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Okay so about a hundred years ago nukes killed everybody on Earth. The only humans left were the 400 people in the twelve space stations that were orbiting at the time. They linked them up like giant K'Nex, resulting in an architecturally ramshackle space station, and now there are 4000 people on there, all of whom are named for science fiction writers and all of whom dress and speak exactly like it is 2014.
Which is fine. This pilot sucked in the way that pilots always, always suck, but the ideas are neat and the execution is thoughtful and if they can manage to turn these characters into actual people, I think it will be a good TV show. I like anything where teenagers tell grownups to fuck off, and I like science fiction where there aren't any options so you have to make weird sad choices, and I like dystopias where they don't even fuck around about how easy and common it is to exploit children. I also like to laugh at self-righteous ideologues, of which this show is chock full. Just a nation of 4000 Lee Adamas -- it's great.
One of them, a science man, discovered a flaw in the system that means everybody is going to die in two months, so to avoid a panic the Council killed him and locked up his daughter Clarke, and have since decided to send 100 kinda-shitty teenagers to Earth, like canaries in a mine. His widow is the boss of medicine, and she is in charge of the teenager project. The main guy of the whole thing is Isaiah Washington, who takes it all very seriously. His second in command is Desmond from Lost, who is very into killing people just in case; his second in command is even more into that then he is. Maybe that guy has his own second in command who is just a straight serial killer.
What I liked the most is that he is basically right and nobody seems to question that fact -- just his methods. He provides one of two absolute philosophies in a situation where even jettisoning 100 crappy teens can earn the other 3900 people another month of life. What I liked the least is the class-warfare stuff in the background, because it's a very simplistic, Dark Knight Rises, GOP-level idea of what privilege and class actually entail: The shitty mouthpieces down below hold grudges that don't make any sense in our time -- much less having grown up in a society half as old as America in which none of our institutionalized pressures would even signify.
Anyway, jail on the Ark works like, if you do any crime you will probably get killed, because you have proven you are not a team player. If you do something wrong underage -- like help your father try to tell everybody they are about to die -- they put you in jail until you are 18, and then they kill you. Or in the case of today, they ignore the first two things and send you to gross Earth, solving at least three problems at once.
So on the shuttle down are this girl Clarke, her ex-friend Wells who is Chancellor Isaiah's son and who sold out her dad to be killed, a bad-boy that is not very bad named Finn and two siblings named the Blakes, who are just awful. The younger Blake shouldn't even exist, legally, and grew up hidden in a cabinet, so now she acts out by taking her shirt off. The older Blake, I don't even know what his deal is but he's got some plans. He shot the Chancellor right before the shuttle took off, and now wants to lead some kind of a revolution on Earth. There are also two nerds.
Clarke's superpower seems like, basically, that she's always on her high horse. Wells's superpower is that he is very helpful! But not so good in a fight. That one Canadian kid who is on every TV show because of his crazy face has the usual power he has, which is leading gross people to riot. The Blakes… so far their superpower is annoying the shit out of me. The nerds have nerd powers like always.
The other 91 teens are mostly just around, being creeps, because their whole deal is that they are all creeps. Thanks to the Blake guy and some droogs, they get the idea that they should have a rave and remove their tracker bracelets that the Ark is using to figure out whether they are going to die of radiation. It was supposed to be that they could communicate and actually have a chance of surviving, but that didn't work out. So now they have decided to say fuck it and just start a civilization from the dregs, like Australia.
Upstairs, Clarke's mom Abby tries to fix the Chancellor from being shot, but she uses too much medicine, which bothers Desmond from Lost so he sentences her to death, even though he is married to her best friend who is some other lady. It turns out that he was the major reason that her husband died and her daughter went to death row and is now on Earth, so she has legitimate beef with him. But then the Chancellor turns out to be alive, and he reverses everything that happened and she doesn't die. But I think she wishes she were on Earth, because their whole family is very into Earth but also because it sucks up on the Ark maybe even worse than down on Earth.
Meanwhile, Clarke and Finn, plus the two nerds, plus the awful girl Blake, go to find the place where they were supposed to be to begin with, an old military base. On the way there they take off their clothes, enjoy trees that glow because of being mutants, they see a deer with two mutant faces, a mean giant eel and other gross wonders. When they finally get to the military base, they have a very dorky celebration that is cut short when one of the nerds, Jasper, takes a spear to the chest. So I guess there are people down there after all. Like Morlocks or something. But I would be willing to bet they also dress like CW teens of 2014, or else are Mad Max versions of the bullshit adults we just left behind.
Week: The remaining nerd, the horrible Blakes and Finn go looking for Jasper, who is maybe not dead but is probably a prisoner of Morlocks. Upstairs, Abby has fucking had it and is willing to buy or steal or even build an escape pod so she can join her daughter down in the irradiated remains of Earth, where everything is trying to kill you but at least they're doing it honestly.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Ninety-seven years ago there was a nuclear apocalypse that killed everybody on Earth and also mostly Earth. The only survivors were whoever was on space stations at that time, of which there were twelve from different countries, which hooked themselves up together to become one janky chimera of a space station, the Ark, that is sad just to look at, but also cool-looking. There were 400 of them, and now there are 4000.
Then this sort of peace-preaching scientist Jor-El type figured out that life support was not going to work out like they thought it was, and that they had just a matter of months. Which sucks because the prediction was that they'd need to wait at least 200 years total before they went back down. Because the margins are so small, all crimes are capital crimes -- if you're not a team player, why share the air with you? -- and so to keep him and his family from starting a panic with this info, he was killed.
His daughter Clarke was jailed up in solitary for the same reason. On the Ark, jail is just for kids, who have to wait until they're of age before they can be killed by the state. So she's just waiting around doing her art and waiting to die, basically. She is a good artist. She also -- thanks to her parents -- is very much in love with Earth, in a "year in Jerusalem" kind of way, where no matter how shitty it is, it's a fantasy. Not just of escape, but also: Home.
NOW
It's a month before her death birthday, and that's when the cops come and put a scary needle-y bracelet on her arm and march her out of her cell. All over the Skybox all of the kids are getting strong-armed out of there, which scares her because in the back of everybody's mind is the idea that if things get tight, people will have to die. Somebody has to make that call, and airlock them, which is called getting "air locked." So, especially for somebody with maybe too mature an understanding of what is really at stake, this kind of armed escort means they're going to be killing some kids today.
Cops: "Prisoner 319, take off your watch so we can put this scary thing on your arm!"
Clarke: "No! I am going to beat everybody up!"
She almost does but then they get her. Outside, she is joined by her mom Abby Griffin, who calms her down not so well.
Abby: "First of all Clarke, you are not being executed. Although that's a good guess. You are actually being sent to the Ground. 100 of you."
Clarke: "But the irradiation!"
Abby: "Maybe, who knows? That's why we're sacrificing children, to find out. The important thing is that you hang onto your main trait, which is being very, very bossy."
Clarke: "I just want everybody to be okay!"
Abby: "I know that and your father knew that, but you come off a little less cool about it than you think."
Clarke: "Sheryl Sandberg would not be amused!"
Abby: "Maybe it's because you're a girl, maybe it's because you are the protagonist. Either way, never ever shut your pie hole."
She gives her daughter a hug which is also not a hug but a trick, and they sedate her so she will shut her pie hole. The mom is like, "P.S. I am so jealous that you get to go to Earth!" And that's when you understand why Clarke was going on and on about Earth before, because her whole family is like that: Hope is a good tradition to hold.
LACUNA!
The guy to Clarke when she wakes up on the shuttle is Wells, the son of the Chancellor of the whole Ark, Jaha, played by Isaiah Washington who I don't really think is worth talking about much. Wells was the one that actually turned in Clarke's dad, so she has something of a grudge, but I guess they used to be friends before that.
Wells: "I got arrested at the last second so I could come on this space shuttle to help you wrangle these jerk kids on Earth!"
Clarke: "I hate you, but I am also naturally very compassionate and protective, so watch out because who knows which way I'll fall at any given time."
Wells: "Ahhh! What was that?"
Clarke: "It's okay, it was just us hitting the atmosphere. I mean, shut up!"
Chancellor video: "Prisoners of The Ark, hear me now. You've been given a second chance, and it's my hope that you see this as not just a chance for you, but a chance for all of us -- indeed, for mankind itself. We have no idea what is waiting for you down there. If the odds of survival were better, we would've sent others. Frankly, we're sending you because your crimes have made you expendable."
Everybody notes that he is awful, which he is. That last one was really unnecessary.
The Chancellor promises that their slates will be wiped if this all works out, since there's no reason to kill children for taking up air if there is infinite air. But it's interesting how they've created this circumstance in the DNA of the show. I like anything where they're balls-out about exploiting children, because we never talk about it even though it is going on everywhere, all the time. Like in Hunger Games, it was about scaring the Districts because they love their kids. And in this one, it's this legal loophole where they are the only criminals that haven't already been killed. Either way, kids are a renewable resource in the strictest sense.
ARK
Desmond from Lost is the second-in-command to the Chancellor, Kane, and in this story he is the person that is willing to do whatever horrible thing to ensure humanity's survival. (A very bad job to have if you are susceptible to mission creep, which he is.) His wife CeCe is the best friend of Abby, who is also in politics and is also the best doctor, but I don't know what his wife's job is. Telling people to chill out and overlooking her husband constantly gaming the system, I guess.
Dude: "Hey, where is that shuttle going?"
Lady: "Is it kids? Is Earth okay?"
CeCe Kane: "Just chill about it right now and don't have a riot or anything, okay?"
People: "Since we'll immediately be killed, okay."
SHUTTLE
"The drop site has been chosen carefully. Before the last war, Mount Weather was a military base built within a mountain. It was to be stocked with enough non-perishables to sustain 300 people for up to two years..."
There is a boy on the shuttle named Finn, who got sent to jail for taking a spacewalk that used up an entire month of oxygen, which is very selfish. But he's not so bad. Right now he has unstrapped and is floating around the cabin -- "Your dad floated me after all!" he cries to Wells -- and Clarke and Wells sternly tell him and the sheep that also unstrap that they'd better get back into their seats, since they're already past atmosphere and the only reason it doesn't seem like gravity is happening is because they are in free-fall.
Then they aren't. The parachutes deploy, and Finn slams into a bulkhead, taking out some wires. The other boys aren't so lucky, but they won't know that until they land.
ARK
Upstairs, all Sinclair from Engineering (aka Felix Gaeta) and Abby's second, Dr. Jackson, can tell Abby is that the shuttle was already off-course when communications got knocked out in what they're calling a "total system failure," which could be because the shuttle is from a hundred years ago but possibly could be Finn's fault? It isn't discussed, but it happens pretty simultaneously; every one of these teens already has a hundred problems to feel guilty/angry about anyway, so maybe just let that one lie. Let's say both.
The point now is that all the help the grownups were planning on giving them is now kaput, and the only thing they're still getting are those tracker wristbands monitoring their vitals. This second thing is key, both because it keeps things stressful on the Ark and makes the kids they're sacrificing "real" in a way Skype wouldn't (for the good adults), while also relegating them to numbers on a spreadsheet essentially (for the Kane types), but also because -- inside the show -- it gives the Grounder kids a lot of power in terms of the mission itself, as we'll see.
LANDFALL
Clarke: "This ship is wicked old, it's just acting rickety. Don't worry."
Wells: "While you're being nice to me, can I just say that I am sorry I got your dad killed that time? I embarrassed my dad to come here to make it up to you, but I will settle for apologizing right before we die."
When it lands the whole thing goes quiet. Not just the shuttle being quiet, but quiet: For the first time in their entire existence (and that of their parents, and their grandparents) the machines aren't humming all around them. There are parts of this story that don't take their futurism far enough, but that little moment is not one them.
Finn tends to the boys he accidentally killed, and Clarke's compassion for him wins out over being upset at how dumb he is. I should say right now that all the "bossy" jokes I will ever make do not reflect how cool I think Clarke is; she's boundless in her sympathy and fierce in her protectiveness, even of assholes, which are the two human qualities I value most, across the board. And they deal with that, before two more characters present themselves.
The Blake kids (I keep wanting to call them twins; effectively they are, but Bellamy is not a Skybox teen, he's an adult with a job, which is a little important for later) are another big part of the mythology here, so let's get that out of the way. Bellamy and Octavia are siblings, which is a big no-no on the Ark. At some point in the last 97 years, the scientists instituted the Chinese one-child family policy as law.
Without knowing the death rates (which here would be linked directly to crime rates, too) we can't say what that would do to population change except that it takes two people to have one baby. This means every generation over the 200 years they were supposed to be up there would at least halve in size, and that's if everybody did it, which they wouldn't. This already sets this story apart from most post-apocalyptic SF because fertility is usually the end-goal, but here it's a problem. And where that leads sociologically -- even with an end-date, at which point the law would reverse itself just as cruelly -- is to a society that doesn't value children the way they do in most stories or usually in real life: Every child born means that every person dies fractionally earlier than if there were no children at all.
Anyway, Bellamy is legit and his sister Octavia is illegal. Their parents kept her under the floors until very recently, and then she went to jail for existing. They both have chips on their shoulder which, while understandable, also make them fucking horrible to be around. (Although I'm sure, as is the way of these things, we'll either learn to like them or they will actually become less horrible.)
Clarke: "Don't open that door! The air could be toxic!"
Bellamy: "If it is, that doesn't change anything. Right? By the way, your knee-jerk paternalism is a problem for me."
Which partly is a thing that is ongoing, which is that Wells and Clarke are both the children of Councillors and thus used to looking down on their fellow Skyboxers in a very particular (bossy) way that everybody feels but people have a hard time verbalizing without sounding like gutter punks. (Which most of them are anyway.) Basically, that kids reared in a political home are probably going to be more into leadership as a natural response, even all other things being equal.
Or to put it another way: Clarke is the Ralph, Bellamy is the Jack, and Wells is either co-Ralph or possibly the Simon. But I'm not going to talk about that book too much because the only thing I really remember from that book is Simon, because when I was little I wanted to marry him.
Octavia and Bellamy have a quick reunion at the door, after however long she was in solitary, and we learn that Bellamy stole a guard uniform to get on the shuttle (he didn't even get himself arrested like Wells) but probably there is something more going on than just wanting to protect his sister. We will see. Everybody is weirded out by Octavia's existence, as this sort of urban legend come to life, which she is understandably prickly about. And then Bellamy gives his sister the neatest gift: The ability to step out onto Earth, their home, a place where her existence wouldn't ever have been questioned or negated.
"We're back, bitches!" she shouts, after putting her feet down and breathing air for the first time in any of their lives, and that's all you need to know about Octavia. I really hope she gets developed soon because it's that bullshit all the way down. "Radioactive" starts playing at this point, and everybody kind of gets nuts and dorky dancing around in the air and stepping all over the ground, but they deserve it.
I know that song gets overplayed, but I'm guessing it was planned for this moment going back in development maybe a couple years, because that's how perfect it is, like, every line of that song is about the show, specifically this moment. So pretend it hasn't been used in every other show and commercial and Top 40 block in the last year, because none of them really earned it like this one.
Clarke yells at Finn about the dead kids, but not that hard, and we learn the oft-demonstrated fact that she hates being called "Princess," which you're given to think is about the class warfare stuff but I'm guessing it's actually a nickname her dad called her. She points out Mt. Weather to Finn and tells him she's being dour for a very particular reason: There's twenty miles of radiation-soaked forest between them and life, and the sun is going down.
If it were just jungle it wouldn't be so sad, but you can see buildings under the trees and they passed over a city on their way to this wrong mountain. Everything was decrepit and horrible and broken. I don't like apocalypse stories because they carry a lot of assumptions about human nature that I think are untrue and silly and gross. I don't like apocalypse stories because they always have this greedy glimmer of anticipation, like, If only the Bomb dropped I wouldn't have to pay my cell phone bill, this line at Starbucks wouldn't be pissing me off.
Or, it's the difference between boring zombie stories and, say, the elegiac beauty of the Fallout games, because I think the former axiom is an awful way to live, inside your head, but the latter takes you deeper into who you are. So I like that everybody here just kind of feels sorry for Earth, essentially, for what was done to her; and that the remnants of civilization seem so tragic, and haunted, and wasted. That's the way it should be. That's how things get reborn.
ARK
Dr. Jackson: "Okay well two kids are for sure dead. And the rest of them seem to be having heart attacks."
Kane: "Did those two boys die of radiation? Or anything that will compromise my goals?"
Abby: "No, just a rough landing because of it being an old shuttle. See, because if they were dying of instant illness it wouldn't just be two of them?"
Kane: "Okay, also, why are they all in the red now?"
Abby: "Because they're on Earth? And that's fucking awesome?"
EARTH
Wells: "Clarke, comms are out, like there are entire panels just missing to space."
Clarke: "That sucks but I'm over it. Look at this line I drew on this map."
Wells: "Where did you learn to draw lines on things?"
Clarke: "My father you murdered. See how this line goes from where we are to where Mt. Weather is?"
Wells: "I do. What does it mean, though?"
A couple of nerds approach. One of them is named Jasper, and the other one is the one that is always with Jasper. Monty. They're pretty atrocious, but necessary. The main awful thing about Jasper is how he is a horny teenage boy who is very interested in girls, because since that's a thing that has never been on a TV show before we need it repeatedly explained and demonstrated to us at every opportunity. Also he wears giant goggles.
Wells shoves him away from Clarke and/or the map, for a reason I don't really understand but maybe is just to provide a pretext for the character we are going to meet -- John Murphy (Bellamy's co-Jack, for now) -- played by Richard Harmon, who is in every show that films in Vancouver due to his crazy face. Think of a TV show in this world, he was on it, playing always a teenage dirt bag who is up to no good, but also maybe he is wounded, which is why his face makes that face all the time.
Murphy: "Don't manhandle that nerd! He is part of our tribe!"
Bellamy: "I am also invested in fucking with you for reasons that aren't yet apparent!"
Octavia: "I don't much care for your parents or for you, you bossy protagonists! I lived in the floor!"
Dirt bags: "We will have an uprising right now if we feel like it!"
Clarke: "Let me break it down for you. We are not bossing you around because we are mean, or because it gets us off. We are bossing you around because we all need to go to the place where we were headed, or else we are going to die. Do you understand that no matter how irritated you are with me, or Wells here, that will not keep you alive? You may resent us, for many different reasons, but no matter how valid those reasons could be, that is not how food works."
Bellamy: "Well, you're still a bitch."
Clarke: "Fine, sure. Just get your shit together and let's go!"
Bellamy: "Actually, why don't you two go get it and bring it back to us, here at this random spot we have chosen to live for no reason."
Dirt bags: "Yeah! Fuck you and your cultural capital that no longer signifies anything but we're still pissed about it for some reason!"
Bellamy: "Wells thinks he is the Chancellor of Earth! A hilarious joke at your expense."
Wells: "I can't believe I hitched a ride down here with all of you assholes. What was I thinking?"
They fight and it's super dumb and Wells's leg is uninjured and then Finn jumps literally out of the sky to break up the fight, which sends Octavia's feral-child ovaries into hyper-drive because of how much hair he has on his head and also his cocky ways. This irritates Bellamy, because Finn just sided with the Squares, but Octavia doesn't care about male posturing or the theories of Rousseau, she just wants the D.
Bellamy: "But that kid is a criminal! An oxygen one."
Octavia: "They are all criminals? That is literally what this show is about. But I don't care, because I don't care about anything. I am going to have a one-woman revolution! And because I am not a very imaginative person, having grown up under the floorboards of a space station, I am assuming that has something to do with stripping down to my bra whenever possible. So if you are not onboard with that plan, then get the hell out of my way."
That's when Bellamy explains that he is not invested in the actual premise of this show, because when the Arkers come down to Earth they are going to kill him. Not because they kill you for everything, up there, but because even by regular people rules, down here, he has done something very, very bad on his way to the shuttle, and that's why he stole the guard outfit, and that's why he is immediately going to start a Tea Party movement that thinks it is about freedom but is actually about protecting his own interests.
Octavia's just like, "Fine, then I am going to go with the away team of Clarke and Finn, and the two nerds, because twenty miles of radioactive jungle is twenty miles of opportunities to take my top off. Revolution!"
But first Clarke has to lecture Finn about not taking off his wristband, because it will make them up there think he's dead, and that's one more percentage point off their likelihood of coming down in two months. This particular lecture is especially grating because she is also telling Bellamy exactly what he needs to do to ruin the entire plan and kill everybody on the Ark and then he won't ever get caught for the very bad thing.
Octavia kisses her brother goodbye, Clarke dreadfully tells Wells once again he should not have come, and then the five of them set off. Octavia makes sure to immediately start shit with Clarke about how Finn is "hers" and Clarke is just like, "You are too basic to even talk to."
ABBY
CeCe: "Darling, how is Clarke!?"
Abby: "She's getting hungry, based on blood-sugar, but she's safe."
That's when they call to say that the Chancellor has been shot (by whom, I wonder?) so Abby kicks into doctor gear and says mild swears and runs to the OR to save him. What we don't know yet is that Kane will be Chancellor Pro Tem as long as Jaha is out of commission and/or dead, and Kane is the mastermind that got Abby's family destroyed in the first place, which bothers her but not as much as his political policies bother her, so not only does the Chancellor need to live because he is reasonable, but also because the thing that will happen is unimaginably bad.
THE TREK
Finn: "Octavia, a purple blossom for your hair from this irradiated stump."
Octavia: "I actually think you're flirting with me and not just doin' Finn."
Jasper: "Did you see that? Heterosexuality happening right in front of us!"
Monty: "Actually that is poison sumac, but the flowers aren't poisonous. My family is botanists so I understand the medicinal properties of plants. That might come in handy since we are surviving in a forest, but maybe not because of radiation."
Everybody stops to look at the beauty of the natural world, which even if it weren't their first hour on Earth it's still be pretty beautiful where they are, but Clarke is not having that shit. She does not have time for oohs or ahhs or natural vistas or discovering nature. She just wants to solve the problem and save the people, so shut up and keep moving.
Finn: "Is that like a thing you are trying to do, or a thing you are actually doing? Because look around at how awesome it is. This thing you waited your literal whole life for."
Clarke: "Okay, for starters, why aren't there any animals? It's not because of people, there are no people. They all died. So what is it? Are we dying of radiation right now?"
Octavia: "Have I mentioned in the last five minutes that you are a bitch?"
Finn: "Nerds, why were you Skyboxed?"
Nerds: "Stealing pot from the family gardens. How about you guys?"
Octavia: "I was born? Remember?"
Jasper: "Will I never lose my virginity? Not at this rate. Maybe this girl will be attacked by an alligator eel and horribly injured, that would be amazing. If I saved her, I mean. If I didn't, probably she would not have sex with me, being dead. So that's two wishes. Grievous danger, and then a pity fuck. That's workable. Good thing respect for women as human beings doesn't need to be on that list for my plan to work."
Clarke and then Finn stop in a somewhat rapturous silence because a beautiful deer is eating in a clearing, and it's so sweet and innocent and the promise of a neuuuuuuuuugh my God! It's got a mutant split-face of two split faces! Mutant deer! Welcome to the new age!
ARK
Jackson: "Well, we used up all the blood rations and all the anesthetic rations and I guess now we are done doing surgery on the Chancellor."
Abby: "That's unacceptable, because Kane will straight-up start killing people. I mean real people, adults, like you and me."
Jackson: "But if you don't stop doing surgery you'll go to dead-people jail!"
Abby: "Honey, if Kane ends up Chancellor that's gonna happen anyway."
What he should have said is, "You aren't even a real doctor. There haven't been medical schools in 97 years. What you are is the granddaughter of a real doctor. Let this one go." Even if she's a very good doctor, that might have thrown her off long enough for Isaiah Washington to not be on this show anymore.
MEANWHILE
Commander Shumway is... I don't know what. I'm so used to how sci-fi shows are usually so serious about the details of all this -- ranks, titles, chains of command -- that everybody just seems like generic adults running around allying with each other instead of having a concept of society. Right now, he's reporting to Kane.
Shumway: "The Chancellor was shot by Bellamy Blake, who was on the Ark. He used to be a janitor. His sister is the one they hid..."
Kane: "Sixteen years! Nearly a record."
Shumway: "Anyway, can we get started? Now that you're in charge, let's just kill shitloads of people! The 100 only bought us another month! I don't know if Engineering can fix that thing dead Dr. Griffin found by then."
Kane, verbatim: "If we're gonna kill hundreds of innocent people, we're gonna do it by the book. Is that clear?"
In summation, Kane knows somebody set up this assassination and escape plan, which means there are creeps in both places and that's excluding him, the biggest creep of all besides Shumway, who is possibly even more of a creep. Also, he did not get the Chancellor shot, which is a pleasant surprise. Shumway, though, really seems like probably he did it.
LANDFALL
Murphy and assorted droogs have scrawled FIRST SON FIRST TO DYE on the shuttle, because they are out of ideas to be weird to Wells. I guess there's something about the illiteracy here, too. Depending on how young they were when they went to jail, they might be actual wild things, not just jerks. Isn't that sad? They never had even the slightest chance.
Wells hops off on his bum leg, and Bellamy decides to approach them for his fake dumb revolution.
Bellamy: "You don't actually think they're gonna forgive your crimes, and even if they do, you're already broken. We'll be janitors, just like I was up there."
Murphy: "I am so angry I will even fight you! What are you talking about?"
Bellamy: "You are lab rats, even now. That's worse than garbage. So how about we say fuck it and break off these bracelets? We're doing them a favor just by surviving, as long as they can tell."
Murphy: "Okay and then what do we get?"
Bellamy: "We will be kings! You can be my henchmen in the new age."
ARK
CeCe: "I am in a fucking awkward position, if you think about it. How's the Chancellor?"
Abby: "Maybe dead, maybe not. Two more kids just died, though. Speaking of bummers."
Kane: "Probably radiation! We should just keep killing people up here, huh?"
Abby: "Kane, it's not radiation. They just ... blinked out."
Kane: "You seem very optimistic about how radiation poisoning works."
Abby: "When they're all suddenly dead we can revisit this. Until then, it's something else. Maybe a dumb mean-spirited uprising, maybe just more of our shitty technology breaking."
I think that it will take them forever to figure out this thing, because to an adult the idea of removing the bracelets would make no sense. Teenagers are immortal because the myelin sheathing on the nerves connecting their brain hemispheres isn't grown in yet. It's not that they need to grow up and learn to be people, not entirely. It's that they literally, physiologically, do not understand consequences. This is why they need parents, which is a thing these ones do not have. (Except for Clarke and Wells, who also don't have fully developed brains yet, which is another part of the reason their high horses bug everybody else.)
AWAY TEAM
Finn: "What I'm curious about is, why now?"
Octavia: "I don't care. I just want to act loopy and try to approximate being seductive."
Clarke: "Fine, I will level with you four people. The Ark is dying. They have maybe four months left, now that we're gone."
Finn: "Oh! That's why you were in jail and your dad died."
Clarke: "Yeah. My mom disagreed with him and the Council disagreed with him, because of the obvious riot that would happen. That's why Wells... Um, that's why we got nicked. And that's why today, because it's worth a shot. Even if we all die, that's another month to fix it."
Octavia: "Frankly I hope they continue to kill people. Fuck 'em."
Clarke: "I understand what you mean, but I also see that I will have to take you firmly in hand if you are ever going to be civilized."
Octavia: "Gotta catch me first! Time to take off my top."
She strips down, inducing boners everywhere, and jumps into a lake. What a free spirit! What a burgeoning womanhood on a reborn planet. I hope a giant pike doesn't come bite her in half! Or if it does, I sure hope Jasper steps up to the plate and saves her, because everybody knows it only takes a certain number of Kindness Coins in the Girl Machine before you get automatic Sex Prizes!
Those things all happen. Except the whole time the mutant pike is thrashing her around and she seems done for, and then it takes forever for Jasper to save her, and then she has like this tiny cut on her leg that doesn't even bother her after this scene. They collapse gasping on a rock, and she gives him a sweet hug for saving her life, and Monty is like, "I wish that I moved fast enough to save a vagina so that it would have sex with my penis. Maybe time!" Then everybody laughs, even the girls, because what the fuck ever. The more boys throw themselves off cliffs trying to trick you into fucking them, the less of that kind of boy there will be.
WRISTBAND RIOT!
Nighttime bonfires, people acting wired and weird, trying to figure out who they are with every single guideline gone; a party. Wells hears people having fun, and immediately limps over to stop that shit.
Wells: "Are you guys actually dancing around a bonfire and breaking your wristbands?"
Dirt bags: "Yeah! Freedom!"
Bellamy: "They will think we are dead, and then they will stay up there forever, or maybe die, or maybe live a hundred more years before they try again. Which means we get Earth."
Wells: "I get that your family and friends don't really mean anything to you sociopaths, but do you understand that none of us are doctors or engineers or farmers? You are talking about a camping weekend, not rebuilding civilization."
Bellamy: "We are a family! We are Juggalos!"
Then they all start chanting Whatever the hell we want! Whatever the hell we want! and Wells starts realizing that maybe he's not Jack or even Simon: If he is not very fucking smart about his move, he is going to be Piggy so fast.
And that's when it begins to rain. Another thing they never saw or felt or smelled before. Their rager turns into something much more beautiful, as the fires go out. Even Bellamy can feel it, with his face turned up to the sky.
ARK
Jackson: "Ten more dead kids, one after the other. This is getting weird."
Abby: "Yeah, but look at those readings. They found water."
Kane: "That's cool but you are under arrest for all those meds with the Chancellor! You're getting floated tomorrow, FYI."
Abby: "This public flogging bullshit is very reminiscent of when you killed my husband and put my daughter in jail, even though our families are friends."
Kane: "I have very strong beliefs! And technically I am right! We are humanity's only shot at even existing!"
Abby: "The difference between us is, I choose to make sure that we deserve to stay alive. So say we all!"
They take her to the Skybox to wait for getting killed in the morning, and she realizes she's in Clarke's old cell. So now it's doubly sad, because how ironic and/or awful of Kane, but also because she misses her daughter regardless of the cost-benefit analysis of sending her with The 100. Poor Abby.
AWAY TEAM
Also enjoying the nighttime is Clarke, who doesn't have to wear the face when everybody's asleep. She creeps out into a glowing magical Avatar phosphorescent forest and just feels some vibes.
Finn: "I brought you some water for your reverie."
Clarke: "Thanks, man. I hope it doesn't mutate us."
Finn: "Oh, can I show you something weird? It's a person-looking footprint near the river. My guess is monkeys."
Clarke: "You're dumb! And I am patronizing! But for real, there are no bipeds native to this area."
So obviously it is monkeys. Just kidding, it's Morlocks! Or something like that. The Others of this show. I am very much looking forward to them. What if they are less crazy than the criminal teens? What if they are Buddhists. Even mutated ones.
KANE
CeCe: "Can I just say that you are a crazy asshole?"
Kane: "Everybody keeps saying I am a bad guy but really I am a good guy. Sometimes, most of the time really, being a good guy actually makes you look like..."
CeCe: "Okay but she's my best friend."
Kane: "Friendship is a luxury. I will kill everybody and take us down to quote 'a cosmic Adam and Eve' if I have to."
CeCe: "Okay that's literally the craziest thing anybody has ever said. I don't think you're qualified for the job you've appointed yourself to. Please just show her mercy. Show me mercy."
Kane: "Mercy is also not on the list. The list basically just goes, Kill people. End of list."
Bets on how long until he has to decide whether or not to kill his wife? I think not long. I don't much care for the character but Councilor Kane is my favorite idea. Did you ever read "The Cold Equations"? A 1954 short story by Tom Godwin, and it's so good because it's not about anything but this. There are situations, science fiction exists to create them if you can't think of any real ones, where things are very simple and very gross and very sad.
This guy's delivering supplies to a colony, they desperately need them, and he finds a stowaway on his ship and his fuel is calculated down to the like, atom, how to get from where he is going to where he needs to be. Everything in between is cold void. He can't afford to get stuck out there, and the colony full of people really can't. There are literally no choices. So no matter how much they like each other or how much he grows to respect her, love her maybe, the equations don't care.
Whenever they do that logic thing to you about who you would save out of a group of people (the doctor who cheats on his wife vs. the menial laborer who loves animals, etc.) everybody acts like there's this 1990's Get Out Of Choosing Free card where you get to be the big self-righteous hero and say like, "We should just pick at random!" Which is fine if you are on a sinking cruise ship, but we are not a cruise ship. We are the last people in the universe. You have to say, "I will die, for sure. No problem. But after that, we have to save the most useful ones." Because it's not just about the people in the lifeboat, it's about their kids, and their kids. All of your people. Not just right now, but forever.
LANDFALL
Wells is kidnapped!
Bellamy: "To be honest I like you? But that bracelet's coming off. You can't be the one to inspire a counter-insurrection so you have to be on our side even if you don't want."
Wells: "I know that you are not doing this for ideological reasons or because you want to lead a race of Juggalos. What is it really?"
Bellamy: "Um, you are right. But I can't tell you why. What I can do is ask why you are still fighting for your dick dad, who I secretly killed anyway, when he exiled you?"
He goes into a whole song and dance about how you have to stop following your dad's rules and whatever, maybe that works on Wells maybe it doesn't, but Wells presents as wanting no part of it. So they hold him down and they do it anyway, and it's pretty brutal.
ARK
Abby: "Okay, let's do this. Before you kill me, I want you guys to at least try to reconfigure the wristband signals so we can talk to them, okay? Hook up with Sinclair."
Dr. Jackson: "You are no-nonsense even when you're dying! I admire you."
Actually she said "reverse-engineer," which makes no sense in this context, but whatever, she's got a lot going on. Of course, that's when the wounded Chancellor shows up, takes things in hand, and pardons her immediately. Abby does not blink.
Abby: "I spent twelve hours putting those intestines back together. Get back in bed."
Jaha: "Okay but first can you tell me if our kids are okay? Did The 100 make it?"
Abby: "...Kind of?"
THE LAST RIVER
They are one river away from Mt. Weather now, this morning, and still misusing basic terms. Things seem to have fallen apart, vocab-wise, since the Apocalypse.
Finn: "Jasper, swing on this vine rope to the other side. Let go at the apogee, that's all you have to do."
Jasper: "What? Apache? Did you mean apex? I don't think that's the word."
Clarke: "Oh my God just do it. I'm already worrying about how we're going to get the shit back across this chasm, I don't care what the fuckin' word is."
Jasper: "I'm a leaf on the winnnnd!"
Everybody tells Jasper what a bad-ass he is for swinging on a rope, and he spontaneously sprouts hair under his armpits and it's just egregious what this kid is written like, and he gets across there and finds a sad ruined sign for Mt. Weather and cheers for Team Apogee and everybody celebrates and hops around and maybe they're giddy from hunger but either way they have a lot of fun with this idea of Jasper being over there, while we are still over here, and that's when Jasper gets a spear through the chest.
Clarke: "I guess those monkeys are more than we bargained for. Unless they are Morlocks. Either way, I guess it's sad that Jasper died."
Finn: "Especially before losing his virginity. His only thing he was about."
Monty: "Does anybody want his goggles?"
But nobody does.
WEEK
The Blakes, Finn and Monty go looking for Jasper or his body, and find weird things that I hope are Buddhist Morlocks. Upstairs, Clarke's mom tries to find a way to Earth because the Ark is awful and Earth is great! Except for all the mutants and spear-throwing.
JACOB CLIFTON is a freelance writer and critic based in Austin, Texas. He currently recaps The Good Wife, Bates Motel, The Blacklist, The 100, and Pretty Little Liars for TWoP. Jacob can be found online at jacobclifton.com, Twitter, and Facebook, and a regular column for Tor.com, Geek Love.