“Guilty pleasure” is a term that’s thrown around quite a bit when discussing television. It’s used to validate watching shows that might not be the most widely or critically praised, but nonetheless have an undeniable entertainment factor. RottenTomatoes uses this exact phrase in its Critics Consensus of the first season of The 100.
Set 97 years in the future after a devastating nuclear apocalypse, the show follows a group of 100 teenagers who are sent down from their current residence on a space station to see if Earth is still uninhabitable. As you might expect, the show follows many of the conventions that populate teen fiction, with struggles for hierarchy and random romance in the same vein of films like The Hunger Games, Divergent, and The Maze Runner.
However, despite its obvious faults in predictability, the first season of The 100 is deeper than simply your everyday guilty pleasure. It’s most interesting when it explores themes presented originally in the classic Lord of the Flies. There are many moments in the first season that seem to give a clear commentary on human nature. Just as Ralph and Jack clashed by respectively inhabiting Freudian ideals of the ego and id, members of the 100 quickly become split between two sides led by main characters Clarke and Bellamy. Clarke follows a more logical approach to society-building, while Bellamy’s camp adheres to his rule “Whatever the hell we want!” Eventually, the group devolves into chaotic violence just as in Lord of the Flies; the parallel breaks when Clarke is able to rein the group in, eventually befriending Bellamy.
The ambition clearly present in The 100 wouldn’t work if the plotline were weak or there was a lack of character development. However, the first season peppers viewers with enough surprises and twists to keep them hooked, and pays serious attention to giving many of its characters relevant and interesting arcs. The acting can sometimes fall short, and set design can feel repetitive. But ultimately, the underlying philosophical concepts propped up by interesting development make the first season of The 100 a worthy viewing for any television lover.