The 100
Let's talk a bit about The CW. I've never liked the network, for the most part. Populated with allegedly "edgy" shows populated by young, beautiful people spouting wooden dialogue in contrived, predictable situations. People who will be in an explosion only to emerge with perfect hair and make-up. I have tried multiple times to watch a show that brought an interesting premise to the table, only to find myself rolling my eyes and reaching for the remote. It's so bad, other networks openly joke in their own shows about the calculated casting and poor writing.
So, when a friend recommended
The 100, a post-apocalyptic science fiction show on The CW, I looked at the floor and said "Come on man...The CW?" This is a friend I watch stuff like
Westworld and
Game of Thrones with. He knows his stuff when it comes to quality programming, so I thought that maybe he fell in the snow and hit his head on the way to my house.
"Hey, it's good...not your average CW show. Check it out."
So, against my better judgment, My wife and I fired up The 100. Yep, there they all were...a cast of teens and twenty-somethings out of an Abercrombie and Fitch catalog, with a couple of token adults thrown in the mix. Within two episodes...love triangle. Easy to read character archetypes... The bully, the pretty girl, the tough chick with an attitude, the psycho... Hmm, I think I am getting punked by my friend!
By the fourth or fifth episode, I am eating my words. People are dying. The shallow characters are gaining depth, subverting their archetypes, considering the implications of their behavior and taking strides to change and grow. An explosion occurs and people are hurt, badly; Injuries which still show scars both physically and psychologically into the next
season and beyond. No Star Trek reset button here! Characters make mistakes, and people die. They die. Children die. All because they made a hasty decision without thinking it through, or because they let their emotions cloud their judgment. The show sets up a potentially cliche and contrived scenario, and then blows it apart. Someone gets put on their knees with a gun to their head? Most shows would have a hero swoop in at the last second, just in time! Not this show. The hero is too late, the villain wins, and the hero makes a decision that makes the villain look good. Suddenly, you realize there aren't any heroes and villains at all. Just different points of view and people making hard decisions that cause deaths, because there was no other choice. Meanwhile, the intrigue gets more and more complicated, the number of factions and points of view multiplies, and pretty soon, the world building starts to rival that of shows like
Game of Thrones.
A quick scan around the internet, and I see people comparing the two shows quite a bit, with some asking the question as to whether or not The 100
might be the better show. I don't think I would go that far, but considering the fact that one show has a much higher budget, a better crew of actors, and a Hollywood level special effects crew, the idea that people are seriously comparing the two says something about the work the show runners over at
The 100 are doing. By combining the gritty realism of Battestar Galactica, and the faction-centric intrigue of Game of Thrones, The 100 is a fantastic science fiction show - one that sheds the negative aspects of the two shows I just mentioned. It never stumbles into the "Who's a cylon" sleeper agent business that brought the final season of BSG to its knees, and the overall pacing maintains its urgency, something that
Game of Thrones fails at pretty consistently, IMO. The show does start out a bit weak, but quickly finds its legs and then blasts off into the stratosphere after the conclusion of the first season.
The 100 is probably the best science fiction show on Network TV right now, and it stands in the ring with some of the cable network;s best offerings to date, with only
Westworld being clearly better at the moment.