A ton happened on The 100 this week. I find myself having to repeatedly remind myself how much I really like Michael Beach because I hate the hell out of Pike. Here's the deal, on the Arc, Pike was a teacher which should have made him well aware of earth's history and still yet, he is determined to move forward with this scorched earth policy in a war. Pike hasn't even questioned what happens when they run out of bullets. When Marcus confronts Pike on the Grounders who are being kept in internment, Pike spins it to claim that they are being imprisoned for the purposes of protection. Say what? How does this teacher not know that this has always been wrong and lead to disastrous results? Pike however is certain that he is not there to be liked and to get a job done. It's ironic that their first election lead to the rule of a dictator.
For her part, unlike her brother, Octavia continues to work to avoid a war. She rides out to spy on the Farmers who are taking soil samples. When Hannah spies a Grounder kid, she says hello in a cheery voice just before ordering the rest of the farmers to kill the kid. Were it not for the intervention of Octavia, who by the way has to tolerate poison sap, the kid would have died. I don't understand how Hannah, who believed her child to be dead not that long ago, justifies this decision to herself. In fact, at this point, I'm pretty sure that I don't like Hannah either. She didn't go into the mist to save her own son when Sakiru found themselves in a Grounder trap and then she has the nerve to blame Octavia for it all when she and Pike were the one's being blood thirsty. Yep, Hannah can join Pike and Jaha on my list of people who need to go.
If Pike had not slaughtered the Grounder army in the first place and treated them like the allies they were at the time, he could have simply asked for Skaikru to have access to the land for farming, instead of having to goad Bellamy into doing whatever was necessary to feed their people. The logic in his position just doesn't make sense to me and it is even more troublesome that even with hindsight, neither Pike or his supporters can see the error of his way.
Marcus continues to marshal his forces and though he is horrified at the fact that he is sending kids to die in order to avoid a war he continues on. Chief among Marcus's regrets is insisting upon the election which gave power to Pike. This earns him a kiss from Abby. Are we supposed to say aww at this? They better not make these two a couple. I know that they've been dancing around it for awhile but I don't want to see Abby with the man who had her publicly punished, I don't care how much they rehabilitate Marcus's character.
Marcus manages with the help of Miller to get a bug placed in the Chancellor's area and this is how he learns about the plans for the Grounder village. Marcus tries once again to talk sense into Bellamy but Bellamy is too far under Pike's sway to stop. Miller is then forced to say a tearful goodbye to Brian. When I saw this moment, I knew that Brian was wearing the red shirt. Clearly, Miller and Brian are a thing but am I the only one who doesn't remember this being explicit before now?
So, Octavia warns the Grounders, who at first believe that she is threatening them. Octavia is told that she doesn't know as much about them as she thinks. I believe that this is a valid point worth making because Octavia has been spending a lot of time self identifying as Grounder when she isn't. It's a problem and amounts to appropriation. The Grounders take a page from Pike's playbook and use the poisoned sap which burned Octavia to lay waste to the land making it useless for farming in the future, killing Monroe in the process. I gotta say that I am team Grounder in this instance.
It's fair to say that Octavia wasn't completely successful in her mission and now she has been captured by the very Grounders she was trying to warn. Pike is certain that Octavia was colluding with Marcus and demands that Bellamy find evidence of this. How much kool aid has Bellamy been drinking anyway to agree to this betrayal? Does this mean that The 100 is going to turn Bellamy into a double agent? I much preferred Bellamy when he at least had the appearance of being autonomous than the robot he has become.
Unfortunately for Skaikru, Pike isn't their only problem. Jaha is walking around selling the City of Light; however, Abby is on the case. Abby let's Raven go back to work but she is concerned that all of Raven's pain mysteriously disappeared though her leg is still damaged. The people of Skaikru are swallowing the tech hand over fist because they want an end to their pain. ALIE is up to something searching for some kind of code her creator made. It's Jaha (who really needs to die) who figures out that it's on the 13th Arc. He is also smart enough not to tell Raven about the tech being the cause of the destruction of the world. As smart as Jaha is however, he doesn't realise how the tech has effected him. When Abby questions if Jaha would allow Wells to take the tech without testing, Jaha freezes because he has forgotten who Wells is. Jaha tries to cover but it only heightens Abby's distrust and she takes away the rest of the so-called keys. Yeah, I'm team Abby on this one.
At Polis, things are also becoming hot. In order to save Skaikru, Clarke convinced Lexa that the Grounders should no longer live by the philosophy of Blood must have Blood and instead seek out peace. Clarke is put to the test when she is presented with Emerson - the Mountain man who blew up Mt. Weather, Clarke's first instinct is to have Emerson killed because she sees him as guilty and separate from what Skaikru did to the Grounder army. Considering that Lexa's rule is being challenged because she chose peace over war, it should have been easy for Clarke to follow the same advice that she gave Lexa. Yeah the hypocrisy is strong with this one. In the end Clarke does chose for Emerson to live, wishing him a long life to reflect upon the fact that he is the last of his people and the lives he has taken. Though it didn't lead to Emerson's death, Clarke's decision is not exactly peaceful because she wants Emerson to suffer and feel pain and most certainly has not forgiven him. Emerson is frustrated because he wanted to die to add his death to Clarke's blood guilt. Although Emerson has been banished, we all know that we haven't seen the last of him right?
Things are escalating in terms of Pike's declared Grounder war. I find it very frustrating in a lot ways because it feels like The 100 is rehashing a plot line that we have seen repeatedly since the first season. I agree that Skaikru needs to find a way to be self sufficient and live but falling back on war again feels lazy at this point. Jaha's storyline is the distraction that it has always been. I just want the whole City of Light nonsense to simply go away and to have his irrelevant character finally die off. Every time I've though that The 100, had gotten rid of Jaha , he is resurrected. I hope that moving forward, The 100 will focus more on the politics rather than the war.
