

“We’ve been fighting for our lives since the moment we landed. Some of us have been broken by it, but most of us are still here…trying to build something real and lasting out of the wilderness.”

It was at that line, in those first moments (prelude, introduction, nothing special right?) that I was reminded why I am so dedicated to this show: everything is so rich and layered in the storytelling. The richness of the story is such that even in the introduction there is not just a welcome to new comers to the show, not just a reminder of where we loft off but a heartfelt if broken greeting for those of us returning who witnessed the pain of these characters….broken, but still here indeed. All of us who watched Clarke say goodbye: “May we meet again”. Well, we have. We’re back, bitches, and I am please to report bigger, bolder and tougher than before.

The Broken Mind of John Murphy Or In the Bunker

If you’re just getting into The 100 then welcome! Here’s John Murphy going absolutely nutter butter (spoiler: he was already pretty nutter butter) trapped in a bunker. I love when the writer start at 100 miles per hour, you just know it’s all going to ramp up from there. Gives me tingles.

On a more serious note: exposition in this episode was a bit rocky in a couple places (I know, I know, you’re trying to catch people up and there’s a lot to tell…believe me, I’m not going to stress over it), but not in the teaser. We get to watch John Murphy just absolutely break apart (hat tip to Richard Harmon, wow dude) and also knitted in quite nicely with that entertainment was a bunch of little leads into the broader story of the season (like veggies covered in delicious cheese):

We get bits about ALIE, like that she didn’t think she needed an avatar. “Why not my creators” immediately made me think of the “made in the image of god” religious angle
We get the reminder hint that she was probably responsible for the nuclear war that destroyed the world
We get the introduction of ALIE’s creator, Bekah (sidenote: who else is pleased to see her creator be a woman? I feel like there’s some great “women in STEM fields” advocacy that could be done there…. “Ladies! Enter a STEM field, create your own evil overlord!”)
We get the first introduction of ALIE’s core command and the “too many people” problem (a classic AI overlord danger, nice)
We get Murphy letting us know its’ been 86 days (who’s need title cards saying how long it’s been? our characters have good reason to say it!)
Sidenote: Do we think the bunker didn’t have a shower? or did John Murphy just let himself be filthy out of spite? Because I wouldn’t put that past him and it seems like a bunker should include a shower.
Finally, John Murphy is released, steps out into the too green landscape of The Ground and just like that, we’ve transitioned right back into the world of The 100 too: messed up, high intensity, edge of your seat storytelling. Brilliant!

Bellamy Blake and His Band of Merry Mercenaries Or The Redemption of Time Jumps

Time jumps are honestly the most terrifying thing a scifi show can do, especially when the season before they took their characters to such a dark and terrible place. They are used too often to soften, distance and erase the realities of what happens to the characters. I can’t tell you the level of relief I felt watching The 100 refuse to do that. Instead, the time jump highlights their trauma. It deepens, it’s taken root inside all of them and the consequences of it all blossom out and through them, in ways that great storytellers (like the ones who make this show) can explore. My favorite examples in no particular order:

Lincoln and Octavia’s search for belonging, and struggle with each other: what happens when you lose your people? How do you cope? When do you let go? How do you move on? Can you? Ultimately, the complexity of the question means accepting that you and your partner, no matter how close, might come to different conclusions.
Mom Bellamy: Listen, I love the “Bellamy is the group mom” trope that exists in so much The 100 fan fiction and I am so pleased to see it become totally and completely canon. Bellamy in season 1 didn’t care about anyone but himself and Octavia, Bellamy in season 2 cared about his friends, Bellamy in season 3 has become so ride or die about his people he may be the only thing holding them all together. He is reaching across the hole Clarke left, and with straining arms and labored breathing is doing his best to hold them all together in her absence. You can almost hear him thinking “what would clarke say?” when he’s giving his “on the ark this jacket meant something different. Down here, it means whatever we make it mean”. He has settled in like a new dad, antsy, uncertain, frayed at the edges, but determined. He even gets gifted a book (calling back to his mom) to remind us that in so many ways he is a care taker and teacher at his core. What he did and what he lost (Clarke’s partnership in leading these people) have wrapped that core of who he is around a mess of consequences, making it a duty, a burden, and responsibility he can never shirk, no matter how heavy the weight may be.
Kane and Abby are basically resigned, aged monarchs doing their best to keep things moving and the outbreak of fires amongst their own people and with the grounders minimal. It shows in their body language, in their eyes, in hunched shoulders. The resignation weighs on them, with all the heft of the last three months of bearing it showing in every line.
Jasper is the most obviously broken of the crew. His grief is like an open raw wound, where the others have patched over theirs as best as possible (not healed but bandaged, strapped together just barely, braced to carry on because they have to). His is exposed, pouring blood, festering with infection because he left it uncleaned and uncared for. While the most obvious, he only highlights everyone else’s deep buried pain by being so brazen with his.
Can we just for one moment take a second to appreciate the shot of the young kids when the crew leaves Arkadia, the kids who stare after them like they’re heroes. Can you imagine it? Someone thinking these tiny children we’ve all grown to love and seen broken and battered and who have suffered so much are heroes? (they are). I just love that small moment. It reminds us that the consequences of time aren’t just more weight, more pain, deep and darker struggles…but also hope and futures. The next generation we’re always all struggling to make life better for.

Horse Races and Music or The Importance of Keeping Character at the Heart of Your Stories

I have just two things to say about the scene where Raven and Octavia race (in the rover and on a horse, respectively) with the Violent Femmes “Add It Up” blasting behind it all, everyone slowly breaking into smiles and singing along:

No other show I have encountered recently balances character and plot quite as well as The 100 does. And this is one of those stolen moments where we see it most. In a breath between plot points (have you been counting? I didn’t, but a lot of plot has happened so far and we’re barely half way through the episode) they just reserve this space for our characters to breathe, and smile, and laugh. And the shadows are still there, in their hesitance, in Monty trying to stop Jasper from putting on the music, in ducked heads when the laughter finally comes but it only sweetens this simple moment. Setting this lightness against the dark makes it feel so much more authentic. Because that’s how people are, not any one thing. But everything, all at once sometimes. Through their suffering we have come to love these characters, and part of why I adore this show is because they allow for that humanity to come seeping through, to touch all of us. The joy and the pain filtering out together, somehow both more powerfully moving for having touched one another.
Less germane to the story, but still something that really struck me: I saw some folks on social media saying things like “I bet these young kids don’t even know who the Violent Femmes are” but there was one person who said (I’m paraphrasing, I can’t find the actual tweet) “From my generation to yours, welcome to the Violent Femmes, kids” and it was just such a lovely sentiment…that’s how you share things across generations. It doesn’t have to be judgmental or antagonistic or jaded. It can be joyous. It can be sharing in something, old and beloved by one person and new and freshly loved by another. That was so powerful to me, the bridging of the divide between generations of fans of this show.

Plot, Plot, Plot Or All Your Faves Are Queer, Isn’t It Beautiful?

In true The 100 fashion, Slamming on the breaks of our beautiful character moment here, we hop right back into some hefty plot that doesn’t feel hefty because of the thick layering of character building around it.

Bellamy and Co demonstrated that they still aren’t great about following orders and I’m glad that hasn’t changed.
Miller has a long-lost boyfriend and everyone cheers (by everyone, I mean me and all my friends). The 100 has been unapologetic about its queer characters since Lexa talked about her dead love Costia and then she and Clarke kissed and pined after one another. They’ve refused to back down, even in the face of some heavy pressure from some elements of the fandom to get Clarke and Bellamy together. Miller is one more in a list of ways characters can come in all variations on The 100 and that’s one of the many reasons I love this show. Like Bellamy and Co not having changed from their rule-breaking selves, I’m glad Jason and Co have stuck to their rebellion too. You guys rock.
After four months could there be more stations still on the ground? Of course there could be. Fun fact: does everyone remember that the mountain was jamming all frequencies when the Ark came down and that meant they couldn’t radio to one another? This is one of those “sign post” things I feel like opens out all kinds of opportunity for storytelling both now and in the future. Chalk one up for the amazing storytellers on this show laying track that can be expanded into all kinds of fun places later.
The looming specter of the Ice Nation looms even further. We are waiting with baited breath to see just how bad these bad guys are. Are they really even bad? There are no actual villains on The 100. Or maybe there are no actual heroes? Either way, can’t wait to see where this goes.

Light at the End of the Tunnel or Indra Returns

Remember when I said some parts of this episode felt exposition heavy? This is one. I think we got what we needed from the Jasper smiling with a knife to his throat in the actual scene. I’m not sure I needed Monty and Bellamy to rehash it. But on the flip side: INDRA RETURNS! And at minute 21 of the episode we finally get real, live Clarke. Things I have thoughts on

Indra is in communication with Kane. Which we can only assume is at Lexa’s behest. Hmmmmm.
Did Indra come all this way just to warn Kane that Clarke is in danger? Why? (turns out, they answer that so deftly later in the episode I was amazed)
I forgot how much I love Adina Porter. I’m so glad to have been reminded.
I will never be over: “Who’s hunting her?” “everyone.” CUT TO: A rabbit tied up as bait and Clarke hunting a panther.

Clarke’s Return or Clarke Griffin is in Pain and Therefore I am in Pain

Here’s a series of disorganized thoughts that happen when I watch Clarke Griffin and her epic suffering (self imposed or not) on this show:

When Clarke rasps “Yu gonplei ste odon” and Eliza Taylor does that still, broken thing with her eyes I basically teared up right there. Speaking, as I was earlier, of consequences…no one bears the weight of the consequences on their decisions like Clarke Griffin. My heart hurts for her. And we see it in the dirt, and the disguise, and the hunt, and the stillness. More than anything in the rigid stillness, like if she moves to much she’ll be caught on the jagged edges of herself.
At the trader’s hut, I was weirdly satisfied by the practicality of the scene. It’s that balance again, that the storytellers on this show do so well. Showcasing the change in Clarke through the normal, day to day realities demanded by a truthful story. This is quality storytelling, it is not easy to pull off and they do it with such effortless grace.

Raven is Still Raven and Octavia Still Octavia or The Cracks Begin Showing

We had some lovely lead up, we had shadows against light, we had the first flavors of the complexity of this story (where everyone is making layered, complex decisions, and living with layered, complex histories) and now, here in this scene with Raven and Abby and Lincoln and Octavia we start to truly see the cracks. Raven is so broken and hiding it so hard that even when Abby obviously knows she hurries away, in pain and unable to trust.

Octavia is so stolidly in need of the freedom the Trikru offered her, she will freeze out the man she loves for daring to possibly compromise. Not to oversimplify an issue, because she’s not wrong. There’s are so many layers to her pain, and his desire to fit in somewhere, and the mess that is the motivation of others and it presses in on them, on their relationship in ways loud and quiet. Again, the humanity of it all reaching through. Nothing is simple. Why do we oversimplify our stories when we could do this instead?

Pivotal Plot Points Or What That “Hmmm!” Sound Means

There is this sound I make when I watch tv shows. A sort of “Hmmm!” (yes, with an exclamation point). It is the sound I make when particularly effective lines of dialogue are spoken or a beautiful scene appears on my screen, a sound of appreciation and surprise. Something rare happened in this episode for me: I made that sound because of a plot point.

I have spent the last few weeks (since teasers and ramp up toward season 3 began) contemplating how the writers of this show were going to convincingly bring the Skaikru and the Trikru back into contact with one another in a way that was not directly adversarial. How do you align the interests of these two wildly opposed groups in a way that doesn’t feel contrived.

And then Indra said her piece:

“My people believe that when you kill someone you get their power. Kill Wanheda and you command death…What Clarke did at the Mountain weakened [The Commander], the Ice Nation is emboldened, their queen wants Clarke’s power. If her people believe she has it she’ll break the coalition and start a war. I can’t let that happen.”

That was the moment I went “Hmmm!”. Like a puzzle lock clicking several moving pieces into place all at once to pivot the door open and reveal the broader landscape of the story you’ve been watching, with one incredibly straight-forward bit of dialogue the writers aligned a series of things:

Elevated Clarke’s place as a key piece in a chess match between two adversaries, also giving Clarke leverage over both, I bet
Laid out the reality of Lexa’s weakened position after the fall of the mountain (consequences!)
Gave the Trikru reason to warn the Skaikru about the danger Clarke was in and align with them to save her
Pitted the Ice Nation against The Commander and prepped the field for war (or potential war, sometimes far more motivating as a storytelling element to move your characters actions against)
Shifted the entirety of the show just a little bit, from grit and survival toward politics and intrigue, proving the two are closely linked and that this story is about that connection

I had to take a deep breath after that scene, pause the show, walk around for a second. I aspire to one day be able to write a scene of anything, ever that opens out a story like that one did so smoothly and cleanly and overwhelmingly. Whew.

Clarke Is Hunted and Haunted or Clarke Is Still Bi, Isn’t It Beautiful?

Niylah covers for Clarke with bounty hunters, thus proving our gut right in liking her. I don’t know if she’s coming back to the show later in the season, but if she does she’d make a great foil to Lexa as a love interest for Clarke. Simple where Lexa is complicated, open where Lexa is guarded. It’d make for a great love triangle honestly, rife with love triangle-y tropes. Notes on…well, everything else besides Niylah covering for Clarke:

More beloved little moments: when Niylah tells Clarke to pick something and Clarke grabs her wrist and doesn’t say anything for a moment and you can SEE the thought flicker through Niylah’s eyes “oh god, is she picking me?” That was such a little gem of an exchange.
“My back isn’t big enough” Remember the “Hmmm!” sound? It has a companion sound: “…oh” which is the sound, honestly, of writers absolutely breaking my lil heart with incredible, raw, simple dialogue. That’s what this is. Painful and beautiful.
When Clarke says “I did what I had to, that’s all” did everyone else have that moment of realization that she, in fact, is saying that to try to down play the demons clamoring inside her skull over it? That she is trying to convince herself of the truth of it? Just me? Ok.
Clarke’s desperation comes across so clearly in the body language of that sex scene, I could feel it in my gut and it made me worried for Clarke. Just in general, sex scenes for the sake of sex scenes seem like a waste of powerful storytelling fodder, so to use that scene to also demonstrate how alone Clarke has been, how starved for contact she is, and tell the broader story….well, that’s pretty stellar.
Jason Rothenberg apparently has said that Clarke and Niylah getting together was in part to completely shut down people’s dismissal of Clarke being bisexual because she didn’t initiate the kiss with Lexa last season, but slept with Finn in season 1. And I just want to say…thanks for that, Jason. The reality of how thoroughly the world tends to erase bisexuals from existence (or make them “straight” or “gay” depending on who they’re dating) is sort of mind blowing and for this show to find a way that fits with the story and is relevant and interesting to counter those tendencies is pretty spectacular in my opinion.

Final Notes Or Things That Didn’t Fit Anywhere Else and This is Getting LONG

Listen, I’ve been writing for a while (and episode 3, YES 3, starts very soon). I’m very behind on getting these written and out. So I’m going to leave out some stuff I had in my outline, but I encourage all of you to comment on them in the comments section. Would love hear all your thoughts on these:

Lincoln advising Abby on the mountain and the danger of that place (more consequences!)
Contraceptive removals and the future of Arkadia
Lincoln and Octavia’s strangely healthy relationship, how they can fight and still make it through like a very normal couple, despite all they’ve been through
Shawn Mendes, The Violent Femmes Cover, and The Pros and Cons of Media Partnerships and Social Media (I have strong opinions on this, I would love to hear all of yours. I thought the scene was beautiful and the acoustic cover so good, but all of it felt HEAVILY detracted from by all the hype on social media about him as the scene approached. I usually love hype on social media, but all the talk about him felt very media PRish and seemed to sink the intense, emotional moment of the scene. Maybe not an issue if you don’t follow along with the live tweeting like I do, but it really took away from things for me. What do you all think?)

I know this is coming to you late, you’re probably all watching episode 3 right now, but I can’t wait to hear everyone else’s thoughts. Leave a comment with what you think!