Why don't you like Clarke and Madi's relationship?
It isn't so much that I don't like the relationship, in fact I do sometimes and I think it had a lot of potential but the writers fucked it up.
When Madi was introduced I was really excited to see what they would do with her and in those first few episodes of season I enjoyed their dynamic but I saw the relationship as sisterly rather than motherly. Then Jason started pushing his cringy “mama bear” agenda (I still can't believe he put the line in the show lol) and using Madi as a plot device whenever he wanted to pit Clarke against her friends or isolate her further. Clarke caring about Madi above everyone else is not the issue here but Clarke’s rash, emotional decisions and complete lack of pragmatic thinking despite the fact that being pragmatic is one of her defining traits was a problem because she just came off as ooc. She did some horrible things in season five including abusing Madi to “save” her and teaming up with Mccreary for Madi’s safety (which an absolute joke). To me, it seemed like Clarke saw Madi as an extension of herself because Madi was HER child which was further proven when it was revealed that Madi’s mother died in her arms and Clarke was shocked because she didn't know until that moment (and it was VERY telling when Clarke thought Madi was talking about her when she got upset about losing her mum) and they could've explored that further by acknowledging Clarke’s unhealthy relationship with Madi and exploring how her mental state after being in isolation caused these attachment issues but that is waay too complex for these writers.
I think the issue was that Jason also saw Madi as an extension of Clarke which is why Madi wasn't developed as a character in her own right during season five, It is also clear that the main purpose for writing this relationship was to cause conflict between Clarke and Space kru for the sake of the plot. Jason is bad at writing Mother Characters and relationships in general but with Clarke he really fucked up.He should have allowed Clarke and Madi’s relationship to develop on screen naturally and let the audience decide how they view the relationship (is it sisterly? motherly? is this Clarke’s most important relationship yet?) because all these scenes where Clarke called Madi her child or someone referred to Clarke as Madi’s mother, it felt forced but Jason doesn't care about relationship or character development. “show, don't tell” is something that heavily applies when it comes to Jason's writing. He always tells us how important certain relationships are instead of showing us and the time jump was a perfect opportunity for him to make changes and tell us “this happened, that happened, they love each other, they changed” without showing us their development and letting us come to our own conclusions.
Yet again I wrote more than I meant to and start to go off track but to finish off “Mama Bear’s don't think” shouldn't be the defining quote for your female lead or any mother character, and becoming a mother shouldn't mean you lose yourself or your agency and only live for your children.
