Revolution...a review, well sort of.

[shadowkat]

So did anyone else watch Revolution? Not seeing any reviews on the old flist, so assuming not?

It's rather silly. And, sigh, been done elsewhere, better. Lost, this ain't.

Feels very..I want to say, comic-bookish?

Here's the set-up:

Charlie's father downloads something from the computer onto a special disc or flashdrive which he wears on a chain around his neck. After he downloads it, he tells his wife to fill all the bath-tubs with water, and pack everything. They are leaving town. The power is about to go off and it will never come back on. He calls his brother who is on the road with a friend, to get read, it's about to happen. The power will turn off and not come on again. The phone cuts off before, his brother Miles can ask why.

Skip ahead 15 years.

The family is living a small surburban cul-de-sac turned rural enclave. One guy is teaching school, this is the father's best friend, who it turns out was a former big-honcho employee with Google. This guy tells the kids that physics went haywire and there's no explanation for why the power went out and it should bug them. The kids don't care.

Charlie and Danny are out exploring. They stumble upon an old bus and reminisce. Danny has an asthma attack, they race back and the lovely blond British doctor puts together a medicine that helps him. Charlie gets in a fight with her father and the doctor, who apparently has moved in with them and is sleeping with Dad. Mom left and is considered dead. We aren't told how she died. Just that she left and is presumed dead.(Which means she'll most likely show up again, particularly since they went to all the trouble of recasting the role with Elizabeth Mitchell after filming the pilot. If she wasn't a major character, why bother? Unless she's only relegated to flashbacks, which is possible.)

The narrative style is similar to Fringe, Lost and Once Upon a Time - with the flashbacks.
Of the three, I still think Once Upon a Time works the best and is the most interesting.
But that may be because it doesn't rely on Hollywood pseudo-science.

At any rate, Charlie in pique runs off. She unearths her old Star WARS RETURN OF THE JEDI LUNCH BOX where she keeps a variety of postcards and keepsakes. (This doesn't work for me.
Charlie wouldn't have a lunch box like that. She's from the 21st Century, I haven't seen a lunch box like that since the 1980s...a vintage 1980s lunch box in the 21st Century? On a movie she's probably never seen and certainly wasn't old enough to see when the power went out? Maybe she found it? But still...it's vintage.)

Anyhoo..while she's doing this, Gus (he doesn't have a name in this so, I'm calling him "Gus" because its the same actor from Breaking Bad and I think Once Upon a Time, the man gets around and tends to play the same types of characters...) comes by with the militia. They want to take her Dad away and they are looking for her Uncle. Her brother tries to stop them with a cross-bow (idiot, why he thinks he can take on a whole militia, a heavily armed one at that, with nothing more than a cross-bow is beyond me). The father tries to stop his son. Someone in the militia panics and shoots the father. They kidnap the son in the hopes of trapping the Uncle. The father, considerate soul that he is (remember he was willing to go with them), tells his daughter to find his brother, Miles, in Chicago, and go hunt for Danny. Which seems a bit contradictory, considering earlier he told his girlfriend to take care of his kids, and his best friend to take care of his medallion and let no one get it, and willingly was going to wander off with them. You'd think he'd tell his daughter to forget her brother and stay safe - then hunt down his brother and fall into their trap. But the theme of this is family above all things, well except for the "evil" power grid which must stay off for some reason.

Charlie, who is a taller less attractive and far less interesting version of Katniss Everdeen, goes off to find her brother. (This a big kink for me, so I tuned in for that bit alone - the female heroine/older sister going off to save her bratty brother bit). Her brother's not a complete idiot. He does manage to escape and does find help. Unfortunately the head of the militia used to be an insurance appraiser and can tell that the woman who helped him is lying. She caves (because she's hiding a bigger secret)and lets them find the boy. (The acting saves the dialogue in this show at times.)

Meanwhile Charlie has left her home, with her stepmother, and her father's geeky best bud in tow. Against her will. They invited themselves. I don't know why she didn't just sneak off without them. Probably decided there was no time. But hey, a resourceful doctor and a geeky ex-Google exec. could come in handy. Well, at least the doctor will, not sure about the Google exec - I think he's around for comic relief and the fact that these shows always require an ex-computer/techie geek. (Hunter, Doctor, Tech Geek - all we are missing is damsel/nurturer, reluctant guide/trained fighter/expert, and spy). On the road, she runs into Nate, who later turns out to be militia (spy). Both are hunting her uncle, who her father told her used to kill people for a living (expert). The Uncle, Miles, is living in a hotel, running a saloon out of it, and keeping a low-profile. Until the militia shows up and they fight them off with swords and cross-bows, even though the militia has guns. I kept wondering why the militia didn't shoot first and ask questions later.

Turns out General Monroe, the leader of the militia, is Miles friend from the road (seen in flashbacks) and they used to both be in the Army. Miles tells Nate he has no intention of going back there. And he tells Charlie that Monroe wants to know how to turn the power back on - knowledge he believes Miles and Charlie's father had in their possession. So that they can turn on the tanks and planes again and do away with the other Republics.
ie. Be the one's in power. Aren't they already sort of in power? How would reestablishing the status quuo make life better for them? Granted they'd get power, but so would everyone else? Unless they only turned it on for themselves? Or they could take the credit for it... You'd think they'd prefer to keep it off - since they have more power that way? I mean, it's easier to be a dictator if there's no techonology and not electricity.

Every follower of Monroe, has a big M carved into their arm echoing Monroe's ink tattoo. Apparently it was too hard to do ink tattoos, so Monroe just branded his followers??

Of course Miles joins the rag-tag gang, after they help save him from the Militia, and Nate (the militia spy) saves Charlie twice, so he sort of joins them but no one trusts him.
Meanwhile...Danny's savior communicates via her weird amulet, which is the same as Charlie's Dad's amulet which he gave to the Google guy for safe-keeping (without telling anyone and swearing Google guy to secrecy), on an old 1980s IBM computer with MS DOS.
(Obviously JJ Abhrams has a thing for MS Dos - this was also used in Lost and I'm guessing it is the same computer, or at least it looks like it.) She logs in and tells whomever is on the other end that militia visited, that they didn't get it.

See? Silly. And a bit repetitive of other tv shows that I've seen.

TV really doesn't tend to do sci-fi all that well, generally speaking, does it? Makes sense why people make fun of this genre. Was thinking much the same thing while flipping through recent sci-fi/fantasy flicks on netflix. They are all cheesy horror flicks.

Mainly because television writers don't tend to have science backgrounds (they skipped science in school - it's not a subject you have to take if you are film, business or theater major or English Lit major for that matter) and therefore skimp on the details. It's sort of like watching sci-fi by way of Stephen King or worse, Marvel comics. There are exceptions of course.

Revolution, alas, feels more like Lost in Space by way of Terra Nova, than Lost, Caprica or BSG. Or even Dollhouse or Walking Dead for that matter.

And it has some of the same problems as Lost and Alias, which is the premise doesn't make any sense. So you have to suspend your disbelief in a major league way from the start.
I normally, as you know, don't have that much difficulty with this sort of thing. But,
the dialogue is not exactly stellar here. The best line to date, was, I'd give 80 million dollars in the bank for a roll of charmin, which is only a good line if you don't ask yourself in the next breath - "wait, why isn't there any charmin or toilet paper, when you have shampoo?"

It's also a bit on the predictable side. With a lot of cliche set-ups. The star-crossed romance, the reluctant hero (who was a bad guy once upon a time), the distrusting step-mom,
the missing/allegedly dead Mom...enough for me to realize this particular trope has reached its saturation point and been done to death. Yes, I have a weakness for it. But no one can do it well, damn it. This is not Issac Asimov folks, or even Stephen King for that matter.

I may try a few more episodes to see if it gets better, there's a few interesting characters in there and I like the female heroines, but overall, it doesn't appear to be much of a keeper.

D+

Comments

[masqthephlsphr.livejournal.com]

I taped it. I wasn't going to watch it, originally, but the descriptions I read had some family stuff that matched my story kinks. But this week is nuts, so I haven't watched it yet.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Oh the family stuff definitely matches your story kinks. You just sort of have to wear blinders where the plot and premise are concerned. Ignore the science, ignore the cheesy dialogue and go with the kinks.

It has some of my story kinks to...which is why I watched it. But I don't know if I can handle the cheesy plotting and bad premise.

[masqthephlsphr.livejournal.com]

I'm going to try to watch it this weekend... before they air another.

[empresspatti.livejournal.com]

I kept wondering why they had forgotten about the steam engine.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I wondered the same thing. Not to mention steam locomotives, coal powered, and gas powered stoves. You don't need electricity for natural gas.

Also water and wind power.

The premise acts like everything is run by electrical power and computers. This is not true.

[empresspatti.livejournal.com]

I was entertained (more shirtless wet guys, please) by the Hunger Games rip off. Apparently everyone has to run around with a bow and arrow.

As long as its on before the 10p slot, there is a chance I'll stay awake through 90% of any ep I remember to watch....

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Yes, I was admittedly amused by The Hunger Games rip-off as well. LOL!

It's on at 10 pm here, though. I DVR'd it. So far has nothing that I watch opposite, so may continue as long as it doesn't bore me like Terra Nova did.

[flameraven.livejournal.com]

Hehehe. The real-life version of Revolution would probably be like "Electricity Fails! Steampunk Fans Rejoice!" and then everything turns into a Jules Verne novel.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

Frankly, that would be rather fun to watch. :)

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Yet, expensive. I remember reading how they were saving money by going with swords and cutting back on certain things...

[flameraven.livejournal.com]

I had considered watching this for the premise, but it sounds like the intriguing premise isn't followed through on the execution. Like... they don't have cars/tanks/planes? Those things don't work because of electricity. I mean, you probably couldn't pull off a 747 without the onboard computer, but there's no reason for smaller aircraft of an early 20th century design not to work. Taking out the electricity would be really inconvenient, but it's not like we didn't have other methods of doing most things before electricity was commonplace. (We've only had reliable, commonplace electricity for 70-80 years, guys; the knowledge of how things worked in the 1910's and 20's is not lost to us!)

I'm a sucker for post-apocalyptic type drama, but I also tend to ask a LOT of questions so if the story hasn't done their worldbuilding well (and it sounds like these guys haven't), then I'd probably be way more annoyed than interested.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Yep, a sucker for post-apocalyptic type drama as well. Shame no one can do it really well. I think BSG and Walking Dead come closest.

I'm thinking Revolution is one of those shows that you sort of have to treat like a comic book and ignore all the details. (Although ironically, both BSG and Walking Dead have comic book roots yet managed to deal with those small details rather well or better than Revolution is at any rate. )Unfortunately there are a lot of details to ignore in Revolution, and as I read in abigail nussman's review - the wrong questions, the characters aren't that interesting. The most interesting one's are the Doctor and the Uncle. The lead isn't grabbing me, and she really should because she hits all my story kinks hard. So I'm quite sure why. Is it the acting? The writing? May just be the pilot. One can't always tell with pilots, although ...the bothersome sci-fi details won't get better.

[cactuswatcher.livejournal.com]

As I said elsewhere, I watched it expecting it to be uniformly awful. I thought the writing was pretty good given what garbage the premise was. There were too many problems in the details to keep track of all them. Somehow from the early previews I got the idea that the power had been off for about eight years. When I learned it was 15, it didn't improve things. It's been 15 years and there is no sign of industry to speak of yet everyone is still running around in new looking polyester clothing and mass-produced boots (that are more like fancy riding boots than rugged hiking boots) that look very new.

I didn't want to write a full review because I did, after all, watch it for laughs to begin with. I thought it was better than I expected, but not good enough for me to bother watching.

Makes sense why people make fun of this genre.
It's why people who really like sci-fi disown this stuff. When I was regularly doing reviews of Firefire, many readers couldn't understand why I kept harping on details. Without some attention to detail sci-fi always falls apart. I think your description of Revenge as comic-bookish is correct. The laws of physics don't have to apply. Things don't have to quite make sense from one comic panel to the next because you expect a lot to be left out. In good sci-fi you can't do things like that.

[ponygirl2000.livejournal.com]

The clothing of all things really bugged me. Perfectly clean, perfect fit and very new. They spent so much time making their sets and yet they couldn't put some wear and tear on the clothing? Annoying!

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Bugged me as well. I just read abigail nussman's review over at the wrong questions, and she picked up on the same issues we did. The clothing is too new and too nice. The heroine has a top that doesn't cover her mid-driff.
I found it distracting and unbelievable. Sure, if she's a teen in normal suburbia or NYC, but not in this world.

Also, how did she come by these clothes? It's fifteen years later? What did they do, rob a department store on their way out of town, and know to get exactly the right size and type of clothing? I'd say they were hand-me downs, but they were too new. This feels very low-budget in places. Maybe NBC spent all their money on Terra Nova and SMASH last year and are scaling back?

[atpo-onm.livejournal.com]

Umm, I did a quicky review on Revolution yesterday, along with The Mob Doctor Noted the Bad Science part, but like cactuswatcher I found it better overall than I expected. I'll choose to ignore the nonsense and at least see where it goes.

I keep having this overwhelming urge to come up with an explanation that-- farfetched as it might be, could explain the situation they set up. It's like many many years ago when Isaac Asimov was asked to write the novelization of the movie Fantastic Voyage. He didn't want to do it because he said the science was ridiculous, but apparently they waved enough money at him that he gave in and wrote it anyway. What was funny though is he wrote a preface in the book explaining to the reader that the science was nonsense, and that he knew that, and to just take the story as entertainment, nothing more.

Typical Asimov. Man, that dude was prolific. Something like over 200 books in his lifetime? Plus regular coloums in SF magazines and other stuff.

[fresne.livejournal.com]

Heh, as I was reading your review, I looked up at the metal X-Men lunchbox sitting on my dresser right now. I keep papers I don't want to lose in it. I simply assumed it was her mothers. Because, err... in a disaster, I'd grab my lunch box because it has the papers that I don't want to lose in it. Thus we see ourselves in a story.

I saw the pilot at Comic Con (rewatched last night - interesting tweaks) and enjoyed it. I liked all the little detail touches. Planes falling out of the sky. Muskets. Cities being less supportable due to population mass and the difficulties involved in shifting how functionalities work/easier to afford by a weekly show. It felt very Earth after Humans. Or as we discussed after watching it like the novel, "Ariel: A Boy and his Unicorn". Okay, so I loved the doctor/step mother character. The thing with the whiskey was just... said a lot about the character and it was nice to see a female character be clever/resourceful strong rather than I shoot arrows (which I like too) strong.

I can see where viewers looking for a scientic explanation for the loss /post fall reality might have issues, but it fell nicely for me into the post New Wave Science Fiction. i.e., I like science fiction for the sociology and human interactions.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

I watched it. I found it rather uninvolving.

That said, I'll probably give it a bit more time as that was also my reaction to Fringe when it first came out. It's still possible it could develop into something. As it was it seemed rather tepid with a few significant world-building issues (my first thought was that, more like the Hunger Games or The City of Ember, they should have fudged the time frames involved.

Saying that power goes off and in fifteen years there's no longer a central government is a really tough sell. I mean, the world managed to have GOVERNMENTS prior to electricity, after all.) It just would have been better to have said that the power went off at some unspecified date (in an unspecified future) and that it's been rather longer than 15 years since it happened. They could have done a similar plot to what they're setting up if they went more "City of Ember"-like and just had the secret flashdrive been a couple of generations earlier.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Sort of off-topic, but is "The City of Ember" any good? Is it Hunger Games or Twilight? (I keep flirting with it, but can't tell from the ads, the good reads recs, or the covers.)

I have to agree, it was uninvolving, but that was true of Fringe as well and you can't always tell from pilots. You can have a brilliant pilot and a bad series, or a horrible pilot and a great series. (shrugs)

And it would have worked better if they set it in some undisclosed time period. Instead of making it look like present day (2012). You set sci-fi in the audience's own time-period or reality and they start to question your plot-points. Lost worked better because they were on an island. Fringe...was better at the small details. Alias...it didn't pull in the weird mythology until the second season. Heroes and Supernatural (ditto). This one tries to tell you a lot in short space of time and make it simple, and skimps on the necessary details. It may have worked better if it had grabbed a page from the Hunger Games or City of Ember (as you described - haven't read it, so don't know).

[flameraven.livejournal.com]

I read The City of Ember a few years back. It was a good book, but very much a middle-grade or young YA book, in that it doesn't sketch out too many details and things are solved fairly simply. But for the simple concept that it deals with, I thought the idea was well-developed and the plot was interesting enough. The sequel, however (Village of Sky or something?) was not as interesting or as well-done.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

It's four books. I don't remember the name of one of them. It's some alien observer or something. And there's the "City of Sparks" one. But I never read either of those.

The last in the series "Diamond of Darkhold" was enjoyable.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

I enjoyed "City of Ember" (and its sequel "Diamond of Darkhold"... though I skipped the other two).

It's not at all Twilight-like. The characters are considerably younger. There isn't a romance. It's very much a young-adult novel and it's primarily about the characters piecing together the fragments of information left behind by the people who had built the City to save humanity from some unspecified apocalypse. For a post-apocalyptic story, though, it's very gentle and...well... optimistic.