s01e03: "Earth Skills (aka Earth kills)" ... or "This is the day THE 100 Grew Up fast"
Today's AccuWeather Forecast: "Acid Fog with a 80% Chance Of Bleak"
s01e03: “Earth Skills (aka Earth Kills)”
From the materials provided with the Warner Bros. DVD release:
“When Clarke, Finn and Wells search for an antibiotic to treat Jasper’s wounds, an acid fog forces them to seek shelter in uncomfortably close quarters.”
Feel free to disagree if you like, but there comes a point in every legitimate TV drama wherein payoffs come to those who wait, those who exercise a modicum of patience in exchange for the inevitable reward.
See, here’s the dirty little secret: episodic storytelling has been around so very long at this point in our cultural history that it becomes difficult to truly differentiate one show from the next. Now, I’m not talking about viewers confusing this week’s episode of family drama from next week’s police procedural. Rather I’m talking about what causes folks to sit up, take notice, and realize the real stakes have been raised so far as this program is concerned, so I’d better start watching with greater interest so as not to miss anything important.
From the materials provided with the Warner Bros. DVD release:
“When Clarke, Finn and Wells search for an antibiotic to treat Jasper’s wounds, an acid fog forces them to seek shelter in uncomfortably close quarters.”
Feel free to disagree if you like, but there comes a point in every legitimate TV drama wherein payoffs come to those who wait, those who exercise a modicum of patience in exchange for the inevitable reward.
See, here’s the dirty little secret: episodic storytelling has been around so very long at this point in our cultural history that it becomes difficult to truly differentiate one show from the next. Now, I’m not talking about viewers confusing this week’s episode of family drama from next week’s police procedural. Rather I’m talking about what causes folks to sit up, take notice, and realize the real stakes have been raised so far as this program is concerned, so I’d better start watching with greater interest so as not to miss anything important.
Relaxing with your friend in space ain't all it's cracked up to be.
The current TV generation measures much of what’s on the boob tube via the bar set by ABC TV’s LOST, an inspired, fantastical variation on GILLIGAN’S ISLAND if there ever were. (I kid, I kid.) What LOST did different from dramas of its type is it invested in character development to the point where audiences actually cared about them … and then – somewhat mercilessly – it killed many of them off. No, not all. But some. Quite a few, too. Right now, THE WALKING DEAD is earning rave reviews from fans employing much of the same technique: encourage the viewers to invite these players into your living rooms on a regular basis ‘cause you never know when’s the last time you’re going to share a few minutes with them.
By contrast, much of what made up THE 100 to this point is chump change. I don’t say this to be insulting. I say it to acknowledge that in the build-up to any successful TV relationship – that between the viewer and the players – there’s often time an awful lot of housekeeping. Introduce me to X. Let me get to know X. Make me – however big or small – care about what happens to X. Then put X through Hell, so much Hell that I either feel it or (minimally) identify with the experience. Writers may not have to kill X, per se, but death has that certain finality that intelligent viewers have come to respect, to fear, to love, to hate. Death draws us in. Death challenges us to stay focused for fear that – like X – we missed something crucial, and now we’ll never get it back.
Plus, there’s a whole generation of TV viewers that we kinda/sorta raised on the whole “nobody dies in TV” milieu. It was always the guest star that bit the dust. In Star Trek, it’s always the Red Shirts that are sent into harm’s way, and they always paid the price for their willingness to play the part of the victim. Series regulars? They didn’t die. They couldn’t die. They have contracts, after all, so they’ll be back in some way, shape, or form.
Won’t they?
Episode 3 – better known as “Earth Skills (aka Earth Kills)” – taught viewers a lesson. What lesson, you ask? Well, it goes something like this: “Here all along you silly people thought you were watching a typical CW show, one where the young will always be young, and that means they’ll be young forever, and it’ll all dissolve into some pop rock soundtrack before the darkness rises and the credit rolls. Well, the adults are now on the scene, and we’re going to show you otherwise.”
By contrast, much of what made up THE 100 to this point is chump change. I don’t say this to be insulting. I say it to acknowledge that in the build-up to any successful TV relationship – that between the viewer and the players – there’s often time an awful lot of housekeeping. Introduce me to X. Let me get to know X. Make me – however big or small – care about what happens to X. Then put X through Hell, so much Hell that I either feel it or (minimally) identify with the experience. Writers may not have to kill X, per se, but death has that certain finality that intelligent viewers have come to respect, to fear, to love, to hate. Death draws us in. Death challenges us to stay focused for fear that – like X – we missed something crucial, and now we’ll never get it back.
Plus, there’s a whole generation of TV viewers that we kinda/sorta raised on the whole “nobody dies in TV” milieu. It was always the guest star that bit the dust. In Star Trek, it’s always the Red Shirts that are sent into harm’s way, and they always paid the price for their willingness to play the part of the victim. Series regulars? They didn’t die. They couldn’t die. They have contracts, after all, so they’ll be back in some way, shape, or form.
Won’t they?
Episode 3 – better known as “Earth Skills (aka Earth Kills)” – taught viewers a lesson. What lesson, you ask? Well, it goes something like this: “Here all along you silly people thought you were watching a typical CW show, one where the young will always be young, and that means they’ll be young forever, and it’ll all dissolve into some pop rock soundtrack before the darkness rises and the credit rolls. Well, the adults are now on the scene, and we’re going to show you otherwise.”
You can always tell who to trust by the look in their eyes.
I’m not gonna spoil it for you, suffice it to say that it wasn’t until this hour’s closing scenes that I was truly bitten by THE 100’s bug. It was there – in a subtly played out scene by two people – that I realized these writers have learned the lessons that LOST and THE WALKING DEAD have practiced: in order for characters to be real, there must be risk. Lethal risk. In order for life to be cherished, there must be consequences for lives lived poorly … and so very much of the posturing and flawed thinking present in THE 100’s first two-and-one-half hours finally had a pay-off … and it was pretty darn big.
What this turn does is ably raises the stakes for both the characters as well as the audiences. Like I said above, it forces everyone to sit up, to take notice, and to realize that the show has crossed a creative line from which there can be no pull back. These kids? The ones forced to grow up and save mankind? If the writing is handled properly, they’ll have no choice but to grow up pretty quickly or face extinction sooner than they imagined.
Like the title implies, the pursuit of ‘skills’ has to come with a measure of risk, and risk – in order for it to be accepted – must bring with it a measure of consequence. We’ve been told that Earth suffered a major catastrophe, and – in this hour – we were finally treated to the first real evidence of it by way of a deadly acid fog that forces our survivors to either seek refuge or (simply) die a slow and painful death. The refuge gives these characters a chance to enjoy a moment of solitude that inevitably leads to some private realizations, but it also means that life will be different after the shared silence is over. Such is the stuff of good drama. Such is life.
Those of us who have patiently been waiting for THE 100 to say something deeper about society, survival, and how do you balance those two things? We were just served notice.
And it wasn’t pretty.
What this turn does is ably raises the stakes for both the characters as well as the audiences. Like I said above, it forces everyone to sit up, to take notice, and to realize that the show has crossed a creative line from which there can be no pull back. These kids? The ones forced to grow up and save mankind? If the writing is handled properly, they’ll have no choice but to grow up pretty quickly or face extinction sooner than they imagined.
Like the title implies, the pursuit of ‘skills’ has to come with a measure of risk, and risk – in order for it to be accepted – must bring with it a measure of consequence. We’ve been told that Earth suffered a major catastrophe, and – in this hour – we were finally treated to the first real evidence of it by way of a deadly acid fog that forces our survivors to either seek refuge or (simply) die a slow and painful death. The refuge gives these characters a chance to enjoy a moment of solitude that inevitably leads to some private realizations, but it also means that life will be different after the shared silence is over. Such is the stuff of good drama. Such is life.
Those of us who have patiently been waiting for THE 100 to say something deeper about society, survival, and how do you balance those two things? We were just served notice.
And it wasn’t pretty.