The world as we know it has ended. Fifteen years later, the story really begins about how to change it once more.
What They Say:
Pilot – In a world without electricity, an American family struggles to reunite.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
With a solid team behind the production, from being exec produced and shepherded by J.J. Abrams to a story concept and design from Eric Kripke while tossing in Jon Favreau as the director of the pilot, it’s easy to get excited about Revolution even if there is a familiarity about it for some people. I’ve had mixed luck over the years when it comes to Abrams work, but it’s something I generally do my best to try and see how it goes. The last time I really skipped one and regretted it was with Fringe. With Revolution, there’s some serious Postman vibes going on here, which coming from a novel point of view, is something to get interested in and excited about.
The series kicks off easily as we see the world losing power in an instant, though some people have some meager advanced knowledge about it. The moment it happens is brief, but the visuals start off nicely as we see flatpsin airliners falling out of the sky and starting the spread of destruction. But the show doesn’t want to follow on the immediate aftermath of it and survival. It wants to shift fifteen years later to show what happened after the Blackout that has left the world without electricity. It affected everything (and there are some strange things not working that don’t require electricity, but that’s just a weakness in the writing) but people will survive and move on. Few remained in the cities due to the danger of it all, at least according to the narration, and many fled elsewhere in order to create smaller communities and militias in order protect themselves.
The focus for the show is primarily on Charlotte, a young woman who as a child saw the end of times happening before her without understanding it. She lost her mother over the years and lives in a small community with her father Ben, who had some advanced knowledge, and her brother Danny who isn’t exactly sickly but has strong asthma issues. They have a simple small community to live in but it all goes down badly when the Monroe Republic military men arrive to take her father, Ben, as they’ve been searching for him and his brother Miles for quiet a long time. Not surprising, everyone has hair trigger tempers and it turns bloody quickly, leaving nobody in a good position as Ben ends up dead and Danny taken by the militia. All that Charlotte can do is to head to Chicago, as her father asks her, to find her uncle and his brother in order to deal with bringing Danny back.
The show gives us the two stories in travel form for a bit so we get to see the dangers of living in this modern world. For Danny, he has to deal with the militia men and their ways while trying to figure out how to escape. For Charlotte and her group, which includes the woman her father was sleeping with and his friend Aaaron who used to work for Google, they encounter bandits and others along the way to Chicago. There’s some help to be had out there in the world, but it’s a cold and brutal place to be which is in contrast to the rather quiet and peaceful way so much of the scenery and locales are presented as.
The basic setup works decently as we get Charlotte finds her uncle Miles, gets the basic idea of why Monroe is looking for him (they can get the power on potentially) and sets the family aspect by bringing uncle and niece together with a fair bit of tension. Miles of course has not handled the time well since the lights went out and isn’t interested in helping, but things move in a way that obviously forces his hand because of the naïve nature of Charlotte that hits many times in this first episode. There’s a good number of scenes that play to the standard things you find in a show of this nature where we see how the world has changed and decayed with all the overgrowth and the like. We also see through the violence that there are some guns that still obviously work, but are in limited supply, while also showcasing that crossbows, bows in general and swords have come back into play. Which I do admit to liking since it’s a more personal way of having to kill somebody and comes across as meaning more.
In Summary:
Revolution puts down the foundation blocks fairly well here with what it wants to do here. The general idea is to go over the layout of the world, noting there are various Republics that exist and some are obviously more power hungry, literally, than others. The big ideas are seeded lightly, from the device that Charlotte’s father passes on to his friend for example, and some of the flashbacks help to flesh things out without it being constant. There’s a nice little twist or two from that which comes into play as well as a Monroe militiaman that we see whose loyalties may be a bit divided. The hints are spread throughout the show that point to the larger picture, and I’ll be honest in saying that they do need to work these as the show moves along its first episodes and not just go with basic character/family drama stuff. That can be well done and enjoyable, but it has to find a good balance between the story of the Blackout and those that are working the knowledge of it and the grunt level kind of action that’s going on, which has its place. Coming from the real enjoyment that was the Postman novel by David Brin, there’s a lot of potential here, but like many genre shows on big networks, it remains to be seen if it can really capitalize on it or not.
Grade: B
