The CW's The 100 is…

...Lord of the Flies. The 100 is about a far future where humanity lives on a space station and they send all the delinquent youths back to Earth to determine is the planet is habitable. … Um, they’ve proven they can’t be trusted so you send them on an important mission to see if earth was survivable? Good plan.

Murphy’s Law
Kill the pig!

All the 100 have these wristbands that monitor their vitals and let the folks up on the space station know they’re alive and thriving or dying slowly. Of course the take-charge psycho realizes you can just take the wristbands off and  let the people who “sent then down to die” think they’re dead and dying.

There’s like one black guy and he’s the noble voice of reason. While their leader is all “they’ll make us prisoners and poor again.”

But reason, neither heartfelt nor rage-filled, won’t do much when they have to face Grounders! Whats? People who stayed on Earth and survived by adapting and becoming something no longer human…

Murphy’s Law
We have fundamental, moral differences. Being good is right! Being bad is fun!

So there are a bunch of youths running around on the surface being total assholes while monsters lurk. Some want to be good, some want to be bad. That’s essentially the plot. Also, that’s essentially the plot of Lord of the Flies.

They’re nerds, bullies, brats, and followers. There’s cool kids picking on losers, noble and strong kids trying to do the right things, and a bunch of expendable others to either punch or defend.

There isn’t a conch … actually, the one guy who decided to be in charge has a gun and everyone else has shanks.

We're up here, and they're down there. We should kill people up here so people up here can live. I disagree...
We’re up here, and they’re down there. We should kill people up here so people up here can live.
I disagree…

The unique (and only interesting) aspect is the people on The Arc (Get it? like Noah’s.) trying to survive and figure out what’s going on. The council keeps talking able a culling and the engineers are noticing that that drop ship that was ejected because of a serious malfunction didn’t leave any damage and no one’s heard from any of the prisoners who are under some mysterious quarantine.

Humanity is screwed from above and below. I’m currently rooting for the Grounders to kill the 100 and the engineers to use the fact that they’re THE ENGINEERS on a SPACE STATION to their advantage.

 Here’s the super-long official summary of The 100:

 

Because The CW...
Because The CW…

Ninety-seven years ago, nuclear Armageddon decimated planet Earth, destroying civilization. The only survivors were the 400 inhabitants of 12 international space stations that were in orbit at the time. Three generations have been born in space, the survivors now number 4,000, and resources are running out on their dying “Ark” – the 12 stations now linked together and repurposed to keep the survivors alive. Draconian measures including capital punishment and population control are the order of the day, as the leaders of the Ark take ruthless steps to ensure their future, including secretly exiling a group of 100 juvenile prisoners to the Earth’s surface to test whether it’s habitable. For the first time in nearly a century, humans have returned to planet Earth. Among the 100 exiles are Clarke, the bright teenage daughter of the Ark’s chief medical officer; Wells, son of the Ark’s Chancellor; the daredevil Finn; and the brother/sister duo Bellamy and Octavia, whose illegal sibling status has always led them to flaunt the rules. Technologically blind to what’s happening on the planet below them, the Ark’s leaders – Clarke’s widowed mother, Abby; the Chancellor, Jaha; and his shadowy second in command, Kane – are faced with difficult decisions about life, death and the continued existence of the human race. For the 100 young people on Earth, however, the alien planet they’ve never known is a mysterious realm that can be magical one moment and lethal the next. With the survival of the human race entirely in their hands, THE 100 must find a way to transcend their differences, unite and forge a new path on a wildly changed Earth that’s primitive, intense and teeming with the unknown.

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Revolution is not Jericho 2.0

A show set in near-future, post-apocalyptic, mid-western America about survival, family and fighting for what’s right? No, not Jericho. NBC‘s new show: Revolution.

I keep seeing comparisons, complaints, and accusations about how Revolution is a rip off or retry of Jericho. However, if you dig a little deeper, look just a bit closer, you’ll see these are very different stories.

In Jericho we saw an immediate reaction to not only a loss of electrical power, but also social power. Jericho was the parable of being doomed to relive the history we refused to learn from. At the genesis of society’s reboot there was constant competition between the old way and some possible new way that might work better. Fear, confusion, and order were everyday challenges for those living in Jericho’s post-apocalyptic world.

Every time normalcy was established in Jericho it was under threat, be it from their neighbors in New Bern or from the sketchy new corporate government in Cheyenne. They couldn’t really settle into a lifestyle because the world hadn’t settled yet.We see fear, confusion, and order conquered in Revolution. The story is set about 15 years after the blackout and anyone who was going to survive has survived. Community and sustainable lifestyles have been established.

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There’s a massive difference between surviving for a few months, or even a couple of years, and doing it for a decade or more.

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There’s a comfort in normalcy, even if it’s the new normal created out of necessity.

Revolution removes the option characters had in Jericho to run away or pity themselves. Unless their people are somehow worse off than the people elsewhere, their situation is what it is.

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The citizens of Jericho not only trying to stave off conflict, they were also constantly trying to plan for the next situation be acid rain, winter, or food shortages.In Revolution we’re introduced to a world that’s accepted its fate, survived it, and lived in it. Unlike in Jericho, no one was excluded. We, the audience, get to see from the introduction that this is not an isolated issue. No care packages are coming and there’s no safe zone to be thankful for.

In post-apocalyptic Revolution, people might want to migrate away from winter and they might need to deal with the local power-mad warlord. Personally, I think a power-mad warlord, unlike a starved and desperate neighbor, is somewhat their own damn fault. It’s their community and their responsibility to stomp that noise out at its inception or suffer when it comes to fruition.

In Jericho we say a civil war where the winner got to survive. In Revolution we see a bully with an agenda and an army. While the solution to both problems is to band together, it’s a different and scarier kind of stand that needs to be taken when it’s a moral imperative rather than a life or death one.

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I encourage you to watch both– at least a little. Jericho because it’s awesome and I can’t say enough good things about it. Revolution because it might be awesome if you give it a chance on its own merits.

Official site: nbc.com/revolution

Official twitter: @NBCRevolution