Episode 5x03: "Sleeping Giants"

Hello and welcome back to Meta Station, where the takes are HOT and the zombie supersoldiers are COLD, and the jokes are weird because we’re both on book deadlines and slowly losing our minds. Erin unfortunately cannot be with us today, as she is dead, on account of what a motherfucking drama queen Bellamy Blake was when he strode dramatically into the spotlight holding his dad mug aloft to rescue Clarke from death at the hands of Claire’s new MILF crush Diyoza. But prior to her untimely demise from FEELS ATTACKS we had tons of shit to say about everything from the increasingly chilling Season 1 Grounder parallels (somewhere in the afterlife, Anya is genuinely touched that Clarke was paying such close attention), to Zeke Shaw as the show’s second and FAR more successful attempt at the Finn Collins character template, to what in the wide wide world of sports “don’t let Diyoza weaponize the cargo” could mean, to how hard Emori is winning this breakup. Our first two fairly modest nitpicks of the season came into play this week – we’re not wild about the narrative failing to pick a lane with Becho, and Claire would like to see Harper with a little more plot agency – but everything else is still so fantastic that we’re perfectly willing to give those cakes a little more time in the oven and we still have faith they’ll be satisfying in the end. For those of you who like it when we get existential, we spent about twenty minutes talking about religion; for those of you who like it when we’re complete garbage, stand by later this week for an outtake where we lose our shit over William Miller tweeting at Claire that he refers to that gun as “the strap-on.”

Okay team, let’s do this thing. ACTIVATE KODIAK!

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0:00 – Hello and Welcome, ERIN IS LOOPY AS HELL
0:02 – We Already Love the Structure of This Season
0:07 – Grounder!Clarke Takes Us Back to Season One While Reminding Us Why the Term “Mama Bear” Is Not Always a Cute Compliment
0:19 – Jesus H. Christ We’re Gay for Diyoza
0:24 – Introducing Paxton “Graveyard” McCreary, Actual Worst Person on This Show
0:33 – R.I.P. Detroit
0:39 – McCreary vs. Shaw: Chaotic Evil vs. Neutral Good
0:44 – So They DID Solve a Problem Like Finn Collins
0:46 – It’s Ben Franklin with the Key and the Kite (You See It, Right?)
0:50 – “Two Suns, No Sunscreen”: Our Nightblood Eligius Theories Just Took a Sharp Right Turn
0:55 – Hytholodium, Raven, and Order Eleven: Is Kodiak an ALIE-Chipped Super Soldier?
1:03 – “First We Pray”: Diyoza, Gaia, the Bible, and a Lengthy Digression on Religion as Story
1:22 – Abby and McCreary: Lots of Plot Options, None of Them Good
1:27 – Emori Is Really Winning This Breakup
1:35 – When Does Harper Get to Do Something That Isn’t Just Motivating Another Character’s Plot?
1:41 – In Which We Side-Eye the Noteworthy Absence of Becho In This Episode, and Hope the Show Did Not Destroy Tasya’s Twitter Mentions in Exchange for One Kiss and Nothing Else
1:54 – “Murder, Murder, Murder . . .”: GOD THE BRAVEN IN THIS EPISODE WAS LIIIIIIIIIIT
1:58 – Saginaw, Grandpappy Blake and Arthur C. Clarke: Characters Who Know Pre-Praimfaya Earth As a Myth Finally Meet People Who Lived It
2:05 – Sorry, HOW Many People Does Bellamy Have to Decide Whether or Not to Kill, Again?
2:10 – This Episode Was a Masterclass in Dramatic Irony
2:14 – This Bellamy/Madi Team-Up Gives Us LIFE
2:29 – “She Is”
2:41 – We Feel Bad That We Didn’t Get to Talk More About Raven But We’ll Save It For Next Time