Rating: B/B+

The CW isn’t generally a network I turn to as I’m no longer a teenager and pretty burned out on superhero entertainments, but a co-worker was talking about the 100 and it sounded interesting…and it was on Netflix. While the post-apocalyptic show does have a lot of trappings of the network and does struggle a bit at the beginning, by the end of the first season it’s developed a fully formed world with rich characters who are regularly tried by complex moral dilemmas.

Based on a book series by Kass Morgan, the 100 has a lot of familiar elements from shows and movies like Lost, the Hunger Games, and Game of Thrones. We’re about 100 years after a nuclear apocalypse where the last couple thousand people now live in a series of interconnected space stations called the Ark. In order to preserve resources, the society follows a rigid, totalitarian set of laws where any illegal activity is punished by death via ejection into space. That is unless you’re under the age of 18 (as played by attractive models in their 20s), then you’re imprisoned.

The titular 100 current prisoners, as we start the show, are being sent on a drop ship to earth to see if it’s inhabitable, a pretty solid premise for the show. And while it is inhabitable, Earth is filled with mutant creatures and actual people they call Grounders (cue the Lost comparisons). As the teens try to find resources, develop leadership structures, and survive, the series spends as much time back in space with the adults (kind of unusual for a CW, teen-oriented show) who are trying to keep the Ark, umm, afloat as it endures equipment failures that threaten survival.

This show has a big cast, but we largely follow Clarke, the daughter of an Ark council member and head doctor, who was jailed after her father discovered the Ark’s oxygen generation systems were failing. While she’s a good person with pretty clear ideas of how to behave, a lot of the other prisoners are violent criminals initially led by Bellamy, a stowaway who should the Ark’s leader, who attempts to thwart Clarke’s desire for ordered rule in favor of hedonistic chaos.

Initially the dialogue is kind of bad in the first couple of episodes, particularly the pilot, and a lot of the characters come across as stereotypes. If you give it some time, though, the dialogue gets a lot better and the characters more complex. The show does a great job of giving each character clear motivation and having them respond.

For instance, Bellamy who we find out isn’t really a bad guy, but has spent his whole life trying to protect his sister, Octavia. The actual only siblings on the arc due to a one child rule, Octavia grew up in hiding. When she gets to earth, she’s never dated anyone or really experienced anything. Meanwhile, a lot of Bellamy’s leadership is designed to protect his sister and prevent the Arc from coming to earth to prosecute him for shooting the Chancellor.

What’s also great character wise is the show puts women and minority actors in positions of power. Women can be total badasses and powerful leaders, and there are never any corny lines about women being able to do the same things as men or shit like that.

Of course, there’s some other stuff that doesn’t really get better like how the show’s always trying to insert these currently popular songs—there’s a really cringe worthy Imagine Dragons’ song in the first episode. And a lot of the first season involves trying to get as many beautiful people to have very tame TV sex with each other. Not that that’s a bad thing, it’s just very CW and all the sex scenes are the same so they’re really kind of dull. However, not just women are the eye candy—everyone’s eye candy here.

Overall, the good outweighs the bad, and it’s very entertaining overall. The plot moves along very quickly with each episode having clear objectives like rescuing someone from the grounders or getting supplies. It tells a very clear story with a well-formed world, and they never seem to be making it up as they go along like Lost. And as a further corrective of that show, there’s always a little bit of mystery, but they clear things up before deepening the world.

What really makes the show worthwhile is it’s a show about complex moral decisions similar to Game of Thrones or Breaking Bad. On the Arc, the people in charge have to decide the best way to deal with the declining oxygen and it that’s killing hundreds of people so the rest can survive. Down on the ground, they’re struggling with whether to torture a grounder for information. And all those decisions they make matter too, even seemingly insignificant ones.

Like Game of Thrones, it’s also a very deadly show with the characters inhabiting a very dangerous world. By the time the teens land on Earth, some have already died and many more die during the season. They’re also not afraid to kill off main characters or people who seem like they would traditionally be very important. There’s no mercy on the 100.

And having already seen the second season, I can tell you that it gets a lot better and the 100 gets really awesome so it’s worth plowing through those first couple of episodes.

-James P.