It’s a sad truth in television that shows often have only one strong female character. The 100 might have started out that way with just Clarke, but boy has that changed. While she’s ripping open her stitches (excuse me while I simultaneously vomit and faint), Raven is undergoing spinal surgery AWAKE, Octavia is bringing a grown man to his knees—literally—and Abby is starting a revolution.
Who runs this post-apocalyptic Earth? Women.
Let’s see what they—and their male friends—were up to this week, shall we?
“Inclement Weather” opens in a very Lost-like setting. Extras we’ll likely never see again wander around the wreckage of their airplane spaceship. Heck, Desmond is even there! But the 70s-music-loving, Scottish, button-pushing Henry Ian Cusick is not in this show—in his place we get angry, power-hungry Kane. He interrogates the beautiful Bellamy for fun and yells at a Katee Sackhoff lookalike for giving weapons to non-guards. “Any use of firearms will be punishable as a felony under the Exodus Charter,” he bellows to Camp Jaha. And that’s the moment when his redemption arc from season 1 went out the window, and I remembered how much I hated him. The rules have changed; they can’t govern and live as they did in space, and he needs to learn that lesson quickly. The kids could tell him all about it if he would actually listen.
ASIDE: How about that new intro? This is what the show needs: A title sequence that fits with the quality of the show and feels decidedly grown-up sci-fi.
On the other side of camp, Abby is having real talk with Raven: The bullet is pressing on her spine—if they leave it in, she won’t walk; if they do surgery, she might not live. Oh, and they don’t have anesthetic. But Raven is a badass (and knows she wouldn’t survive against the Grounders long in a jerry-rigged wheelchair), so she tells Abby to do the surgery. Lindsey Morgan deserves an Emmy nomination after that tear-jerking scene—never has so much been said with wide eyes, lips trembling with fear, and a few shed tears. And those screams. (Shudder.)
And then someone else starts screaming. Kane, Starbuck 2.0, and the other men from the guard run into the forest to see who’s out there. They find three of their men crucified, one barely alive, who is most likely asking why they came down to Earth at all.
But you know who is happy to be on Earth? The 47 (-1 for Clarke). They’re just chilling in their underground bunker, having pillow fights, listening to cool music (see last page), and flirting about breakfast dates. And Miller is back!
Life is never quiet for these kids, though, and an alarm sounds. Maya informs Clarke—and the audience—that it means surface patrol is back and needs medical attention. Naturally Clarke takes off running into places she isn’t supposed to be and sees a dead man with a bullet wound and another man very badly burned.
She later confronts Wallace about this. She’s insistent that the bullet wound must mean her people are alive considering the Grounders don’t use guns. But the Undergrounder President and Doctor Lady show her the wounds—and it does look like an arrow wound (I guess? I’m not a medical examiner, but Clarke seems convinced). She wants to interrogate talk to the man who was burned, but she’s told only patients are allowed in medical.
Back at Camp Jaha, Abby finishes Raven’s surgery and goes to talk to Kane. He has a moment of truth when he says, “That’s one thing these kids have, it’s courage.” And then when Abby realizes he never sent a search party and refuses to do so until their camp is “safe,” he becomes terrible again: “I’ve made my decision.”
Sidenote: Didn’t The Council have multiple members, so the Chancellor wasn’t allowed to make decisions alone? They need to get some new council members ASAP.
In more bad news, Raven’s surgery didn’t go so well. Her left leg has significant damage, no feeling below the knee. But in a truly selfless act, she sends Finn out to find their friends. (Finally he gets to do something!) He takes Sterling and Monroe in to break out Bellamy, who then brings along Murphy, who knows the Grounder camp the best… as he was tortured there for three days. They make it to the woods, where they are caught—by Abby and Miller’s father. She loads them up with weapons and says, “Bring them home.” (I might or might not have gotten chills in that moment.) And just like that, “Chancellor” Kane has a rebellion on his hands.
NEXT: Oh, baby, baby, how was I supposed to know (you weren’t real)?
It could be a briefly needed insurgency, though, because the rightful Chancellor is on his way “home.” After searching and searching for what was responsible for that damn crying, Jaha finds a baby boy locked inside a drawer. Suddenly Jaha has a reason to find a way down to Earth: “I can’t let you die up here with me.” He searches through the computers to find what’s salvageable on the ship (and let’s be honest—I feel like all ways to Earth would have been found by Sinclair, but I’m willing to let this one slide if it means Jaha can go down to Earth and usurp Kane). As Jaha thinks he’s found a way down, he notices the baby has a chess piece—a knight, which if you know anything about chess, you know it is a piece that can jump other pieces to get to its destination (kind of like you know who) and is meant to stay close to the action (again, symbolism).
Right here is when I thought, “Oh, this can’t be real because the baby didn’t have this chess piece before and babies CAN’T HAVE SMALL TOYS.” But I quickly forgot this as Jaha started talking about missiles. He’s going to use the very thing that destroyed the Earth to return to it—nice. He straps the baby inside his spacesuit —don’t worry “this O2 feeds the whole suit”—puts on a cracked helmet and shoots himself out into space. I’m not sure about the science of it all, but I held my breath and enjoyed it nonetheless. Until. Jaha falls in the door ON THE BABY. But my screams to The 100 writers were unnecessary because there is no baby. Turns out oxygen deprivation is giving Jaha hallucinations, now in the form of his deceased son. Ghost Wells (whom it was quite nice to see again) gives him a touching speech while holding the black knight.
Aside: It was during one of these many Jaha scenes that I realized this was a PACKED episode. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it’s a lot to take in. The short-episode order of this show requires a pacing that feels more like an HBO show than a network serial. If only for my note-taking, I’ll be happy when a few of these groups get consolidated and there’s less bouncing around.
With his ghost son’s blessing, Jaha takes off in the rocket… and lands in a desert. It’s unclear how far away from Mount Weather this desert might be (based on the Lincoln Memorial, it seems that the nuclear apocalypse changed Earth’s landscape, so I doubt it’s all the way out West). But based on how quickly this show moves, it doesn’t seem likely that Jaha will be away from his people for long—which is a good thing because I’m not sure how much Desert Mirage Wells I want to watch.
Hopefully Jaha’s landing spot is just far enough away that his crash will go unnoticed by the Grounders, Reapers, and the Undergrounders, because none of them are too keen on the Sky People, especially of late.
Octavia and Lincoln are having problems with not one, but two of these surviving people groups at the moment. At the end of “The 48,” Octavia was sleeping at the foot of Lincoln, the memorial, while Lincoln, the grounder, went into his village to get her a cure. Her cure came in the form of Nyko, the village healer. He saves her and then tells her to run, that Lincoln has been captured and is a lost cause.
Some of you commented last week that Octavia shouldn’t run off with Lincoln because she’s too strong to be “taken care of.” Well, all you can quit your worrying. If anything, being with Lincoln makes her stronger. Yes, he protects her, but they take turns saving each other. And it’s her turn.
She knocks out Nyko—not a small man—with a rock, binds his hands, and holds a blade to his throat while strutting into Lincoln’s village. She demands to get her man back. Lettie Mae Indra, Lincoln’s leader, acquiesces. She delivers a slightly beaten Lincoln to Octavia later that night, but the reapers intercede and take him instead.
NEXT: Does Clarke have a little bloodlust?
It’s a rough day for these strong women on Earth. Back at Mount Weather, Clarke is being alienated by the people she once kept safe. Jasper tells Clarke that she’s the only one not happy with their current living situation. They are fed, clothed, and what he thinks is safe; they’re guests, not prisoners.
“What would you do with a guest who kept calling you a liar and generally acted like an ungrateful ass?” Jasper says.
“Kick their ungrateful ass out.” (Thank you, Miller.)
“Right now, our biggest threat to us is you.”
I’d say the ungrateful ass is Jasper, who was saved about a bazillion times by Clarke. But I guess good food and the prospect of a girl who will eat breakfast with you can go a long way. This leaves Clarke suddenly very alone, so she keeps doodling on her map. But then she sees Langston, the man who was covered in burns—except now he’s mostly healed, a miracle considering the time frame. Clarke’s curiosity is eating her alive, so she does what needs to be done to get herself to medical. She slices open her arm. I think one stitch would have sufficed, but this girl only knows how to go big. (And the one time she dresses in pink, she gets blood on it—go figure.)
The “nice” Doctor Lady (do we know her name yet?) re-bandages Clarke’s arm as she “sleeps.” And the first chance she gets, Clarke leaps out of bed and starts investigating. She follows the dialysis tubes that pump blood in the other, sleeping (comatose?) patients. She follows the lines through a grate, which leads her to a room that must have come from Jason Rothenberg’s nightmares: There are bodies being hung upside down and drained of their blood for the dialysis patients alongside cages full of people being kept like animals in line for slaughter. One of those prisoners: Clarke’s old enemy Anya. If the music didn’t alert you, this show has become a full-on horror show. Happy Halloween, y’all.
All these questions…
Kane told Bellamy they found two more barrels with rifles and a third with bullets. Was this an odd lie or just a convenient way to explain to viewers how the people from the Ark will continue to have so much firepower?
Aren’t you supposed to pass out from pain at some point? Poor Raven… Do you think she will regain feeling in her left leg?
Who else thinks it’s time to for a new Exodus Charter?
Does Miller seem shifty to anyone else? Did he get dialysis-Grounder-blood brainwashed?
Spoilery observation: In the title sequence, you can see the Brooklyn Bridge and the Statue of Liberty under dirt and far off in the distance you can see something on fire—could that be where Jaha landed?
Do you watch a lot of CSI? Can you tell if that was an arrow or a bullet wound?
Was the baby supposed to be Baby Wells?
If the Undergrounders are being pumped with Grounder blood, wouldn’t they eventually build a tolerance for the ground?
Any space experts out there? Can you survive with a cracked helmet or does your head like explode automatically or something?
Is Indra working with the Reapers or was that a coincidence attack?
Did the Jaha scenes feel more reminiscent of Gaius from Battlestar Galactica or Sam Bell from Moon?
President Wallace told Clarke his people were attacked by “what you call a Grounder.” Do we know what the Undergrounders call them?
Team Murphy?
Be honest: Did Jaha riding in the missile to Earth remind you of this?
This recap brought to you by “The Road” by Old Man Canyon on repeat.
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