The 100 - Anaconda

Discussing Ep. 7.8

So after having to put some stuff on hold to tend to other stuff, I was finally able to catch up on the episode that I missed (I am glad that there is a break in new episodes right now). This was the backdoor pilot to The 100 prequel show and I have to say, I don't know how I feel about it.

Right off the bat, it was somewhat of a relief to know that the "key" wasn't necessarily Clarke herself but rather what she was carrying, which Bill thought was the Flame or the Key, as he called it. So it doesn't seem like it's necessarily anything to do with Clarke herself but rather with what she carries, which is presumably the personality and memories of Calliope, his daughter, and the knowledge of what Becca saw when she went into that special wormhole. I will say this about Clarke though. Even though she can be hypocritical and intolerable at times, I give the character credit for being complex and severely flawed. She's not the anti-hero, per say, but she's definitely not a character that you can look to as a Mary Sue or one dimensional to the point of being unrealistic.

Which could not be said of the prequel character of Calliope. Not that she was a Mary Sue but rather her character was a bit too noble, too righteous, too good considering her family environment and dynamics. I fail to see how she could possibly turn out the way she did and not be influenced at all by the personality of her parents, especially Bill. Bill is a legitimate narcissistic sociopath! That was the diagnosis her mother, Grace (a clinical psychologist), gave to him. Whether she said that as a joke or was serious, Bill's behaviour throughout the episode more than confirmed that diagnosis. Now, maybe I've watched too many videos on narcissism and such and therefore I'm a bit too sensitive on the matter, but it just seems so unlikely that the Cadogen family could exist at all the way it was portrayed in this episode.

Like I said, Grace is a clinical psychologist. It's her job to discover and treat mental illness, disorders and such. The fact that she diagnosed Bill as a narcissistic sociopath AND was married to him AND had two children by him makes absolutely no sense. I'm not saying it doesn't happen in real life, but it seems highly unlikely. Why would she marry him? Why would she stay with him? Why would she have a family with him? That's like a counsellor for sexual abuse and rape survivors knowingly and willingly getting into a relationship with a serial rapist! What possible motivation, other than perhaps money or a sense of survival, could Grace have for getting involved with Bill? She, more than anyone, would know that Bill would be completely devoid of empathy and remorse to the point that he would be both a bad father and a bad husband. Why knowingly create a family with someone like that? Now, if Grace herself were a narcissist, I could probably buy into that more. But that's not the impression I got of Grace at all. The fact that she was willing to die with Callie if Callie didn't agree to board the helicopter was proof that Grace wasn't narcissistic or a sociopath herself. So why be with Bill? How could she be with Bill?

Maybe she fell in love with him and felt like she couldn't turn away from him. That's possible but highly unlikely. She came off as a strong willed person in her own right. Maybe she fell in love and felt like, as a psychologist, she could "cure" him of his narcissism and sociopathy. A better assumption, but it doesn't speak well of Grace and portrays her as either arrogant or naive. In the end, I find it highly unbelievable that Grace could or would marry Bill and stay with him the way she did. I'm sure there's a bigger backstory to it all but making her a clinical psychologist was dumb. They should have given her some other profession and THEN I would have bought it that she fell under his snare and unknowingly enabled him and raised a family with him that produced a second narcissistic sociopath in Reese. And I have to say this....I don't know if the writers were watching Endgame when they wrote this, but having Grace say that Bill "is a lot of things, but he is not a liar!" was stupid. Part of being a narcissistic sociopath involves being a liar! It just does. Gaslighting, manipulation, and attempting to get away with any kind of crime or sin, by default, has to involve lying and deception. To remove that from Bill's character makes absolutely no sense at all! That was a fucking stupid thing to say.

Which brings me to Callie...the girl who should not be. She has a narcissistic sociopath for a father. She has, at best, an enabler for her father's sociopathic behaviour in her mother. She has a narcissistic sociopath in her brother. But Callie somehow, someway, managed to turn out as this righteous and virtuous do-gooder who takes part in protests and activism and seeks to help mankind? Bullshit! The best way I can describe how completely awkward and unrealistic this is is to compare it to the Trump family. You have Donald, the narcissistic sociopath. You have Melania, who at best enables everything Donald does (but to be fair, she seems rather narcissistic in her own right). You have the two sons Eric and Don Jr., who emulate their father's narcissism and insecurities. But instead of Ivanka as the daughter (who bears all the signs of narcissism that her father and brothers do), rather imagine that it was Greta Thunberg who was the daughter in the family! Someone like Greta, with her personality and sense of empathy and wanting to make the world a better place rather than have the world serve her needs, arising out of the Trump family would not, could not and does not make any sense at all! Someone like Ivanka coming out of that family makes total sense. But if she were like Greta, it would make no sense. So how is it that Callie arose out of the Cadogen family as the activist and morally sound character that she is? She can't!

Her brother, Reese, made sense. I could totally see someone like him arising out of that family. I totally wanted to punch him in his smirking fucking face! But that was the point. And credit where credit is due, Reese did show some degree of remorse. He later brushed it off, but you could see in his face when he burned Becca at the stake, when he betrayed Callie, when he saw his mother locked out...there was conflict within him. I like that. I can accept that. Callie on the other hand was far, far too good. Far too noble. And add to all of that, she was the one who created the Trigedasleng language? Considering that JRR Tolkien created his first constructed language when he was a teenager, I suppose it isn't that much of a stretch, so I won't harp on it too much. I'm assuming the prequel series would explain exactly why she created it because it felt like such a random thing to do.

But speaking of unbelievable characters, here we have Becca. The famous Becca, creator of nightblood, creator of ALIE, creator of the Flame. As if those accolades weren't enough, she had to be portrayed as such a genius, such a prodigy, such an amazing and intelligent character that she went to Harvard University....at the tender age of 10! Fuck off! Fuck the hell off! Why did they have to make her into a super fucking genius? It would have been just fine if they had said that at 15 or 16 years old, she went to Harvard and cut through all the programs like butter. Not 10 years old! I swear, whoever wrote this episode feels like they were writing some really bad fanfiction. It just felt like they really stretched the abilities of these characters to a point that they went into the realm of the absurd.

So I'll get to some of the more interesting and positive elements of the episode. I don't know when this episode was filmed or written, but I found this particular shot rather apropos, with the Russian Ankovirus spreading and everyone on the TV screen wearing masks. I thought that was rather funny and I'm assuming that the writers are playing both on the coronavirus and the news of Russian interference in American affairs, so they had no problems attributing a virus to the Russians.

This shot was rather interesting, if only because I had seen something similar before.

In Terminator 3, at the end when Skynet launches all the nuclear missiles to various parts of the Earth, they basically used the exact same shot. I'm assuming it was homage to T3 because if they're going to claim otherwise and say it was a coincidence....I'm not buying it. The shots appear far too similar to be coincidental.

I am very intrigued by what Becca saw when she stepped into the wormhole. What exactly did she see and does it have anything to do with what Murphy saw? She saw it as Judgement Day (another Terminator reference) and felt that humanity, especially Bill, was not ready to encounter that just yet. So what does Judgement Day look like? Was it Heaven? Was it a place that they could all actually go to using the Stone? I think that'd be kind of eerie, almost like Event Horizon where the were able to open an actual wormhole to Hell! Also, why is it that none of the Commanders or those who had the Flame ever knew about this? I'm assuming that the Flame contained records of Becca's experience so why hadn't any of them ever sought to find the Stone on Earth? Why are we only hearing about this now?

On the whole, I don't know if I'm sold on seeing The 100 prequel. They'd really have to work on Callie to make me invested in her as a realistic and relatable character. Though it was nice to see how some of the things that we've come to know on the show came to be, like "from the ashes, we will rise" slogan and Trikru and the language and all of that. Maybe with it's own series, the writers could flesh out everything better so that it all makes sense.

Definitely needs some work though. Onto catching up with the next episode!