AudienceofOne

Why are they going to such great lengths to make this season as tedious as possible?

I was going to ignore this when you posted but what the hell. The actor is clearly pregnant, her bump was quite noticeable in the memory device torture scenes.

With these dumbasses? All I could think of at that point was that Stargate Command would test the connection, send through a MALP to assess the environment on the other side and only then send through people - all of whom were highly trained. In this episode, these idiots just opened it up and wandered on through without even knowing what the atmosphere on the other side was. This is how Clark and Raven ended up in the digestion system of a planet animal. It'd be hilarious if the sun went nova after the device was built and they walked into an icy vacuum.

One of these days in a perfect world. Far far away. Maybe in another galaxy even. Longstanding popular shows won't destroy themselves to give birth to their mutated offspring. I honestly do not have words for how much I hated every terrible retcon this cynical hack just rained down upon me. I am genuinely angry even though I have no right to be. I've hated this show since Season 3. And yet. I am still genuinely angry. Turns out I had some affection left for this mess after all. At least before they just hacked up their own creation for their personal longevity. There was one line that made me laugh though. It was when Crazy Cult Bill said something like, "As everyone knows, to dial a location you need seven symbols". And for some reason didn't follow it up with, "At least that's what I learned from Stargate SG1, which is what this show has been blatantly ripping off for the last two years". Gosh I hated the Trikru and Trigedasleng retcons, they were horrible. Just the worst thing anyone could come up with. It's like they took anything interesting or organic out of the show and replaced it with the most trite explanations possible. Suddenly the entire show is just the game of a petulant child. Fighting with her brother in her tree house with their special language because she had a fight with Dad. Trikru! I'm starting to think this show's own creators hate it and want to destroy it before they leave. Makes sense - a show obsessed with nukes created by a guy who nukes it before he moves on. KABOOM! Nothing but radiation and ash. Farewell 100. You will not be missed.

Because Bardo is Earth - spoiler If it turns out that Bardo is not, in fact, Earth, I'll just come back here and delete these references *whistles innocently* Bardo is totally Earth. Time dilation!! As for the whole of this episode - other than the Diyoza/Hope scene that was surprisingly excellent - 💤 💤

Especially since Raven's entire freakout was predicated on Clarke's apparent blithe and carefree ability to commit mass murder without giving a shit. I seriously wanted to kick her. Raven's always lived in Raven world and this was the worst example. And of course Clarke just a) takes it and b) empathises and comforts as though Raven didn't just paint her as some kind of mass murdering sociopath. This Wait, I thought that was just me!! So weird. Jordan is the worst. But Echo's a close second. She's just such a one-dimensional psycho at this point. I'd say it was character assassination but she never had much of a character to begin with. I've spend the last couple of episodes going, "YES WE KNOW THAT BARDO IS EARTH, GET ON WITH IT" and I thought at last that this episode would have the gang going up to the surface and realising with shock and horror that this whole thing has been a giant narrative circle. But I guess that they need Clarke there to look in horror at the semi-submerged Statue of Liberty a la Planet of the Apes so it's been delayed an episode. This episode would have been a whole lot of nothing if it wasn't for Indra. Slim Sheidy is so boring and pointless. He can move on to the great mind drive in the sky any day now as far as I'm concerned.

Love it so much

The nadir of the episode for me was when the memory technician or whatever he was suddenly went, "Oh I know! The native Bardoans had this technology that we don't really know much about but that just happens to be RIGHT HERE and if I put this tattoo on your back where you'll never be able to see it you'll know how to get back a person you don't remember!" And they all just agree to that as though any of those words put together make any damn sense. I've never been a fan of Echo because I feel like her character is just whatever the writers want her to be at a particular time and right now her deranged obsession with Bellamy feels unearned.

Incomprehensible

And none of it has a point that I can see? What does any of this add to the storytelling? Maybe they're angling for a new season or a spinoff. If so that's even more annoying. They should wrap up the story they have. I really don't understand why they couldn't use this season to finally show them building a society or if they want to show the extinction of humanity then show it. Everyone just keeps running around for no reason. I'm fine with Clark choosing to go after Bellamy. But shouldn't they have at least had a conversation about her abandoning Sanctum? Someone at least could have said, "you have responsibilities here, you can't leave". Or something. Anything. The editing did not help of course. The episode was all over the place.

At the beginning of last season I called it the baby that Stargate SG1 had with the Shannara Chronicles and I did not want to be right. At this stage I have no idea what this show is even about.

This episode was beyond stupid. Every piece of conflict was so contrived. We haven't heard anything from the prisoners and now we get them right in the middle of a philosophical argument about whether to cooperate or not right when Raven decides to march some of them to their deaths. Don't get me started on the Sheidheda nonsense. Surely they could have done this plotline without Russell secretly being a megalomaniac Heda. And Jordan remains beyond stupid. Which is fine and I agree that High Horse Raven really pisses me off, especially when she's benefited from all of Clark's hard decisions. The problem is that she lied to them from the beginning for no reason. She could have told them the risks as she knew them, that way it would have been more powerful and more poignant when the situation spiralled out of her control. The girlfriend would have still been furious and the story would have been a genuine tragedy. As it is I found this episode completely tiresome. I remember when things falling apart was done organically. But it is admittedly a distant memory.

Bellamy is in love with Clarke and has been for years IMHO. I'm surprised Echo is still alive since I would have bet big dollars they were going to put Clarke and Bellamy together by the end.

I mean I once managed to kill a cactus so I spent that whole sequence wondering how many harvests they'd screwed up before they finally got it right.

The funny thing about his comment was me rolling my eyes earlier at Echo suddenly being a semi-automatic weapons expert. This show has always done this thing where a person is exposed to a new thing (here's a weapon, this is how Grounders fight) and within one or two episodes they're super experts. Oh God, not me. What a convoluted mess. The SPIRAL that is INSIDE YOU represents NUMBERS that power the MACHINES that lifts the BRIDGE that takes people from Sanctum but sends them to somewhere else and it's the Beta planet and the armoured soldiers send their prisoners there and there's a TIME DILATION and everyone loses their memories but then regains them and how many episodes is this season supposed to be??? It's like they're so lost for ideas that they just throw as many things into the pot as possible. It is possible they are angling for a time reset, which would be a crappy ending. Yep. They've got it the wrong way around.

I had this realisation during this episode that she's such an amazing actor with such gravitas but that we simply don't write parts for an actor like her in any other show. I don't know what her career will be like post-100 and that's super depressing. Not to make a negative statement on the other actors because many of them are quite good, but I think she's by far the best on the show right now. She is her character on a fundamental level. But he wasn't even on the other planet. He was this weird annoying retcon that popped up last season when things were already ridiculously overcrowded. Oh Sheidheda? Yeah, he's something we've been worried about for DECADES. Never heard of him before? We just never mentioned him. These writers have one fatal flaw. They use contrived action as a lazy writing prop to keep momentum. Given a moment to reflect and make things real they instead ram a new point of conflict in. It's why the show is too busy and too convoluted.

"Charlotte" was and is Dolores. The idea they're exploring here is that if you put "you" in a completely different life you would be changed by that life to the point where you're a completely different person. She was burned in the accident but not killed. She's still Charlores. It's just that the experience of losing the family she'd come to care for has changed her radically. Like almost everything this season, it works thematically. But the execution was terrible. Mostly because she's just assuming that Dolores is responsible for the explosion when she has no evidence of that at all. It's simply bad writing.

I pretty well checked out of this episode the minute they spent so much of it with Maeve killing imaginary Nazis for no reason. It's mindless and done solely because someone thinks it's cool to see a WOC kill Nazis while ignoring the fact she's currently enslaved to one. I can't believe I'm saying this of these writers after the first two seasons but they really haven't thought this shit through.

Since there was no reason for her and Maeve to be on different teams in the first place, her going to such lengths to "convince" her fell completely flat. Maeve's issue was never her choice to be on the wrong team, it was the fact she was stuck following somebody else's program for three seasons. Her blathering to Dolores about how she had to stop Dolores from creating a world full of Dolores copies - where did she even get that from? At the same time she's criticising her for creating versions of herself to die. These two things contradict each other! It's almost like she never had an actual motivation this season but was just a way for the writers to misdirect the audience and deliver exposition. This season was extremely good thematically but the writing was not very good. Execution matters too.

And then they woke up and it was all one of the AI's simulations... And the final scene is a flashcard that says, "Simulation rejected, load simulation 58Xb705" and it's just that for the next 10 seasons.

I don't know why anybody's doing anything except Dolores. She at least has a motivation even if they're still trying to drag out her arc by having her speak cryptically all the damn time. These shows always end up victims of their own success by trying to drag it out long past its use by date. I have no idea why Maeve and Dolores are fighting each other. The person Maeve should be pissed at is Serac since he's essentially enslaved her again. Somebody decided it'd be cool to have two hot chicks in leather fighting each other and that's just so damn sexist that the show's ostensible feminism is falling flat. Even Dolores is like, "why are you doing this?" and Maeve is just "I don't know, let me blow your arm off though, that'll make a cool visual". Dolores created versions of herself that she let die. That's literally the opposite of somebody who only cares about her own survival. So Maeve's "revelation" that Dolores was willing to sacrifice herself at this juncture made Maeve look like an idiot. And the last person who should be looking like an idiot is Maeve. Seriously, this was NOT a good episode. It was almost juvenile.

This episode was self-indulgent, that is all. I hate it when American shows get extended beyond the length of their own story and they are forced to resort to filler and then every episode becomes the product of somebody's "wouldn't it be cool if" brain fart. Wouldn't it be cool if we did Westworld as different genres? So cool, man. Let's do that! That will kill an hour.

Halfway through this season my initial assessment hasn't changed. Thematically on point, execution AWFUL.

So I'm the only one who thinks that Charlotte has a copy of Delores in her? This episode was way better than Maeve being stuck in the same rat maze over and over again. The theme that the "real" world is simply a more complex version of Westworld really works for me. Also in terms of structural disadvantage, Caleb's storyline is extremely apropos. If society decides that you're not worthy of resources then you end up in a self-fulfilling prophecy. So this show is still capable of making apropos societal allusions when it wants to. This episode gave me more hope for the rest of the season.

I don't really know what to say, I thought this was much weaker thematically than the first episode and just consisted of Maeve replaying her role in previous seasons. Maeve believes she's powerful and the ultimate badass but is just fulfilling the programming dictates of somebody else. We already know this so I don't know why we needed to see it again. Also can't she get a new plotline? It's depressing seeing a badass WOC being stuck retreading the same ground and I don't get what the show is trying to say by making it happen again - other than the fascist subtext of "we're all just machines in someone else's story", which it made already. And didn't require actual fucking Nazis to do it. The show feels like it's spinning its wheels, filling an episode count in preparation for an inevitable season 4. I'm not impressed.