User blog comment:FloaterJ/Nitpicker's Nook/@comment-26131697-20150222152610

Copied over from the Mountain Men thread as I think this section is great and I'd like to contribute.

I am becoming really irritated at the whole MM storyline that has spoiled series 2 for me. I completely appreciate others love it so I don't want to ruin anyone's enjoyment. This is just my opinion and reasons why. I sincerely want to see a Series 3 and 4 etc because it's a great series, just that series 2 has become pants for several reasons:

WARNING. Please don't read on as this contains SPOILERS and might spoil things if you've not watched up to Resurrection. I've watched all the available clips, reviews and summaries to base this upon.

1. As a CBRN trained responder, this whole killer radiation thing is just plain daft and wrong. Radiation of such catastrophically high levels that kills in seconds means that it is fundamentally lethal. Immunity is quite simply impossible, not only because it would have been so much higher years ago, but that at the point where it does what it does to the Mountain Men, means that it is so unbelievably high as to be catastrophic to all human life, far, far, far beyond what little immunity is feasible. To claim that the levels have been rising, so five minutes survival many years ago is now far less, is to doom everyone to death, grounder, sky people etc. The whole thing is like claiming that some people are immune to jumping off a thousand foot high cliff. Just because we can concieve of the catastrophic result does not mean it isn't fundamentally the same as catastrophic levels of radiation. It would have been at least relatively realistic to have the MM becoming progressively more ill after many days of being outside unprotected. Radiation in this program seems to act more like a chemical agent, but again, impossible to become immune to.

2. Bone marrow has to match donor and recipient and the operation is not murderous to the donor. The side effects are feeling a bit ill for a while.

3. Bellamy is becoming the Deus ex Machina for every lazy plot turn. Whenever the MM are about to do anything in their own favour the writers have "Pop up" Bellamy appear and mess it up for them. The MM would surely have made scrambling around the air ducts a lot more difficult than it is and as soon as things start going wrong such as the kids loose in the place, they would surely protect all of their vulnerable areas including making sure people can't go scrambling around the air ducts. It's just a no brainer.

4. Emerson has got to be the most useless sod in the mountain. When sniping he and his thick mate pick the most stupid and easily accesible place and act like they're on a picnic. When an arrow has his mate in the neck he pulls out a knife to face the attack. Really! He left a high powered rifle on the grass and putting his back to the direction from which the arrow came and two people on horses goes to fight the ninja Octavia who seems to have picked up sword skills in short order. Did these two idiot MM not even bring pistols? Was no-one watching their back? Where are their automatic weapons? Why not release gas then just go out and slot the grounders whilst they're hiding? Later on Emerson has another dullard moment when he picks up the gas grenade from the water and stands there like a clot where it's glaringly obvious the gas didn't work. So what's he think? The kids are sleeping? Then in a straight rip from Battle for the Planet of the Apes, the kids start killing the soldiers. Emerson even leads the soldiers right into the middle of the room unarmed! Honestly, who writes this stuff? Surely the mountain men would all be dead now anyway because they clearly have no concept of how to assess risk. Do they poke knives into toasters, tie their shoelaces together, use the hairdryer in the bath, run downstairs carrying scissors point out infront of them, eat their food uncooked, have barbecues in their bedrooms and put deadly fluid into empty drinks containers and leave them out on the shelf. The delinquents are astoundingly clever whereas the MM are astonishingly thick.

5. You can't just pull a CBRN respirator mask off like Clarke the immortal and Anja who for no sensible reason is a grounder leader, do when they escape. "Get the mask" Clarke cries and in a heartbeat the guard is down doing the usual, "help the magic radiation is killing me" squirm. Realistically Clarke was more likely to leave Anja in the cage, or probably jab her in the eye with a finger. Anja and co just tried to wipe out Clarkes entire people and would surely be last on Clarkes, "I'm going to let my enemy out of the cage" list with Clarke highest on Anja's "I'm going to do you mate for wiping out so many of my people" list.

6. Survival of the fittest in this post apocalyptic world appears to be "fittest" as in "best looking".

7. "Pop up" Bellamy is guaranteed to be able to walk through the middle of the dining hall with a sign on his head saying "I'm from the clouds" and still not get caught whilst the entire MM people are having dinner. He can be counted on to use a special radio that can send signals from underground through metres of rock, concrete, metal etc and over a long distance to the Sky people camp and it's a little hand held radio as well. Moreover he has free run of the entire ventilation system that the MM must surely (well probably not because they're thick) be aware of and surely to goodness would have welded up, fitted with alarms or covert cameras by now!

8. The MM have the capacity to block any radio signal from the SP camp etc. However they don't have anything that can detect radio signals coming from inside the mountain and back from the SP camp whereas McGuyver Raven can do marvels in comparison.

9. Shooting someone with a pistol is more likely to see the bullet travelling around the body and coming out of the neck, armpit or anywhere than going straight through. Clarkes shooting the sniper (another thick MM) through Lincoln is more likely to kill him and do nothing to the bloke behind. Another clot who brought a knife to a gun fight. I've not seen anyone doing much training with their weapons but they're crack shots when the plot demands it.

10. MM sniper number 2 (above) is even more thick in that he doesn't take a few shots then clear off but hangs around waiting for someone to figure out where he is. The ground alliance only need to give the MM's some sharp knives to play with and they'll kill themselves within the week judging by how inept they are at everything.

11. Some MM's die faster than others from the magic radiation. Tsing pops it in short order, the guards drop as if someone hamstrung them, but Maya seems to crisp up over several minutes and is still alive when on the hospital bed looking like she's just been put under the grill (which is probably where the Mountain Men sleep given their propensity for doing the most stupid thing possible in every given situation).

12. Clearly the decider for putting someone in charge is that they are

a) under 18

b) fairly good looking

c) not the strongest or smartest person

d) person most likely to display disturbing character traits. e) being a main character guaranteed to survive every bomb, bullet, gas attack or other event that drops everyone around them. The show has serious "Star Trek Red-Shirt die disease."

13. Clarke's "hunches" always pay off. She should set up a horse race and get people to bet on them, she'd clean up!

14. "Hey, who shot these two guards and freed the girl?". "Seems like we have someone inside whose helping them." "Shouldn't we guard all of our most precious facilities such as the acid fog, the chemical attack machine, the armoury, the air vent controls, the radios, the grounder cages, make sure the air vents aren't vulberable to someone crawling around in them, people aren't hiding in rooms... Nah!

15. I would not be shocked to see the search for the delinquents reveal a whole load of them in a room, one with a lamp shade on the head standing in a corner, three sitting in a drawer, half a dozen under the bed, two standing pretending to be old store manequins, one hanging from the ceiling with a light bulb in the mouth, and still not get spotted!

16. Wait until the grounder/Sky alliance marches on the mountain, release the fog, send out troops in CBRN kit and kill the lot, or contact the sky people by radio and come to some decent arrangement, "Hello, look the kids are here, we've figured out we can cure our problems by bone marrow magic, we don't want to hurt anyone, any chance we could get your help and then come outside. You could take your chances with the grounders but given they've tried to wipe you out, killed lots of your kids and so on, whereas we saved their lives, you might want to consider the long term chances of a decent grounder/sky person get together."

"Yeah ok then."

Roll credits.

Having said all of that, I still love the entire idea of the show, found series 1 to be brilliant and series 2 entertaining, but the latter is more comedy with episodes of gratuitous and barbaric suffering than serious drama now. I hope the writers for series 3 are given more time to think things through because they are clearly capable and have a great show on their hands. I get a strong sense of plot twists and ideas being thought up on the spot and run with, with no time to take stock and ask, "is this really feasible?" "Is this red shirt die day again?" or "Is Bellamy actually invisible."

It wouldn't take long for under 400 people, only a portion of whom are males of fighting age, and so used to seeing each other and no-one else that the minute Bellamy rocks up in a corridor someone would shout "who the bloody hell is that?" Has no one asked "Hey where's that bloke from outside that we strung up to bleed and who isn't in his cage anymore." or "Anyone seen Lovejoy?" or "Given that all these kids are kicking off shouldn't we put a guard on the air locks that they can go through...." nah! Surely not.

Anyway, all said in the best of humour. Can't wait for the next rib tickling episode. I hope someone finds a pegasus and learns to ride it. By the way, could someone please just try cracking the password for a laptop and see if once they get the code (by guessing it) all the most secret plans contained on it, just flip up onto the screen like a secret agent book falling open. Ho Hum.