As winter hiatus begins, we get one more chance to honor some truly great performances for Hypable Honors before 2014 wraps up for good.
Most shows have wrapped up their Fall 2014 runs, and we now embark on the sometimes short, sometimes longer winter hiatuses. While most CW shows seem to be planning to return sometime in January, ABC tends to shoot for March, and everyone else falls somewhere in between.
Anyway, this week’s selections for Hypable Honors hail from a show about geniuses tasked with trying to save the world, and a bunch of delinquents charged with repopulating it. Both Scorpion and The 100 have had some really great performances this season, and we are really excited to showcase some of their most impressive talent.
Make sure to check let us know who you think is most worthy of Hypable Honors this week in the comments below!
Hypable Honors
Show: ‘Scorpion’
Actor: Elyes Gabel
While we’ve been enjoying the show since it premiered, Elyes Gabel’s performance in this past week’s midseason finale of Scorpion was unlike anything we’ve seen on the program previously. Thanks to Gabel’s intensity and skill, the episode became one of the best hours of television we’ve seen in a long time.
As Walter O’Brien, Gabel has had to reign in his emotions for most of the season so far as Walter’s intelligence supposedly keeps him from feeling things a lot of the time. Therefore, his emotional breakdown and responses to the stressors around him in this episode came as a surprise.
For an episode with such a hard-to-swallow premise (that being a child caught in a sink hole with only an hour to live), Gabel walked the fine line between emotion and hysterics and he walked it very well. Even though emotions aren’t really his character’s “thing,” his performance allowed us to see a different side of his character (one that he’s been hiding all season) without betraying what we know about Walter so far. In other words, Gabel’s performance in “Dominoes” added another layer to his character.
What really made Gabel’s performance so entrancing in this episode compared to previous episodes of Scorpion was his interactions with the child actor. Every time the two were together or talked to each other, our stomach was in knots. The intensity that Gabel brought to Walter’s dedication to the child and unwillingness to give up made the dire situation even more emotional and real.
We’d also like to give a special shout out to Baby Star-Lord (the endearing name we’ve given to Wyatt Oleff, the actor who played Young Peter Quill in Guardians of the Galaxy) for his performance in the sink hole. It brought us to tears. Great job, Baby Star-Lord!
Show: ‘The 100’
Actor: Thomas McDonell
Let’s be clear: there were three breakout stars of Wednesday’s mid-season finale of The 100 season 2: Thomas McDonell, Eliza Taylor, and Lindsey Morgan.
McDonell gets the spot because his character, Finn Collins, met a heartbreaking end which will forever change the show. After the dark turn his character took earlier this year, it was only a matter of time before he had to atone for his sins – and he ended up walking into the arms of the Grounders to save the woman he loved.
In his final scene, Finn uttered a heartbreaking “I’m scared,” which would send tears rolling down your face if they weren’t already. And then Clarke (Eliza Taylor) stepped in, knife hidden up her sleeve, to end his suffering before the Grounders began his long and torturous execution.
In the words of Buffy: “I told him I loved him. Then I kissed him. And then I killed him.”
Both Clarke and Raven (Lindsey Morgan)’s performances were haunting as they struggled to accept Finn’s impending death. Seeing Clarke come to the conclusion that she had to kill Finn, and seeing Raven break down as it happened will stay with us for a long time. While we’re going to miss McDonell’s presence on The 100, we know that Finn’s death will have a lasting impact on these two characters – and we can’t wait to see what happens next.
