The CW’s new drama The 100 finally premieres Wednesday night, and its start is something I have anxiously awaited ever since seeing the pilot many months ago. With respect to some of the other new CW shows that launched this year that I did enjoy, The 100 was by far my favorite of the five. The feeling that anything can happen and danger is always lurking around the corner is one of those things that really sold it for me.
The CW must be confident in the series, too, as they’ve sent the first six episodes out to press already, and every one will leave you wanting to see what happens next. The 100 has a really well put together cast, with the younger generation on the ground mostly made up of faces that would be new to American audiences, while the veterans – including Henry Ian Cusick, Paige Turco, and Isaiah Washington – face their own challenges up on the Ark space station that has housed them for so many years.
Sure, there’s a little bit of a Hunger Games feel, but in those films, the characters on the ground that you felt the most for were limited to Katniss and Peeta. In The 100, there’s a much wider selection of characters, and the audience is guaranteed to gravitate toward their own favorites that they can identify with. Clarke, Finn, Wells, Octavia, Jasper, Monty, Bellamy… they’re all very interesting, with backstories left to be explored, and not every one of them might get out of the series alive. I’m probably smack dab in the middle of the generations of characters seen on The 100, which gives me a unique perspective in that I can identify with all of them.
The visual effects and the sets of the series are also top notch and deserve notice; it is incredible to see this kind of time spent creating a look for a weekly series like this.All in all, I hope the audience takes on the journey of The 100 when it premieres Wednesday night, in part because I’m selfish: I’d love to see a second season, and some eyes glued to the TV would help make that a reality. But as it stands, this was one of my favorite pilots of all of the networks for the 2013-2014 TV season, and it only gets more addictive from here. Now, CW publicists… do I really have to wait until May for episode 7?
