The 100: Pilot   Rewatch 
May 1, 2015 6:56 PM - Season 1, Episode 1 - Subscribe

97 years after a nuclear war, human kind is living in space. 100 juvenile delinquents are sent down to Earth to see if the planet is habitable.
posted by sciatrix (10 comments total) 2 users marked this as a favorite
 
I gotta say, on first watching I was utterly delighted by how pointedly the show established a pattern of Clarke being the person most likely to stop, think, and make smart tactical observations. My little sister is a sweet, polite, kind blonde woman who was very like Clarke-as-we-see-her-here as a teenager, and it's amazing to see a character type like that presented as being also a strong, capable person. I think off the top of my head the only comparable character I've seen recently is Katara from Avatar.
posted by sciatrix at 6:58 PM on May 1, 2015 [2 favorites]


I simply couldn't get over how horribly, terribly bad the premise was. I tried...
posted by Justinian at 3:26 PM on May 2, 2015 [1 favorite]


So, Earth 2?
posted by Yowser at 4:44 PM on May 3, 2015


So, why should you watch The 100? It's a very legitimate question. The beginning is less than auspicious: Hungerstar Galactica with a massive injection of CW teen romance. But over the course of the first season, the show ditches what's not working (the boring sex lives of teenagers) and doubles down on what is working (tough questions, social awareness, nuanced characters and stories, lots of women with agency).

That helped make The 100 one of AV Club's best new shows of 2014.
The CW is the last place you’d expect to find the most compelling science fiction currently on television... Throughout the season the “ground” stories became increasingly more exciting, eschewing most teen-drama convention (aside from one ill-advised love triangle) and focusing on interesting questions like who has the right to inhabit the land and the moral responsibilities of being a successful leader.
Women are everywhere on The 100 — younger women, older women; tough as nails women, tender women; leaders, followers. They're competent, brave women who face their challenges head on. Even when the show is doing a well-worn plot, the abundance of women's perspectives helps keep things fresh. As Leanna Moxley wrote for Bitch Magazine:
...the show is a surprisingly feminist take on the apocalypse. The 100 treats violence as a question, not a foregone conclusion. As its characters struggle to survive in a harsh reality, they ask: Is violence truly inevitable? When the end of the world happens, who gets to be in charge, and what should that look like? What if that power was placed in the hands of a teenage girl?
All of these qualities are there in the first season, which is capable and enjoyable enough. But it's in the second season where the show really ramps up the sophistication (if not the scientific accuracy), and puts the characters through their most challenging situations. It's when "the show broke out of its post-apocalyptic reenactment of Lord of the Flies and became an interesting, challenging story."
posted by Banknote of the year at 1:20 PM on May 4, 2015 [2 favorites]


I've been watching season 1 on netflix, and it's been a rough and uneven road.

I do my best to avoid falling into the trap of rivet-counting with science fiction premises, as that way lies madness. But everyone's a little bit mad so: the Ark's chosen method of execution being blowing people out of the airlocks nearly made me not get past the first episode. That's precious atmosphere, biomass, and a lot of water you're just throwing away, and made all the worse by the conceit that they're running out of at least two of those. No wonder you're shooting your councilors! (I suppose it's the B-Ark up there.)

Although that does make letting the inevitable love triangle subplots roll past easier in comparison. And towards the end of the season, I'm seeing more glimpses of more watchable elements surfacing.
posted by Drastic at 9:31 AM on May 9, 2015 [1 favorite]


Oh, the science! Don't even try to think it through. You might end up throwing something through the TV next season.

In one of the later season 2 threads, mordax said "the science is so dire I feel like patting someone on the head" which is very much how I feel. Even though this is my favourite SF show that's currently airing, it makes me wonder if something can, by definition, be good science fiction when the science is so bad.
posted by Banknote of the year at 11:48 AM on May 10, 2015 [1 favorite]


The science is definitely dire. I have had to handwave madly, and my personal fanwank is that all the calendars are wrong, and it's actually 300 years (which is what the books say) since the nuclear war. That's the only explanation I have for why the Grounders would have forgotten things like CPR, for instance.
posted by suelac at 12:38 PM on June 6, 2015


How are the books, suelac? Are they worth checking out?

And I agree that the timeline makes no sense at all.
posted by Banknote of the year at 9:08 PM on June 7, 2015


How are the books, suelac? Are they worth checking out?

I don't know, but I was reading the wiki, and the commenters there seemed to think the books were pretty dire. There's some indication that the show was based on an early draft of the first book, and they diverge fairly soon, but I don't know for sure.

I admit that I'm pretty stoked for Javier Grillo-Marxuach to join the writing crew. Maybe there will be a touch of humor? Please?
posted by suelac at 8:40 PM on June 8, 2015 [1 favorite]


Okay, finally got around to trying the pilot. I...don't know about this, but I do like that there's a smart blonde and a smart doctor mom in the show. Everyone else with brains....well, if they have any, it's highly questionable?
posted by jenfullmoon at 9:55 PM on December 15, 2015


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