Rating summary
Movie | | 4.0 |
Video | | 4.5 |
Audio | | 4.5 |
Extras | | 2.5 |
Overall | | 4.0 |
The 100: The Complete Second Season Blu-ray Movie Review
These Are My People
Reviewed by Michael Reuben April 8, 2016
The 100 met with mixed reviews when The CW network premiered it on March 19, 2014. While
the production values of the post-apocalyptic sci-fi series were well-received, many found its plot
and characters trite and uninspired. As my colleague Kenneth Brown wrote in his review of
Season One's Blu-ray set, the show "features a cast of too-gorgeous-for-reality teens getting
grimier and bloodier by the minute, as if grimier and bloodier will somehow immaculately
conceive compelling character arcs and gripping storylines". Certainly Season One's soap opera
romances and recycled Lord of the Flies ethos did not bode well.
But by the time The 100 reached the jaw-dropping conclusion of the initial thirteen episodes, it
had become clear that series creator Jason Rothenberg had much greater aspirations. Freely
departing from the original novel by Kass Morgan (the first in a planned trilogy), Rothenberg
used the typical CW "pretty people" formula as a Trojan Horse to smuggle onto the network a
serious drama about the clash of noble ideals with unruly reality and the catastrophes that often
result from the best of intentions. It's a rich subject that science fiction is especially well-suited
to explore, whereas a realistic treatment in a contemporary setting risks stumbling over politically
sensitive trip-wires. One of Season Two's recurring themes is how fighting for a cause in which
one believes—any cause—always has a cost, usually in ways that are unforeseeable. Just as in
another contemporary classic of TV science fiction, Battlestar Galactica (which Rothenberg and
his writers have obviously studied), the heroes of The 100 rarely achieve victory. The best they
can manage is to avoid defeat.
Season Two of The 100 premiered on October 22, 2014, and ran for sixteen episodes, three
longer than Season One. When Warner Home Video declined to continue releasing the show on
Blu-ray, the Warner Archive Collection stepped in to fill the gap (though the shift occurred so
"under the radar" that many fans may not realize there's a Blu-ray set available).
Spoiler warning: The discussion below assumes familiarity with Season One. If you have not
seen Season One of The 100
, proceed at your own risk.
As fans already know, "the 100" of the title are the hundred children and teenagers sent to
Earth's surface from an orbiting space station known as the Ark some ninety-seven years after
the planet was devastated by nuclear war. Their mission is to determine whether the planet has
become habitable. With a few exceptions, all of the 100 have committed crimes for which, if they
were adults, the Ark's laws would require the death penalty. Part of the motive for sending them
to the surface is to conserve the Ark's dwindling supplies.
Season Two picks up immediately after Clarke Griffin (Eliza Taylor), the group's de facto leader,
awakens inside the Mount Weather facility that she and a small group tried unsuccessfully to
reach in the series' pilot episode. The locked room where Clarke finds herself is pristine, and the
visible technology indicates a civilization more technologically advanced than the tribal
"Grounders" that she and her fellow survivors were fighting just before they were tranquilized
and carried away. Whoever these "Mountain Men" are, they are obviously unlike anyone the 100
have encountered since landing on Earth.
Clarke will shortly learn that the Mountain Men have brought forty-eight members of her group
to Mount Weather, including computer geeks Jasper (Devon Bostick) and Monty (Christopher
Larkin). This group will come to be known as "the 48" (and later, for reasons that will require no
explanation, "the 47"). Technical wizard Raven (Lindsey Morgan) and the man whom both Clarke
and Raven love, Finn Collins (Thomas McDonell), remain at large, somewhere outside. Also
missing from the 48 are the perpetually bickering siblings, Bellamy and Octavia Blake (Bob
Morley and Marie Avgeropoulos), both of whom have found themselves thrust into unexpected
positions of leadership in the fight for survival.
Outside Mount Weather, the twelve individual space stations that were fused to form the Ark
have completed their perilous journey to the surface, following the desperate escape plan
conceived by Chancellor Thelonius Jaha (Isaiah Washington). As anticipated, however, many of
the Ark's residents did not survive the voyage. Those who did, including Clarke's mother, Dr.
Abby Griffin (Paige Turco), and council member Marcus Kane (Henry Ian Kusick), begin
organizing to establish a fortified camp that can be defended against the Grounders. The
settlement is christened "Camp Jaha", in honor of the former Chancellor, who remained behind
on the Ark, sacrificing himself to facilitate the launch of the individual stations toward Earth. But
as Jaha waits resignedly for his oxygen and supplies to run out, he begins hearing and seeing
signs that he may not be alone on the station as he originally thought.
The first few episodes of Season Two move at a dizzying pace, as the story struggles to keep up
with activity in multiple locales, including Mount Weather, the space station, crash sites and
other places on the ground where the characters have been spread far and wide by the chaos of
Season One's conclusion. Gradually, though, as events reveal more about the different groups
competing for the Earth—the Mountain Men led by President Dante Wallace (Raymond J.
Barry); the Grounders led by warrior Anya (Dichen Lachman); and the terrifying Reapers, whose
murderous frenzy doesn't seem to allow for leadership—Season Two expands into a pessimistic
meditation on humanity's penchant for self-destruction.
Until the 100 landed on Earth, the Ark's inhabitants believed themselves to be the sole survivors
of their species, so that all of their leaders' decisions were driven by the desire to perpetuate human existence (or at least that's how they justified
the harshness of their decisions). In Season Two, the Ark survivors must adjust to the discovery that their fundamental
assumption was wrong. They are now one among several factions of humanity competing for
dominance of the planet, often with irreconcilable needs and objectives. Just as their former
world was decimated by conflict among nations, their newly established colony is now caught in
the crossfire of factions warring for dominance. Instead of starting over, they must rejoin a fray
that has continued throughout their exile in space. The geo-political conflicts that were thought to
have ended with nuclear devastation never went away; they just relocated into new territory.
Issues of loyalty and leadership recur throughout Season Two, along with thorny problems of
diplomacy and compromise, both within Camp Jaha and outside its walls. Before the season is
over, many of the characters are faced with impossible choices between equally unacceptable
alternatives. The children who landed in Season One look much less like youngsters after they
have been forced to make life-and-death decisions that were once the exclusive province of the
Ark's leadership. And the former leaders appear far less authoritative when the organizational
structure developed for space station life confronts a vast unknown that considers the "Sky
Crew" to be an invading enemy (or, in some cases, a tantalizing prey).
Season Two builds to an explosive conclusion with even greater stakes and more lasting
consequences than the Grounder attack that ended Season One. Both individuals and
relationships are permanently altered. Meanwhile, a small party of adventurers has gone
searching for a rumored paradise called "the City of Light". That quest reveals an entirely
separate frontier in this brave new world, which will prove central to the story of Season Three
(currently underway).
The 100: The Complete Second Season Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality
The 100 continues to be shot digitally; the primary cinematographer in Season Two was Michael
C. Blundell, a veteran of Stargate:
Atlantis and Stargate
Universe. The Warner Archive
Collection has distributed the sixteen episodes evenly over four 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray
discs that feature an image much like that of Season One, with superior detail, vivid color, strong
contrast and an absence of noise, banding or other artifacts. While my colleague Kenneth Brown
noted some issues in Season One's night scenes, to my eye no such problems occurred in Season
Two. This may be due to subtle adjustments in the series' photography, or it may simply reflect
differing expectations on the part of two reviewers. The bottom line is that Season Two of The
100 arrives on Blu-ray with an excellent image. WAC has followed their usual practice of
encoding with a high average bitrate, usually around 30 Mbps for each episode.
The 100: The Complete Second Season Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality
Season Two's 5.1 audio mix, once again encoded in lossless DTS-HD MA, continues to
demonstrate that TV sound can be every bit as complex and dynamic as a feature film. The
mixers take full advantage of the surround array, placing both environment and specific sounds
(including voices) into the rear channels for full immersion into The 100's distinctive mixture of
the futuristic and the feudal. The Grounders with their battles and rituals supply much of the
latter, while the former, which in Season One drew from the Ark's space operations, is deployed
in the exploration of Mount Weather's mysteries, which continue to reveal new physical and
sonic spaces right up until the series finale. The sound mix even returns to the space station,
courtesy of an episode-long flashback. Dynamic range is broad, bass extension is deep, and the
dialogue is clearly rendered. Scoring duties continue to fall to Mark Dauer and Evan Frankfort.
The 100: The Complete Second Season Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras
- Deleted Scenes (1080p; 1.78:1): None of these scenes have final color timing, and many
are missing effects shots.
- The 48 (disc 1) (1:28)
- Many Happy Returns (disc 1) (0:40)
- Human Trials (disc 2) (1:51)
- Fog of War (disc 2) (0:59)
- Long into an Abyss (disc 2) (2:22)
- Spacewalker (disc 2) (2:27)
- Survival of the Fittest (disc 3) (2:13)
- Rubicon (disc 3) (1:26)
- Blood Must Have Blood—Part 2 (disc 4) (0:58)
- 2014 Comic-Con Panel (1080i; 1.78:1; 29:01): Hosted by Damian Holbrook of TV
Guide, this panel features a wide-ranging discussion of Season 1, with a few hints about
the then-upcoming Season Two. The panel consists of Executive Producer Jason
Rothenberg and actors Eliza Taylor ("Clarke"), Marie Avgeropoulos ("Olivia"), Devon
Bostick ("Jasper"), Isaiah Washington ("Thelonius"), Lindsey Morgan ("Raven") and
Ricky Whittle ("Lincoln").
- The 100: Unlocking the Mountain (disc 4) (1080p; 1.78:1; 10:03): Cast and crew
discuss the centrality of Mount Weather to the plot of Season Two and the design of The
100's conception of the facility, which was inspired by an actual government installation.
- The 100: Pre-Viz Stunts (disc 4) (1080p; 1.78:1; 6:25): A comparison between stunt
sequence rehearsals and the finished product.
- Gag Reel (disc 4) (1080p; 1.78:1; 3:56).
The 100: The Complete Second Season Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation
When WAC picked up The 100 on Blu-ray, the prevailing wisdom was that the ratings-challenged show would probably be canceled after its
third season. However, like its bloody but
unbowed heros and heroines, The 100 has demonstrated unexpected stamina, and The CW has
ordered yet another season. When the show returns next fall, we can look forward to Season
Three on Blu-ray. Meanwhile, WAC's four-disc set of Season Two is belatedly but highly
recommended.