“We’re
back, bitches!”
Like
many-a pilot, the first episode of The
100 could have led to a different show, and that show would have very much
been knocked off from The Hunger Games
and by extension Twilight. Clarke is
our Katniss, and around her are set up the nice boy whose feelings are not
reciprocated (Wells) and the bad boy with an honorable soul (Finn) to vie for
her heart, a contrasting rival (Octavia) and a clear antagonist (Bellamy, who
also happens to be the baddest of boys), and a pair of wacky goobers (Jasper
and Monty). Watching the pilot again, it’s easy to imagine, like I did the
first time I watched it, the show continuing on with fleeting, grim-seeming but
ultimately bloodless adventures that end with the characters shouting “WOOOOO!”
at each other in victory, punctuated by a new field of bioluminescent flora
every week. And that would have been fine, but it wouldn’t (and initially
didn’t) keep me from starting my nightly bike ride an hour earlier the next
week, and certainly wouldn’t have me thinking about how the show compares to Buffy beyond the obvious teen soap on
the CW connection.
In hindsight, though, the episode’s
end, with Jasper taking a spear to the chest, should have been a stronger signal
that the show intended to venture down a much darker and starker path—not just
because it’s a surprise (it really isn’t), or because it reveals, as Clarke
says, the eponymous 100 aren’t alone on Earth with the gargantuan water-snakes
and two-faced deer. No, it’s the violence, the way Jasper gets ripped off his
feet, leaving him gasping and dumbfounded with the spear still sticking from
his chest. “So,” you might say, “it could have been a cheaply violent YA
dystopia knock off?” Well, sure, but honestly, that wouldn’t have been so bad,
either. Just because it’s for the young is no reason media shouldn’t be harshly
violent—honestly, being bloody and body-filled is probably better than empty
action. And make no mistake, The 100 is
shockingly violent, very refreshing for something not on cable. Really, though,
Jasper’s flying carcass signals the show didn’t intend to fuck around and pull
punches.
Between “Chosen” and this, in no
small part because of Buffy, being
serialized became super cool, leading to a few shows becoming so decompressed
no one watched because they were so busy setting up cool stuff to come up soon,
guys, don’t worry, they forgot to actually do anything cool, so they were
canceled before they could get to anything they were setting up. Had The 100 come around in that time, it’s
easy to imagine it spending a good bit of time establishing the kids while
aboard the Ark (it’s also easy to imagine this if they had more than 13
episodes). These days, though, while serialization is still super cool, people
are a bit more realistic about their odds of renewal, so accordingly, the show
wastes absolutely no time getting to the point, which necessarily necessitates
a fair bit of clunky exposition (my favorite is the hilarious “That’s the girl
who lived in the floor for 16 years!” shouted from off-camera. Thanks, mystery
voice!) so we know what is going on.
What’s going on is this: for the
past 97 years, about 10,000 people have survived a cataclysmic nuclear war
aboard the Ark, a massive space station lashed together from 12 national space
stations, waiting for the radiation on Earth to reach livable levels, projected
to be a another century in the future. With supplies extremely limited,
everything is strictly rationed, and any crime committed by anyone over the age
of 18 is punished by death. One hundred juvenile offenders are loaded into a
dropship, given pardons, and sent to Earth to see if the surface actually is
survivable now, and are tasked with locating a known supply cache at Mount
Weather. One such parolee is Clarke, who is smart, imaginative, pragmatic, and
a bit brusque and jaded, and has a mother of some power. Also going down to
Earth is the hated Chancellor’s son Wells, who got himself arrested when he
heard Clarke was being sent to the ground, but Clarke hates Wells for his role in getting her father arrested and executed. There is also Finn,
who, in the most fitting character introduction, gets two others killed trying
to make himself look cool. The dropship is damaged, all communication with the
Ark is lost, save the biometric monitor bracelets each of the 100 wear, and
then, they land.
All that gets covered in the first
five minutes.
We may not spend long with those our
preconceived notions of how YA dystopia works encourage use to think are our
main characters aboard the Ark, but we return to it frequently. Good thing,
because doing so gives us a better picture of the pressures and constraints
that shaped the 100, but also I think the Ark is a simple enough concept (“Everything
is rationed.”) but endlessly fascinating and compelling. Everything being
rationed means everything, and when you take on survival as a theme, making
oxygen a concern is a great choice. Buffy
was often lightly about how older generations can abuse and exploit the
younger, and this theme is quite dominant in YA dystopias, The 100 very much included—the show’s banner image on Netflix is
some evocative promo art of young bodies falling through the sky like rain,
selling that theme pretty hard while also getting the tone of the show across
brilliantly—but the means by which that theme is examined can often feel like
an afterthought. But there is motivation for everything done on and by the Ark,
and that motivation is deprivation. Every second a character is on screen you
are reminded of that deprivation in their faded, worn, and patched over (though
still immaculately fitted) clothes. Ark society is quite cruel—while an obvious
power-play, the amiss thing in Kane’s attempt to execute Abby for using too
much morphine saving Chancellor Jaha was not the execution, but that he
attempted it before Jaha was confirmed dead—but unlike a lot of fictional
societies meant to examine the lengths of survival, the cruelty of the Ark
feels earned. But the Ark isn’t also so strange it has to prevent the kids from
acting like kids, exuberant, reckless, and dumb after living under such
restrictiveness for so long.
While Abby and Kane duel over beneficence
and pragmatism up in space, the same debate plays out on the ground with
sympathies reversed as the angry, disenchanted, and dispossessed of the 100
(which is most of them) are more swayed by Bellamy’s “Whatever the hell we
want!” than Wells’ “Look, I know being on Earth is amazing and all, guys, but
we really need to start constructing shelter and collecting water so things are
in order when the people who imprisoned us and threw us away because we’re
expendable come down here.” Bellamy has some less than selfless reasons behind
his revolt of the underclass, and Wells should probably have considered how
popular he’d be considering how many parents his dad had executed, complicating
their positions considerably.
And ultimately, those considerations
are a good enough sign to overcome that over-ass-played Imagine Dragons song.
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