I’ve just watched the first episode of The 100 on Netflix. Well, actually, I started writing this at about the 35:00 mark.
Is it wrong for me to want every single one of these whiny teenagers to die horribly? I mean, it’s not just that I don’t like any of them. It’s more of a deep-seeded loathing, a visceral hatred of everything about them and everything they stand for. I don’t just want them to die. I want them to die suffering, only lingering long enough for them to finally realize in their last moments–too late–just how awful they are as human beings and potential role models. They must, in the end, die knowing that it was the only just fate for them. Because if these whiny teenagers are the last hope for humanity, then I think we can all agree that it’s okay for humanity to die out. We should, in fact, celebrate the end of this breed of whiny teenager.
If you don’t know what The 100 is, it’s a show based on one of those ubiquitous Young Adult dystopian novels that were so rampant around the time of The Hunger Games, where every story had to be set in a bleak future apocalypse and every character had to fit neatly into a familiar high school cliche and also be in some sort of a love triangle. (Ruining the market for any other dystopian novels for years to come.) This particular story has our high school cliches (100 of them, get it?) landing on a post-nuclear-holocaust Earth after having grown up on a space station. You see, a nuclear holocaust wiped out everyone on Earth except a bunch of astronauts from different countries, who somehow glued all of their space stations together into one big space station and colony. Now the evil space station adults (who are dead set on making all teenagers’ lives miserable, as is required in Young Adult stories, except for the “cool mom” of course) need to reduce the population. So they decide to jettison 100 whiny teenagers (who for some reason all happen to be prisoners, because teenagers are are hoodlums and adults never do anything wrong) and send them to the planet to see if it’s still covered with radiation. Because it’s not like you can measure that from orbit or even see anything happening on the surface by, you know, looking out the window.
The plot holes in this show are big enough to drive a truck through, but still I would support the concept if not for this tiny problem of the entire cast of human guinea pigs being so incredibly repulsive to watch. They seem to think they are going to the prom instead of being forced to survive with no food and no shelter and possibly mutant monsters trying to kill them at every turn. But it’s okay because they can build a bonfire and party and those nasty adults can’t tell them what to do!
Still, I might see if I can pick up the book if it’s cheap. I like post-apocalyptic stories. Perhaps network executives injected all the whiny teenagers into the show to appeal to The CW’s audience.
