Last year I binged through the show “The 100” and had the same experience that many others had — it was fantastic at the beginning, but faded as the seasons wore on. There are different theories as to what happened, but I think the lack of constraints hurt them.
Having constraints can be a wonderful thing, as I shared a few years ago regarding the original icons on the Macintosh. Forcing yourself to stay within boundaries can be a challenge, but can often lead to amazing things.
If you’ve not seen the show, it’s set a hundred years after a nuclear apocalypse wipes out the earth. Fortunately, many humans survived aboard a giant spacecraft. At some point, they want to test to see if the earth was habitable or not, so they sent down 100 juvenile delinquents to see if they would survive or not.
Here’s their original trailer from a decade ago:
Having that happen for real seems wildly unlikely, but entirely reasonable. With our known universe, based on Earth, they didn’t do anything for the first few seasons that was impossible. It’s all very improbable, certainly, but they stuck with the constraint of “follow the allowed structure of our world”.
Time wears on…
As time went on, though, the writers decided that reality was too tight of a constraint so they ventured way out with weird portals (through both space and time) and other things that were wildly unrealistic. They made for pretty good television, but I much preferred those that were locked into some degree of realism.
It’s not an uncommon direction for a show to take, but I think The 100 would have been far better served if they had faced their constraints head-on and worked through them.
Semi-related is this quote from Ryan Holiday in “The Obstacle Is the Way“. His words were intended for obstacles that we face in our life, but I think it holds true with this as well:
“The obstacle in the path becomes the path. Never forget, within every obstacle is an opportunity to improve our condition.”
What obstacles have you faced that have been worth fighting through rather than going around them?
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