SourK

Good job, everyone. Good job Sinclair, for running off alone in the dark to get murdered by a serial killer. Good job, Raven, getting out of the rover after he told you not to and accomplishing nothing besides making sure the last thing he sees is someone he loves getting hauled away to be murdered. Good job, Bellamy, for coming up with half a plan and then failing at even that part of it ten seconds in. Good job, Clarke, following the creepy music and then staring at the music box for something like six hours, and also failing to guess that Emerson wanted to kill your whole family in front of you rather than just killing you. Good job, Emerson, for being so intent on your revenge that you allowed yourself to be killed by a dead woman's cybernetic ghost. Good job, Ontari, for swallowing the brainwashing pill without putting up any protest. Good job, Allie, for letting them drag an un-chipped Murphy away to a cell where he will probably start a brand new subplot full of misadventure, on his own. Good job, Kane, for being absent at the moment you probably most needed to be there. Good job, writers, for deciding to make an episode that was randomly a slasher movie as you're winding down the season. The thing that really makes Clarke tolerable to me is that nobody likes her. If she were awesome at everything and always right and popular, that would be too much. However, I like the observation that after all the stupid "blood must not have blood" talk, the lesson seems to be that you should just kill everyone. How strange.

I loved the scene where Clarke showed up out of nowhere and wanted to talk about what was happening in her plot line, only to have Jasper be like, "STFU, there's something happening in my plot line right now!" Agree with the PTV review -- getting rid of Pike was way too easy. That looked like a setup from a thousand miles away, but I was legit surprised by the detail where Monty's mother sold him out. Uncomfortable rape scene was uncomfortable. I think we're supposed to believe he's okay with it -- due to the porny-sounding music in the background and his sarcastic comments at the end -- and that's what makes it so awkward and wrong. Aside from that scene, which I didn't like, I'm starting to find it kind of funny that Murphy's always on some crazy side-adventure by himself, getting abandoned by the main cast and thrown from one bad situation to another.

On the positive side, I was impressed by the double-fakeout where we saw that Pike was dictating a fake plan into the spy device and it looked like Sinclair fell for it, only for us to discover that pretending to fall for the plan to get thrown in the brig was his plan all along. I mean, my standards for this show are low, so I thought there was a possibility that Kane and Sinclair really fell for the fake plan and was pleasantly surprised when that wasn't true... although, why their fake-fake plan had to involve Kane pretending to read a book in the middle of the garage I don't know... On the negative side, pretty much everything else. Like everyone, I was cheering for Kane to run over Bellamy and disappointed when he didn't. I don't understand Bellamy's sense of right and wrong, for real. By the end of the episode he's clutching his pearls because Pike's going to execute Kane, but WTF did he think was going to happen? I mean, he comes from a culture where capital punishment is commonplace. I know there was that brief scene at the beginning where Pike said "We're not on the Ark" and didn't execute Sinclair, but why is that even important to Bellamy? If he doesn't mind killing two random Grounders why does he mind killing a traitor who tried to kidnap and murder the Chancellor? I don't understand him at all. I've suspected for a while that Paige Turco is on some kind of limited shooting schedule, because Abby is suspiciously absent sometimes when she should really be there, but... couldn't they make up a throw-away explanation for why Abby can't participate in any of this? Like Kane doesn't want to bring her into it, or she's locked in a lab studying the CoL chips, or maybe that scouting party that was randomly murdered at the start of the episode was actually just gravely injured and she's busy in the infirmary the whole time? And finally -- has anyone considered that maybe Raven doesn't remember Finn because Finn was super boring? Or is that just why I don't remember Finn?

I don't disagree with anything anyone said about the TV trope where lesbian characters get killed as soon as it looks like they might be happy, and, as a bi person, this whole story line where Clarke is bi and it's not a big deal had certainly been making me happy, but I still liked this episode a lot. In a way, I'm also glad that Lexa died while she was still awesome and didn't hang around long enough to become disappointing. I was also really impressed with all the plot twists with the AI and, while I thought something bad would eventually happen due to Lexa's poor "Blood Must Not Have Blood" policies, I was surprised that she died right now. For me, this was probably one of the best episodes the series has ever had. 1) Part of me actually started to wonder if ALIE 1.0 is looking for ALIE 2.0 because -- unexpected plot twist -- she actually wants to be good in some way and needs the new code to do it. 2) This show is already a pastiche of so many other shows that I would be kind of okay with it if it just stole the ending from Dollhouse and Clarke had Lexa's memories implanted in her brain so they would be together always.

LOL - of course there is a thirteenth colony. I do seem to remember hearing rumblings about a war between the stations in the first season, when they were celebrating their unity or whatever, but I completely forgot about it until now. I'm kind of impressed that they brought that back and built on it. Agree with everyone -- this "blood must not have blood" thing is idiotic. I love peace as much as the next person, but, when somebody comes and kills hundreds of your people the correct response is not to say "Oh well, let's turn the other cheek." You don't have to wipe out their entire race, but you need to demand some kind of justice. I was actually pleased that this episode began by pointing out what a total fucking hypocrite Clarke is, and interested in the scene where she flatly admitted to that priest that she was acting in the best interests of her people and not Lexa's, but overall still kind of frustrated. I mean, I guess this is what happens when you put a couple of teenagers in charge of international diplomacy or whatever, but come on. This. There is a weird TV belief that gay guys only ever hug each other, and I thought this show was above that. Especially since Clarke, Octavia and possibly even Kane -- depending on his choices in the next few episodes -- could be spared. Those are the three I'd really miss other than Raven, and I'm worried for Raven, now, because, if this microchip thing isn't reversible later, I think she's going to die in a software purge or something...

The scene with Gus drove me nuts. Fiona is a terrible partner, and he has legitimate reasons to be angry about her behaviour -- plus, she's lying to his face about his ring, which sold behind his back, even though she had no right -- but signing the papers isn't a favour. It's an obligation that he brought upon himself by marrying somebody he didn't know. And, if he wants those obligations to end, he needs to get a divorce. Acting like she should just ignore him from now on is not a realistic solution. Speaking of obligations -- it also drives me crazy when the show acts like it's a legitimate option for Fiona to just stop taking care of the kids she's responsible for. Like, I agree that it's not fair that this responsibility was thrust on her at a young age, but it still exists. When she was like, "What if I just want to be their sister?!" I was like, "Too bad." I also had a hard time getting on board with Sam's idea last week that Debbie and Carl could take care of themselves so Fiona shouldn't worry about where they would be when they got evicted from their house. I... am cautious about the Helene story line. I've never disliked her -- she's in an open marriage and Lip is an adult; they can have sex if they want to -- but this whole thing with the college makes me... well, I'm cautiously waiting to see if anything else comes out of it. Basically, the administration's whole issue is that she's supposed to be discreet about it and... it's not like she chose to have someone post a topless photo of her on the internet. She's really the victim here, in a lot of ways, and I understand her being mad at Lip, if she thinks it's his fault. I also understand why she wouldn't just suddenly dump her family and career for him, even if she thought about it one night when she was drunk. Also, he beat up her son one time, which was pretty uncool.

Most unintentionally hilarious moment: That extra pointing at Lincoln and wailing "You don't belong here!" Second most hilarious moment was Bellamy giving Rita's eulogy and saying only that she was "real." Sure she was. She totally wasn't a fake person you had a fake relationship with to give you a fake motivation for the rest of the season. I get what's happening from a writer POV -- Abby and Kane can't keep fighting with each other and everyone else who caused trouble around camp is dead or following a hologram, so they need a new shit disturber -- enter Pike. In order to give that story some kind of meaning, they need one of the main characters to go along with Pike. Their best candidates are Bellamy and Raven,and Bellamy has more relationships, so it's more dramatic if it's him. It makes sense for the story, but it's not coming across that well on screen. I kind of wish they'd taken Raven with them or that she joins up with them later, so at least there are two characters with Pike and they can talk to each other about it and develop their motivations a little more. My favourite part of the show is really Clarke/Lexa/Jody from Shameless/pit fighting, though, so I was still content. I think there was a time jump at the start of the episode. It's possible someone said something later to contradict that, though. I'm bad at noticing things like that. I had the same thought about Abby, especially since Kane was so cagey about where she was. But Indra also has a radio, so could they not just call her and give her a heads-up about what's probably about to go down? They should at least have done that. I think there may still be grounder politics at hand. The Ice Queen was kind of a static character, because she was set in her goals and nothing was going to change her mind, whereas her son is more of a wild card. I think, between the two of them, he is the more interesting character to have in the mix right now.

LOL @ "The honour should be yours." Why doesn't the self-destruct in Mt. Weather sound an audible warning? Why didn't they go on the PA and tell everyone to evacuate? I get that everything happened really fast, but they handled it poorly. That's kind of a pattern on this show. That said, I was surprised that Mr. Gaeta survived! And surprised that the assassin was in Mt. Weather. And surprised that no one noticed what's her name left them to climb a ladder for four hours alone. Clarke and Lexa had such a lovely wedding. And, if it wasn't a wedding, I don't know why they made Clarke wear that dress, because I thought the point was to make her seem scary.

Wow, Lexa looks a lot cleaner when she's not out in the field. I miss the war paint. I know last week I said I was happy about Abby and Kane, but this week I had a better idea. What if Kane gets together with Indra? Wouldn't that be awesome? This is my new stealth ship (sorry, Abby). Last season, I started to actually listen to the Grounder language and now I can't not listen to it, and it's so dumb. I understand the idea -- like, this is how English would evolve over many decades after the end of mass communication and so on, but I laugh whenever they say anything. I liked the way Clarke's DIY red hair looked, but all I've been able to think about it how gross it must have been to touch. And, if the colour came out that easily, it would be on her clothes and her hands and her face. Like, a total nightmare. All things considered, if I were in her place, I'd just hand myself over to the Ice Nation and not try to wear a disguise.

So excited this show is back. Based on this episode, it looks like they're doubling down on lots of things I love about it -- casually being okay with gay people, Cain and Abby's friendship/romance, Murphy being the voice of reason in the kingdom of a crazy Jaha -- and one thing I hate, which is the idea that Octavia is authentically a grounder, even though she only started trying to be one, like, four months ago, and has never lived among the grounders, and got kicked out of the clan she tried to join. Listening to her lecture Lincoln about how to belong to his own culture properly was so annoying. I understand Jasper being upset about what happened to Maya -- that was a really horrible thing. Not only losing someone you care for, but being placed in a situation where you have to watch good people die in a terrible way, and there's nothing you can do about it. I even kind of understand why he's acting like he blames his friends and they should have done something different to stop that from happening -- it's a form of denial. So, he's annoying, but I'm willing to see where it goes, because it seems like a somewhat realistic reaction to me. That said -- why would you take that guy on a sensitive mission where you've been explicitly instructed not to break the peace?

My favourite was obviously the insane tribal concil where no one knew what the rules were, and I wonder how the explanation went while they were filming. It seemed like Keith was honestly confused about WTF was going on when he offered to step down. My second favourite part was the sequence at the beginning where Jeff narrated the incredible story of how each of the final six got this far in the game and, when he got to Tasha, he was just like, "Tasha... has lasted this long! Will she last even longer?" (paraphrase) Pretty much sums up how much of an impression she made this season. I'm okay with Jeremy winning, but I wish Wentworth had pulled off that final immunity challenge. I think it's wrong that Probst gets so excited when people injure themselves or get sick. To me, that means you're doing a bad job of running the show -- it's not something to celebrate.

Well, you can tell I'm a casual fan, because I didn't realize he was on Galifrey until I read the recap. I thought this was a really interesting idea and that the last 10 minutes were super exciting, but the rest of it fell a little flat for me in execution. Having a character talk to himself the whole time is the most obvious solution to the writing problem of having an actor alone on stage and I wish they'd done something more creative. I've been a little bit distressed this season at how much this show is becomming exactly like Sherlock, so I wasn't pleased to see the Doctor's mind palace, either. That was a good solution for Sherlock, but replicating it for Doctor Who didn't work for me. I also hate to say this, because it's clear that he's trying really hard, but I don't like Peter Capldi's take on the Doctor. I think he lacks the warmth, charisma, and vulnerability that the last three Doctors had, and I don't think 12 has a strong enough personality to carry an episode alone. I know not everyone agrees. The thing where he just wandered around randomly, examining everything and hoping for something to happen, reminded me of Myst.

Honestly, at first, I was vaguely interested in this voting block thing, but they over-sold it. At this point, I don't care who votes with who if I never have to hear those words again.

I don't hate Clara, but I hope she stays dead. Partly just because the character has been around too long and partly because this was a good ending for her that made sense with what we've been shown up to now. I was completely unspoiled for this but, even toward the end of last season I saw foreshadowing that she would be the first long-term companion to actually die rather than leaving in some other way, and this season they piled on the warnings even more. I would have been disappointed if it hadn't happened after all that -- and I was decently surprised that she died before the finale. For what it's worth, I did get really emotional when she died. Maybe because I do see it as a sense-making part of her character arc, maybe because I liked her better once her deathwish gave her a personality again, and maybe because I just like big, melodramatic moments. The fact that her death was kind of an accident because she made a stupid, impulsive decision, not understanding what the consequence would be -- for me that doesn't cheapen it. It adds a different, maybe more realistic flavor to the whole thing. That said, I have a whole separate beef with the over-arching theme of how every woman who travels with the Doctor is eventually destroyed in some way -- which is another reason I wish Missy would come back, because at least she won't be slowly broken down by him. Oh, my heart -- if we could maybe have half a season where the two of them go on Time Lord adventures together before the next companion comes. That would make me so happy. I think she's the first major companion to die in the new show. I seem to remember Kylie Minogue going into some flames on a forklift, but I don't really count her because she was some random who was there for one episode to kind of fake us out. I agree that dying when she jumped into the timestream would have been the best ending for Clara, and tied everything up a lot better, but I'm okay with this ending, too. I actually liked Clara best the very first time we saw her, when she was a Dalek -- that's still the Clara story that resonates with me the most.

Yes, yes, plot twists and shirtless men, but the most important revelation to me was that Connor thinks you can destroy a hard drive by hitting the keyboard and screen with a hammer.

I second what everyone's already said: surprise turnarounds like this are why I watch Survivor and it was really satisfying to see. I don't remember Savage from Pearl islands -- probably because I was focussed on hating Rupert -- but he lost me this very episode when he said it was disgusting for Stephen to talk about blindsiding someone in their alliance. I've been trying to figure out why it bugged me so much and the best I can come up with is that I like players who can compartmentalize the game better than that -- people who understand that it's a competition and other people might win, and they don't take it personally or act like jerks just for the hell of it. People who can't compartmentalize the game often go down a road where they convince themselves that anyone they vote for deserves it for being a bad person, or that anyone who makes them feel anxious is doing something morally wrong. That was actually why Rupert drove me crazy way back when, ironically enough. I liked Ciera a lot in her first season, and I think she's partly beind sincere when she keeps yelling at everyone to play to win, but I think she also keeps going back to that because it was a talking point that got her a lot of respect from viewers and Jeff Probst in her first season. I think she saw it as a safe way to win an argument for a while, but we could see her rolling it back even in this episode, where she started to admit that the people at the top of the alliance obviously were playing to win already and that's why they didn't want to disrupt things. I think she's right in a way that the people on the bottom of the alliance could be trying harder to get to the top, but she's approaching it the wrong way by criticizing how they're playing. Looking back on it, I seem to remember a similar incident in her original season where she overplayed her hand rhetorically and said something that ended up alienating the person she was trying to convince because it sounded condescending.

I think it might end up that Arya is placed in a position where she has to choose between getting revence on Meryn Trant or completing her face-gaming mission, and that will prove whether or not she's ready to become no one.

I know I've been saying, "I wish the zombies would get there; I wish the zombies would get there" but now that they're there, I don't like them.

At first, I was honestly confused about what Cersei's plan was, but, yeah, her plan has always been to rule by way of putting someone else on the throne and bossing them around. It didn't work with Robert, and then it didn't work with Joffrey, because he was a psychopath who wouldn't listen to anyone, and then it didn't work with Tommen because Margaery got her claws into him. At that point, I think she started looking for ways to shore up her political power without controlling the throne, and controlling an army of religious zealots was the next best thing. The problem is, I think she's so cynical and so used to people flipping to suit their own interests that she doesn't realize that they're sincere in their messed-up beliefs. I think she thinks it's a facade to mask their quest for power, and she's going to be surprised when she can't get them to look the other way later on. Word to all of this. The sand snakes are disappointing me. I was excited when I heard that there would be a bunch of new female characters in Dorne -- and I was excited about the idea that we would meet some people in Dorne period, since Oberyn was pretty awesome, and it seemed like a cool place. As it turns out, though, the characters in Dorne are all getting a similar level of character development to the non-Danaerys, non-Tyrion characters in Essos -- which is hardly any at all. Even the Boltons got more than this. Even Walder Frey. I think the disappointment of the sand snakes is some combination of the show not knowing what to do with women when there isn't a man in the scene with them, and being spread too thin across too many locations. Because the characters in Westeros all interact with each other and are part of the same massive conflict, we spend more time getting to know them, and they get drawn into several different story lines by proxy. But, in Essos and, now, Dorne, the characters are all kind of peripheral to the main story, and we see them for a couple of minutes every other episode -- it's hard to feel like they matter in the same way as the characters in Westeros.

God dammit, I thought he'd pretend to be nice for a while. Guess there's no reason for him to do that once they're married, but I never wanted to jump through the TV and save someone more than I wanted to jump through the TV and save Sansa just now. :( It makes me wonder if Ramsay's creepy girlfriend, what's her name, was actually trying to do Sansa a favour by showing her what they did to Theon and telling her what happened to Ramsay's other partners.

It's funny, because my first thought was, "Yeah, good deal," but, when I look at it from his perspective, she's a foreigner who sacked his city, nailed his dad to a post, and burned some guy alive just to make a point. I probably wouldn't want to marry her if I were him -- she'd look just as bad as any of the other rulers on this show. And yet, because she's so pretty, part of me still goes "Score! You got so lucky marrying ths volatile murderess!" Why is that? For the greyscale, I think this is one of those things where we just have to believe what they tell us instead of looking for ways to make sense of it. So, Tyrion says they didn't touch him with their grey scales, and we believe him. Stannis says it got passed through a doll and we believe that, too. But, yeah, as others have said, from a sense-making perspective, there's no reason Tyrion should be so sure he isn't infected. As for Jorah, maybe you're not contageous until you turn all scary. Who knows? For the canle -- this plan actually makes sense to me. I don't think it's intended for an immediate emergency, like calling 911; I think it's more like, if Sansa feels like things are going downhill and she needs an exit strategy, then the candle in the abandoned tower signals to Brienne that it's time to intervene (even though she doesn't know it's Brienne who's watching for the signal). The last time Brienne talked to Sansa, Sansa seemed to think she had the situation under control, so this actually makes sense to me as a way of signalling, at a distance, that things are no longer under control. It does depend on Sansa knowing which way's up, and not being taken by surprise, but I think she can probably do that.

What I love about this plot line is that, so far, in trying to kidnap Tyrion and bring him to Danaerys, all he's done is make it less likely that they'll get there and given himself a disease. That's the Jorah way.

I firuged out where they were, but I agree it was a weird jump. My feeling, watching it, was that there was probably either a scene in between those two points that got cut, or the scene at Castle Swamp was originally supposed to be in a different episode from the scenes at Winterfell, and they got moved closer together. .

So... I think, at the end of last season, Ramsay came up with an ill-defined plan to have Theon be a mole or something. There were whispers about him having to pretend to be Theon Greyjoy again, etc, etc, so it sounded like they were going to send him on a mission. I guess that didn't happen yet? Or am I remembering it wrong? I spent the last two weeks being underwhelmed, because nothing all that horrible was happening, and then, this week, it was fresh horrors all the time, and I got excited. Like, when Jon Snow cut off that one dude's head, it was the first time all season that I said "Holy crap" out loud because I was so shocked and surprised, and, for some reason, that was also the moment I knew this episode was a winner. What's happening to me? I was worried for Sansa at first, but, after thinking about it, I agree that Ramsay will probably be okay with her. He doesn't take being a Lord for granted, and marrying a noble woman is part of what his father gave him by legitimizing him -- I think he'll treat it really seriously. If Sansa needs to be worried about anyone, it's Ramsay's girlfrind from his bastard days. Yeah, Margaery has always seemed pretty worldly to me, too. For Littlefinger and Sansa, I think she can do so much better than him, but my sense is that maybe they are now a genuinely committed murder couple, and he's going to marry her off to the Boltons so they can kill the Boltons together. I totally agree that his endgame still has to involve being with Sansa, but I think he'd rather be with her as the Lady of Winterfell than some fake, random neice he made up. My gut feeling is that she can probably trust him, because he's taken with her, but that she'll have to kill him one day to really come into her own. This made good sense to me, too, when I heard it. Interested to see where it goes. The religious stories aren't really my bag, either, but religion plays a role in the power relationships within a society, so I understand why this keeps coming up. For the Faceless Men, though, I thought they were just going back to their "There's only one god, and that's the god of death" thing -- the same as Arya's teacher used to say. I dont think they're going to turn out to be religious, but they have magic powers, so who knows?

I don't have strong feelings about David either way, which makes it a little boring for me that he's emerging as the frontrunner. Cody seems kind of Tom Cruisish to me -- like, when a camera's pointed at him, he's always trying way too hard to make a good impression. He's probably a nice person, but it comes across as insincere.