Stuff You Should Watch: The 100
Months ago I watched the Pilot and promptly dismissed this show as the new Revolution, Terra Nova and similar sci-fi series, i.e. the ones full of improbably good looking and bland youth with the acting abilities of the mould behind my fridge - paper thin plots, soapy romance and really cheesy pseudo sci-fi attempts.
Then I read one too many praises on TV Com and thought I'd give it another go. I suffered through the Pilot again and the second episode and then, well, it got better, much, much better.
100 kids, who comitted various felonies on a giant space station that was built after a nuclear war destroyed life on Earth - are sent back down to find out if life is possible there.
The start of the show is like any other teen show on telly. There's the clever blonde kid, the rebel teen, the dark and tortured kid, the funny kid...etc. But then people start dying left right and centre, on the planet which is not as empty as they thought - on the space station, where people are running out of air and hard choices have to be made.
Man, that show gets dark and brutal real fast. This is more Hunger Games or BSG than Twilight, let me tell you. You think things are going to turn out for the best, because on these type of shows, that's how it goes except that here, the cavalry doesn't always arrive in time, when it arrives at all.
The 100 is a bit of a wolf in teen's clothing.
The characters are layered and well crafted, both adults and teens. People you hated at the start grow on you and the 'bad guys' have good reasons for acting the way they do.
Yes, there are teen love triangles because hey, this is the CW network after all, but the romantic shennanigans pretty much come second to the need to survive in a hostile environment.
There are a few familiar faces, the chap who played Gaeta on Battlestar Galactica - in more or less the same role. "Dr. Burke" from Grey's Anatomy runs the station. "sierra" from Dollhouse plays a "grounder" leader.
It's not perfect, far from it, some plot lines could do with not being there such as some of the teen romance stuff, but for what it is or trying to be, it's pretty good.