It may be a new year, but we’re not ready to close the book on 2023 TV quite yet. All week, Vulture critics will be offering recommendations for the shows they loved last year but didn’t have the bandwidth to cover. (There was a lot of TV, okay?!)
Anyone could die in an episode of 100 Foot Wave. The HBO docuseries isn’t facetious about this: Every time a big-wave surfer launches their body down a moving wall of water that is multiple stories high, they put themselves in incredible, undeniable amounts of danger. From other surfers and their drivers on Jet Skis who might be in their path; from equipment failure, including a surfboard snapping in two and catapulting its rider into the water; from the wave itself, which can buck and roil and shift, and always, in some way or form, crashes. It’s only honest to the sport that 100 Foot Wave keeps a toe dipped in the realm of disaster, viscerally illustrating and contextualizing near-death experiences. And it’s also only honest to those doing the sport that 100 Foot Wave also concerns itself with life: with the sensation of doing something physically and emotionally challenging and doing it well, with the goose bump–causing euphoria of walking away from a wave that could have very well killed you, and with the existential toll of staking one’s professional and personal identities in an extreme activity with extreme consequences.
In its 2021 first season, 100 Foot Wave filtered those emotions primarily through legendary surfer Garrett McNamara, a gruff and uncompromising figure, laser-intent on pushing his body to do all it takes to win. He’s loyal to his family, friends, and the younger surfers he’s taken under his wing, but he’s convinced of his own expectations for people; what they consider their capabilities and skills doesn’t hold as much weight as what McNamara believes. 100 Foot Wave fills in a fair amount of biographical backstory but mostly tracks how after making his name surfing in Hawaii, McNamara recognized an opportunity in the mammoth waves crashing ashore in Nazaré, Portugal. His surfing there helps turn the town into a mecca for the sport, sparking international competitions and bringing new industries to Nazaré, though it takes a little while for McNamara to convince the industry to take the place seriously. The season also incorporates his fame after surfing an 80-foot wave there, and his light friction with wife Nicole, who unapologetically demands more of his time for their growing family. (The deadpan Nicole is a star in her own right, a great talking-head interview who lovingly and matter-of-factly cuts through McNamara’s boastfulness.)
McNamara’s myriad injuries — and, although the series doesn’t harp on it, his age; he’s in his early 50s during filming — informed a recurring question in the series’ first season: When is enough enough? It was reasonable to assume that his health might cause the second season of 100 Foot Wave to expand its focus past just him, and reorient itself around a phenomenon rather than a person. That’s precisely what happened, and it was the correct choice. In its 2023 second season, 100 Foot Wave became an immersive roller coaster of a watch, not just for its omnipresent sense of danger but also for how it prods at the chicken-or-egg connections between ceaseless ambition and precarious survival for many surfers, beyond just McNamara. “We’re not going to war, we’re going to have fun,†says Fred David, the boyfriend of and Jet Ski driver for multi-time world champion surfer Justine Dupont. What 100 Foot Wave’s briskly entertaining and could-be-longer second season points out — sometimes horrifyingly, and always compellingly — is that in this convivial-yet-hypercompetitive athletic world, those two concepts can be the same.
That war-versus-fun divide is bridged by the precise manner in which 100 Foot Wave captures the impetuousness of the ocean and the excitement and fear it inspires in the surfers. The series’ visuals have always been unbelievable in a “how did they pull this off?†way, and director Chris Smith incorporates aerial drone footage and cameras mounted on surfboards and Jet Skis to careen us around this aquatic atmosphere: above the water as it transforms from placid to turbulent, within waves as they form 360-degree barrels, underneath the surface while being buffeted with white foam and effervescent bubbles. All that technical effort reveals both Icarus-like freedom and calamitous falls; the series’ anxiety-inducing cinematography and inquisitive posture toward what draws people to endeavors that might kill them make 100 Foot Wave akin to the exceptional Academy Award–winning documentary Free Solo. Yet it’s the vérité-style interviews and candid moments with the surfers — immediately after wipeouts and wins, or during conversations with loving relatives and apprehensive teammates — that help us understand the entirety of what’s at stake here. Smith takes the surfers McNamara has partnered with, mentored, and competed against and deposits them at our feet like so many precious shells and sponsored–by–Red Bull hats plucked from the deep, each with a story line that explores another facet of this sport.
There’s McNamara’s brother-in-law C.J. Macias, a natural athlete who can surf astonishingly well but also gets lost in his own head worrying about his life’s purpose. McNamara’s longtime surfing partner Andrew Cotton, staring down his 40s and a crumbling marriage, wonders whether all the time away from his family to finally snag a ten-story wave is worth it. Teen Antonio “Tony†Laureano and his father and driver, Ramon, both Nazaré locals, feel ignored by the professional surfing community despite being from the place where so many competitions are now held; the chips on their shoulders fuel Tony’s relentless training. Close friends Kai Lenny, Lucas “Chumbo†Chianca, Nic von Rupp, and Pedro “Scooby†Vianna initially seem like varying caricatures of the laid-back surfer bro, but their protectiveness toward anyone in trouble on the water hints at their own history of close calls. Some surfing partners are also involved romantically, which can add extra intensity when things go bad (like for Dupont and David, who struggle with David’s decision to stop driving for Dupont because of his reluctance to see her on the biggest waves) or sentiment when things go right (like Brazilians Ian Cosenza and Michelle des Boullions, who get engaged over the course of the season).
All of those stories are entertaining and often intermeshed, as those in an insular world where your rivals are the same people as your friends, tend to be, and they provide 100 Foot Wave with a fuller sense of why: Why put your life on the line? Not everyone has an answer, but 100 Foot Wave honors that inscrutability, too, by letting its subjects sit with their uncertainties and their vulnerabilities while also celebrating their accomplishments. And McNamara, in wise-godfather mode, oversees it all, throwing relentless encouragement behind proven surfers like Cotton and Dupont and prompting Macias and the younger Laureano to step up their games. Their success in Nazaré is part of his legacy and helps 100 Foot Wave ensure its own longevity, too.