yellowfred

I don't doubt that the writers had a reason for having the Machine call Root "Samantha Groves," but I don't think it's a thing of the Machine knowing her so well. I'm sure Root wouldn't have gotten angry with the Machine for calling her "Samantha Groves" any more than she got mad at Harold for continuing to call her "Miss Groves," but "Root" was the name she obviously preferred. Like, I think Shaw could have called Root literally anything and she'd have been fine with it. At the same time, though, Shaw calls her "Root" every single time. John calls her "Root." Fusco, when he's using a name, calls her "Root." Even Harold eventually started calling her that more often (I would argue that his insistence on calling her "Miss Groves" was something of a defense mechanism on his part). So, if the people she was closest to, the ones who cared the most about her, all call her "Root," it's a little sad that the Machine doesn't.

I'm still holding out hope that that's a misdirect. Like, they mentioned needing to be careful about sending out ravens before they left, since there was a chance Ramsey would intercept them. She could be sending that one specifically so that Ramsey will intercept it and send his forces to Moat Cailin, with the intention of stopping the knights of the Vale, which would leave Winterfell relatively unguarded.

So, as far as "episodes right after a major character death" go, this one wasn't bad. I wouldn't put it in the same league as "The Devil's Share," but it wasn't bad. Shaw was absolutely killing it. I got a little (read: a lot) weepy seeing her at the playground. I was a little worried that they'd go too far one way or the other with her grieving process, but the way it played out, to me, felt true to the character. She was definitely more on edge than usual, but Shaw's never going to be the one to let feelings get in the way of doing her job. I particularly loved her little "who needs God mode" moment at the Vigilance-Lite headquarters. On a side note, I'm gonna be honest, it hurt me a little bit, in my soul, to hear the Machine call Root "Samantha Groves."

I feel like this episode missed an opportunity by not having Root at least a little bit involved in the case of the week. I mean, she was the original shadowy mastermind who had all her bases covered. I get that she was busy with the Shaw plot, but I still would have liked to see at least a passing reference to her first hand knowledge of how someone like that operates. Then again, I do always love getting to see Elias and Finch working together, so I'm not exactly complaining.

I'll be honest, I was really expecting Sansa to make a better show of recruiting. I mean, I guess it's reasonable, considering the fact that instead of being (sort of creepily) mentored by Littlefinger, show!Sansa got stuck being (even more creepily) raped and tortured by Ramsey Bolton, but I always thought that diplomacy (or, what passes for diplomacy in Westeros) would end up being her thing. Like, I did sort of appreciate her being largely unimpressed with Stannis (twice she banked on him winning battles and twice she was left hanging), but she's now doing the exact thing that he did, expecting people to follow her because their allegiance is her birthright. At the very least, she could tell them what a sick fuck Ramsey is (I honestly have no idea why this isn't their go-to argument).

I mean, it's entirely possible that they gave her a simulation where she killed the scientist, then had someone in real life kill the scientist, and played the news story just to make her think it wasn't a simulation. The only thing we really know wasn't a simulation was her finding out that the scientist had been killed, since that was followed by Root's message.

I have a theory that the code Root gave the Machine to help her defend herself was basically a "what would Root do" protocol (particularly since it was recently established that Samaritan kind of sucked at predicting how Root would react under stress). Plus, as much as Finch taught the Machine to think and reason, I think Root taught Her to feel. So, basically, I wouldn't be surprised if She takes on more than just Root's voice.

Regarding the various potential tropes involved in Root's death, I tend to think it's still too early to tell. On the Fridged Woman level, like, obviously it had the most immediate effect on Harold's storyline (though I might argue that the Machine had the most significant reaction), which is not ideal, but we haven't really had the chance to see how it might affect the rest of the team. Also, I tend to associate fridging with people being murdered purposefully (as in, by the in-story person who killed them) to elicit a particular reaction from the hero, which wasn't the case here. The Bury Your Gays trope is a little trickier, because, unlike fridging, it's ultimately not an issue with how something is framed, executed, or any other storytelling factor. It fits the trope because she was a lesbian and now she's dead (or, ascended to non-corporeal god-hood, depending on how you want to view it). There's nothing the show or the writers could do with her death that wouldn't fall into that trope, so the real question is whether or not the overall storyline that it's a part of ultimately pays off.

In season 2, the episode where they first introduced Caleb Phipps, they explain that the reason the internet exists as it is now was because of an unknown hacker who hacked ARPANET, thereby forcing the government to make it open to the public. Finch implies that it was him, though we don't actually get confirmation of that until season 3.

Ha, and they always turn into Gods.

Basically, he made the internet. Like, he hacked into what was basically a closed, government-run network and made it open so that everyone could use it. I think the mention of his father, particularly in that context, really emphasized exactly how long he's been hiding and how much of it was pretty fundamentally unfair. So, I've honestly been trying to resign myself to the fact that Root was probably going to die before the series ended, this whole episode I was trying to mentally prepare myself for it, but I'll be damned if that wasn't just completely gutting. I'm glad that she got to go out protecting Finch and I kind of love the idea that the Machine picked her voice (which is kind of fitting, since Root was always the one She picked to speak for Her). I also appreciated how understated it was, with each team member realizing/finding out and just kind of freezing for a second. That being said, I don't know how much they'll really be able to deal with the aftermath of it, since they only have three episodes left, but I hope we see at least a little bit of the team tearing shit up out of grief. On a related side note, I've gone from hoping that Blackwell wises up and turns on Samaritan to hoping that he dies slowly and painfully.

I wonder if Clarke has officially saved all their lives enough times that they'll stop being dicks to her. This felt like such a non-episode. Like, there were maybe five minutes of anything having to do with the season-long plots, which might have been okay early in the season, but it feels a little late in the game for it. It would be one thing if there were at least some meaningful character interactions, but there really weren't. We didn't even get some of the others taking about their perspective on the whole Mount Weather thing, which seems like a missed opportunity (I find it hard to believe that no one in that room felt like pointing out that he's alive because he's got some dead kid's bone marrow in him). I mean, I guess you could count it as a final resolution to the Emerson issue, but I didn't think that really needed to be resolved more than it already was (side note: the grounders apparently kind of suck at exiling people). Plus, the lesson of this season seems to be that you're definitely better off just killing your enemies, so I suppose this was more thematically appropriate.

So, I feel like the idea for this episode was really good, but so much of it got lost in execution. I mean, I'm happy that we have most of the original group working together again, and I think that's been long overdue. Moreover, I think it was smart to have it happen in an episode where their conflicts are brought up and then have to be set aside for a more important goal. At the same time, a lot of it just didn't work. Like, I didn't get why Alie!Raven was harping so much on the deaths of Clarke's father and Bellamy's mother (both of which were pretty clearly not their faults) when they both have body counts in the hundreds from actual choices they've made (not that those went unmentioned, but it seemed like a lot of emphasis was put on those two). I guess they maybe wanted to draw a parallel there, but it seemed more like, in Bellamy's case, the writers don't want to put too much emphasis on things that the audience might actually hold against him. Like, even the whole "Bellamy's really a follower" thing was about him following Clarke to try and save Raven, rather than that time he followed Pike to commit a war crime. Regarding Clarke blaming Bellamy for what happened to Lexa, I don't think that would really be in character for her. Like, if Lexa had actually been assassinated for her position on the whole thing, I could maybe see Clarke holding it against him more (I kind of wonder if that's why the writers had her accidentally shot instead), but even then, I think Clarke understands better than most people the way that choices have consequences you can't predict. That being said, I really wish she'd stood up for herself more. When she said the thing about how Lexa was in the chip, I was kind of expecting her to snap about how completely ungrateful they all are. I mean, I get that that's not really her style, but it seemed like so much of her time in Polis was about rebuilding her confidence in herself as a leader, so it particularly sucked to see her apologizing for it again (and again and again). On a side note, when Jasper said that whole "I can't do what you did" thing, I initially thought that was him saying that he couldn't have saved Raven's life or he couldn't have been a productive member of the team mere days after losing the girl he was in love with, but then I realized that he was just being a smug asshole about the fact that he didn't destroy the thing that, as it turns out, is the key to saving the world, even though he wanted to destroy it purely out of spite, so he can go die in a ditch any time now.

So, I just watched the episode. I actually found it mostly underwhelming, which is surprising, since it included two of the things I've been looking forward to for most of the season (Octavia beating Bellamy up and Pike getting arrested, neither of which were as satisfying as I thought they'd be). Part of it was probably that I was hoping Octavia would have more of a hand in bringing Pike down and for it to be a more direct result of Lincoln's execution, but mostly it just felt anticlimactic. Like, I get that they wanted it to be Bellamy's call, because redemption or whatever, but having it be more or less on a whim just wasn't very satisfying. Also, I feel like maybe the worst part about the Ontari storyline (aside from that one thing that's probably been discussed enough) is how completely ineffectual she is. Like, I guess it's only been a few days, in story, since she showed up again, but I was kind of expecting her to blow the whole thing open more than she has. Pike won an election and immediately slaughtered an army of grounders. From what we've seen, the Commander's position is more absolute than the Chancellor's, so you'd think that Ontari would have at least done something vaguely comparable. Instead she's twiddling her thumbs in Polis (no puns intended) and the only effect she has on the Arkadia storyline is some vague doubts that she'll accept them surrendering Pike. It occurs to me that both of my above complaints come down to the fact that this show has killed off two significant characters this season and neither of their deaths seem to be more than a footnote in the current direction of the story. Obviously, the season's not over yet, so there's still time, but it's more than a little frustrating. All that being said, probably the one good part of the episode, for me, was the Alie stuff. I can hardly believe I just wrote that, but here we are. As much as I could really do without seeing Raven tortured (again), I thought Lindsay Morgan's performance was great. Also, her Raven-as-Alie stuff was so spot-on it freaked me out. On a side note, I feel like Jaha should get some kind of special award for being a normal human who interfaced with an AI (the same AI that once nearly wiped out humanity) and somehow made the AI more evil.

In "Watch the Thrones," she was the one who stopped Clarke from assassinating the Ice Queen and then bled all over her face. I was surprised they didn't include her in the previouslies, since that was a while ago and I think she only had one line. If this was supposed to be the beginning of Bellamy's redemption arc, it really didn't work for me. He still so obviously doesn't get what he did wrong that I want to smack him. Also, why was his reaction to finding out there's a new commander to say "damn grounders always responding to horns"? Like, what the hell? If he were acting with the sense god gave a fruit fly, he'd at least be wondering what that might mean for his people and the huge army surrounding them that he knows could wipe them out if the new commander tells them to. I'm really gonna miss Lincoln. I guess I'm happy that he got to do the whole "heroic sacrifice" thing (I mean, I can only take so many accidental murders in the same month). I don't know who directed this episode, but I wish someone had explained to them that you can let the audience know that someone's been executed without actually showing it. Plus, for me, it just looked kind of fake and it took me out of the moment. So, basically, agreed about the show pretty much sucking right now.

This is actually a central tenet of the League of Assassins in the Arrowverse. Basically, they have, at any given time, a handful of the deadliest killers in the world mixed in with several dozen incompetent toddlers. It makes dealing with them kind of like a game of Russian roulette. So, I really wish we'd gotten to see more of Sara's thought process this episode. I think a part of the problem was how rushed the first half of the episode was, but it seems like her decision to rejoin (prejoin?) the League of Assassins could have used a bit more setup. Like, I'm guessing that she was having trouble controlling her bloodlust and she thought that Ra's could help her, which would have taken exactly ten seconds of dialogue to establish. Also, I guess they've been training together more than we've seen (and I probably shouldn't discount those two months of playing board games together), but I didn't really think that Sara and Kendra had gotten to the "I can save you from your time-travel-induced, quasi-brainwashing, because of our personal connection" level of friendship. That being said, I thought the fight was really cool and I hope we get to see the two of them interacting more in the future. Also, okay, their conception of time travel almost always gives me a headache, so I almost always choose to ignore it as much as I can, but this episode was definitely pushing it. If the central premise of the show is that the future can be changed (is, in fact, constantly changing), then they really need to stop throwing in all these ways that their actions have already been written. Like, the thing with the Chronos reveal (which I actually thought was really well done) means that they were already destined to leave Mick to die before they even really got started on their mission. On top of that, if they're saying that the only reason Nyssa saved Sara on Lian Yu was because future!Sara told past!Ra's to send her (his whole, "why would I ever do that?" seemed to confirm that), then that means that everything that's happened to her since Nyssa found her has basically been predestined. At the same time, though, when they've gone to see past versions of Stein and Snart, they've actually changed how things worked out (ultimately not that much, but still). Then again, Sara got to name her own future girlfriend and Ray got to give some physicist's son a nickname that will cause him to spend most of his adult life saying "no, not that Bill Gates," so at least there's that.

She's bisexual.

This is another episode where I wish the writers had thought through how to prolong the fight against Savage more thoroughly. This is one of the reasons that I think television writers would learn a lot from playing video games. Like, most games that feature an actual plot have a main recurring villain, but most of the actual work you're doing is to either weaken your opponent or strengthen your team. Along the way, you probably run into the main villain every once in a while, just to make sure you remember who they are, but you're not constantly going head to head with them. Not to mention, I feel like Savage might seem more threatening if we saw significantly less of him (the "Jaws Effect," if you will) and more of the proof of his influence. For example, if it were one of his semi-immortal flunkies running the mutant-hawk-manufacturing scheme (also, if at some point there was a concern about Vandal Savage commanding an army of mutant hawk things in the future), it would have reiterated that he has a huge power base of loyal followers and avoided having the team kill Savage for a third time, still not permanently. Also, it would have felt more like progress, which would be nice, at this point. I must have missed it, but did they at least manage to keep the dagger this time? I, personally, did not find the discussion of the various types of bigotry present in this time period to be overly "very special episode"-esque. To me, it felt like they kept that as an aspect of the different plot lines without making it the point of any of them. Of course, I would have found it pretty glaring if they just hadn't addressed any of it, so there's that. So, now that Sara's stuck where/when she is, do you think she's at least gonna go back and see that nurse? I'm just saying, like, while she's there/then, she might as well take advantage of the situation.

Regarding the predictability of Lexa's death, I actually am in the camp that's been expecting it for a while (for me, the big tip-off was the introduction of Ontari, followed by the explanation that we wouldn't see her again until after Lexa died), but I'm starting to understand a bit more about why so many people were caught off guard by it. Like, I can respect that the whole reveal of the spirit of the Commander being an AI chip is a huge part of the story that they want to tell, but there's really not any good excuse for being fully aware that there's this damaging trope out there, reassuring your fans that you're aware of it, and then playing right into it anyway.

My understanding was that the Commander used to only be in charge of Trikru, the same way that the queen was in charge of Azgeda and the other clans presumably have their own leaders. Lexa was the first Commander who was able to unite all of the clans into a single coalition. Also, given Titus' reaction to the idea of there being a nightblood from Azgeda, it was probably something that only ever showed up in Trikru children before.

The thing, though, is that Titus doesn't need to convince the people that they should go to war, he has to convince the commander. The whole problem is that the people already want war and Lexa wouldn't let them have it. He was hoping that making it look like some random sky person killed Clarke would be enough to get Lexa to declare war (a shaky plan, at best, but I think he was more than a little unhinged at this point). Even if he did try to convince people that Skaikru killed the commander, there'll still be a new commander with at least enough of Lexa's memories to know that he's lying. Plus, he made that whole deathbed promise to never hurt Clarke, and I think framing her for murder would qualify. Personally, I think her death went the way it did specifically so that it would set up Titus and Clarke in kind of an awkward alliance, probably against Ontari, since she's probably going to be the next commander. That was sort of my interpretation also. The first generation of people she met probably had a reasonably clear understanding of what the chip was, in the same way that most people now would have a reasonably clear understanding of it, meaning that they get what it is and what it's meant to do, but it's not like they really know how. Then, over the course of subsequent generations, that understanding changed, in part because that type of technology might as well be mystical, compared to what people were living with in their every day lives. I mean, I agree that 97 years is probably a little quickly for that to have happened, but there are some exacerbating factors, like the fact that they don't seem to have had any particularly reliable means of writing things down, that make it more feasible.

So, the impression I got of Alie 2.0 is that it's meant to be more about understanding, while Alie 1.0 was more about controlling. So, while 1.0 alters what people value (and think and feel and remember), 2.0 is more about keeping a record of it. I don't think there's any implication that who Lexa was was affected by Alie 2.0 in any way. There've been several references to the fact that, as a commander, she was notably different than her predecessors in her approach to things. Several people who had known previous commanders have said, on the show, that she was special. She may have had some extra information from the memories of past commanders in her dreams, but even those were more like suggestions that she decided, on her own, to either ignore or accept. I doubt any influence from the chip was substantial enough to undermine her own role in what she was able to accomplish. Plus, if she really had all the knowledge of the past commanders, then she would know everything that Becca knew and she'd have had a complete understanding of the technology embedded in the back of her neck. On a side note, after writing that paragraph, I had to go back and change a bunch of stuff to past tense, and now I'm sad again.

I think Sara and Snart would have frozen to death if he did that. For the rest of it, I have no idea. Gideon's just selectively lame, I guess. So, I have slightly mixed feelings about this episode. I mean, I wasn't a huge fan of any part of the set up, but I thought most of the scenes of different characters stuck together were really good. I particularly liked Sara and Snart, but Ray and Kendra were more enjoyable than I expected them to be. I was also really happy to see Stein get his big damn hero moment. That being said, I think the time pirate stuff was kind of dumb (both the element that time pirates brought to the episode and the very idea of time pirates existing). I also did like Rip's wife, but it didn't make me like Rip any more. If anything, now I'm more upset that we didn't get her leading the team instead, since she was apparently the smart, strategic one in their relationship.

So, that was kind of a gut-punch. I haven't quite decided if I mean that in a good way or a bad way. On the one hand, I do see the narrative purpose of it. Both personally and politically, Lexa was a huge stabilizing factor in the world they've built, and I don't think the writers want the situation to be that stable just yet. The reveal that all that "Spirit of the Commander" stuff she always talked about was actually, scientifically true was pretty awesome (I'd suggest that Clarke should feel bad for all those times she rolled her eyes about it, but I think she's been through enough). I'm also working on the assumption that the new commander being from the Ice Nation (not spoiled, just guessing) will add some interesting complications. It probably helps that I think Lexa's death has been pretty well telegraphed for the past few episodes, so I would have actually been more surprised if she lived much longer. I'm almost relieved that it wasn't a full-on Caesar situation, which is what I was predicting after 3.05. On the other hand, it really just kind of sucks. Like, generally speaking, I'm not really a fan of the whole "accidentally caught in the crossfire" thing. Plus, the "lesbian sex leads to death" thing still rankles, no matter how it's used. Beyond that, there's the fact that I just really liked Lexa. This season, she's honestly been one of the most likable people on the show. I liked both her romantic and professional relationship with Clarke; I think the two of them play off of each other brilliantly. I also just liked watching her be a leader. She made for an interesting contrast with Pike in the way that she lead by reining in her people's passions instead of using them to her advantage (also, in that she was awesome while Pike was and will probably continue to be the worst). I'm not entirely certain that even a great storyline resulting from her death could be as enjoyable to watch as any storyline where she'd gotten to live. I think probably the saving grace, for me, is that you could tell how seriously the show took that moment. Like, I've seen characters I love die on TV shows and I've seen characters I love be discarded. The former is sad, the latter is insulting. To me, in this episode, Lexa's death was definitely the former.

So, as much as I liked the reveal of the new Green Arrow being John Diggle, Jr., I kind of had to roll my eyes at him choosing to go by "Conner Hawke." Like, did he pick that name out of a hat? I half expected him to say he read it in a comic book or something, because there was absolutely no in-universe reason for him to be using it. I really liked getting to see Sara and Old Man Oliver interact (even though, between her hair and his beard, it was not a great time for personal styling choices). The two of them still play off of each other really well and I think their friendship is easily one of Sara's strongest connections to her sense of humanity. I love that Sara's more firmly planting herself on the side of "people before the mission," which will probably put her at odds with Rip more often. I also appreciate that, much like myself, Sara has taken to ignoring Rip's vague and often contradictory warnings about timeline stuff. One thing that continues to not really work for me is how impressed people are by the cold and heat guns. Like, Heatwave is basically carrying a slightly modified flamethrower. Will people thirty years in the future still be awed by that? Also, in terms of doing actual damage, neither of their weapons are as effective as a normal gun.