With the amount post-apocalyptic stories dominating pop culture, you’d think Mother Nature would start to take it personally. The next example is the CW’s ‘The 100’, which is debuting midseason. The show stars Eliza Taylor, ‘Lost’s’ Henry Ian Cusick and Isaiah Washington (‘Grey’s Anatomy’). These cast members along with dreamboat Thomas McDonell, Marie Avgeropoulos, as well as executive producers Jason Rothenberg and Matt Miller, appeared at short a panel after an exclusive screening of the pilot at this year’s Comic-Con.
‘The 100’ is based on a soon-to-be published YA book series from Alloy Entertainment. Alloy is also responsible for ‘The Vampire Diaries’ and ‘Gossip Girl’.
Eliza Taylor plays our almost 18-year-old protagonist, Clark. The show opens with Clark wrongfully detained in future-juvi (that’s obviously located on a space station called the Ark). Earth has been uninhabitable for 97 years due to radiation, but now the Chancellor (Washington) wants to determine if perhaps our poor blue marble can sustain life once again. He, along with second-in-command Councilor Kane (Cusick), send 100 juvenile delinquents to be used as lab rats.
However, something goes wrong en route to Earth and the delinquents crash land, causing them to lose all communication with the Ark. For a bunch of locked up teens, this is a dream come true. No parents! In fact, we even have a moment the teens chant, “Whatever the hell we want”, which becomes their motto and what I’m hoping the motto is at the masquerade party tonight.
Oh, and did I mention that the government is a military dictatorship? And Councilor Kane is evil.
Oh, and also Clark had a falling out with one friend who ends up being one of the 100. Awkward.
Oh, and also there’s a love triangle. Or maybe more of a love octagon.
Oh, and something happened with Clark’s dad, and Councilor Kane’s wife is best friends with Clark’s mom, and Clark’s mom is about to be executed, and also she’s a surgeon, and families can only have one child, and there’s this one guy who you think is admirable but he’s actually corrupted, and….
Is your head spinning yet?
Yeah, that’s how I felt.
When the character Octavia (Avgeropoulos) first steps onto the planet Earth, she takes a long deep breath. Shouldn’t a TV pilot allow you to do the same? So many important details were being thrown at us. I felt like I woke up in the middle of a relay race. It was like an entire TV season took a bunch of caffeine pills and decided to speed up all of its revelations into one episode. Slow down, buddy. The trouble with adding so many plot devices up front is that you lose the opportunity to establish the (oh, how do I put it?) heart and soul of a TV show.
Still, the effects were cool. My jaw certainly dropped seeing a (spoiler) two-headed deer roaming the planet.
It was stated during the panel that this show was pitched as a cross between ‘Los’t and ‘Battlestar Galactica’. That, it is not, unfortunately.
However, it doesn’t mean ‘The 100’ didn’t accomplish what it set out to do. It is YA, after all. It expertly caters itself toward a teenage audience with beautiful faces and likable archetypes.
Nonetheless, like our characters in the show, we just have to wait and see if ‘The 100’ will survive when it airs midseason.
Check out a clip:
