The 100...episode 3.5 - Hakeldama

[shadowkat]

Well, I went online and found an interview with the actor portraying Bellamy, and the writer, which explains what they are doing with the character this season. Because it felt a bit like they were flipping him backwards. When in reality, they were having him struggle with two leadership models, the pragmatic one espoused by Kane, and the emotional one espoused by Pike. He was always a fighter or solider, and this season...he's come face to face with his old mentor and teacher, who speaks to his emotions. The actor is rather interesting -- the show's violence bothers him and he's had to walk out of scenes to clear his head. He can't stand guns or any of that, while his character is the opposite. Now that's acting. And he's gotten good at playing the dilemma - or internal war over which side he should go with. He doesn't see either as good or bad per se, so much as which is more likely to result in their survival.

In the episode Hakeldama, it is ironically Clarke's discussion with Bellamy that inspires her to ask Lexa to change her ways. It is also to a degree, her discussion with Kane and Abby, when Octavia and Clark tell them to hand over Pike - for the Grounders to achieve justice and peace, and Kane and Abby state -- "that is not our way." Octavia responds..."maybe it's time we started changing our ways."

Meanwhile we have Allia hovering with Thelonious in the background, Allia had set off all the bombs - destroyed the world - in response to what had been going on back then, and is happening again, now.

Pike's speeches to the Arkadians are eerily similar to Donald Trump's current rhetoris of us vs them, let's build walls between us. It's a pure emotional response to pain and suffering, fueled by fear, guilt, and hate. Pike had lost half his crew, farmers, not fighters, to grounders. Then, the other half in Mount Weather, as did Bellamy, when they went off on a wild-goose chase to save people.
They are reacting on pure emotion at the moment - similar in a way to Finn in S2. Bellamy also felt abandoned by Clarke, he wasn't ready to take the reigns quite yet, and pushed around by Kane.

I still think this story could have been built a bit better -- feels a bit abrupt. And a little too black and white in some respects. For example - there was no indication that the Grounder army was a threat, they were told that they'd been sent to protect the 13th Clan. I like the significance of 13...13th Tribe...of Abraham, that resided with Cain.

Anyhow, Clarke attempts to reason with Bellamy, thinking there is a chance, but Bellamy is too filled with pain to hear her -- and while he seems to have mixed feelings about Pike's methods, he's struggling to argue with them. As he tells Clarke - from the very beginning they've been attacking us and trying to kill us. They struck first. And it never seems to end. Perhaps Pike is right.

Clark takes that information along with what her mother and Kane have been stating all along to Lexa, and states "maybe we need to find a way that isn't blood takes blood. Maybe we should step up to the plate first. Get across to them...that the violence can stop and find peace. Otherwise, we'll just have continuous war. Yes, you're right this was an act of war, but what does fighting back get us?
Except more violence and more grief? And where does it end? With everyone dead? No one left standing?
Do you want to be a leader of a dead people or a leader with the courage to take a stand, and garner peace?"

Meanwhile, we have Theolonous offering people Allia's way out...which is to escape to the City of Light, the virtual reality world created by Allia, where life and death don't matter, or so it seems.

Better episode than the last one, in some respects. And managed to renew my faith in the writing, which felt a bit offkilter in episode 3.4.

Still hands down the best science fiction series on television at the moment. And under the radar.
In part due to the channel it's on, and in part due to the subject matter.

Oh, in case anyone is interested - here's the link to the article I read:

* Bob Morely who plays Bellamy talks about his Character

* EW interview with the actor playing Bellamy.

He also states that he stays off the internet, because when he was on it during the first season - he found that various statements influenced how he viewed his character which interfered with how he played him -- which is a bad idea. So he backed off of it.

He did manage to sell the character's arc to me.

As an aside? I don't really ship anyone in this series. Nor do I care that much who they kill off.
I've watched daytime soaps most of my life, I used to character deaths. And know that only the characters that the writers don't know what to do with or feel will further the show better with their death, die. Writers don't kill characters they like. (Tyrion will never be killed off by GRRM for example, because the writer likes the character too much.) They aren't killing Clark, Kane, Bellamy, Octavia, Abby, Murphy, or Raven any time soon, the writers like them too much. LOL! (Although I did wonder after this episode if Bellamy would die next.)

Comments

[beer-good-foamy.livejournal.com]

Thanks for posting this. I'm still not very happy with this development, though. While the parallel to current-day politics is pretty obvious, so you can hardly claim that they're being unrealistic (though I wish just ONE character would ask Pike and Bellamy "And then what? How does this keep us safe in the long run?"). But it feels way too much like a repeat of the Finn storyline from s2. For all the show does right, it treats the sky people vs grounders conflict way too much like the Western cliché of homesteaders vs wild injuns, and keeps going back to having the "civilized" characters murder innocent "savages" only so the "civilized" characters will have something to brood about. That was skeevy when John Wayne did it, and it's no less skeevy here.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

You're welcome ;-)

Yup, that's my difficulty with it as well. (Not helped by the fact that the villains in the Arkadia group (Pike, Bellamy and Theolonus) just happen to be POC, while the heroes (Abby, Clark, and Kane) just happen to be White, which grated, although they probably did that in the hopes of making it look less cliche? I don't know.)

American Television and Film still relies far too heavily on over-done WWII and Western tropes (ie. settlers vs. innocent savages or white hats vs. Nazis). It's actually my quibble with the film The Revenant. It's been so overdone that it is sliding towards cliche.

I kept hoping during the last episode that Bellamy and Pike would have THAT discussion ie. "And then what? How does this keep us safe in the long run?" or a more snarky response..."Uhm, how's that been working for us so far? Not that great, has it?" (Where's Murphy when you need him?) Or Clark and Bellamy would have had it. Instead, she has it with Lexa, which was not good enough.

And I hunted spoilers to see how long I had to put up with this story arc, which was not working for me, and if it was going the same route as the Finn story did. The Finn story worked, we do not however need a repeat with Bellamy. But according to the spoilers, they are apparently going a different route with it. So, I'm keeping an open mind for now. This show can turn on a dime, as we saw in S1.

There's two story arcs that I'm a little wary of - this one, and the whole Allia/City of Lights arc (that could easily fall into cliche), but I'm keeping an open mind and seeing where it goes. Last season was sooo good. Also, according to the spoilers the emphasis for the rest of the season will be on supplies and food.

[beer-good-foamy.livejournal.com]

That's the thing though, I loathed the Finn storyline. He snapped and murdered a bunch of innocent people, OK, that's a valid storytelling move. What almost made me stop watching the series, though, is how everyone else reacted, and how the writers seemed to expect the viewers to react; the other "civilized"/"white" characters, after being horrified for about five minutes, all treated it like an accident that happened to him, rather than a crime for which he should be held accountable. Again, his murder of grounders became all about his trauma, not that of the people who actually suffered for it, because they didn't quite count. The conflict between either feeling sorry for him (as the sky crew all seemed to do) or torturing him to death (as, of course, the savage grounders wanted) rang so ridiculously false; if you're so civilized, and you want to prove it, defuse the situation and put him on trial yourselves.

It bugs me all the more because The 100 is, on a surface level, one of the best shows on TV when it comes to diversity. Ethnicity, gender, sexuality, even age seem like non-issues among both sky crew and grounders. And yet, again and again, the conflicts they set up seem to hinge on the viewers not being expected to award the same level of humanity to grounders as to our "heroes", and it's reinforced with some very dodgy stereotypes (right down to having the grounders speak an incomprehensible language even though they all speak English fluently). Season 3 started out a lot better in that regard, so them back-pedalling into this now is just... well, we'll see where it goes, I guess.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

I wish I could say that I disagree. But alas, I don't. The Finn storyline worked up to a point. Where it failed is like you state...the decision to emphasize the pain of the Sky People over the Grounders. Unfortunately, the show is set up that way -- we're in the point of view of the Sky People, so we will always get their side over the Grounders. If you look at it from the perspective that you are in one point of view not the other, and you should as a viewer be questioning that point of view/perspective...it sort of works. (Point of view fascinates me in stories.) Here, our point of view is split between various post-adolescent protagonists - Clarke, Bellamy, Octavia, Jasper, Raven, and Murphy. And a few adult protagonists - Kane, Abby, and Theolonius. Everyone else, with the possible exception of Lincoln -- is secondary point of view, although I think Lincoln is as well.

So the story tellers are telling the story through the perspective of the settlers or the astronauts coming back down to earth after being in the sky for decades. And like most people, they see it as being all about them, their pain, their needs, their issues, and they've cast themselves as the heroes.

I think the Finn arc was supposed to question that perspective. Yet at the same time add a layer of ambiguity to it -- in that the Sky People weren't permitted to put him on trial themselves and had to follow the Grounder's ways. This feels largely unfair, considering that the Grounders were permitted to try the Ice Nation themselves and not let the Sky People enact their brand of justice. Perhaps if they had turned over the Ice Nation to the Sky People to enact justice...things would have gone differently? Who knows.

Anyhow that's how I've made it work for myself. Take it or leave it. Because I'm not sure it entirely works. And like you, I don't like the repetition of the story arc. I feel like we've done this three times now. The best was Mount Weather -- that was the best of the three and the most ambiguous and horrific. After that, I didn't think it needed to be explored again...but I guess the writers felt they needed to make a much bigger point about the Grounder's being less monsterous in some respects than our protagonists, or rather make that point to the protagonists -(who consider themselves they advanced culture)- you sought the violent remedy, not the Grounders who you accuse of being uncivilized. (Which is true. Sure the Grounders have attacked, but their attacks are nothing compared to :1) the nuclear explosion in S1, Finn's massacre of the village - S2, Clarke and Bellamy's massacre of Mount Weather -S2, and Bellamy/Pike's massacre of the 300 Grounder army that was there to protect them.) To put this into historical perspective? The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor pales in comparison to the two bombs the US dropped on the Japanese. Just as the various Native American/indian attacks in America pale in comparison to how the European settlers almost massacred them with their bigger weapons. (There's a lot guilt in my country over that by the way, hence the reason the trope keeps popping up.)

I think that's why they are doing it. I'm just hoping they move on soon.