We built this City of Light on rock and roll.
Warning: Full spoilers for The 100: Season 3 follow.
The 100 came into Season 3 on a high, with a notable increase in acclaim, buzz, and coverage on the heels of its excellent second season - only to then suffer through some very public backlash.
So did the show stumble in Season 3? Yes, in some key ways, most certainly. Was it still a great show, despite those issues? Yes, most certainly.
It’s impossible to think about Season 3 without also thinking about the controversy that surrounded the series – and for the first time, negative media attention – in the wake of Lexa’s death, which was about how it was handled story-wise, and whether it fed into a long-standing TV trope, and also whether the show's writers manipulated fans beforehand in terms of expectations. Personally, in terms of the latter, I do think some lines were crossed (and lessons learned, the hard way, for many TV creators in regards to the tricky realm of modern social media interaction with fans), but I want to stress that this review is of the actual content of The 100 as a TV show alone in its third year.
Let’s get to where things went wrong, as the key issues are pretty clear. I wrote before about how I don’t think it was an incorrect choice to kill Lexa off, given the circumstances of Alycia Debnam-Carey’s availability being so limited – you had a character who was, essentially, now too awesome and too important to the story to take off the board -- yet say she was alive, out there, somewhere -- for most of the time without it hindering the show, and yet Debnam-Carey’s Fear the Walking Dead commitments meant the opportunities to actually have her onscreen going forward could be few and far between. It was a frustrating example of real world obstacles and contracts impacting story, and given that, I completely get the decision to kill her. But wow, the way she was killed sure sucked.
She had a poignant, emotional death scene with Clarke (Eliza Taylor) after she was shot (Debnam-Carey and Taylor continued to prove to be a wonderful onscreen pairing), but few were satisfied with the lame, horribly timed manner of her death – which both fed into a trope about killing off lesbians on TV but also into a cliché story beat for any fictional pairing, where her and Clarke’s long-awaited sexual consummation was immediately followed by Lexa being killed, in an accidental manner that played as though she stumbled into a room, not noticing the gun shots and mayhem occurring. Think of any popular, "badass" character – say, Batman, for many. If Batman was killed by a stray bullet meant for someone else, as he wandered into a room, would anyone find that dramatically satisfying? Of course not. So yes, those five minutes or so of screen time – which happened in the middle of an otherwise terrific episode! – were really notable, because taking Lexa out was too big a deal to get this wrong.
The other massive issue, and one that went on for several episodes, was how the Pike (Michael Beach) and Bellamy (Bob Morley) storyline was built up. On paper, it sounds pretty fascinating and in The 100’s wheelhouse. A strong-willed, charismatic man of the people rising up from the Ark with a much more black and white view of all Grounders as the enemy, who manages to gain support - and how Bellamy, in the wake of tragedy, is swayed to his side, makes ghastly decisions as a result and finds himself now in opposition to his friends, only to eventually realize he’s on the wrong side. That sounds cool! Except it was terribly rushed and had Bellamy, one of the show’s central characters, jumping immediately to an absolutely despicable, horrific act, as he joined in (and helped make possible) the straight up murder of 300 Grounders, who were there to help defend the people of Arkadia, in a way that felt absolutely unearned and bizarre. The justification was meant to be that Bellamy already shared Pike’s overall distrust of Grounders, having not been there for most of the time his people worked with them in Season 2 and only knowing of their betrayal, and that the death of his girlfriend, Gina – which occurred because he trusted a Grounder – was what set him off. Again, this all sounds fine when describing it. But on screen, Gina was a cipher we barely knew, and certainly didn’t care about, and Bellamy’s feelings about the Grounders not portrayed nearly enough to get the “straw that broke the camel’s back” feeling it seems was intended. Bellamy just seemed to say, “Sure, I’ll massacre people here to help us.”
It also didn’t help that the depiction of Pike felt so off initially. He was easy to hate, sure, but initially, that was it. There was no nuance to him, as his philosophy seemed to be “Kill all Grounders, all the time,” in a manner that felt ludicrously dangerous. Even if he felt they were genuine threats, he was starting a war, with no backup plan, where the numbers were against him to a massive degree. It all just felt really rushed and poorly motivated, even as it was a key storyline.
All of the above occurred in Season 3’s first half, but the thing is, some really strong elements were at play at the same time. Clarke’s journey to Polis and reunion with Lexa not only allowed the show to continue to build this compelling and involving relationship but also expand the world of the Grounders and their society and to get sequences like the awesome fight between Lexa and the intriguing Roan (Zach McGowan). Out on the road, the ever-fascinating Murphy (Richard Harmon) was reunited with Emori (Luisa D'Oliveira), for a wonderful, Bonnie and Clyde-type dynamic.
Meanwhile in Arkadia, even as Pike was rising to power, the Alie (Erica Cerra) storyline was growing in a suitably insidious fashion and once Raven (Lindsey Morgan) was drawn into it, it became especially interesting. I feel like even more could have been done to portray how the chaos Pike was causing was allowing Alie’s rise to happen under everyone’s noses, but it still laid the groundwork for the City of Light storyline to really take center stage in the secondabby half of the season.
The second half of Season 2 was much more cohesive than what came before it, and in fact contained material that would have been beneficial to include early on. It shouldn't have taken 13 episodes to happen, but “Join or Die”’s flashbacks to Pike on the Ark was both a really clever prequel episode (leading almost directly into the pilot), and finally gave much better perspective to Pike as a guy truly trying to protect his people, using the most harsh approach possible. This nuance should have happened much earlier, but still worked surprisiongly well when it occurred.
Another big highlight of the season was the Raven “possession” situation, as Alie began to actually take control of everyone’s favorite mechanic. Not only did it give Lindsey Morgan an opportunity to shine -- playing both many facets of Raven and then simply playing Alie herself, taking over her body – but it was a cool and scary scenario, as Raven’s friends did all they could to save her before it was too late, with the episode “Nevermore” a big standout of the entire series.
As Alie forced Raven to cut her own wrists or Abby (Paige Turco) to try and hang herself, the streets of Polis were literally filled with blood, and Kane (Henry Ian Cusick) was horrifically crucified, was The 100 getting darker than ever at some points here? Yes, but it was already innately a very dark show, with dozens of touchstone moments that included death, misery and mass murder (including Clarke herself allowing or causing it more than once!) – and was part of what had grabbed audiences to begin with. Suffice to say, I never felt The 100 wasn’t being, well, The 100 during Season 3 and all those aforementioned moments felt effectively chilling and worked to underline the scary threat of Alie.
That being said, sure, you can go too far in terms of having awful things happen where it can feel numbing and overdone and The 100 did begin to touch upon that a bit, even though I don’t think it went too insane in this regard. There was a lot of fan outrage and anger over the deaths of Lexa and Lincoln (Ricky Whittle), but I think both – despite how botched the circumstances of Lexa’s was – served dramatic purposes, helped motivate storylines and characters moving forward and were given proper dramatic weight. Actually, the one death that really bugs me from Season 3 is Sinclair (Alessandro Juliani). The father/daughter-type bond between he and Raven began to get more focus (and some really emotional scenes) in Season 3 and then, right on the heels of saving her from Alie, he was killed. Looking back, it felt gratuitous and had zero story impact afterward. I can't even recall Raven really bringing it up again.
Overall though, the second half of Season 3 found the show once more delivering e ton of fun twists and exciting new scenarios. The reunion of the “Adventure Squad” kids that began this show was very satisfying to see, the introduction of Luna (Nadia Hilker) intriguing – with plenty of room to grow in Season 4 – and the late in the game, more multifaceted look at Pike (Michael Beach was terrific throughout, it should be noted) meant seeing him actually team up with everyone else to take down Alie was actually a really exciting turn of events that would have felt impossible (and impossible to buy into) earlier in the season. Alie made things an appropriately “All hands on deck” situation, with Erica Cerra also proving to be a strong inclusion as both the chilling AI and her human creator, Becca.
This review is already a very long one, so just a handful of points to end on…
-It seems like Jasper (Devon Bostick) was a polarizing character this season, but I felt it was a well-done portrayal of someone in a very sad, broken place. That being said, next season does need to point him in a new direction (More optimistic? Outright villain?), since we've now seen enough of him in this place.
-Though his mom, Hannah (Donna Yamamoto), was even worse than Pike, in some ways, feeling like such a mindless follower, it was great to finally see Monty (Christopher Larkin) get his own storylines in Season 3.
-I’m actually quite curious where the show goes with Jaha next season. After all he set into motion (and he was sort of pre-fanatic about Alie and the City of Light before he even took the chip), what is his place in this group?
-Octavia’s (Marie Avgeropoulos) hatred towards Pike over Lincoln led to her making a big, appropriately morally murky decision in the season finale, though she also felt a bit sidelined for awhile. But ending the season on her killing Pike seems to indicate big things are in store for her.
The Verdict
The 100: Season 3 was messy, that’s for sure. In the first half, it often felt like we were being given big ideas happening on screen, without the proper build up to them. The show has thrived on putting its characters in dark, morally questionable circumstances, but with the Bellamy situation especially, it was just way too much, too fast, which left a lot of what followed more difficult to be on board with, given how it began. But as the season progressed, there was still plenty of examples of the bold, clever sci-fi series the show has always been, and while it couldn’t retroactively fix those early mistakes, certainly some of the follow-up with Pike and Bellamy by the end was much better than proceeded it. Those big missteps aside, this was great TV for much of the season, with episodes like “Thirteen" (those highly regrettable circumstances of Lexa’s death aside), “Fallen,” “Nevermore” and the season finale, “Perverse Instantiation -- Part Two Review,” displaying a series that still delivers some of the most exciting and audacious moments you’ll find on TV -- and certainly broadcast TV -- these days.
Editors' Choice
→
Aucun commentaire:
Enregistrer un commentaire