Saturday, January 23, 2016

The 100 Season 3 Premiere: Wanheda Review

The most attractive Post-Apocalypse since the Eloi.
The Post-apocalypse 90210 is back, baby!

And it's off to a rocky start.

Some details are jarring: there are broad, flat and possibly graded roads now for jeeps (yes, they have jeeps). Who made the road, and why? There are no cars. Well. Now there are. But come on, do you see Grounders doing road work? They wear skulls for decorations. They'd be more likely to eat the road crew.

But that's just nit picking.

The episode starts a couple months after the end of the last series. The passage of time is shown through Murphy's eyes, who's been locked inside a bunker for eighty days (giver or take) and is on the verge of insanity, watching the same video over and over again until he can quote it verbatim. It does give the writers a chance to info dump about the fall of human civilization and the role possibly played by the mysterious AI in a red dress.

Funny how AIs always represent themselves as foxy women in red dresses.

I'm not complaining.

Anyway, crazy former commander Jaha lets Murphy out after the opening credits, and tells him about the City of Light. It's real, but virtual, or really virtual. Virtually real? Take the blue pill, Murphy. Have a juicy steak with Agent Smith. They hint at a Matrix like angle, and if that's the case, it opens up a pile of possibilities for scenes set in our current world, with all the budget savings that has to offer.

Commander 'Gonzo' Jaha has teamed up with the AI, who may, or may not, have destroyed humanity. There are hints both ways. Jaha and Red Dress have gotten a nuclear reactor going, and just in time. It can provide the power for the hot showers Clarke's going to need.

Clarke's been living in the woods, feral style, wrestling black panthers and selling meat to a trading post. Because that's what you do in the future. She looks like she hasn't bathed in three months, and she's gone Ginger. Or is that mud?

Apparently, Clarke's being hunted by everybody, who want her Mean Mama Mojo.

Feeling lonely despite all the panther snuggling, Clarke and the young lass managing the trade shop have some hot, steamy and arguably gratuitous sex. Then Clarke's off again, only to fall… into pushing the plot forward. Because something has to happen in the episode.

"I'm a star now, I don't have to bathe!"
Young Jasper, in the meantime, has gone over-the-top bananas over the loss of his one true love, Vegan Vampire Girl, and repeatedly manifests a death wish. He's so annoying about it you just wish they let him do it.

But no. Jasper's dragged along on a mission by Beefcake (Bellamy), Worrywart, and Lame Leg Lady. They drive a jeep across fields… which clearly show the lines of cut grass made by sweeps of modern machinery. CUT GRASS, people. In the Post-Apocalypse! I had no idea there would still be landscaping. Makes it much more appealing.

The 100 is going for epic on a shoe string, so you have to accept this sort of thing. They gotta cut cost corners somewhere, and the grass got it. Just use your imagination and think of Love Canal.

Where did they get a jeep? Best guess is Mount Weather, because why would you have one on a space station? Yet the Weather folks didn't seem to use them. Could be wrong. Not important, a throw away line later will cover it, no doubt.

Otherwise, more of the same. War is looming on the horizon, because stuff. Adults are proven wrong and praise the superior wisdom of teenagers. A real life pop singer makes an appearance to sing and play the piano. Two hunky guys fight with their shirts off.

It's fun and gleeful, but even more preposterous than usual.

The combat skills and abilities of some characters, who spent their entire lives in, essentially, antiseptic closets, are now elite warriors, which kinda makes the savage Grounders look incompetent and needlessly lame. Maybe they wear skull ornaments to compensate. They'd be ten times more dangerous and competent if they were teenagers. Their leader, Doe-Eyes (Lexa), is a teen, after all.

It's still the CW.

The premiere is only the opening salvo.

It's packed with set up and teen tropes.

All the better to subvert and kill them later.

Here's hoping.

"I have to go do ab crunches."

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