Tuesday, March 8, 2016

What Did I Think Of: The 100: Season 3, Episode 7 -Thirteen- (SPOILERS!)

What can I say about Episode 7, titled Thirteen, of The 100? It was definitely a doozy. When I first heard the synopsis for it, I can't say I was super enthused. I'm not the biggest fan of Polis, Lexa, and what's going on in Polis with Lexa, so I wasn't that excited to hear that Thirteen would be mainly focused in Polis. The flashback scenes I was interested in. I thought seeing the destruction of the Earth would be pretty cool. So I'm a little mixed on Thirteen. There were definitely some jaw dropping moments, but it was mixed with some ho-hum moments too. I'm going to break this review down into the separate storylines/characters featured in Thirteen.

Murphy

Murphy is a little tied up at the moment. He's been captured by Titus and Titus hasn't been the nicest host to him. First Titus tortured Murphy for information regarding Clarke, now he's torturing Murphy for information regarding the City of Light pill Jaha gave him. Apparently the symbol on the pill is a holy symbol to Titus. Murphy is currently tied up in Titus' little holy cave hoping for some type of escape.
Again, Murphy has no luck at all. Always captured, beaten up, that's just the usual for him. Again, I love his sass. I'm glad they made Richard Harmon a main member of the cast. Even though he's done some pretty despicable things, Murphy's sass and snark makes me like him.
So there is really not that much to tell about Murphy in Thirteen. He spends the majority of his time captured and beaten up. It shows how crazy pants Titus is.


Octavia (and Indra)

Octavia was probably my favorite part of this episode really. She doesn't take any crap and she tells it like it is. To me, she's the only one in this episode really concerned with this brewing war between the Grounders and Arkadia. Dealing with the problems of Pike. I liked how she gave Clarke a bit of a reality check. Commenting on her cushy quarters and her little trysts with Lexa. I've been kind of annoyed with Clarke for that this season, so it was nice to see Octavia give her what for. Clarke has been so focused on Lexa, that she's kind of forgotten her own people, that she is an Arkadian.
I also liked Octavia motivating Indra to get out of her depressive funk. Gave Indra a purpose to fight for again. Of course, I don't want Indra to hurt Bellamy or anything, but I like this pair of strong women.

Becca


The flashback bit was the biggest draw to me in Thirteen, but I kind of ended up wanting more from it. I thought I would get some scenes from the ground as everything was getting destroyed, but it all took place in space. We got to see more of Becca. Her having to deal with her creation destroying the world. In all honesty, she didn't seem that tore up about it. She was obsessed with getting ALIE 2.0 working, even though the space station she was on wanted her to destroy it. And I kind of agree with the commander of Polaris. If your last creation just went wacko and destroyed the world, maybe it's not a good idea to continue with Version 2.0. Maybe it's better if Version 2.0 is destroyed. Obviously Becca didn't feel that way.
I will say, Becca has a real knack for saving herself while getting everybody else killed. Her creation destroyed the Earth and she just happens to be safe in space. Then she ends up getting the Polaris space station blown up because of her refusal to destroy Version 2.0. But she doesn't die with the space station, she manages to use an escape pod and go to Earth just in time.
My favorite part of the flashbacks was seeing how it fit into play with Grounder history. How Becca was the first Commander, how she's the origin of the Black Blood, which she had created and injected herself with to make her a compatible vehicle for ALIE 2.0. That part I liked, because it brought a lot of stuff together. Made things more interesting.


Lexa
This stuff started off...

And then things got a little shocking.


and in the end, I was like, alright. You threw a little bit of a twist in there The 100 writers. Brought some pretty interesting, separate parts together.


So in short, Clarke and Lexa had sex and then Lexa dies. Oh and then Clarke and Murphy get locked in Clarke's room. Still not free Murphy, still not free. I could really care less about the Clexa moment, because I don't ship Clexa, I ship Bellarke. But her death thing was a little jaw dropping. Did I hate it, no. But again, I'm not the biggest fan of Lexa in general. She's not my favorite character. Most times I just found her boring and robotic, and the other times she just annoyed me to no end. I feel like the Clexa thing was really pushed this season just because of a certain, loud segment of the fan base.
Hey look! Titus might be a leftie! Hello fellow left-hander!

 

So in short, Titus tried to kill Clarke, but ended up shooting unlucky Lexa instead, when she walked in to investigate. Lexa dead. It took her quite awhile to die though. Super long, maybe overly dramatic (at least to me) death scene. But again, remember that I'm not a Lexa fan. I was not one of those sobbing in front of my TV. The coolest thing about this is that we find out that ALIE 2.0 is actually in the back of Lexa's neck. It turns out that every commander is implanted with ALIE 2.0 that Becca brought down from Polaris. I thought that was a really cool way to tie everything together. But just because Lexa is dead, doesn't mean that she is gone forever. Lexa is probably contained somehow in ALIE 2.0, which means we'll probably see her again. But she's dead in the real world.

The Overall Reaction
This has been the craziest part of Thirteen, the fan reaction. My personal opinion is that...

People really need to chill. It's not the end of the world. It's a TV show, she's a fictional character. People are going a little crazy here. Twitter and Instagram have been flooded with people who say that because Lexa's dead, they are done with the show. I have mixed emotions on that. Namely, I want a Season 4, so The 100 needs to have all the ratings and viewers that it can get. But at the same time, I want to say good riddance to those people. I won't miss them. I feel that they weren't true fans anyway. They are mad because things didn't go the way they wanted them too. But here's the deal, Alycia Debnam Carey was a guest star! She's got another job, another show where she's one of the main characters in Fear the Walking Dead. Rothenberg only had her for 7 episodes, so he had to do something to wrap up her storyline and explain her absence. I mean, I think Rothenberg backed himself into a corner by integrating her story with the ALIE 2.0 story, that's ultimately why he had to kill her. Cause she's on a zombie show, people tend to die on zombie shows, main characters tend to die on zombie shows. If he hadn't weaved the ALIE 2.0 storyline into it, he could have had Lexa go away for awhile without killing her, but because he did, he had no choice but to kill her. And the ALIE 2.0 integration with Lexa really did make a cool, little twist.
But some Clexa fans are going too crazy. In all honesty, they kind of get on my nerves. If you don't like Clexa, then to them, you are automatically homophobic. If you praise and hope for Bellarke, they go out of their way to hurt you and make you cry. Not all Clexa fans are this way, but I've run into some of them that are, and they annoy me. So if you decide to leave The 100 because you're mad about what happened to one character, then buh-bye. I won't miss you and don't forget to close the door on your way out.

EPISODE GRADE: B+
A slow start episode, with a real shocker of an ending. Fun to watch.

The 100 pictures were procured from http://screencapped.net/tv/the100/ and I procured the gifs from various sources through google images

3 comments:

  1. I admittedly shipped Clexa, and yeah I overreacted a bit to Lexa's death. Mostly because I was so invested in the story. But I still think the writers could've done it a bit differently and made it better.

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    1. I think any way they tried to fix that situation would have failed. The reality of her being a guest-star and only around for 7 episodes in Season 3 tied their hands. The hardcore Lexa fans would have been angry in any way that she left.

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    2. I'll be completely honest, I never really liked Lexa and I'm glad she's out of the picture finally. This season has been hard for me to get through because the original gang has been split up pretty much the whole time. This season has almost made me be over Clarke. I've just been annoyed at her mostly this season. I hope the last couple episodes are epic!!

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