Season 2 Review, Part 1: Clementine was Great this Season
I've wanted to review Season 2 for quite a while, but now I finally have time. I have quite a bit to say, so I'll do it in installments.
First off, Clementine.
It was obvious from the start of the season that she wasn't the same Clementine we knew from Season 1, and that's a good thing. She's lost both her parents and Lee, and even that doesn't completely destroy her spirit, as you can still see shades of former happy, hopeful self in the very first scenes of Season 2 ("I hope there's water in there"), but then Omid dies. And that seems to be the straw that breaks the camel's back.
From that point on, she almost never cracks a smile. It's not a sign of maturity, although she is more mature. It's a sign of depression. And you know what? That's the logical state to be in, considering all the pain she's been through. And from s2e1 on, she's more willing to hurt and manipulate people (blackmailing Rebecca). That's also logical, considering all the horrible people she's met. Along with her innocence, she's lost her faith in humanity and may not feel the need to show mercy to cruel people anymore
Sure, sometimes, I miss Hopeful, Innocent Clementine, but Depressed, Disillusioned Clementine is much more true to the character than a continued Hopeful, Innocent Clementine would be. After all, the more hopeful and innocent they are, the harder they fall to depression and disillusionment. I think it was brave, true writing to change a fan favorite character dramatically, in realistic ways that acknowledge her pain and suffering, even though people might not like seeing that change. (I can always revisit Hopeful, Innocent Clementine in Season 1 anyway.)
Also, I continued to like Season 2 Clementine on the basis of how smart and resourceful she is, but in addition to that, Season 2 Clem is even more of what I call a Spunky Character. That sounds really cute and ineffectual, but here's what I mean when I say Spunky Character:
Spunky Character. n. A character who is generally smaller and/or weaker than the other characters but nonetheless sallies forth and takes no shit from anyone.
....And ok, that does actually sound really cute, but not ineffectual. Admirable.
I've loved Spunky Characters ever since I was a kid, because I could relate to not having the physical strength to combat the evils of the world but I liked the idea of relying on one's inner strength.
Clem has a definite disability in that she has less physical strength than an adult would. This disadvantage comes into play, for instance, when you make the choice to Help Kenny when he is being beaten by Carver. Clem may not have known that there was little she could do physically, or she may have forgotten in her desire to help Kenny, but she immediately gets beaten down by Troy. A bigger character like Lee would have been able to recover from a blow like that much easier and may have actually been able to help Kenny, but one hit to Clem and she's down for the count, and that's sad and frustrating for a spunky character.
But Clem has enormous inner strength to keep going despite, not only the incredibly daunting outer obstacles (bandits, psychopaths, loss of blood, the somewhat sturdy walls of a shed, oh and zombies, etc.), but also the inner obstacles she faces (sadness, pain, loss, etc.). And it's clear from her many sad, scared reactions that she does feel that the obstacles are quite daunting, but she chooses to continue fighting them.
I think this season dealt with Clem growing up, but at some point, the game has to deal with her depression. It's just tricky to explore the psyche of an unhappy character without making them seem whiny and/or making their sadness seem trivial by having them recover from it too quickly. And it's especially hard to explore the main character's psyche at all in a game like this, because you're playing as Clementine. So to what extent should Telltale take it out of the players' hands and focus on what CLEM is feeling, not the players? Well, I trust them to figure it out. After all, I do appreciate that they let Clem have a whole season spanning several years to be depressed, because like I said, anything else would make it seem trivial and unrealistic.
Lastly, I thought it was incredible how much you could SEE Clem growing up in this season. In the final shot of s2e2, it zooms in on her face, and I just remember thinking, "Wow, this is going to age her emotionally so much, and she knows it. You can see she knows it. She accepts it. Which means she's already so much older, just from this one experience of getting kidnapped." And then, in the very first shot of s2e3, I just thought, "Yep, wow. She already looks so much older." Even though, physically, she looked exactly the same. Therefore, it wasn't entirely her features or expressions that told me this, but also the context of events.
See, in Episode 2, much of the episode is actually, strangely bright and hopeful. You know, at first, there was Luke, Kenny, Walter, Matthew, Sarita, and the awesome (!) wind-powered ski lodge filled with Christmas decorations, all making the world seem a bit brighter. And then there was Carver, using Bonnie to lie to Clem, torturing Carlos, and killing Walter and Alvin (possibly). It was a pretty stark contrast, and made getting kidnapped by Carver all the more horrible for Clem in my eyes.
Also, Clem may have been taken prisoner before (by the St. John's and the Stranger) but never without someone who she could count on to shield her. Fact is, up until Christa got attacked, Clem always had someone taking care of her. She may not have been very happy with Christa, but for practical purposes, she was not alone with Christa. Christa herself said that she was the only one tending the fire, so that was a pretty basic skill Clem didn't even have to learn until the start of this season.
However, by the end of episode 2, I was convinced Clem had no one in her current group to protect her at all. Obviously, the Cabin group wasn't about to. They locked her in a shed when she was helpless and injured. And I certainly didn't trust Kenny to protect her. He was fickle, petty, and just to spite Lee, he refused to save Clem from her kidnapper....in Season 1. Little did I know that Season 2 Kenny would be very different. Regardless, for all I knew, Clem was completely on her own when she got kidnapped by Carver, and she would have to bear the full brunt of the horrors ahead. No one would help her. Those facts, along with her sad, understanding, but non-anxious demeanor, made her look so much older in the aforementioned shots.
And from that point on, she's just growing up non-stop, learning new survival skills, and developing a deeper understanding of the people around her. Until finally, she's all alone with AJ, heading confidently into a horde of zombies covered in zombie guts. (At least, in my ending.)
So those are a few reasons I thought Clem was great this season. I'm sure I've forgotten a lot, but maybe I'll remember once you all start commenting your thoughts. 
Comments
I like Clementine's new personality too, no one else really does
Coming into this thread, I did not expect to be pleasantly surprised that other people actually like season 2 Clem :P
Nice post. I didn't agree with all of it, but it was well written and it gave me more insight into Clem's character than I had before reading it.
you shoulda say this before... so many repeating topics all over and over again.... this is .... insanity...
Exactly! Even though I like Clementine's S1 version more, S2 version of her is cool too. You can see it in her face 16 months later after that Pitstop event, how much pain and depression she went through. She clearly misses the old and best days; with her parents before all this, with Lee when everything started and continued to believe in humanity and hope with him. Seeing Clementine's face after 16 months was a symbolic moment for me. Well... even though Christa took care of her for a long time, I guess I should thank MY Lee for giving her the fire that will never dissappear no matter what; "Hope"
Thanks
I think a good number of people do like her in Season 2. Everyone I know in real life does. I think it's just far less common on these forums to find people who like her, which is unfortunate and is also why I wrote this post recently.
Lol, maybe I should change the title, but I'm glad I provided a pleasant surprise.
Oh, well, good, glad to hear it.
I agree completely. The only reason I can think of that might be keeping Clem going at this point is what Lee said, not to give up hope that the world could go back to normal someday. It almost certainly won't go back to normal, at this point, but I think the gist of what Lee said has stuck with Clem and she has chosen not to give up hope.
Dark_Star, I thought you were dead. :>
I am. This is all a dream.
I love how Clementine is in season 2. No doubt she had to grow up from that little 8 year old version into something we can all be proud of (given the right choices). I'm not talking about how her innocence is destroyed or how she became a badass, but that she grew up into a capable individual both in wisdom and in strength of character.
season 1: make clementine to be prepared for the ZA
season 2 : how you're gonna render clem's growth...
season 3 : Clem's alternate universe(since it has alot of damn endings since season 2)
Yes, absolutely, and I feel like she's still growing.
It would be awesome if there were five different universes in season three, but I doubt Telltale could handle that massive amount of work. I heard an idea on a post here once that the DLC for this season would bring all five versions of the story to a single point, so that season 3 could start from there. I like that idea. Here's the post http://www.telltalegames.com/community/discussion/81915/the-five-threads-or-how-the-hell-are-the-ttg-devs-going-to-start-s3
What if you don't own the DLC though? Do you just basically miss all the important stuff and get started at a point you don't even recognize? That would be stupid.
i like that clementine changed i thought she was alittle to sweet to successfully live in her world but i don't want her to stop careing about people so long as she can protect her self i'm happy
Oh, yeah, you're right. Unless the DLC is free and very well-advertised, they probably have to just start season 3 in different places like the did with s2e2. Which is kind of a bummer. I wanted to spend more time with Kenny/Jane/AJ than that will probably allow for.
Right. I want both of those things for her too, to continue caring about people AND to be able to protect herself, but finding a balance will no doubt be extremely difficult.
I agree with this thread in principle, even though I feel the execution was lacking. It's striking that the examples you cited came from the first two episodes - do you believe that the portrayal of Clementine's character differed when other writers were introduced to the mix?
Amid The Ruins had the infamous moment where Clem kicks in a door like some miniaturized John McClane, and it seems like Clem's vulnerability only resurfaced once Breckon returned to writing duties. Even so, there's that awkward moment where Clem getting shot through the shoulder is shrugged off - I can understand it being an attempt to show how much she's "progressed" from being squeamish with a dog-bite to nonchalantly surviving a gunshot wound, but it still is hard for me to believe.
Personally, I dislike how the 16 months later gap is really overlooked with regards to explaining how Clem survived a previous winter, and what her relationship with Christa was like. This is particularly egregious in the episode where Clem enters a civil war ruin (one of Omid's obsessions) and is confronted with the possibility of seeing another baby die. This ties into Season 2's overuse of time-skips as a means of avoiding plausible character development - in theory, Rebecca's growing trust of Clem would be heartwarming, but in execution it's more abrupt than anything else.
And her relationship with Sarah felt largely limited to showing how Sarah "was never meant for this world", ignoring the possibility of Clem building a friendship with another child. More could have been done with this relationship than focusing on how precocious and 'mature' Clem is by being the equal of grown men.
No, it's mostly due to my laziness that I only cited examples from the first two episodes in this post. In other posts, I've cited examples from other episodes, and I sometimes use that as a poor excuse not to type out those examples again. But I should have. In my post about Slapping Sarah, I talked about how that could mean that Clem is going to the dark side and dealing with problems in a Carver-ish way. There was, as you might expect, some contention surrounding that claim, but it's honestly still how I see the Sarah slap.
And in my post about defending Season Two, I mention how Season Two Clem was learning survival skills (tending a fire, kicking zombies in the legs, stabbing zombies in the neck, using versatile no-stick tools like the nail file, walking around in zombie guts more often, even kicking down doors if you ask me, etc.) and hard truths about people such as that people are unstable (Kenny), manipulative (Jane), and untrustworthy (everyone she's met this season at one point or another).
Off the top of my head, Clem's growth is also shown by:
-Being able to lie to Carver in his office, showing she doesn't feel like she's betraying herself by pretending to agree with his messed up outlook
-Being able to yell back at Kenny for blaming her for Sarita's death; this is noteworthy because it looks like Clem never stood up for herself when Christa blamed her for Omid's death, which either shows Clem is more honest with Kenny or is unable to handle taking the blame any more than she already has
-Being capable of stealing from Arvo, while in season one she refused to steal from the Stranger
-Having the option of not opening up to Luke on the balcony in ep 4 after he proves to be a flake like Kenny and Carver said; this perhaps shows a growing mistrust and coldness from Clem when compared to how she opens up to him at the dinner table in every dialogue choice in ep 1 (which I think was partially due to a need to talk about Lee and partially due to a certain amount of trust in Luke)
I think all of this shows both a growing competence and cynicism, and I think maybe Clem needs to temper her trust in people with some cynicism, being aware of both the best (Walter) and the worst (Carver) in them before she can have balanced relationships with them.
The door-kicking moment is indeed infamous, but I think wrongly so. As a child, I took gymnastics and martial arts classes, and it's really not hard for me to believe Clem could kick in a door like that. I've seen younger, smaller kids kick through boards and concrete blocks, and those were the normal kinds of kids, not the kind of kids that grew up in the apocalypse. And it's true that kids are not as strong as adults, and there are many adults who could not kick down a door, so maybe that's why so many people find it unrealistic. (But, hey, I've even heard a gamer called Tobuscus call it unrealistic when Clem did that pull-up in ep 1, because he couldn't do that at her age.) But kicking through objects is not a matter of mere strength. It's a matter of sufficient strength AND sufficient technique, the correct combination of which can be learned by both children and adults to kick through solid objects.
I think the real problem with the door-kicking scene is not that it was impossible (I certainly don't see anyone on here disproving it on the basis of physics), but that it took a lot of people by surprise and took them out of the game experience, which is a valid complaint. But, personally, I'm glad that scene happened, because like I said above, it's another example of her growing skills.
I think Clem's vulnerability was apparent throughout the game by her facial expressions, like when Kenny was yelling at her in episode 4, or any time she's about to face down a zombie, or when she cries when Kenny or Jane dies. But she is growing more cynical and therefore perhaps less vulnerable, and like I said above, it's hard to really show what's going on in Clem's mind in a game like this because the gamers expect to have a choice in it, and the more choices there are regarding how she feels, the less concrete it is.
But I don't think Clem was ever squeamish about the dog bite, but maybe Ive misunderstood what you mean there. And I guess it's easy for me to accept her recovering from the gunshot in the shoulder because I've never been shot so, for all I know, going into shock and passing out for a few hours is a realistic response. Plus, unlike with the dog bite, Clem had friends around to help her stop the bleeding (I'm sure they dressed the wound somewhat while she was out.)
The time skips don't bother me. Stories often skip over long periods of time in which not much happens, and they show little clips of what it was like during those time skips and expect you to assume it was like that all throughout the time that was skipped. I expect we are supposed to assume that, when Omid was alive, it was always like it was at Gil's before he got shot, with Christa and Omid sharing playful banter and Clem sort of being left out a bit. And before Christa was attacked, it was always like it was at the campfire, with both Christa and Clem being depressed and Christa giving Clem resentful looks if she ever brought up Omid. But I was also never crazy about Christa, Omid, or Rebecca so that probably makes me biased in not caring about their character development, which probably could have been done better. But like I said in my Defense of Season Two, I would rather have shorter waiting periods for each episode than meticulously fleshed out character arcs for ever minor character.
I think Clem's relationship with Sarah was to show how lacking Clem was, not Sarah. I mean, it did show how lacking Sarah was in her ability to pick herself up, but this story is about Clementine, and it showed how lacking Clem was in her ability to pick others up. I wrote all about it in that Slapping Sarah post, but basically, either Clem leaves Sarah to die or she slaps her, like Carlos did just days ago. In my opinion, that only worsened Sarah's mental state and delayed her death. Clem was brutal when she needed to be kind. She reminded Sarah of her father at his worst when she needed remind Sarah she had a friend at her best. She gave Sarah one more reason to want to die instead of giving her a reason to want to live.
Clem's always been precocious and mature. That's who she is. I honestly wouldn't like her anymore if she became dim-witted and immature. And I don't think it matters much that Sarah was also a child. She and Clem had very little in common, so I don't mind missing out on their possible friendship.
But really, it's all a matter of opinion, what would have been more fulfilling to see happen onscreen. Your opinion is just as valid as mine.
I just go off of the 16 months fanfi by Tyler_Durant it's a great story and t-t should make it canon to season 2 when it's done
Cool, that's actually an advantage of the time skips. Either fans could just believe what it's implied to have been like during the time skips, like I said to Bokor, or fans could let their imaginations wander and come up with their own stories of what happened, which can be a lot of fun.