Bonnie in S2 E5
Wow. I'm seriously blown away by how vile Bonnie turned out to be.
She was easily my favourite character in 400 days - I was immediately drawn to her timid, soft spoken optimism and unluckiness. Then she shows up in S2 and leads her psychopathic cult leader to a group of unarmed, kind people which she knows includes children. Her actions alone in E2 were unforgivable, but the writers seemed intent on showing us she was a good lady who was just prone to making very, very bad mistakes, so I eventually allowed Clem to forgive her after the Hardware situation.
And now comes E5. I keep the walkers off Luke on the ice, just like he asks. I figure an 11 year old girl is probably too scared to go running onto thin ice to help a heavy, crippled man who is already shouting at her to stay back. Unfortunately he dies, senselessly (which is a topic for another day..) And now, back at the house, Bonnie decides I'm a "pretty little girl" who "no one ever expects anything of" and it's my fault that Luke is dead. She is literally blaming an 11 year old child for the death of one of her closest friends.
How long has Bonnie known Luke, exactly? 3 days? Not counting the days she kept us prisoner at the Hardware Store, of course. 12 hours ago she was making sure the adults didn't talk about sex in front of Clem. 48 hours ago she was profusely apologizing to Clem after the walker attack in the museum ticket booth. And now suddenly Clem is old enough to be blamed for the death of an adult man who was beyond saving. Now suddenly Clem is expected to carry out every single life-threatening maneuver or risk getting treated like a murderer, because clearly the countless times Clem has already saved the group's skins means nothing. And then, of course, she tries to steal the truck Kenny repaired, takes all the food meant for a newborn baby, and abandons a child who has just been shot.
I'm legitimately in shock by this. I have no idea if this is just awful, inconsistent writing, or if the writers genuinely meant for Bonnie to be an irrational vindictive asshole with zero understanding of personal responsibility or the kindness owed to a child.
I'm sure this has been talked about to death since the episode's premier, but I had to let it out. I really hope characters will be written with more consistency in S3.
Comments
Way konger than that, it's probably close to about a year that she knew Luke. Tavia brought Bonnie and the other 400 Days people to Howes where Luke and the cabin group were originally living, there it seems that she developed feelings for Luke and may have even formed a relationship with him, considering how she said Luke's moves "worked on me." When Luke and the others were planning on leaving, Bonnie almost decided to go with them, but chickened out at the last minute.
Oh yeah, you're right. I totally forgot about the cabin group being captive there earlier, I guess because I played each episode a while apart.
Still, I don't think it detracts from the rest of my argument. Thank you for reminding me of this!
Come on she's not 'vile' I love Bonnies character! Some of the things she did were questionable but she never did anything 'vile'.
I suppose that's true. I don't know I just can't see Bonnie as vile.
> 12 hours ago she was making sure the adults didn't talk about sex in front of Clem. 48 hours ago she was profusely apologizing to Clem after the walker attack in the museum ticket booth. And now suddenly Clem is old enough to be blamed for the death of an adult man who was beyond saving.
This was pretty much why I couldn't buy Bonnie's sudden anger towards Clementine that just came out from nowhere. There was no sense of foreshadowing or build-up that Bonnie was 'vile' all along, and her sudden attachment to Luke to the point where she blames a small girl who she was shown in the past to be amiable and apologetic to all just seems very out-of-character.
This is especially bad when Bonnie says to Clementine that "it must be easy to be a pretty little girl who is never expected to do a damn thing", when she of all people should know that Clementine singlehandedly saved everyone in Carver's community, and can choose to tell Bonnie her plan to rescue everyone. There's being a hypocrite and the story consistently portraying Bonnie as a hypocritical character, and then there's Bonnie suddenly chewing out a little girl out for not saving Luke when her characterisation appeared to have taken a sudden shift from 'doormat henchmen with a conscience' to an 'irrationally, vindictive, finger blaming individual'.
> I have no idea if this is just awful, inconsistent writing, or if the writers genuinely meant for Bonnie to be an irrational vindictive asshole with zero understanding of personal responsibility or the kindness owed to a child.
Considering that there are several writers on board who may have had different ideas of their story per episode, it's likely that Bonnie is a victim of inconsistent writing who was turned into the villain to fit the narrative of Episode 5 regardless of how little sense it made, much like how Mike was.
I remember how most of the users on this board liked Bonnie and Mike pre-Episode 5. And something tells me that the writers intended for them to be unlikable from the start, but they found themselves surprised that players liked them more than the writer's intended, so they corrected it by turning them into villains in Episode 5.
Agreed. Seriously, they have Bonnie, Mike, and Arvo take all the food, even the baby formula? What on earth are they going to do with baby formula?
I don't think they were strictly intended to be unlikable, but I think both were intended to be gray/ambiguous with unclear motives at best. However, episode 4 ended up making them look like two of the most rational, level-headed people of the group, which kind of throws a wrench into that plan. I mean, a fair portion of episode 3 deals with the dilemma of whether or not to trust Bonnie, and to a lesser extent, Mike. Come episode 4 though, they're two of the only people that really seem to have their heads on straight. There's a reason so many people gravitated towards them.
And it's a shame that come Episode 5 that we arrived from liking them and wanting to root for them while the rest of the cast at their lowest point in the narrative, to hating their guts and wanting them dead upon their betrayal, and the transition feels unnatural and unwarranted.
If the writers had intended to make Bonnie and Mike treacherous and untrustworthy all along, then why make them appear rational, level-headed and likable in Episode 4, as well as morally grey in Episode 3, and give no hints for the upcoming betrayal event in later scenes?
Unless the writers weren't able to seamlessly write character's personalities per episode due to lack of creative talents, then the only justification I suspect is that the writers set the two up to play the role as traitors without considering whether it would be in their nature to betray their friends the way that they did, all because they wanted a dramatic event before the finale.
And speaking of the dramatic event, I have a feeling that it's because the writers wanted to enforce the Kenny vs Jane choice, which if it weren't for their betrayal, most players would have had a harder time choosing Kenny or Jane and would instead gravitate to Bonnie and Mike instead, who were more likable and were the ones most players were rooting for at the time.
Taking all of this in consideration, it feels like the writers cheated their way out by demonising Bonnie and Mike just to enforce the Kenny vs Jane conflict in the finale.
To be fair I think Mike was handled fairly well, and Bonnie too if you try to save Luke.
I really like the conversation you're able to have with her when you help Luke, because it only dawned on me after replaying it a while ago that almost all of it is actually referring to her deciding to leave with Mike and Arvo
When i read she does this, i actually am glad that on my play through she died in the water with Luke. I feel bad about Luke, but not for her at all. If she never led Carver to the group then a lot of people would still be alive
that is not a bad opinion but she did some good things too...
Funny, because I always felt indifferent about her and I don't know why.
I was actually more upset by Bonnie and Mike's betrayal, than I was by Arvo's shooting of Clementine. Thinking about it, Arvo's actions in attempting to escape the group were not a whole lot different from the group's actions in attempting to escape from Carver. Both sides were escaping from what they felt were dangerous people (Kenny in Arvo's case, Carver in the group's case), and neither side seemed to care what happened to that dangerous person's allies afterward. Arvo was willing to steal the group's food and transportation, which may very well have resulted in Kenny, Jane, Clem, and AJ starving to death in the woods, whereas the group was willing to sic an entire hoard of zombies on Howe's, resulting in the potential deaths of numerous innocent people who likely only stuck with Carver because they felt it offered them their greatest chance for survival. The group didn't even shut the loading bay door after they'd used it to escape, allowing the zombies full access to Howe's and allowing them to take the facility down from the inside. Whenever any of the people in our group objected to the hoard plan, it was purely in the name of their own safety - the fact that they were putting an entire community's worth on innocent people in danger never seemed to cross their minds. With that in mind, I can't hate Arvo for his actions in escaping our group in Episode Five. It's not like we were a whole lot better.
Mike and Bonnie on the other hand, I can hate. They flat out betrayed people who accepted them (unlike Carver's group, which used our people for slave labor), and basically left those people to die. They claimed that Kenny was too dangerous to be around, yet they were willing to abandon a young girl and a newborn baby to his care. Even if you played Clementine as anti-Kenny and pro-Arvo as possible, they still didn't even try to ask you to join them before they left. They planned to leave the group with absolutely no food, and no transportation - a situation that would likely have resulted in the death of the group, and would almost certainly would have resulted in the death of AJ. Had my Clementine had caught them sneaking off on foot with one bag of food, the situation would have been fine. I would've done everything I could've done to get them to stay, of course, but failing that, I would have let them leave peacefully. Taking half the food for what amounted to half the group would have been perfectly fair, but instead, Mike and Bonnie made a conscious decision to take everything, thus leaving their former teammates to die an almost certain death. This isn't even mentioning the fact that when their plan went wrong, Mike and Bonnie fled like cowards and left Clementine to (almost) bleed to death in the snow, instead of accepting responsibility for their actions and trying to help save her.
In summery, while Arvo, Mike, and Bonnie may have all been complicit in the theft and shooting, I can forgive Arvo's motivation of escaping his enemies a hell of a lot easier than I can forgive Mike and Bonnie's straight up betrayal of their former teammates.