The 100 Season 1 Review

The 100 is a sci-fi show set in a post-apocalyptic world where the human survivors of a nuclear war are trying to determine if Earth is habitable again so they can go back. Apparently these survivors have been living for about a hundred years on the Ark - a connected group of space stations that helped them survive the nuclear war. The problem is that their systems are failing and they will soon run out of oxygen and be unable to survive. These survivors on the Ark have a pretty ruthless society with some messed up rules - all focused on preserving resources. For example, people who commit crimes are automatically "floated" - aka killed by being sent out into space. The clearest sign of their ruthlessness, though, is in the plan they hatch to discover if Earth can sustain life again. They have 99 juvenile delinquents locked up, teen offenders who were too young to float, and they decide to send these children to earth and monitor their vital signs.

It's a pretty interesting sci-fi premise with a lot of potential. These 99 kids - plus one guard - are sent to Earth on a drop-ship and they each wear a wrist-band that is being monitored by the Councillors and scientists on the Ark. When the kids arrive on Earth and find that they can breathe and walk around without automatically dropping dead or suffering any side-effects in what seems to be a lush forest they, predictably, have different ways of dealing with their new lives. Many of them are angry at the adults on the Ark, especially the politicians led by Chancellor Jaha, while others just want to find a way to survive and communicate with the Ark to let them know it's safe for the rest of their friends and families to come down to Earth. 

There are tensions and power-struggles both among the 100 and the people on the Ark and, combined with the discoveries about Earth it makes for pretty interesting watching overall and since I watched it kind of quickly it allowed me to overlook and forgive some of the nagging little issues and just enjoy it despite them. My main disappointment was how quickly "survival" came to mean "war." I would have loved to see more time spent on these kids failing at actual outdoor survival. I mean, they lived in a spaceship and suddenly they're out on this huge planet with all kinds of trees, bugs, a vast sky, creepy night noises, etc, and no matter how much they would have tried to teach them about "Earth Skills" I don't think they could have possibly prepared them. I would have loved to see some more skills like building shelters, etc, focused on and to have some of the kids go off in different directions for longer periods of time and just do their own thing as well. 

And I think spending some screen time on both of these directions combined could have led to better development of the conflict that eventually arises between Clark and Bellamy over who is actually in charge among them. For example if we had truly seen them split off into different groups and have Clarke's medical skills come in handy and Bellamy's hunting skills or whatever then the reason why those two were the leaders and their conflict over how to handle situations would have been much more believable. 

Overall, though, it was a pretty good first season and I moved right along to season 2 to find out what was going to happen. There were some good character moments and, as would become one of the show's biggest strengths in the next two seasons, there were some pretty big plot twists and reveals that would make us change our minds about certain characters in a big way. 

That's all I can say without spoilers, but I do want to talk in a bit more detail about some spoilery things below. 

YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED. 

SPOILERS BEYOND THIS POINT. 

Some things I liked a lot were: 

- Wells' character and how he was willing to make Clarke hate him so as to prevent her from hating her mother. 

- Raven. I was so glad when she made it to the ground alive because there would finally be someone smart there. The show didn''t really let her shine as much as she could have, but it's a start. 

- All the flashbacks and reveals detailing the ruthlessness of the leadership in the Ark and how many of the characters deal with being off the Ark and free of those rules. 

- Thinking back on it the kids were still trying to (in their own weird misguided mob way) have some form of justice and accountability for things - see later seasons where this is thrown completely out the window 

- Jaha's semi-complex portrayal. I was worried - and my fears were pretty much confirmed in later seasons - but in Season 1 they do interesting enough things with Jaha's character that I could accept his portrayal as more than a token Black guy in charge who is the bad guy. They showed that he was better than Kane and that he regretted some of the (stupid) ruthless choices the laws forced him to make and he was, overall, presented as a leader who at least tried to do what he could. 

Some things I disliked this season: 

- The stupid love triangle 

- How quickly it became a war with the Grounders 

- The whole unnecessary Diana plotline that ended up going nowhere 

- Why the Ark couldn't just send them down with a couple of cameras and communication equipment in the first place - the wristband idea was extremely inadequate for telling them ANYTHING about Earth's current state 

- The only prominent Black character among the 100 gets killed off within like 2 episodes (Wells) 

- Murphy and his extremely disgusting behavior when he literally urinated on a Black character for not doing the work he was supposed to be doing or something. I get that he's supposed to be portrayed as the bad guy, but there are racist connotations here that I don't think the show writers even realized - it's so troubling. You don't just have a character do that and then not - no, you just don't need to have a character do that at all... just don't. 

Well. That's it for season 1 for now. Check out my season 2 review.