New TV Show "Revolution"

New NBC Show, "Revolution", Monday nights 10 pm.

What happens to the world when suddenly all electricity and technology stops working? That's the theme of the new NBC serialized action adventure drama that premiered Monday night September 16.

The Good

The show's visuals were quite good. The visual effects were pretty good. Scenes showing nature over run city scapes like from "I Am Legend" and "After People" (or whatever that Discovery channel show was called where all people on earth suddenly vanish) were cool. The nature backdrops of forests, fields, farms, streams and waterfalls were beautiful. It's a post apocalyptic world where nature has "taken the world back" instead of having been wiped out, which is kind of different.

The mysteries surrounding what caused the electricity to stop working and how are quite interesting, but hardly get touched on at all in the first episode of the show. It basically just happens, and there's a couple characters that might know something about what caused it, and that's about all we know. There's a hint suggested by one geek character that it's much more than just an EMP (electro magnetic pulse), that something big like physics itself going wonky, might be at play. Why and how, we have no clue at all and the few people that do know (or did know), aren't saying anything to anyone.

Three characters stood out to me as the most interesting parts of this new show, Miles (the former soldier turned mercenary on the run who might know pieces of the big puzzle), the Captain of a militia group hunting down Miles and his relatives (one of the most engaging characters of the show so far, well acted), and woman named Grace living alone on a farm with a secret attic full of interesting mysterious stuff.

Interesting characters circled.

The other two characters and actors that had real potential but unfortunately died before the first half of the episode was over were the mother and father of two of the show's lead teen characters. The parents were a heck of a lot more interesting and grabbing than the two young adults were, in my view, but unless we get to see them in lots of flash backs, they're now out of the picture to be replaced by their pretty looking but ho-hum character young adult kids.

Lots of action, but a little too violent + a big body count.

The biggest thing going for the show is the mysteries and the action. If the show can buckle down on some of the good characters and focus more instead of this all over the place jumping and poorly executed plot points, it has potential.

The Bad 

The first and most notable "bad" thing is the obvious Hunger Games Katniss rip off. Charlie is a touch adventuress girl in a brown leather jacket with a crossbow who likes to hunt. *rolls eyes*. And the clothes she's wearing looks very out of place and impractical. Low riding leather pants? Seriously? The world has all but ended and she looks like she's dressed for class in high school, as does her super model looking brother. Both those characters didn't do anything for me.

The show gets rushed along through a pile of different scenes that are fast paced but are so haphazard that they feel overly forced. The show could have been much better if it had been given 2 hours to draw some of the characters and events out. Instead, we're left with people making very stupid decisions without any real explanation as to why so that they can push the story in a particular direction. It feels like way too much shoehorning all the way along, like they were aiming and needing certain spots to hit and just jammed them all together.

The Verdict

The show has potential, but it has to focus on the more interesting characters and story aspects and quit with the "don't they look pretty" and dumb forced plot points. Stick to the interesting stuff and the interesting characters that were very briefly touched on in the pilot.

Overall, I'd give the show many a 6 our of 10 mostly because of the glimpsed potential and interesting theme. Over the last few years I've seen a lot more new series pilots that were way better at developing characters, grabbing the audience, and dropping you into the world than Revolution's opening did. Similar shows like Invasion, Jericho, Flash Forward, The Event, and Tera Nova all had much better opening episodes (in my opinion), but none of them lasted beyond 1 season.

Unless the show can transform itself beyond what was shown in the 1 hour series premiere, I can't imagine this show lasting beyond half a season. It's initial viewership ratings were pretty good for NBC, but how many people return for the 2nd and 3rd episodes will be the real benchmark.

Rated PG?

Just a quick side note... The show was rated PG and aired at 10 pm. This show was not PG in my books. It should have been PG-13 or 14A. There was quite a lot of violence, including some gun shots and sword slices that included mild blood spray. A large number of people are killed in close combat by way of guns, arrows, and sword and knife slices and stabs, some in the slow "Ugh, I've just been stabbed, am dying, and can't believe it, I'll fall down now in shocked surprise," cliche. Two bad guys cough up blood and die after drinking poison by accident, and the lead young adult girl (Charlie) gets rescued from an attempted rape (she gets dragged away but the bad guy is stopped after a short wrestle with her).