The 100 - Series Premiere - Recap: The Expendables

Recap and review of The 100 - Series Premiere - Pilot:

The 100 is a far more interesting show than I think The CW has ever done, at least from the standpoint of premise and the pure potential therein. This is such a steep departure from the typical teen drama, blending elements of science fiction, fantasy, and post-apocalyptic, dystopian world-building to make a series that takes familiar teen drama tropes and placing them in an entirely new context. "Pilot" isn't a perfect first episode of television, in that it falls prey to some head-scratching dramatic choices, but it does a terrific job in fully establishing what this series is, from the get-go. It's far more atmospheric and foreboding than many shows on the network, and it's something is likely to be an acquired taste for many viewers. But it's kind of crazy how much potential this series is showing, and right out the gate.

Credit: The CW

The premise is intriguing in that it centers on how the fall of civilization gives way to another fall of a different kind. Ninety-seven years after a nuclear war, the remaining survivors continue to live aboard a space station culled together from all the surviving nations with space stations of their own. Called "The Ark," the station houses the last of humanity, and not everyone is its best and brightest. The station is home to all manner of criminals, juvenile offenders, and ambitious, possibly corrupt politicians. The scarcity of resources and the limited available space and oxygen aboard the craft means that all crimes are punishable by death if you're over the age of 18. This allows the people in charge to keep the population down, since just about any minor offense can get you killed. None of the kids on The Ark have brothers or sisters either, since families are limited to one child, under penalty of death. All in all, managing this thing is a bureaucrat's nightmare.

But luckily, the man in charge has an idea. Chancellor Jaha (Isaiah Washington) comes up with the idea to send 100 juvenile offenders down to Earth ("The Ground") to test if enough time has passed for the surface to become habitable. As we learn during the course of the hour, this is a necessary measure: The Ark can only sustain the population for another three months, which is stretched now to four months with the departure of the 100. So best case scenario, Earth is habitable again. Worst case scenario, the government still has another four months to brainstorm a solution to their problem. In many respects, the series suggests that the destruction of the civilization below nearly 100 years earlier hasn't exactly led to a more understanding society now. If anything, society is more militant and close-minded than before, as families are broken apart on petty crime violations, and people are executed by being "floated" (i.e., ejected into space). People who might be saved through medical treatments are allowed to die because it would require more than the allotted allowance of medical supplies per person. And kids are sent to fend for themselves in the harsh, radioactive wilderness below because society has deemed them "expendable". This society is depicted as a kind of Hell. But at the very least, for these kids, it'll be a Hell on Earth.

Credit: The CW

The characters are mostly just ciphers at this point, but the show does a good job in making each person feel distinct right from the get-go: Clarke Griffin (Eliza Taylor) is a girl who was arrested with her engineer father because they planned to reveal the flaw in The Ark, as well as the information that they were on borrowed time. Clarke's father is "floated" for this crime, and the girl has never been able to forgive the one-time friend who turned her father in -- Wells (Eli Goree), the Chancellor's son. When Wells learned Clarke was being sent to The Ground, he committed a crime and got himself sent down there too. With them are Finn (Thomas McDonell), a kid arrested for wasting oxygen to perform an illegal spacewalk; Bellamy Blake (Bobby Morley), the janitor who shot the Chancellor in order to get inside the vessel going down to the surface so he could watch over his sister Octavia (Marie Avgeropoulos), whose sole crime was being born. Her mother violated the law of having more than one child, and raised Octavia entirely in secret for sixteen years before being caught and floated by the Chancellor, which added another layer of motivation being Bellamy's actions on The Ark. Also joining them on this journey are Jasper (Devon Bostick) and Monty (Christopher Larkin), two guys busted for growing pot in the pharmaceuticals division. It's a fairly diverse cast, and the adults are equally interesting in their own right...

Clarke's mother, Councilwoman Dr. Abigail Griffin (Paige Turco), is one of the scientists overseeing The 100 alongside Councilman/Chancellor Pro tempore Kane (Henry Ian Cusick), a man whose sole ambition is to rise to the role of Chancellor in order to preserve the human race with a harsh, no-exceptions style of rule. As he tells his girlfriend (who also happens to be Abigail's closest friend), "If I have to reduce us to a cosmic Adam and Eve, I will." Naturally, this places him in direct conflict with Abigail, who blames Kane for turning on her husband and having him "floated". Abigail is nearly floated herself after breaking the law by using more than the allowed medical provisions to save Chancellor Jaha, after he is shot by an unknown assailant. However, Chancellor Jaha awakes from his medically induced coma to pardon her at the last minute, and to bring Kane's would-be tyrannical reign to an end. But things are far from over, as time is running out for The Ark. The scientists, who are monitoring the 100 via medical bracelets since all communications to Earth are nonexistent, all seem to be stumped as to how all these kids are dying. And it's kind of a weird choice to have these supposedly brilliant scientists never consider for one moment that the kids could simply removing their bracelets in order to allow the scientists to think they're dead. The Chancellor had promised the kids full pardons if they survived the experiment, but Bellamy raises a mob of kids to remove their bracelets, surmising that if The Ark thinks they're all dead, they won't follow out of fear of radiation. That means the 100 can have Earth all to themselves, without facing the likelihood that the Chancellor will go back on his word.

It's this latter point that creates the driving narrative of the episode, as the struggle for power begins almost immediately. Bellamy forms a kind of "live free" authority, the followers of whom all live by the code of "Whatever the hell we want." Wells, however, insists that there need to be rules and laws, that this society can't survive without order. It's an interesting clash of ideologies that's somewhat undermined by the cavalier attitudes of some of the kids: you'd never know they hadn't eaten in 24 hours from their complete lack of initiative in going to search for the supplies in a shelter at a nearby mountain. More troubling still, from a story perspective, is that the other core group of kids aren't really all that interesting. There's a potential love triangle brewing between Clarke, Finn, and Octavia, as the trio teams with Jasper and Monty to reach Mount Weather, the nearby station with supplies. And it leads to some beautiful stuff, such as Clarke's encounter with some glowing plants late at night. I should note that the visuals on this show are really, really solid. The Ark looks great, the shots of the craft entering the atmosphere were believable, and the glowing forest looks ripped straight out of Avatar. It's rare for a network show, much less one on The CW (with its notoriously limited budgets), to have this kind of technical prowess behind it. I was really very impressed.

Credit: The CW

As for our group, nearly everything that could possibly go wrong does: Octavia is almost eaten by some crazy water snake before Jasper comes to her rescue; they encounter a two-faced, mutated deer, which suggests the radiation hasn't exactly dissipated just yet; and Jasper is impaled by a mysterious assailant, suggesting that they aren't alone down here on Earth. It's not exactly boring, but it's hardly unexpected either. But what works about it is the youthful sense of wonder. These are kids who've never seen Earth, and they act the way kids in a playground would, wanting to experiment and explore, even to the detriment of their own safety. It's reckless, sure, but it makes sense. And that's the big bonus of this show: everybody acts the way they should, and everything makes sense within its own limited context. It's a show that doesn't contradict itself, even though its premise leaves it open to a ton of potential hole-poking. This is as impressed as I've been with a pilot in some time.

The 100 series premiere isn't perfect, but it's a damn fine hour of TV for what I expected, going in. And what's even better is that there's potential for the series to grow from here, to become something even more than the sum of its parts. And that, in and of itself, is exciting.