When it comes to content, The CW typically veers away from featuring anything too dark or gruesome — You won’t see many cold-blooded murders on The Flash or Legends of Tomorrow. One of the exceptions, however, seems to be The 100, the network’s post-apocalyptic show about teens trying to rebuild society on a ruined Earth. The show has frequently gone well beyond what viewers have come to expect from CW series, venturing into territory that’s more on par with what fans have come to expect from premium cable networks.
It’s at the point where you wonder how The CW lets showrunner Jason Rothenberg get away with this stuff, and he’s right there with you. “We definitely pride ourselves on pushing the envelope on what’s acceptable on The CW,” he told Comic Book Resources. “I’m often surprised we get away with some of the things that we get away with, frankly.”
"To their credit — with [CW President] Mark Pedowitz, in particular — they’re aware we’re competing in a world where people have cable and streaming. That kind of content is kind of expected — that’s the stuff I love — and it’s [what] we try to kind of emulate and live up to with this show."
It’s true that most premium fantasy and science-fiction series don’t shy away from the darker side of life. (Game of Thrones, which features incest, beheadings and much more, can be Exhibit A.) And by allowing The 100 to explore darker subject matter — whether it’s cannibalism, children killing one another to become commander, or whatever else — The CW has made the dystopian series more believable.
Rothenberg also suggested that, by allowing The 100 to push the envelope, The CW is laying the groundwork for other series on the network to follow in its footsteps. “I use the metaphor sometimes that we’re the blocking back who bursts through the line of scrimmage and leaves roles for the running backs to follow and the running backs are like The Flash and other shows on the network that can do things that maybe they thought they couldn’t do we’ve broken through in certain areas, mainly when it comes to violence and things like that.”
And there’s certainly no shortage of violence and loss on The 100. That’s bound to escalate during the show’s final season, which premieres tonight at 8:00 p.m. With one final struggle to survive left, fans are heading in expecting the worst (but, who knows, perhaps some of the characters will get the happy ending they deserve).
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