This 11-Year-Old Cheesy Dystopian Soap Opera Is the Fifth Most-Watched TV Series Ever
This series had a promising premise, but it wasted its potential in no time.
When you think of the most-watched TV show in history, what's the first series that comes to mind? If Game of Thrones is your first thought, you're absolutely right.
According to IMDb, Stranger Things and The Walking Dead deservedly share the top three spots with the adaptation of George R.R. Martin's novels.
But number 5? Well, it's not that obvious. The 100, a post-apocalyptic show that ran for seven long seasons on The CW while remaining a soap opera in a sci-fi shell, seems to have landed in the top five by sheer coincidence.
What Is The 100 About?
For nearly a hundred years, a space station has been orbiting near-Earth; after a global nuclear catastrophe, the ship's population consists of the remnants of a lost civilization.
However, the resources of the station are not eternal, and the leadership is forced to look for ways to return to the planet. One hundred teenage criminals are sent to the surface as test subjects; they will either die or survive and prepare a foothold for the return of the rest.
They decide to build their own colony on a not very friendly planet, but Earth holds many surprises that young men and women born in space cannot even imagine.
The 100 Is a Teen Soap Opera Disguised as Dystopian Sci-Fi
Once upon a time, many had high hopes for The 100 – the concept allowed the series to become a kind of Lord of the Flies in the context of a global natural and civilizational disaster.
But something went wrong, instead of a serious thriller about survival and overcoming, the viewer got a completely faceless teenage action project.
Even more sad was the fact that at first there was hope for a quality drama. The writers of The 100 started killing off characters left and right, and, it must be admitted, some deaths were unexpected.
But soon the dead turned out to be alive, the missing returned, the kidnapped were rescued, and the series moved from a brutal fight for life to the establishment of everyday life, friendly chats, and conflicts over love triangles.
The 100 Is the Perfect Guilty Pleasure for Those Tired of Serious Sci-Fi Projects
The 100 has so many shortcomings that they turn into advantages. The writers' imagination is boundless, it is almost impossible to predict what will happen in the next five minutes.
The show has a high dynamic: when the characters are about to shed a tear or sort things out, something is bound to explode nearby or a crowd of savages will run out from an ambush.
The 100 is a real guilty pleasure. It takes the worst of old action movies and trendy teen stories and turns the very idea of post-apocalypse into a soap opera.