Sunday, February 15, 2015

Ships That Aren't Shipping 2015 - Part Two Clarke and Bellamy on The 100

Welcome to Part Two of this year's series of Ships That Aren't Shipping But Totally Should be posts. We started off this year with my favorite on-screen couple Oliver and Felicity on Arrow for Part One. Last year, the second spot was taken up by Charlie and Monroe on Revolution, but since Revolution ended up being cancelled, I had to find someone else to take their place. The answer was easy in Clarke and Bellamy on The 100.

The 100 is my other favorite show on TV at the moment, aside from Arrow. The only downside to The 100 (or the fifty-one, it probably should be called now, since I think that's how many there are left) is that it only gets a half-season run at 12 or 14 episodes. Seriously, this is a show that deserves a full 22 ep season.
So, the Bellarke ship is not just the unrequited desire of crazy enthusiastic fans. In the books the series was based on (and I say was not is because the TV series and books have gone in totally different directions) Bellamy and Clarke are actually together by the end of book 2, titled Day 26.
In the series, however, Clarke's love interest came in the form of Finn. However many Flarke shippers there might be, I never felt these two had much believable chemistry. It was okay, but I always got the sense that Finn liked Clarke a whole lot more than Clarke liked Finn. Meanwhile, in the few short scenes Bellamy and Clarke spent together, sparks usually happened, even though they intensely disliked each other for most of season one.
Those who'd read the books would have already been hoping that Clarke and Bellamy would eventually get together, and those who hadn't soon jumped on the bandwagon, because it was easy to see by the end of season one that Clarke and Bellamy were definitely starting to see each other differently than they first had.
The seeds of this were sown subtly at first, but then grew stronger, like in the episode where the kids all accidentally got high off some nuts they'd picked. Many, like Bellamy faced demons of their past. Bellamy was ready to give up, in the process of leaving for the unknown when Clarke found him. He admitted the things he'd done to get on the ground in order to protect his sister, Octavia, calling himself a monster.
Clarke brought him back from the edge, telling him he'd done what he'd had to in order to protect his sister and that she needed him, he'd been essential to leading and keeping the kids safe. After this, the two of them seemed to form a tentative bond, despite keeping up pretenses of not liking each other. However, they were always there for one another when needed most, climaxing in Clarke standing up for Bellamy when talking to the ark, in order clear Bellamy's name so he wouldn't be punished when the adults came to the ground.
The season finale saw the climax of the rising tension with the people who'd already been living on the ground. The kids came up with a risky plan of blowing the reserve fuel left in the drop-ship to take out the attacking grounders out. But before they did that, they had to draw the enemy in. The plan was to let the grounders attack and then start retreating, everyone going into the ship before sparking the rocket ignition.
However, as these things usually ago, it didn't happen according to plan. Bellamy had been off doing something else (maybe taking Octavia to her grounder boyfriend, Lincoln, I can't remember now) and when time came to enact their plan, hadn't returned yet. Clarke was worried, and when Bellamy did make an appearance, he was cut off by a grounder who attacked him. Finn went out to help him and when the others started calling for the ship doors to be closed, the two boys were too far away to make it to the ship. Of course, Clarke wanted wait, but to save everyone, she had to make an impossible choice. Season one ended with the kids who'd survived getting gassed by men in black masks, with Bellamy and Finn nowhere to be seen.
Going into season two, I knew it would be a while before Clarke and Bellamy shared any screen time, but the five (I think it was) episodes we had to endure before the two of them had their reunion was painful. At least the reunion was worth the wait with the sharing an intense embrace.
My total Bellarke disappointment came in the fact that Clarke and Bellamy had only a little bit of interaction after this episode, basically no alone time. And as of two episodes ago, were split up again as Clarke has been plotting with the grounders and Bellamy infiltrated Mount Weather to take the "mountain men" down from the inside.
There are only a couple of episodes of season two left, and while I didn't expect huge Bellarke revelations, I was hoping for a least a few really good Bellarke moments. However, not much has eventuated, and I can only hope that going into season 3, the creators might start giving the Bellarke ship more prominence in the storyline.

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