Lots and lots!! *engage ramble mode*

We really must let the season play out before judging it too harshly. This is a real 'knock it all down, build it all back up again' season.

Can I just do a big shout out to the cinematography here? I feel like this is really interesting in the context of what you're saying:

They shot 3A in a way deliberately designed to throw the audience "visually" out of the character's headspaces, particularly from 3.04 onwards. Just a few of the tips and tricks they used:

• Camera already "sitting" in the rooms in Polis, waiting for Clarke to appear.
• Camera following other characters around such as Roan & Lexa, then Clarke appears as if a part of their story.
• Bellamy shown in group shots, only filmed when he's speaking, not reacting to Pike's words, so we get no sense of why he's suddenly decided to shout "Pike! Pike! Pike!" etc
• Camera panning through the walls of Arkadia but not following the characters, the "dollhouse" effect.
• Wide shots of Polis command-room, the "fly on the wall" effect, eliminating Clarke in the crowds.
• Visual barriers between Bellamy and the audience - tables, other people etc.
• Visual barriers between Clarke and the audience - a lot of the back of her head.
• A lack of the sense of these two characters moving between physical spaces. The camera didn't follow them as they entered or left the rooms or from one part of Arkadia/Polis to another. They were either already there as the camera "entered" the room or appeared in the room as the camera was already in it. You'd never do that if you wanted the audience to feel like these characters were driving the story... the camera would track with them as they left/entered and moved through spaces.
• This is really just a small sample!! They didn't do this all the time... but just enough for it to have quite an effect on the feel of the story.

All this stuff works really well on a subconscious level to visually "disconnect" the audience from the characters.

There was a noticeable switch in the way they started to frame these characters from 3.09 onwards, as they slowly bring the audience back into their head spaces again. Suddenly we start getting the reaction shots, the camera choosing to follow them as they become the narrative drivers of the story again, the visual barriers drop away, the characters start to move through spaces and the camera moves with them in tracking shots. Again, it all works subconsciously to bring us back into the character's heads, backing up the writing and the sense that we're only now starting to get a peek into what has been driving these characters and their choices during that period of disconnection.

So there is a real visual contrast in the way they've framed and presented 3A from 3.04-3.08 compared to 3B. Which gives me a lot of hope that most of this was all on purpose. Because no one "accidentally" sets up these camera angles, films these scenes or edits these sequences like this... it's all been chosen by someone, at some point.

This kind of visual storytelling is really fascinating. I hope I didn't go too much on a tangent here, but I thought you might find it interesting!

*ramble mode disengaged*

tl;dr There's usually a reason for everything in this show.