SourK

I think it would be really funny if the asshole principal turned out to be the voice of reason, and they all just kept shaking their fists in his face anyway.

LMFAO. Veronica holds a press conference in her secret, illegal bar and starts by making everybody watch her sing show tunes. I've missed this. Also, I love how the search party looking for Jughead was making as much noise as possible and not giving him any opportunity to respond when they yelled his name. There's something beautiful about watching the whole town just tromp through the woods while their enthusiasm to get involved stops them from accomplishing their goal. Yeah... I feel like this show might not understand how abuse works. Unless Reggie's dad suddenly escalates in a future episode... but the vibe I got is that we're supposed to think that hitting his car with a bat solved the problem. I don't get why so many TV shows seem to believe that writing one story/essay/poem/song will suddenly open all the important doors. I think this is an interesting path for Jughead, but there was part of me that found it annoying that he barely even did anything and suddenly he has headhunters beating down his door to give him opportunities. I'm glad his school is probably evil.

TKTK During that long, long moment, I thought "Then, she got an idea. An awful idea. The Grinch got a wonderful, awful idea!" I don't particularly like this thing where June's a dark, gritty antihero or whatever, but, more importantly, I don't understand the logic of this decision. They just had to keep her from talking to anyone for a few more days. And June told JANINE their plan. Which is just as bad as letting Ms. Lawrence know, plus the part where she can't monitor Janine. I agree with previous posters who said it seems like the Americans are honoring their agreement with Serena, which is the smart thing to do, and the ethical thing to do. Also, because there were stills last week that made it seem like Luke was there for the arrest, and then we didn't see him, I think it's possible we're missing a scene where someone got Luke to agree to this arrangement so that they could get Fred. But it's an interesting point -- I'm not sure Luke could be compelled to bring the baby there against his will. I think it's possible to argue that one of the levers Gilead has to control the Handmaids is that it's holding their children hostage. That's something that's been used against June more than once, and the reason she ultimately didn't leave last season. So, you could say that, if the Handmaids knew their kids were safe, they might be more willing to resist, and also that they might not be willing to leave while their kids are still hostages. Based on the angry, sad way they were looking at each other, they'd be good candidates for marriage on this show, but I think the laws of Gilead say that June can't be anyone's wife because she's a sinner or whatever. However, I think it's a good point that, with his wife dead. Lawrence has a lot less reason to leave the country, even if he still goes through with the plan to send the kids. He might end up staying behind with some kind of other agenda. I didn't think of that, but if Lawrence purposely helped her OD, that would explain a lot about the way he was looking at June, and the dialogue where they both said they should have looked in on her -- we know June's lying; maybe he is, too. I'm not sure he'd do that to his wife, though. We keep getting told that he really, really loves her. That's also what I thought, but there was that one line of dialogue where Serena was worried that Fred would be extradited to somewhere where he could be executed, which suggests to me that he might not be in US custody. I think they said something last episode about him being tried by the international criminal court, or a war crimes tribunal or something, and I have no idea how that works.

You guys, it's tradition that every season of The 100 ends with a total blood bath where everything goes wrong and half of the characters die and the thing everyone was fighting over gets destroyed. This year the power of love defeats two of the villains and everyone lives. I hate it. Also, this thread is the first place I learned that Clarke and Bellamy are married in real life. Does anyone else remember that one season of Angel where Angel's baby went through a portal and came back as a teenager and stole his girlfriend? That reminds me, when he listed them, he said that if things failed at Alpha site, they'd go to "beta then gamma then delta." Why did gamma get promoted over delta? That's the mystery I want solved.

I feel zero tension about anything that happens to June because I know she can't get hurt anymore, but I more or less liked this episode anyway. And, as others have said, I LOVED the music. Aside from the Kate Bush song, my favourite part was the score in the scene where Fred and Serena are lying in their separate beds. It was creepy and surreal and kind of sad and captured the mood really well, given the betrayal going on. I also thought it was really funny that Lawrence got trapped in his own depressing version of Collateral, where he had to drive June around and wait in the car while she killed people. Somebody made a comment this episode -- maybe Lawrence -- that June always stays calm no matter what happens and I was like, "No. She makes the same expression no matter what happens, but then she goes berserk." I think they missed an opportunity to have her take him out in a premeditated way because she knew he was going to tell on them. Or to rearrange the situation so that she and Lawrence killed him together and became partners in crime more than they already are. Instead, they framed it more like self-defense, and had her use an improbable, improvised weapon that she grabs in the moment, and it didn't quite work for me. Same. Serena is one of my favourite characters, and not because I think she's a good person. I just think she's in an interesting position, because she's both a victim and a perpetrator, which makes things a lot more complicated. To me, that reads as "Let's force them into a standoff and make them kill us" which is what people do when they don't want to be arrested.

Not understanding WTF's happening as I watch the show really hurts my enjoyment of the show. I was confused about Murphy and Emori's deal (thanks for explaining; I loved their outfits, too), but also why the colony people recognized Gabriel on sight when no one knew he changed bodies, and how Abby's injection would change her bone marrow right away. Speaking of Abby -- I guess she made seven magic prime-making injections since she gave Russell six and used one on herself, but then he decided she should be a host anyway (why?!)... which means there's one left over? I love how, all season long, everyone's been like, "Remember Monty (not Harper). Be more like Monty. Honour his sacrifice and live the way he'd want us all to live!" and meanwhile no one's seen his kid since this started and they don't even remember he exists. That's why he's dead, yo.

That scene stood out to me, too, mostly because I knew it would bug the forums. 🙂 In all seriousness, it feels like a little bit of lazy directing when that happens -- basically, the show is anticipating that the other actors are going to approach Elizabeth Moss in the scene, so she's already looking up when they do, and nobody thinks about the world building and relationships. That said, part of me likes the idea that, the longer this particular group of people keeps interacting with each other (June, the Waterfords, Aunt Lydia), the more familiar they get, and the more the boundaries around their interactions get blurred. For example, I kind of like that moment where they see the doctors in the hall, and June goes, "Aunt Lydia?" as if, for a moment, she actually expected Lydia to have her interests in mind and protect her -- much like I liked how June and Serena used to get confused about whether they were friends or not. But I wish the show were dramatizing that kind of thing more deliberately rather than having the characters act random.

I love how we all have to explain the story to each other and then, after we understand, we still don't care. I liked the scene with the young Echos. It legitimately went a different way than I was expecting and it helped me understand Echo more as a character. I know everyone's been calling her kind of slimey and cowardly or whatever, but it clicked for me in that scene. Her story isn't about being the best or the strongest or the most principled -- it's about getting backed into a corner where she does what she has to do to survive. Anyway, remember when the main problem was that the sun made people kill each other? Those were fun times.

Serena WHAT. She'd better be tricking Fred somehow. Maybe now that he's important, she's giving him to the Americans so she can leave the country and get her stolen baby back. I didn't hate this, but my trust with the show is broken, now, so we'll see. I think the show has a built-in escape hatch for this issue, in that maybe the guardians are good people who don't want hurt anyone, so they're not, like, actively trying to police very hard -- they just get involved if something super obvious happens and they'd be in trouble if they didn't. Or maybe there's a really enterprising guard who decided to put a microphone in the freezer. Who knows? If Janine had found out that her son was dead, she might have flipped out and, in the process of flipping out, told everyone the secret plan she had just made (which is a really compelling reason not to include Janine in the secret plan, June). So, it probably seemed safer to tell her that her son was okay, but so far away that he definitely couldn't be part of the escape plan. Telling her he's happy and that his new family is nice to him probably would make her feel better, given that there's nothing she can do for him. "Say it with baked goods." If you get hungry, can you just ask the Martha network random yes or no questions? Ugh... as you say this, I think there's a possibility that maybe at the end of this, Lawrence can't make a deal anymore because horrible, horrible Fred gets there first and walks away free. I really hope that doesn't happen. I wish I had a clearer read on Lawrence's political beliefs. For someone like Serena, I get that she wouldn't want to leave the country and immediately get thrown in jail, because she's okay with at least some parts of Gilead and she's hoping she can carve out a space for herself where she gets the things she wanted. Lawrence seems to think everything's stupid and hate living there, so it's less clear to me why he would choose this horrible life over being a war criminal? Frankly, he's risking execution either way if he's so flippant about resisting everything, so...

I do think it's a nice detail that, both times she wanted to give a speech to the judge, she said, "Your Honor, may I be heard?" which is melodramatic, weirdly formal, and kind of a signal that you're trying to make the other person feel rude if they decline -- so, perfectly in character for Mary Louise. I think part of the reason I didn't like this ending was because it feels to me like it's conflating a lot of different issues into one. I feel like, somewhere behind the scenes, someone's reasoning is, "If Celeste can prove that Perry was abusive, then she should automatically keep her kids" and "If Celeste can prove that Perry was abusive, then it doesn't matter how he died." Neither of those things is true, but it seems like, for some reason, that tape was the dynamite that blew up all of those story lines, and made everyone say, "Well, case closed. He was a scumbag, so everyone else is exonerated (except his mom)!"

LMAO. I should learn not to doubt the forum posters. Last week people were saying, "Janine keeps getting hit in the face because they want to stop doing her eye makeup" and I was like, "nah." But now she has an eye patch, so yeah. I am intrigued by the glimpse we got of Serena joy in which a) she's dressed more like she was in season one, but fancier, b) her super villain-like prosthetic finger is matched with her outfit, and c) she's swaning around like she's a celebrity again. HAS this whole "bring my kid back from Canada" thing made her a celebrity again? Didn't she and Fred move to DC? Does she have an evil cat to pet while she plots her latest scheme? Maybe he did. Maybe we've had it wrong, and Gilead believes that, if you want to be a rebel, the worst punishment is having no one react to anything you do.

Ugh. I have a lot of questions about this -- and I don't think it's doing Celeste any favours to immediately confess to a crime after winning the custody battle (?!) -- but I think the thing that bugs me most is this magic video that shows up, proving that Celeste is telling the truth about Perry. Part of the problem abuse victims have in real life is that they generally can't prove what happened so definitively and it's a little disappointing to see the show build an escape hatch out of that issue. Also, it's true that many abusers were abused themselves as children, but I'm not super keen on this thing where Celeste is removing any responsibility Perry has for his own behaviour and chucking it onto Mary Louise. That's an interesting dynamic, but not when it's tossed on at the last minute like that. Most of Celeste's questions seemed bogus, but I guess most of the questions addressed to her last week seemed bogus too, so... this is a weird courtroom. I wish the show had only been one season.

I hate Mary Louise so much. Which is the intended reaction, so good job, show. In all seriousness this is my favourite Meryl Streep performance because it's understated and relentlessly unlikable -- something I don't think I've seen her do before. This is his big moment! His lame custody hearing is turning into a murder trial! (I think what we're meant to infer is that the police are giving him a bunch of stuff because they want to use the custody hearing as a way to flush out evidence about the murder; that's weird and not appropriate, but I think that's what's happening). For the sex and ambien, I agree with the addition that the ambien is pretty easy to explain. You say, "I was taking ambien and I had an adverse reaction to it that no one predicted, and I woke up in my car one time not knowing how I got there. It was really scary, so I've stopped taking ambien." Done. I was really, really frustrated by the questioning about her sex life. I don't know how these things go in real life, but I feel like somebody would need to make at least a token effort to explain how this had a substantial impact on her children.

Lydia: June, stop bullying Ofmatthew June: What if we bully her together? Lydia: OMG, u know me so well I'm choosing to believe that "sometimes it's the apple, sometimes it's the barrel" is the key takeaway here, in that Lydia was always a rotten apple full of festering rage, waiting to lash out at people, and June has slowly become that way because she's been trapped in the Gilead barrel too long. Also LOL at Lawrence slowly sliding the door closed while June stared at him. He was all of us in that moment. WHAT IF every time you look away from her and look back, she's still standing completely still and staring at you, but she's somehow two feet closer? I think they're trying to work a theme about the "I asked my mother what will I be?" line, where a) there aren't a lot of options for women in Gilead and b) Lydia seemed to believe there weren't a lot of acceptable options for her, which is why she judged herself so harshly for her sexual impulses. Though, I must say, it seems like kind of a bad choice to have these wacky musical moments after something HORRIBLE happens, as if to downplay the seriousness of the situation. This is the second episode in a row that ended with a black woman getting killed because of something June did, and I'm not sure fun credits music is the way to go. I think she's ashamed of her sexual impulses and/or sexual conduct. So, when she lunged at him and he pushed her away, in her mind, she became the same as that mom she felt contempt for, so she tried to distance herself from that feeling by lashing out at the mom. She was proving to herself that she WASN'T morally weak by reporting someone else for moral weakness. (It's not logical but people do stuff like that all the same). It was totally stupid and I had a hard time suspending my disbelief, but, imagine that you had no social or emotional support network for several years and then, when you're genuinely upset and vulnerable almost everyone you know makes fun of you for crying. That would be really hurtful. I think the problem is that I'm so far outside the experience of the show right now, and so far removed from what's happening that it's hard for me to identify with the characters. But in theory it kind of makes sense.

Okay. I take back some of my despair from last week. They didn't just stick Kane in a new actor and go about their business, and, as much as I wish he weren't dead, it's better that they killed him off this way. I also totally missed the Jesus stuff in his story until he directly asked what happened to his crucifixion scars. And I spent a lot of time remembering back when Abby was kind of a badass and Kane was the chancellor, and they grudgingly respected each other and then fell in love. I used to really like them as a couple.

I'm wondering if she's literally off her meds. Gilead might not believe in psychiatry. The way the scene was set up, with her wife hovering in the background, seemingly learning about this stuff for the first time, I thought she was about to say she'd been arrested for having sex with a Martha so that they could both cry in extreme closeup. I wish we were spending more time on this story, because I do think the angle they're working this episode -- where the wife is like, "Nothing that happened in Gilead matters to me; we can just move on" and Emily is like, "Everything that happened in Gilead matters a lot and I'm not the same person anymore" -- is super interesting. I agree, and, in the past, I've been annoyed when the show tried to make June responsible for Gilead murdering it's own citizens. It's not her fault if the government kills people. That said... I kind of feel like this one was a little bit June's fault? At the start of season two, she made a serious, good faith attempt to escape, and it went wrong, and people got killed. This time, she exposed everyone for no reason by showing up at Hannah's school when she didn't have a plan for what to do when she got there. Seeing Hannah wouldn't have helped anyone, including June, but it put lots of people at risk, and one of them died. She didn't kill that person, but she wasn't very careful with that person's life, either. The sense I'm getting is that there are regional differences in which of the rules are emphasized and how they're enforced. So, in DC, the sexual stuff seems to be more relaxed if you're reasonably circumspect about it (hence that dude from Oz putting the moves on Fred). This is actually a sign that DC might be a better fit for the Waterfords, since their whole philosophy toward following the rules of Gilead has mostly been "If nobody sees it, nobody gets mad." As for doing the tango at a party, I can buy that, too. There are already places in the world where it's officially wrong to do things like that in public but, if you go to a rich person party behind closed doors, the rules are relaxed. The Grand Seduction of the Waterfords is not a plot line I was salivating to see, but I admit the pieces are all coming together to show us that life in DC -- for the privileged class -- is much closer to what they imagined when they helped build Gilead. The rules don't apply to them and they can maintain something closer to the lifestyle the had before as long as they pretend to be pious in public. It was a good scene, but it also reminded me of a very similar scene in Quills (which is set right after the French Revolution). I liked the Quills scene a little more because it was understated -- the camera tracks across the evidence that the home's previous owners were literally dragged out of the building, but nobody mentions it. Here, I wish they had trusted us more to understand what was up without explaining it. Yeah, there was part of me that thought, "Maybe this is just how couples pick each other up in religious dictatorships..." I understand and can get behind June's decision to stay in Gilead, but, for me, I think the issue is more that I would like her to either have an actual plan to get Hannah back OR admit that she doesn't and that it's harder than she thought and maybe she screwed herself by staying, but she has to try, etc. So, either we're watching her slowly gear up to rescue her kid, or we're watching her slowly despair that she made a mistake and won't be able to rescue her kid after all. Instead, I feel like we're watching her do random stuff that's somewhere in between having a plan and not having a plan, and there's no a lot of momentum. I had the same thought, and I'm hoping that info is on the tape and we just didn't hear the whole message. I could see a possible direction for this story where Gilead offers to trade Hannah for Nicole, and set a precedent that the old kids still belong to their parents but the new kids belong to Gilead. The reason I don't think that will happen is because it would anger too many of the people who kidnapped pre-existing kids. But it would have taken Luke in an interesting direction if he was faced with the possibility of getting his daughter by blood in exchange for the daughter he's adopted and been caring for. I agree with you that the show totally won't send June to Canada any time soon, but, reading the thread, I'm starting to feel like season three would have been a lot more interesting if it had. I think there are interesting and timely stories to be told about the refugee situation in Canada, and June could have been a really good part of that since she's kind of an agitator now. Plus, it would be interesting to see how her relationship with Luke changes when they're back together and raising Nick's baby. In Gilead, they could have split the action between Serena trying to choose between the fantasy of the world she wanted to live in in Gilead vs the reality of what Gilead has become and her need to either escape or destroy it (without trying to get Nicole back) + a plot line about Rita working with the Marthas to resist. I think it depends on whether you see the show as ideally being about The Situation with Gilead, explored from lots of different angles, or That One Handmaid Who Resists Gilead (which is, I think, what the show runners have chosen).

Noooooooooooo. Between the convoluted plot lines and making up excuses for why the characters look different as the actors bail from the show, this is giving me major Sliders vibes, now. This season started so weeeeeeell. I liked it so muuuuuuch. Then there was an alien light show and people started downloading into unknown actors. Whyyyyyyyy. Plotwise, I'm not sure why Madi thought she could boss everyone around by saying she's the commander, since 99% of the characters who came out of stasis were never in her Cru. And she sent away the one actual follower she had. I laughed a little when Gabriel stood there and watched as the two people he brought to the light show just ran straight into it with no hesitation after all the build-up about how dangerous and mysterious it was. I was also confused about why he thought someone whom he remembers as being next to Hitler in a history book would care that bringing a gun means she'll kill everyone else and herself. That person would totally still bring the gun. Also because Gabriel immediately said, "It healed you!" to explain what was happening. It's a super good sign when the characters have to explain the story like that. (The only thing that would have made this funnier would be if, instead of getting spit back out in the same direction she went inside, Octavia just fell straight in one side and out the other, kind of like running through a lawn sprinkler. "It healed you!!") (I pray to god this doesn't mean Diyoza and Octavia are now the same person or that Octavia became Diyoza's unborn daughter inside the lights. Just let it be, "It healed you!")

I don't understand what Serena's deal is anymore. In season one, she wanted to kidnap a baby. In season two, she succeeded and then discovered that the world she had built to let her kidnap a baby was not the world she wanted to raise a baby in, so she let June take the baby to Canada. Now... is she trying to get hold of the baby again so that she can make a deal with super spy for BOTH of them to go to Hawaii or whatever? That kind of makes sense to me as a motivation, if that's what's happening, but it's needlessly dangerous for the baby, and frankly I'd rather she just took super spy's offer, now. I groaned at that because it was so weak. I guess it worked out in that Serena brought the tape or whatever, but, when you're dealing with people like this, you make them do the favour for you BEFORE you do the favour for them. That seemed weird to me, too, but then I remembered two things: 1) stealing a baby was always Serena's pet project more than it was Fred's so, if she's off that now, he might be totally fine with moving on. 2) he's in the hoover stage of his abuse cycle where he's worried that the power dynamic has shifted and she won't forgive him so he's trying to be nice. There's a limited window where he'll be really solicitous until he feels dominant again. I couldn't tell if it was being broadcast live, though it seemed like it might have been. If it was, that was really the moment to fuck some shit up and damn the consequences. It's a way, way different dynamic than asking her if she's happy in a closed room in front of two diplomats. (Which was terrifying; remember when this show was terrifying?) Same. I don't understand why more of the refugees aren't interested in going to what's left of the USA, especially since it's probably more actively involved in undermining Gilead. Though I'm not going to fault them if all they want after what they've been through is to be safe somewhere with their families. But I do wonder why they're not ALL OVER the media telling everyone what's happening in Gilead. Though, I suppose people who flee from North Korea go all over the media telling us what happens there and it's not like that's stopped people from having diplomatic relations with the country or from concluding that most people who live there must be fine with it.

I have to say, I genuinely liked the twist where picking give people to be Marthas got re-framed from "decide which five people to save from the colonies" to "draft five people to fight in the resistance, and maybe save everyone." I didn't see that coming, and I thought it was a powerful moment. It turned a helpless, depressing situation into something hopeful, with a purpose. I think it's always both with him. It's hard to get a read on his character but I think he's playing the wrong of Falsely-Friendly-Seeming-Sexist. He doesn't want to hit anyone or rape anyone, and he will tolerate letting the women around him do what they want up to a certain point, so it's tempting to mistake him for an ally. But he's also not willing to let go of his position of power and treat women as equals. It's the kind of sexism where guys say, "I think men should be the head of the family but they should be nice to their families." It's holding onto a dominant position, and playing dumb little games to test or prove your dominance, without intending to go super dark and evil. The book thing struck me as being a dumb game or a bit of a performance -- the part that really cemented for me that he has animosity toward women in his heart was the disgust in his voice when he told her she stole someone else's husband. From a writing perspective, I agree with you 100% but, from a TV production perspective, I think it's often more difficult. People have contracts and, even when they don't, if someone's nice to work with, you don't want to suddenly fire them from a job they like. It's easier on a show like Game of Thrones where there's a roadmap extending far into the future and you can say at the outset "We're hiring you for two seasons, and then your character's dead." In situations where the writers are making it up as they go, you reach a point each season (or at each contract renewal) where you have to decide whether people will still have jobs next year, and I can understand why that would suck, and why you would try to keep them on. This dynamic confused me. At the macro level, I think the essence of his insult was that he led up to it as if he were about to ask her opinion or advice about what books to consult on gender theory, but then he just asked her to physically bring him a book. (I'm not familiar enough with Descent of Man to analyze what it means that he chose that one but it seems to dovetail with his "women are fine, men are better" philosophy). At a completely different level, there is this awkward question of reading. I don't think picking up the book he asked her to pick up and handing it to him would necessarily be considered "women reading" for the purposes of their rule against women reading, and I don't think anyone would seriously expect her to pretend she forgot how to read. But I think he made the situation tense for everyone by playing with an edge case -- a situation where she was told to do something she shouldn't have been told to do but where there wasn't a clear prohibition against it. It seemed like he just wanted everyone to be uncomfortable. I'm confused about why she feels comfortable telling him all the details of the crimes she's involved in but not saying, "Hey, what's your deal?" Also, I feel like his Martha talked to him a lot more directly last season and now the dynamic has changed so that people are more afraid of him.

Ugh. The show's doubling down on everything I didn't like last season, and this episode is the perfect example of it. Deliberately slow and ponderous; long, long closeups of people's faces doing nothing; June's Christianity being a shorthand way of telling us she's a good person; everybody having a dramatic crying scene for Emmy reasons. The thing that annoyed me most was Lydia's outburst toward Janine. The better scene, IMO, was the one where Janine was hovering around her talking about how she prayed for Aunt Lydia to get well -- it's creepy and wrong in a subtler way, because we remember that the only reason Janine acts like this is because Aunt Lydia tortured her into being the perfect pupil. Having Aunt Lydia flip out for no reason is more dramatic, but it's overkill. The thing that used to be scary about this world was the insidious way it corrupted small interactions -- not random acts of violence. For the first thing, it's confusing, but in this case, I think, on paper, the characters were shocked by the breach in decorum (Aunt Lydia should have led Janine away and beat her somewhere else instead of interrupting the party), but the actors' faces showed a reaction more appropriate to being shocked by the fact that something violent had happened at all. For the second thing, I forget if June knows this, but Fred has met Luke before, so there would be no point in lying if Fred's standing right there. Same. This isn't just me being picky -- I honestly don't understand why June assumes that making Serena powerful again will do anything but restore Serena's power to hurt her. Everything we've seen from her so far has shown that she has no real problem with what's happening until it affects her. So, if June somehow convinces Fred to give Serena what she always wanted/expected and make her personally immune from subjugation, why wouldn't Serena just become even more effective in subjugating others? Maybe it goes back to what that other dude said last week -- that June wants to believe that everybody has some kind of humanizing narrative where they secretly want to do the right thing. June's religiosity is creeping me out, and here's why: the whole principle of Gilead is that Christianity is law, and by making June a super Christian hero, the show's kind of side-stepping the issue of whether it's okay to live in a theocracy at all and instead focusing on whether the people running Gilead are the "right" kind of Christians. I get it -- "real" Christians believe in love and wouldn't build a world full of punishment -- but also maybe it doesn't matter what kind of Christian you are when there are appropriate boundaries between laws and religion. To me, the freaky thing about Gilead isn't that the wrong kind of Christians took over -- it's that secular government was overthrown by a religious order of any sort. So it worries me that the show is so focused on what the right way of being religious is.

Okay, so this is taking a turn, now, but I'm still holding out hope for it. We got off to such a strong start. That's a good point. It makes sense to me that the characters did what they did from an "action A should reasonably lead to result B" point of view, but, from a narrative point of view it feels like that was a lot of set-up for a con that was revealed right away. I know this show's MO is to set something up like it's going to be a huge problem and then immediately zig-zag into a different problem instead, but still. I LOL'd at the scene where they all reveal they have a spiral pattern in their minds. That story took a really hard turn into the bizarre all of a sudden. And, even though I've never seen Lost, it feels the way I imagine Lost would. For the hair stuff, I think it's interesting when the hair/makeup department starts doing something new and you can see that it's a pattern that holds across several different characters. Like, someone behind the scenes clearly likes a certain way of styling hair. It made Raven look different enough that I didn't recognize her in the first few episodes. The part I don't understand is why any of them would, for any moment, believe that the Primes will leave them all alone and not force them to be Nightblood hosts. I know that this is theoretically voluntary, but, if there was a lesson from Mt. Weather, it's that people will get really greedy when they see an unexpected opportunity to save themselves. The Primes already killed Clarke! I know they said sorry, but they're totally going to kill the rest of you, guys.

To echo what everyone else already said: I'm really enjoying this season, and enjoyed this episode particularly. Plus, I'm glad Diyoza stayed around. If they're going to leave Octavia in, then having her go on an adventure with Diyoza is an okay way to do it. And I kind of liked that scene in the quicksand where Diyoza's just standing there while Octavia struggles and sinks and she's like, "You were literally told that struggling would make you sink, but you're so bullheaded you just keep doing it." (paraphrase) It was a nice summary of the character's motivations coming from someone who would believably have insight into it. Another thing I liked about this episode! Murphy was just being Murphy in all of his scenes -- acting totally in character, saying stuff he'd normally say, and it makes sense that that behaviour would tip Jo off that he's the most corruptible, morally grey person to go after. They did a really good job with that scene. You can see the moment she makes a decision and kind of thinks, "He's doing this to trick me and I can't bluff my way through it; there's no point anymore, so I'll just let the mask fall and enjoy freaking him out." And then the camera goes all fisheye creepy while it happens to take us inside Bellamy's POV as the nature of the conversation suddenly changes. Really nice. I also, just in general, liked that everyone in this episode seemed smart. Jo was good at figuring out them, they were good at figuring her out, everybody figured out the situation with the Primes, Jo figured out that saving Marcus is her way to convert Abby (which is a great way to tie the plot contrivance with is health into the story), and we can already see the pieces of sense-making plays fall into place. Add that all to whatever that twist was with the alien lights that chased Diyoza and Octavia and I'm still totally on board and totally interested to see what happens.

Okay, the pieces of this season are starting to come together for me, and I like it so far. Lots of people on redemption/atonement arcs from different angles, that weird leader guy on a "dark" atonement arc where he tries to make up for killing everyone during the eclipse by bringing them back to life but only makes everything worse, Madi learning how to suppress the dark Commander like Clarke will probably need to suppress the Prime personality... I'm on board. This is interesting. (Also, I see that very deliberate parallel where the leader apologized for closing the door while people were trapped on the other side, just like Clarke closed the door in the first of her many "I had to do what I had to do and I'm sorry but I'd do it again" decisions.) Yeah, I'm confused about what their attitude is about this, but I guess we'll find out based on how they handle it in the next episodes. On the one hand, it seems like the non-Prime people should find this all very normal and unremarkable and not see any reason to actively hide it from the outsiders, but the Primes seem to know that what they're doing is messed-up, even if they're willing to go through with it. So the non-Primes are in kind of a weird territory where it seems like there's no reason they would keep it secret, but they're being super cagey about it for unknown reasons. I had a similar moment where I laughed at Clarke for being such a joiner when she did the balloon thing. I was like, "You don't even know these people and you don't understand their rituals, but you'll just jump right on board." But then I remembered that Skycru culture has always involved a community ritual element -- Marcus and his mom had some weird tree, IIRC, and they had special days where they would stand around and ritualistically say stuff. So it kind of makes sense to me that, if they want to belong, they would be like, "Oh, you're having a festival day to bond the community together. I know about that. Let me play." This is also a good question. As above, I'm not sure we know, because it seems like she shouldn't have to impersonate Clarke. It seems like impersonating the person you took as host is not part of this exchange under normal circumstances, and it's not clear why they would be motivated to hide this from Skycru if they've already gotten what they wanted. The only scenario where I could see them trying to hide it is if they still want to get on board the ship. So, I guess we'll see. The part that I do agree with is that an apology doesn't mean anything if your behavior doesn't change. Continuing to hurt someone over and over and saying "sorry" each time is meaningless. However, I don't think anyone has articulated a clear request for what they would like Clarke to do instead of what she's been doing (like, "How about you talk to us first and we vote" or "We want you to prioritize X over Y" or something). They just come in after the fact and say, "We don't like what you did!" instead of saying what they wish she had done differently. So I'm not sure how they're expecting her to change. (Also, my perspective is skewed because I straight-up don't remember most of what happened last season.)

Good point. Bran's Random Adventure Beyond the Wall was always one of my least favourite stories. At least the final season solved one mystery for us: why won't Bran tell anyone the future? I'm not annoyed exactly, but I did notice last season that she was still going to be alive when someone attacked the Red Keep and I thought maybe she'd get out of the dungeon and do something. I guess we're supposed to believe she just died when everything collapsed, in which case there would have been no reason to check in with her, but I did think it would have been cool.

Mixed feelings. I'm happy to know how it ended, and I think most of the plot points would have been fine/good with more build-up. I didn't get that "everything's falling into place" feeling I wanted so much as it just felt like a bunch of stuff happened. Not thrilled with the politics around Dany overall, happy for Sansa, touched that Brienne said Jaime died protecting his queen, confused about Arya, stealth shipping Jon and Tormund now for some reason.